polytechnical
Presuming that personal inclinations should be normative, which is to say that one’s own wishes or beliefs should rule over what others think and do, leads many architectural thinkers to oversimplified descriptions of our work, based on arty explanations which often take a zero-sum form. ‘Architecture must be X, and definitely not Y!’ The process of conceiving and materializing a building - we hear - is either rational or intuitive, meaningful or practical, human- or object-centered, profitable or affective, formal or functional, and so on and so forth.
From time to time, a few such voices become sufficiently charming to make it fashionable to think of architecture in black and white, to see it with a microscope or with a telescope. Someone will claim that what we do can only be understood as an elevated artform, for example, and then someone else will oppose that claim by arguing that we’re actually technicians of some sort. In confirmation of Sayre’s law (‘in any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake’) such debates can turn fierce.
Seen from a distance, though, it becomes clear that whenever over-simplifications do offer a few communicative advantages, most of the times they also bring terrible effects in practice. Noted elsewhere, many popular concepts in architecture are no-doubt effective, but not really efficient. The actual process of projecting and constructing even the simplest building is definitely richer and messier than any sweeping statement could even dream of capturing. In fact, it is only in the abstract levels of architectural thinking where black and white, totally original, or all-encompassing thinking finds some sort traction.
Still, every now and then someone mounts the bank and starts proclaiming that we have finally found the much awaited silver bullet theory; that brilliant idea capable of explaining everything we do - probably by means of a catchy slogan, or using the arcane wording of an incantation. The use of ‘manifestos’ as a popular form or architectural communication is revealing in this sense.
An evident case in point is so-called ‘functionalism,’ rejected long ago by academic consensus and yet quite present in everyday architectural education. Against the belief that buildings must be entirely determined on the basis of a reductive interpretation of the activities expected to take place there (referred to as ‘functions’ or ‘program’), reaction eventually shifted towards the equally impoverished assumption that buildings should be conceived as isolated objects; pure forms, detached from any use or context.
Conceptual disputes like these would remain anecdotal, were it not for the fact that, following yesterday’s functionalist, we are constantly impelled to consider our work in relation to stilted ideas, and thus take sides in the day’s disputes. Rather than conceiving and making buildings, we hear that our work consists in ‘meeting a series of responsibilities,’ usually formulated in broad and hollow terms. Whatever we do - it seems - is certainly not meant for discrete human beings, but should instead be considered in ‘societal’ (i.e., larger than social) terms. On the other hand, no matter how small, anything we do will inevitably have a cosmic effect; it will eventually be determined by an artificial intelligence, and yet should not fail to incorporate some form of perennial wisdom.
To be sure, the vast majority of architects who are currently conceiving, developing, and constructing actual buildings couldn’t care less, as they certainly won’t see much benefit in debating if their work is part of an autonomous or a heteronomous discipline, or situated in the ‘Anthropocene,’ for example. Being truly busy leaves no time for all things holistic, no time to consider time in terms of ‘eras,’ or to adopt arcane belief systems. Venturi made clear in his own ‘(gentle) manifesto’ that architects are constantly confronted instead with the fact that in our profession basically nothing is ever an ‘either-or’ dilemma, but rather a ‘both-and’ puzzle, with a considerable number of strange parts and a good number of missing pieces.
How we deal with this puzzle and manage to deliver on our duty to create and make buildings, explains why there have never been child geniuses among us. Unlike Mozart, who allegedly started composing music aged five, we are required to develop a series of tasks that are very specific to our profession, but also to coordinate a series of additional, often conflicting yet indispensable activities that can only be done by others. Any building, no matter how small or simple, is in this sense polytechnical.
Yes, it will inevitably occupy a piece of land somewhere, have an overall shape made up of interrelated usable spaces, constitute a general physical system (as in Newtonian physics), and communicate something about the people related to it - their ambitions, their social status, and so on. This is mostly what we do. And yet, the knowledge and skills, the techniques required to achieve these things are certainly not the same as those needed to ensure final stability and withstand vertical pulls (gravity) and horizontal pushes (wind); and also not the same as those required to supply the building with drinking water, electric power, and fresh circulating air either. Additional techniques are required to organize the logistics of the construction process, ensure financial feasibility, adjust to all legal requirements and norms, etc. Like a movie (film is another discipline without precocious geniuses), the list of credits is quite large - many different professionals are required to make what is in all cases a very complicated object.
Against the sheer number of techniques involved in our work, it is no wonder that unlike Mozart, most architects tend to achieve their most valuable work towards their maturity. On the other hand, once we recognize the difficulty of what we do, the different hierarchies in which we organize ourselves seem less arbitrary and instead offer a reasonable way to acquire experience in time. A logical progression in any architect’s formative process not only moves gradually across scales, and in increasing levels of complexity. It usually starts by laying down deep and stable disciplinary foundations, on which our exchanges with others can actually take place and be truly productive. In other words, a genuine, in-depth engagement with the extraordinary lore of the architectural discipline is indispensable for the kind of architectural practice that other professionals can confidently rely on and collaborate with.
Said collaborations with other professionals are therefore built gradually, first with clear and concrete limits (inter-disciplinarity), and eventually moving into multi-disciplinary or polytechnical assemblages required to conceive and make the larger projects. For instance, an architect can perfectly carry out the whole process required to design and build a small single-family house with a specialized constructor (two techniques come together in an inter-disciplinary effort). A large hotel or a specialized hospital, on the contrary, can only be done by a considerably large team of very different professionals (the polytechnical nature of the endeavor demands a multi-disciplinary arrangement).
Interestingly, the term polytechnical is now taken for obsolete in several dictionaries, probably owing to last-word claims that our work should go even further and become ‘trans-disciplinary.’ Some clarity seems necessary here. Beyond the prefix multi-, for something to actually be ‘trans-disciplinary’ it is necessary that when different disciplines come together their specificity dissolves, and instead merges into something unprecedented - a brand new ‘cloud of co-creation’ where the particularities of all constituent parts disappear.
Back to the start, the presumption that personal inclinations should be normative leads a good number of architectural thinkers to consider oversimplified descriptions of our work. Paradoxically, to consider our work in trans-disciplinary terms is actually quite simplistic, mindless of how complex it might sound. Blurring the particularities of any profession, in order to claim that collaborations between different professionals take place in uncharted or nebulous territories, might be an effective way to sound high-minded, and yet prove totally inefficient when the time comes to deliver the goods.
The Construction of the Babel Tower (Anonymous, ca. 1400) Source: Getty