Reinier de Graaf - architect, verb.: The New Language of Building

architect, verb

architect, verb

The New Language
of Building

Reinier de Graaf

First published by Verso 2023

Reinier de Graaf 2023

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

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Verso

UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG

US: 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217

versobooks.com

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-191-1

ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-194-2 (US EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-193-5 (UK EBK)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Typeset in Sabon by MJ & N Gavan, Truro, Cornwall

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents

What makes good architecture? Ask any architect and you will likely get a lengthy expos on the all-importance of his or her work, their passion matched only by the passionate indifference from society at large. Architecture, it seems, has landed itself on the wrong side of history. Admittedly, confronted with the most pressing issues of our timeeconomic inequality, climate change and universally dwindling human rightsthe discipline has not made a good showing: complicit in escalating house prices, an integral part of the largest CO2-emitting industry, and all too oblivious to the political machinations it helps perpetuate.

Elitist in the 1970s, forgotten in the 1980s, rediscovered in the 1990s, idolized for much of the 2000s and 2010s, architecture today mostly registers as a cause for concerna discipline insufficiently aware of its consequences, therefore one to be scrutinized and kept in check. Gone are the days of splendid isolation and privileged deliberations among peers. Architecture has caught the attention of both the public and the private sector in no uncertain terms, and there is one thing the two wholeheartedly agree on: too much is at stake to leave architecture to architects.

Valued at US$280 trillion, buildings represent the largest global asset class: triple global GDP, worth twice the worlds oil reserves and thirty times its gold stock.as our most recent global crisis demonstrated, also a potential source of its collapse.

What is true in financial terms equally applies to environmental issues. Buildings produce 30 per cent of all global greenhouse gas emissions while their construction accounts for 40 per cent of the worlds energy use. The built environment affects us all! is the mantra of virtually every conference discussing the relevance of architecture. And the affecting isnt limited to the economy or the environment. Witness the growing number of publications and online lectures on the subject, the built environment also profoundly affects us emotionally. Happiness, wellbeing, liveability and the sense of place are but a few examples of the increasingly emotive terms in which our built environment is being discussed, their prolific use indicative of the apparent lack of each.

In the age of big data, everything is quantifiable, even feelings. At long last, the elusive profession of architecture can be held accountable: good architecture makes people feel good, bad architecture does not. The logic is hard to argue with. But even if less technocratic evaluations of buildings ought to be welcomed, a problem arises when one tries to establish a basis for such evaluations. How does one measure happiness, wellbeing, liveability or place? While the economic or environmental impacts of the built environment tend to manifest in the form of certain hard facts, the same does not apply to its presumed emotional effects. Sure, one can hold polls, issue questionnaires, rely on internet data, but no matter how large or detailed the number of liveability rankings, wellbeing ratings or happiness indices produced in the wake of such efforts, a nagging contrast persistsbetween the immeasurable value attributed to each of these properties, on the one hand, and their inherently unmeasurable nature on the other. The immeasurable cannot be measured. Any attempt to do so only means that the very subjectivity which the numbers sought to exorcise from their subject re-enters through the back door.

Efforts to hold the creative disciplines to objective standards tend to leave a dubious tastebe it the Nazis concept of degenerate art, Stalins Socialist Realism, Chinas ban on weird buildings or, more recently, the British governments fraught attempts to monopolize the notion of beauty. One could argue that to measure something represents the first step in removing it from the realm of free will. Once things are measured, they can be classified, compared and, if needed, encouraged to change in order to compare more favorably. What is measured is forced to comply. It becomes vectorized. Ironically, it is the global system of free competition that has escalated this process to the extreme.

Global indices now exist for almost any aspect of our lives, professional or personal, factual or emotional, real or imagined. In subjecting an ever-larger number of segments of our lives to quantification, the world of free global competition increasingly exposes itself as a source of un-freedom. No longer is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness each individuals free choice; it is instead an imperative to which to conform and strive.

Nothing succeeds like success. We can only go further, forward, up. Competition permits no challenge, quite simply because it internalizes all challenge. Its whole principle is to challenge, everything, all the time, everywhere until only a perpetual contest is left. Not to strive for something, but to strive, pure and simple. The aim equals the means. Values do not serve to be adhered to, but to mobilize. There are no truths, only aspirations. No absolutes, only comparisons, promoted in the form of endless benchmarks, references, precedents, touch-stones, best-in-class examples. The principle has consumed the economy as much as it has consumed political ideology, the world of science as much as that of art and culture. It pervades our language as it pervades our thinking. It operates through words and numbers, most commonly a combination of the two, relying on commonplaces as a substitute for ideals and measurement as a substitute for logic. The more foregone the conclusions, the more extensive the numerical evidence presented in their support. Amateur philosophy meets pseudo-science, practised by an army of thought leaders, strategy consultants, content specialists and subject matter experts.

Architecture, arguably a mix of amateur philosophy and pseudo-science in its own right, has proven particularly vulnerable to this trend. Neither an art nor a science, it is left without the defence mechanism of either, condemned to fighting a war on two fronts: against unsubstantiated commonplaces and the arbitrary measurement systems that sustain them, against words which do not permit an antonymwhich architect, in their right mind, would not wish for people to be happy, want to design unliveable buildings, or oppose a sense of wellbeing? and against numbers which do not permit questioning. There is no arguing with peoples feelings, not when expressed in hard figures.

From architects trying to explain to the world what they are doing, we increasingly witness a world in which architects are told what they