voussoirs: WHY DESIGN WHAT?

Today, Google delivered two reports that it presumptuously considered might be of interest to me:

https://insideevs.com/features/558637/design-critique-tesla-roadster/

and

https://www.designboom.com/architecture/quad-studio-dalu-architecture-chengdu-nbd-center-proposal-china-01-06-2022/

One is always surprised and a little concerned that one’s interests are so closely monitored; but such is life these days, unless one chooses to isolate oneself from things digitally interventional, which is just about everything. What one does is to try to limit intrusions and unwanted supervision as best one can while still remaining engaged in matters that have become everyday, without the unnecessary distractions or diversions – but it is difficult as so much of ordinary life now relies on this technology.#

The two articles were opened. It was the building project that prompted the question: why? What drives the mind to want to shape anything in this particular fashion? Design as an act involves some predetermination – planning as strategy, ambitions for ideas as well as in matters of form, purpose, and location, organised as the usual floor plan: see - Paul Jacques Grillo What is design? (Paul Theobald, Chicago, 1960). One was puzzled with what one was looking at. What philosophy, what concept, what ambition drove someone to think that this project in this form was essential; held some necessity, some meaning for the world for it to be?

The subsequent reading of the design review of the slickly smart Tesla Roadster - WOW! - (see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/03/wow-world-and-me.html ) raised the same questions: why? Why this? How could one be critical of or ‘appreciate’ a side contour or a fin - give the mass some interesting solidity; more underplay in the fins – without some guiding vision? Is it all only about perceived ‘interest’? What might be the beginnings of such an assessment? Herbert Read wrote a thoughtful book titled The Origins of Form in Art: Thames and Hudson, London, 1965. The title allows one to re-frame the question: what might the origins of form in design be? One is left pondering, puzzled, when contemplating the images just seen. Why? How? Where might the beginnings lie?

In another publication, Wordsworth, Faber, London, 1965 - original edition 1930 - Herbert Read derides the idea of art as being a matter of taste:

p.19

Art does not yield its highest felicity to those who treat it like sweetmeat, to be taken when the mind is too satiated for grosser nutriment. That is the miserably insufficient concept of art as the subject-matter of ‘taste.’

The parallel between developments in car design and building design has been noted – see https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/12/shaping-cities.html and https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2015/09/zahas-architectural-car-design-strategy.html. Do things happen just because they can? Are we just playing games with technology, with technological possibilities in cars and buildings; or is technology playing games with us? Has design simply become the subject-matter of ‘taste’ while using technology as a ‘tool’ to achieve more and more unexpected bespoke extremes?

The next report seemed to suggest that we were indeed merely playing games with technology because we could; because we are totally entranced with it and the extremities of its possibilities that allow for all impossibilities – why hold back?:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/05/bmw-unveils-car-that-changes-colour-at-the-touch-of-a-button

Who wants a car that can change colour? Why? What burden does this generate for crash repairs? Does one ever think of the user and the inevitable? Have the wonders of technology blinded us to the needs of ordinary living and its wonders referenced in the Zen quote: "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

Where might necessity lie here? Where is Kandinsky’s ‘inner necessity,’ (spoken on in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, George Wittenborn, New York, 1964), that sense of intimate functional needs, and essential emotional involvements that require attention and consideration – recognition and embodiment? There was a time when ideas had beginnings, a background, with theories shaping them; when actions were driven by defined intents; real, articulate ambitions. Now? Are things done just because they can be? Are they manipulated to become merely ‘bespoke’ and ‘interesting,’ to catch attention in the same manner as selfies do – LOOK AT ME! ? Has technology and its alluring treasures and pleasures changed us by engaging us in endlessly playful and different possibilities rather than a moral or thoughtfully necessary engagement with form and function? Can one explain the situation in the same way that the electric guitar became a popular instrument, with the advice that it will take years for the instrument to produce really good music, because it was such an experimentally new gadget, distracting players with its new intrigues. Are we all distracted with the intriguing possibilities of technology? Even the drawing process has been taken over by technology that now drives all attentions, constantly making demands on the designer and documenter. Once things were simply drawn; now it is not uncommon to hear the question in the office: “How do I draw . . . ?” as everyone sits in front of a computer, paying it and its demands made on the process of ‘drawing’ the attention that drawings were once given, when body, pen, and paper were in close, immediate and responsive contact with the outcome.*

One does wonder; how is the individual considered in these new schemes and designs? Does the designer, the architect, think about the everyday experience of the user sitting beside one of the transitional points of the curves that are so expressive on the elevation? Is the response just: “Sorry, you miss out on the view?” Does it matter? It seems as though the user is considered merely as one who is looking on, as part of the game being played, rather than being considered as a living being, a thinking, feeling person seeking accommodation, shelter and comfort, engagement; life in interaction with an involved function and a form.

What appears to be so is that the game has taken over and the user is now simply a participant in the performance; one of the many removed form the reality of the place. Here one recalls the self-conscious stance of the observer inspecting a project as a jury member. It was a working day; the office area was full of busy staff; the juror entered pompously, stood deliberately in an exposed, central location, placed arms akimbo, and surveyed the space with the slow turning of the head and deliberate, squinting of the eyes – looking ‘aesthetically’: he gave the public impression of one reviewing something in order to identify the uniquely mystic qualities – to see if it was ‘tasteful’ enough to be worthy of acknowledgement. He never thought of asking any of the staff if they liked to work in the place; his assessment was superior, other-worldly; his stance emphasised this classy position, his being a knowing, artful, ‘tasteful’ individual. He wanted to be seen as such by everyone in the room – LOOK AT ME LOOKING! When the performance was complete, he slowly and knowingly turned while lowering his arms, and walked out, fully aware that he had been seen. No one else’s opinion or everyday experience of the space was relevant to HIS assessment: he was there to look at things artistically, elegantly: its ARCHITECTURE! The most important thing was the act, not the place or the experience of function.

Has technology removed us from ordinary living; have we dislocated the ordinary daily experiences with life’s own rigours? Have we been separated from everyday living experiences? Here one thinks of the response received from a solicitor when he was approached with much frustration after having no results for four years, and heard nothing again for the last six months from our own solicitor. The simple, ordinary response is to ignore your own ‘useless’ solicitor, and to approach the other to ask what was happening. But no! The reply was that this other solicitor could not speak to us because we were being represented by our own solicitor! The real issue held no intrinsic value. That we had got nowhere for nearly four years meant nothing. (Give him his due, he got someone else in the office to respond to us in detail!). The point is that ordinary simple engagements are stifled by the rules of the game, irrespective of sensible and reasonable outcomes.

Likewise, the response from the electrical provider that bluntly told us that no response would be given because we were using the ‘wrong’ Email address! The issue, by way of complaint with money that was being taken from our account, was irrelevant: it held no meaning as a message in a ‘wrong’ Email. The important matter was the correct, the registered Email address. One could see the issue as being a refusal to respond to an important message because the wrong coloured ink had been used; or perhaps the wrong paper; maybe the wrong typeface! Here the rules of engagement in ordinary life have been modified, controlled by technology; by the rules of another game that has been given more importance than real, everyday solutions. “Life must be stopped” appears to be the rule. There is something Kafaesque here. Where is the real world, the lived outcome, when structures intervene with frameworks and rules that only facilitate diversions and delay with distractions?

Is this what has happened with architecture? The user appears irrelevant; the only important matter is the appearance – style; the style that technology will allow one to implement with clever programmes taking precedence over ordinary, everyday, essential function or purpose. One is amazed by the language used in architectural talks that drop in the latest CAD programme being used, as if it might mark some cleverness; at least a special awareness, if not competence. Is one is left stranded by taste alone, with personal preferences for appearances being gauged by programme output and self-centred ambitions? WOW! - the worry is that one knows how the output of programmes can amaze even those who managed the input, smothering any self-criticism with a blinding, amazed, indulgent praise, deafening Graves’ ‘reader over my shoulder’ - Robert Graves and Alan Hodge The Reader Over Your Shoulder A Handbook for Writers of English Prose Jonathon Cape, London, 1942.

Does this explain the building seen today? Why choose to stop and start curves like this? What happens at the junctions? Who decides, and how? Why? Where?

Here one thinks of tattoos that have become very popular. While not being a fan of such inking, preferring thinking, one is always wondering just what intents and ambitions are used to decide what ‘tat’ might go where; how might one start? How does one choose a subject; a size; a colour; a location on the body; a style? What overview, review, might there be to manage such a decision? The same question arises with architecture. If Herbert Read is right and it is ‘taste,’ then we have a serious problem. Tradition saw matters personal as diversions; distortions; distractions. One can only hold one’s breath and hope that the experimentation with tech might finally settle down into serious work, after it becomes too familiar and boring to alert our attentions and interests, allowing other matters to be considered; one might hope that the different engagements can become work that has broader issues as its core. Why else build? Even the pyramids had a meaning; they were neither whims nor tasteful decorations.

One fears for a world, our cities, that are becoming a conglomerate mess of tasteful, personal exercises – a competitive collection of things experimentally bespoke. Civilisation is rooted in shared ideals. When these fragment or become singularly incoherent, faked, then civilisation itself fails, falls into chaos – it becomes Babylon’s babble. We need better than this. We need design that has roots; has meaning; seeks out relevance in its substance; in its being – its being there. Building to be just different and pretty is dangerous; it stirs discontent with its charade, its pretense. We need places that enrich our lives rather than merely startle for a just a few minutes, before the next wonder is erected, ready to astonish. One recalls van Eyck’s Dogon basket example that embodied the universe with its square base and circular top – see Team 10 Primer Alison Smithson ed. (Studio Vista 1968): a worthy publication that should be read today. This basket rooted itself in things both everyday and cosmic, in remembrance.

We all become lesser with built environments that have become competitive grounds for gamesmanship, one-upmanship, rather than places for people that have been shaped by meaning, care, thought, commitment, and love. One can already feel the cringe that such irrelevant matters might even be mentioned today: they will have to be considered if we want to remain civil.

Cars and buildings built for individual performances as startling, ‘star’ appearances – LOOK AT ME! - are hollow and divisive; shallow and selfish. Community involves the effort and endurance of committed care revealing the realistic wonder of things ordinary but remarkable if it is to be enriched - things, quiet, modest, ringing with easy depth and true enchantment. This is not what was seen today in these Google reports; just bursting egos. We need to give more consideration to the Zen quote: "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

In Wordsworth, Herbert Read asks:

p.126

how can thought be felt? I should reply: not in pure ecstatic contemplation of its own process, but by being conceived in some analogy which blends it vicariously with the passions and volitions of our vital frame.

Maybe we need to know more about this circumstance, the passions and volitions of our vital frame, rather than engaging full-time with technology that we are told will do the thinking for us. It is the feeling of thought that is important in the origins of form. The workman of old saw it clearly: having concentrated, he set to work. Frank Lloyd Wright, in The Future of Architecture, (a Mentor Book, New American Library, New York, 1963), referred to the beginnings of architecture in 'the words of the architect of ancient times called carpenter who gave up architecture to work upon its source.’ The words he cited to were: Consider the lilies, how they grow: they toil not; they spin not. (Matthew 6:28). It is advice that needs to be taken up without delay and self-interested diversions, for we need to rediscover the roots of our inspiration and guidance rather than be led by interesting, personal perceptions driven by hedonistic self-importance - see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/01/on-mental-health-architecture-penis.html