Be Artfully Creative, Not Efficient

By James (JED) Donaldson

8/9/2024

The single largest threat to the profession of architecture today is the importance society has placed on the concept of efficiency.? This is significantly more perilous than the popular threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking over creative jobs held by designers and Architects. The societal engagement with efficiency is beyond the Architect's control; within the building industry it should be devalued before our entire built environment is solidified as an efficient product built for the process and not for the people.

The architectural field of the twenty-first century is captured in a pernicious dialogue defined by the coming of age of efficiency in our society. The First and Second Industrial Revolutions (1770-1914) surpassed the Agricultural Revolution (1650-1770) in their harmful impacts on the environment; the building industry is currently responsible for 42% of the global greenhouse emissions per Architecture 2030. ?With technological advancements, industrialization achieved unprecedented worldwide reach and the transformation of natural resources into products powered the economy and degraded world health. In the name of efficiency, humankind has set its focus on industry advancement that favors wealth over welfare and has justified it in the process.

Due to the advancements put forth during the Industrial Revolutions, there was a shift in the philosophical approach to architecture and the dominant approach to design was centered on mass production. An early example of this new way of thinking was promoted by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879) in his writings, claiming that "a rationally designed structure may not necessarily be beautiful, but no building can be beautiful that does not have a rationally designed structure." Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) translated this to the famous saying that 'Form Follows Function' as seen in his Guaranty Office Building, formerly called the Prudential building, Buffalo, New York. In the most primitive developmental phase of a building's birth, Architects would present the question, 'Is this functional?' and the building was streamlined down to the architectural essence.? Adolf Loos's (1870-1933) writing in 1908, 'Ornament and Crime,' defined the idea that a building should be efficient and that extraneous detailing was unnecessary and, therefore, unwanted.? Le Corbusier’s (1877-1965) 'Five Points of Modern Architecture' redefined architecture and he further reinforced a new way of thinking about the house as a 'machine for living in' as described in 'Toward a New Architecture' (1923).? Villa Savoy in Poissy, France, is the pinnacle of his works, exemplifying how a structure is built around a rhetoric of efficiency rather than hospitable place-making.?

The shift in mentality to focus more on the utility of a building and the performance of the facade promoted the advancement of construction methods. The introduction of the assembly line within the automobile industry changed how buildings would be built and on-site construction was seen as inefficient and of low-quality. The building industry adopted the concept that buildings were an assembly of parts. Sears Catalog Homes (1908-1942) was a corporate strategy to sell a residential home at scale, with no need for an architect. The homes were fully designed by Sears, and plans, with the building's materials, were shipped via rail to the site for the homeowner to assemble. Improving on this idea of building from a pre-engineered kit of building materials, Charles and Ray Eames popularized the assembly of a building using a 'catalog of parts' with their 1949 home in Pacific Palisades, CA.? The following era of architecture, shaped by World War II, streamlined the building down to its 'purest' form, expressing the structure, and celebrating the tectonic language of assembly. As a result, the highest compliment a building could receive was the expression of its systems as integral to its cultural and aesthetic appeal, as seen at Renzo Piano's and Richard Rogers's 1977 Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.

Despite the streamlining of the construction process being branded as a central core component to achieve a project there is no recognition of how that impacts the outcome of built works. Contractors align themselves with clients through efficiency at the expense of Architecture.? A project can go through months, if not years, of development only to be dismantled in a few days through the 'Value Engineering' process, a.k.a. Devaluing Engineering as often referred to by Architects. Contemporary strategies such as Integrated Project Delivery define the construction process as collaborative with the team's focus on efficiency. All parties are locked into a singular process, and there is no room for thoughtful evaluation of an apparent threat to the budget.? Decisions are made in real time, in full exposure, without contemplation of possible new paths for a solution, as time is the most precious element. Buildings are broken down into segmented parts, a categorical list of materials and systems, and decisions are made independent of the whole. The result is often a Frankenstein building containing fragments of the original Architect's intent and a contractor's solution for economizing the construction process.??

With the need to mitigate global climate change, the construction industry is using efficiency as a bridge to justify our sustainable solutions. There has been a resurgence in the mass timber structural system due to wood having a low carbon footprint. However, at the 2024 Zak World of Facades, Irene Martin and Mitch Albarran of Arup presented Fabric Workshop's mass timber facade solution as a menu of items that promotes efficiency through a 'click and select' method based on pre-approved assemblies, which limits an Architects ability. The 2017 student housing project by Acton Ostry Architects, Brook Commons Tallwood House, was the tallest mass timber building at the time of its erection and has since collected accolades centered around the efficiency of the building, prefabrication of the parts, and construction process. Humane, cultural, and creative practices are void within the presence of the building and exemplify the powerlessness of the contemporary Architect against the values placed on efficiency.??

By addressing and responding to what Thomas Heatherwick defines as "boring architecture" that has plagued our cities for the last century in his book 'Humanize, A Maker's Guide to Designing Our Cities,' the Architect empowers the physical environment to be a place of healing and inspiration. Contemporary Architects have the opportunity to denounce efficiency and encourage an equitable approach to design using artfully-creative thinking. They can lead with creative design as placemaking for bettering the planet, consider a contemporary approach to Gottfried Semper's (1803-1879) Four Elements of Architecture: the hearth, the roof, the enclosure, and the mound, and center a philosophical approach to architecture around the environment, the local culture, and being artfully-creative.? The artful moments in a work of architecture are the points that separate us from the machine and should be celebrated although they are not the most efficient. With the introduction of AI technology to the masses combined with the global need for climate change mitigation, it is more critical now than ever before that the Architect amplifies the dialogue on how to artfully design buildings with a lasting legacy that is not based on engineering efficiency. When done correctly, a well-designed building that is both a high-performance building and an artful-creative solution is a healthier work or living environment. At the urban scale, it will be a societal benefit; building a better planet for all humankind. With true ingenuity and artful solutions, a new era of architecture is ahead and, if shaped correctly, can be an astounding contribution to the global environment.