Is High Concept Engineering Eclipsing Design in Architecture?
I continue to cogitate on Will McDonough's and Renzo Piano's efforts at green design.

The more I study all of McDonough's work and Piano's latest, the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) building, the more I see two designers being lauded for what seems to me engineering, rather than design, accomplishments.

In turn, I sense that engineering is eclipsing design in architecture.

In turn, I fear we are in for a high tide of ugliness as move farther into the quasi religious trend of letting nature be our latest god, rationalizing choice with enviro-think (rather than science) and its underlying ideology of environmentalism (rather than empirical facts).

Consider Will McDonough first.

Practically all the virtues of McDonough's work are engineering related, as the buildings are either banal, or incongruous and awkward aesthetically. And McDonough himself stakes no claim to being a great aesthetician. He advocates a philosophy that constantly verges on ideology, a philosophy that asserts that everything human beings make ought to be rethought and remade to be recycled either to earth, or to technology, and that aesthetic concerns are clearly subordinate to this task. In fairness to McDonough, it is hardly cricket to critique his work in terms of design at all. He is not busy reconstituting the form language of modern design for environmental needs. He is, rather, focused on changing what things are made of. In focusing on that, he becomes effectively an engineer. Design is an afterthought.

Verdict: Will McDonough seems to support the argument that engineering is eclipsing design in architecture.

pt3
First, let me say Mr. Piano seems incapable of building something ugly. I have grown to be an admirer (though not a n intense fan) of his work, since Koen nudged me, and I investigated his work.

I admire Piano's flare at finding a concept and then working it through as thoroughly as possible into a building that is then informed by the concept at every level of its form.

At the same time, his buildings seem to me never to quite transcend the concept into being irreducible buildings--my ideal of what great architecture ought to achieve. They always remain, IMHO, ultimately, thoroughly worked out concepts.

Pompidou Center, which he did with Rogers, is utterly fascinating and a conceptual icon, and yet in the end it raises the inescapable question: yes, but why organize all the infrastructure as exoskeleton? Isn't it better to protect the infrastructure from the elements using the walls and roof than not to? Doesn't reducing the walls to just membranes to protect people kind of diminish the potential utility of walls? And isn't it a hell of a lot more work to paint every nook and cranny of infrastructure than it would be to paint walls? Isn't ease of external maintenance a rational utility, too?

What we see in Pompidou Center is an engineering exercise in externalizing technology, rather than what I would call design. I mean, outside of paint, how much design choice did Piano and Rogers really have once they committed to the concept of externalizing the infrastructure (should it be called extrastructure?)? Whether pipes, ducts, and conduit are inside, or outside, they pretty much go where they have to go to maximize function and minimize cost.

It is worth noting that the Pompidou Center does not have extraordinarily unique function or environment dictating its externalized infrastructure. It was done to be different. It was done to call attention to the building. Any steel frame box made of any material could do what Pompidou Center does. So: in the end, the only rational justification for the Pompidou Center approach to architecture is that if it works better, is cheaper, lasts longer, is more beautiful, or whatever other measure of utility you might like to apply. If Pompidou Center were any of these things, then we would likely have seen a lot more of this kind of architecture solving problems everywhere...but we haven't. And we haven't frankly, because it was a clever high concept, but a dumb design idea.

As a former real estate feasiblity analyst, I would instantly have vetoed this design. Why? Because infrastructure is way more expensive to build and maintain than walls and roof. I'd rather build more walls and roof and less infrastructure. Put bluntly, Piano and Rogers built a building with less space and more infrastructure. It is just dumb. Some times I like to use big words, but dumb is all I can say about this building.

pt5
It may be a nifty concept striking what seems a fresh cord with folks today, but, well, the hanging gardens of Babylon predate it in originality a bit, don't they? I guess the British Isles made use of sod covered roofs back to the time of Braveheart, or before, though the grass growth may have been volunteer rather than planned. And then of course, there were the sod houses like those my grandmother were born in. What I'm trying to say here is that using biomass for roofs is not original and it has always been used for its cost effectiveness and its insulating qualities.

To the extent that the concept of covering roof with a sort of super absorbent, green bio Kimby reduces water run off, it makes great sense. I've always thought water run off from roofs should be kept on-site and used to grow plants there. And if covering a roof with biomass helps Renzo design a building without AC, then that is a two for one deal that can't be beat. I would only add that the roof should be planted to grapes, fruits and nuts and these should be sold to people to eat and drink, thereby cutting down on the uneccessary shipments of same to the building, there by saving lots of waste transportation of Coke and Twinkies (the latter of which was once attributed as the cause of the assassination of a San Francisco mayor, but I digress). Regardless, all of the above are examples of engineering, rather than design, IMHO.

Now, in traditional design terms (those that include aesthetics), this high concept fails in my opinion. Within the site, it creates a sharp, sudden and incongruous environmental discontinuity, rather than ameliorating one. The green layer goes along and then suddenly jumps 20 feet straight up, then falls 20 feet straight down at the other end of the building. This does not harmonize with any other environmental discontinuities in the area.

Also, considering the aesthetics of the green roof in terms of the surroundings beyond Golden Gate Park, the three domes do not look like the undulating topography behind them. They look like three domes covered with grass and portholes.

All of this is a way of saying: good engineering, weak design.

pt7
The other problem I foresee is that those glass walls will be separated from the frame and do one of two things. Either they will shatter, if they are not strong enough, thus leaving a berm of huge glass shards that are exceedingly difficult to climb over in a panic without goring yourself to death. Or they will fall in tact on to the beveled ground; then tip up, and effectively create a glass lid over the beveled area around the building foot print. I don't know if this would for certain make ingress and egress nearly impossible, but I reckon it might.

Now, I know many will say, oh, but the experts must have already thought that through and there is nothing to worry about on those counts. Maybe, but experts are among those most prone to getting tunnel vision about solving the problems assigned them and ignoring the problems they are creating with their own solutions. The experts were looking at this building as a problem in building an environmentally efficient and envionmentally friendly building. As a result they were trying a lot of new things. And they had a man in Piano who had already a great reputation from Kansai airport for building earthquake proof buildings. This is a recipe for creating unforeseen consequences like I am referring to and to others I am not keen enough to anticipate. But trust me: when you take experts out of their comfort zones, they are not experts any more. They are experimenting and one tends to experiment on the problem at hand, not the unforeseen problems.

Now let's stop hand wringing about earthquake safety and move onto whether or not this building transcends its high concept and achieves an irreducible unity, or does it, like some other of Piano's buildings fall into the category of thoroughly worked out concepts that do not transcend their concepts.

At first, second, and third glances at the pictures from many angles, I would have to say CAS is yet another example of Piano's brilliance failing to achieve an irreducible unity in architecture. Ordinary persons are never going to look at the CAS and say that is the darndest thing they ever saw. They are going to say: wow, look at that huge museum with the grass on the roof!

And architecture critics are going to continually point to the innovative environmental design and to the brilliant problem solving related to getting by without AC and so on.

But neither the architecture critics, nor ordinary persons are going to look at CAS and say, "Wow! that is one of the most beautiful buildings I ever saw."

And so, considering that Renzo Piano is one of the most talented and daring architects of our time, and he keeps building buildings that are long on engineering and technological and environmental virtuosities, I am inclined to answer the question in the title of this post this way: yes, it appears thta high concept engineering is eclipsing design in architecture.

so that
the future of architecture may well be that a concept of beauty will be closely tied to efficiancy or even become a function of it. for years i have personally seen efficient cars as beautiful for the poetry of getting much from little. I suspect that any auto designer could come up with a bmw, all you need to do is throw money at it. not much of a challenge there. but make a car that is the least expensive to buy and operate, reliable and very efficient, and there is design worth celebrating.

pt2
But at the same time, I think that once one makes the value shift to desiring more efficiency and/or environmental friendlyness in one's products, then one quickly comes back to the issue of how do we not only engineer these products to be efficient and environmentally friendly, but also how do we make them beautifully.

Beauty is beauty. Beauty, or aesthetic appeal, is one of many facets of a thing.

Aesthetics are the rules of making things beautiful and appealing.

Beauty is not function.

Function is function.

Beauty is not efficiency.

Efficiency is efficiency.

We learn this all the time in the innovative things we make.

At first, all we care about is getting the function right and just try to make it as inoffensive looking as we can.

But then at a certain point, we begin to try to differentiate our product with beauty, or improved aesthetics if you will.

It is like it takes some time for producers and consumers to get sufficiently used to the new function, to begin letting our aesthetic urges kick in.

An example of this in my life time would be regional shopping malls. For the first 25 years of their existence, a mall could be ugly and flourish simply because it was new and a monopoly in its market and massively improved shopping efficiency of the consumer (one stop etc.). But then everything shifted to malls and butt ugly box stores encroached. And so to keep their customers, malls had to begin to think about visual and contact point aesthetics. They had to be made more plush and less ugly.

PCs are another example. Plain manila boxes for 20 years; then suddenly, translucent with all kinds of forms.

Cars are another. The Model T came in any color as long as it was black; then many car lines with every color in the rain bow and style, style, style.

We can be certain of three things in life: death, taxes, and the early stage of any major new product emphasizing function and paying little attention to aesthetics. There are of course exceptions. Certain large corporations and certain exceedingly wealthy persons find ways to avoid taxes almost entirely. And certain new products, like an iPod, with the rare CEO who has a sense of aesthetics informing him, insists on a splendidly designed product, as well as one with sound engineering. But for the most part, ground breaking new products often take several iterations before they become informed by a truly appealing form language.

cont.
What separates them is not scale or technology but method. If it were scale the large airbus or any large aircraft for that matter would be part of architecture etc. It is part of architectural history that the balance between engineering and design has shifted continuously. Gothic and renaissance architects were also in charge of engineering, including the design of small and large tools (Brunellechi was one of the masters in crossing the disciplines. He was not only one of the sculptors of the doors of the Florence baptistery; he also designed the Duomo and the famous structure that made the building of the cupola possible) Early modernist architects were still very much in the forefront of technical developments in the use of concrete, design of curtain walls, innovative construction like Gaudi in his search for Catalan identity.
Since his early experiments with rubber sheets programmed to serve as versatile casting forms for concrete shells, Renzo Piano has never clearly made a distinction between architecture and engineering, so the question that dcwilson is raising hardly applies in his case. I have not seen the California Academy of science building?otherwise I am sure dc and I would have visited it together?so I can only admire the analysis dc is sharing with us and add very little to it. But the general question is one of the most important ones architects and anybody concerned with architecture could ask. Yes architecture has grown to be only skin deep. With few exceptions, what we as willing or un-willing architectural consumers have to put up with is architectural cosmetics. To support that point I would defy anybody to find in any architectural magazine an analysis of the CAS building that shows the kind of depth and width that dcwilson?s contribution to the DA forum is showing.
My personal opinion on the significance of the Georges Pompidou, the Paul Klee Museum or any other Renzo Piano building is not very interesting in this discussion but I would like to contribute with the idea that we do not need architects if we had good engineers, nor do we need engineers if we have good architects or designers or any other combination we can think of. It is an invention of early 18th century to divide the ?how? (engineering) from the ?why?(arts) I always understood that design was the reconciliation of both ?why do you make it? and ?how do you make it?

Koen,
When I look at products that you have designed, I see irreducible unity in the finished product. Isn't that a wonderful garlic holder, I say, even though I know you are combining porcelin and ceramic for a constellation of reasons.

Or I say isn't that a wonderful flower vase, even though I know that it is designed in part to be cat proof.

You make these objects seem simultaneously new and as if they have been there forever, or should have been. Thus, there is even a unity of the sense of time in your work.

I noticed the same quality of unity in your cookware designs that you shared with us, and I notice the same quality in the Tilt-a-Bowls. The bowls were flat on one side, but I did not look at the bowls and say, "Hey, look at that bowl with the bevelled side on it." I did not even look and say, "hey, look at those tilting bowls." I said, "Hmmm, now those are striking looking bowls."

This is what I call irreducibility unity of design.

I have seen this irreducibility in everything from salt shakers to skyscrapers.

I realize it takes hard work, rigorous training, great talent, and a kind of genius to achieve it.

I know we can't expect it every time out from everyone, or even anyone.

But I believe architecture, as well as, design, or any other plastic art, or applied art, ought to aspire to it and should at least occassionally held up to this high standard and assessed.

Why?

Koen, this insight of yours is stated with brilliant clarity...
and the clearest things sometimes take time to grasp.

"So, architecture, for better or worse will continue to hold on to it's position in which very few people hold on to the authority to decide over both the overall character and the particular qualities of the build environment in which we all have to live. That this authoritarian position is rarely challenged tells us more about the willingness of our society to grow toward true democracy than about the arrière-garde efforts of architects..."--Koen de Winter

I thought I had gotten this stuff out of my system with my long post and now you have planted another seed.

What would a democratic architectural method be like?

How could we unstick it from elitism and "cosmeticism" (the ideology of the cosmetic), and what might a nonauthoritarian architectural process be like? and what kind of buildings might it yield?

cont.
Not that I have any ambitions in that direction, but I can understand that designers or architects, especially those who know their art well, are tempted to make small detours into the more visible and exposed world of cosmeticism. I have done so myself and yes it has not given me the satisfaction of seeing them used by thousands of people but it gave me a place in the permanent collection of the MoMA and a few other quite places. Yes, as a society we need and generally applaud authenticity and clarity of intention and execution, but we also rejoice in the extravagant, we applaud exuberance and need both the marginals and the risk takers. I have often stated that these contradictions should be guidelines in where we use our talents. So I enjoy extravagant and exuberant graphics because their inherent lifetime is short and unless we are talking important editions, the validity of their message is of the same nature. I enjoy fashion and personal expression in clothing for the same reasons. I do not mind when technology driven products are frivolously designed. We know that technical improvements will soon get the better of them. So I sometimes wonder if some architects should have chosen to be graphic artists or fashion designers, and the same applies to designers.
The all important question of what that new architecture might be?
Of course we can not introduce a ?market-place? in architecture in which every building could be challenged by a similar one for a better price are a better one for the same price?or a much better one for a higher price.
In the first place I think that the division between engineering and architecture has encouraged cosmeticism. As in every division of labour you end up emphasizing the typical aspects of the different parts, including the abuse that could result from it. Architects and designers are in this not different from stock brokers. If architecture is reduced to concerns about how it will look in architectural magazines, it is inevitable that cosmetics will gain in importance. We see the same thing in industrial design. The illusion that ?anything is possible? and basic knowledge of how things are made is no longer required, has started a Sunami of superficial, self satisfying design and every day more of it is produced in the limitless virtual world of attention seekers.
My appreciation of Piano?s work is not based on the fact that he is always right. Remember architects do not have the benefit of great public input or discussion. As a society we are willing to live with an environment that is imposed by developers and the chaotic result seems to be experienced as a reasonable facsimile for the diversity we need and want.

Lovely statements about...
Lovely statements about design.

"Regarding Mr. Piano, I believe he is a man of vast talent and skill who is for some reason either resisting, or simply choosing not to bring his work into irreducible unity." I missed the explanation of this statement, I guess.

Koen found more than one way to get to the point I would like to make, that there needn't necessarily be a distinction between design and engineering. A designer who understands and can even contribute the necessary engineering will be a better designer than one who doesn't; the engineer who is sufficiently sensitive to aesthetic and ergonomic issues i(among others) is in effect his own designer.

To state that engineering is strictly a matter of applying known principles and facts to the solving of a problem may lead some to think that for each engineering problem -- a bridge, for instance -- there is only one logical solution. As this is not the case, we must acknowledge that the engineer makes choices as he designs, just as the designer does. So, at best there is a continuum between the engineering-ignorant designer and the aesthetically challenged engineer. Why would anyone not prefer the broader middle ground, either as consumer, client, investor or audience ?

Hi dcwilson,
I do not think that I am more qualified than anybody else to answer this question but let me share what I know.
First of all, as SDR points out there is not such a thing as a 100% technical solution. Even a Petri-dish could have a different shape as effective and objective as the existing ones and even in a simple thing like that we acknowledge the contribution of its inventor and keep calling it Petri, for Koch?s assistant biologist Julius Richard Petri. SDR reminds us of the fact that highway bridges are no exceptions. They carry with them the subjective choices that are inherent to a problem that can be solved in a large variety of ways. As a piece of good engineering the Golden Gate Bridge is not as spectacular as it is a wonder of technology (how to execute what has been engineered or designed) It is also quite exceptional as a work of art. So, why not using it as an example? With its 75 million kilos of steel and 300.000 cubic meters of concrete it sounds to me as a well grounded choice.
Nobody questions the fact that it is well engineered but the choice between the original Strauss version, the subsequent Strauss/Moisseiff version and finally the Irving and Gerdrude Morrow version was hardly based on differences in the quality of the engineering. The Morrows introduced considerations like the vertical ribbing on the towers to catch the sunlight in a way that would make them look slimmer. They added considerations like the view of the motorists and spaced the posts of the pedestrian railing in order to increase the open view. One could of course argue that the towers, from a structural point of view could indeed be leaner toward the top but the Morrows changed the towers into lighter constructions toward the top to make the towers more elegant.
What makes the almost 2 km long span of the Golden Gate Bridge such an irreducible unity of design is in my view essential to democratic design. Contrary to Santiago Calatrava, who makes of every work an expression of his personal views and preferences, the Golden Gate Bridge, and many highway bridges with it, are expressions of their times. Not of a well identified individual, but of a society that expresses itself through the talents and abilities of one of its members. By being this collective expression, it reflects the standards and ambitions of a large group of people that inevitably identify with it. We can admire Santiago Calatrava?s work but very few of us can identify with it and share in the pride of a common human achievement. The Golden Gate has that. So we do not know it as the Irving and Gertrude Morrow Bridge, but as something else we collectively can understand: The Golden Gate.

for dcw's
continued feeling that something is missing in piano's work; It looks from an artist's perspective that when you speak about irreducible unity in design, you are speaking about evaluating a building in terms of art. My present understanding of the subject is that art is persuasive communication. Specifically storytelling. The way I evaluate it is to look for a perfect economy. Which is to say that i am looking for an art work to say what is intends to say as concisely as possible. No extra or missing components to cloud its ideas. It also has to have a hook to draw the audience. But "what it has to say" brings intent into the picture to make these evaluations. An artist may make a work that is intentionally ugly and visually awkward as a metaphor for the ugly traits in humans. In a case like that it would be poor art criticism to fault this work for being ugly. if i were to evaluate a building in a similar way i would start with the designer's intent. then i would have solid backing to say it doesn't meet its goals. it sounds like you have a constant in mind that some buildings hit and others don't. This was where i was starting to go with my idea of an aesthetic judgement being

This is more like it...
Koen is drawn into the center of things and throwing out Brunelleschi, while most persons are still struggling to get through Dwell.

SDR can't see why a person cannot be both a good engineer and designer and baptizing me with healthy skepticism.

Glassartist doubts the concept of irreducible unity of design.

And Gustavo is ready throw the designers out, move on to engineering, and convert Manifesto to a verb

This is the Design Addict I know and love!

Quick! Someone email Renzo and tell him we have serious questions about what his brilliance is up to--democratic engineering, or the eclipse of design with high concept engineering, or just a 12.5% architect's fee of $500M for lifting the ground up and sliding a building under it..

Some one text Will McDonough and tell him to come and write about what he does without sound bite epigrams like waste is food. We believe he is onto some things, but have concerns about his sense of composition.

Oh, and I personally declare May 6, 2008, the first annual Architects Have To Wear Cheerful Colored Clothing Instead of Black Day.

Manifesto, manifesto, manifesto!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!