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Establishing an artistic identity may be essential for an architect, but it doesn't always result in better architecture.
By Lance Hosey
May 2002
When architecture speaks, the architect is said to have a clear voice. Critic
Russell Fortmeyer calls Will Bruder "a singular voice in architecture."
The term has been applied to figures as diverse as Rem Koolhaas, Christian
de Portzamparc, and Aldo Rossi. The Architectural League of New York holds
its annual "Emerging Voices" lecture series to recognize "architects
at the threshold of critical and professional recognition," and recent
participants have included Marlon Blackwell and Rick Joy. The league's mission
explains the term emerging, but what of voice?
Although use of the word is widespread, the intended meaning is vague. Architectural
discourse relies heavily on such metaphors, often borrowing ideas from other
disciplines. Voice comes from literary criticism, where it suggests
the unique aspects of a writer's work that are consistent enough to be recognizable.
The term harks back to oral traditions in which the speaker's voice influenced
the listener as much as the story itself. But to apply it to architecture
is to focus on the designer's personal expression, implying that what
is said is less important than how.
It goes without saying that architectural judgment tends to emphasize form
over content, but what is rarely discussed is why consistency of form is
important. Young architects strive to establish a personal voice, because
critical recognition demands it. The recurring themes of a Mies, a Meier,
or a Gehry are regarded as the trademarks of talent. Mies's restraint and
Gehry's exuberance arguably represent opposite extremes of expression, but
the steadiness of their mature work is similar. We equate such constancy
with seriousness and commitment, which the "art" of architecture
demands. Designers who work in multiple visual languages are often deemed
frivolous or erratic. Conventional wisdom holds that Philip Johnson is architecture's
great impersonator, capable of speaking only in other people's voices. His
New Canaan estate is a garden of quotations. Of course, he borrows from
the best: he did a great Mies impression and now does a passable Gehry.
(A sure test of a clear voice is the ease with which it is parroted.)
Surely Johnson's reputation has suffered from his versatility. If during
the last half century he had produced the same quality of work with a less
derivative vocabulary, he may have been hailed as a visionary comparable
to the architects whose work he emulates. Yet if voice refers not
to language but to the way it is spoken, then Johnson's voice is very clear.
Regardless of a project's idiom, his sensibility has been more consistent
with massing, proportion, and scale of detail than that of many architects,
and the effort to construct graphic images defines all of his work.
Although related to but distinct from style, voice includes all the qualities
that together form the unmistakable identity of an architect's work. This
emphasis on identity is much like the auteur theory in film, first
associated with the French New Wave in the 1950s. "There are no works,"
went the movement's mantra, "there are only authors." The American
film critic Andrew Sarris defined an auteur as a director whose
distinguishable personality or "signature" emerges over a series
of pictures. Although both fields adopt a literary device to highlight
the director or architect, one important difference is that the auteur theory
in film was always controversial. Architects, however, rarely question
the primacy of the author. It is unthinkable to judge buildings without
placing them in the designer's oeuvre. The idea of voice regards a building
as a sample from someone's repertoire.
But what is the value of consistency in architecture? One benefit is
marketability. Identifiable imagery is the equivalent to "branding"
in commercial advertising, and both architects and clients capitalize on
recognition. The University of Cincinnati's publicity campaign centers on
the expansion of its campus, which according to its Web site is "studded
with masterpieces by all-star signature architects." The metaphor of
the signature again suggests architects as auteurs, and Cincinnati has formed
its own cult of personality.
A subtler advantage of consistent design is that it allows architects to
concentrate on fewer issues. Paul Rudolph said that Mies was able to create
great buildings because he ignored so many problems. Sarris remarked that
the Hollywood studio system, in which producers commissioned movies, forced
directors to express their personalities through visual treatment rather
than literary content. Architects are also dependent on patronage and cannot
always influence factors such as program, location, and users, so they
focus instead on form, which may be developed independently of specific
projects.
None of these explanations of voice necessarily benefits a building's
larger community. The Guggenheim's revival of the city of Bilbao would have
happened if that building had been a solitary statement in Gehry's career
instead of a run-on sentence continuing in many places. And often cities
suffer from an architect's pronouncements. A single voice can drown out
the unique character of a place and its people. For most of us, the word
Bilbao is now synonymous with a building, not a city. It makes us
think of Gehry, not the Basques.
The clashing of architectural voices can result in cacophony. It has been
said that if we were to line a street with all the great houses of the past
century, the result would be a very bad street with great houses. Despite
a heroic building campaign during the last decade, Berlin is still defined
more by the strength and coherence of its nineteenth-century avenues and
public spaces than by the din of recent construction. Cincinnati's brilliant
campus plan by George Hargreaves deftly amplifies the rolling terrain,
but this idea has been virtually ignored by most of the "signature"
architects, whose contributions generally could have been built almost anywhere.
All stories are said to follow one of two plots: a hero takes a trip, or
a stranger comes to town. The story told in the architect's voice often
combines these scenarios: the hero comes to town--and remains a stranger.
To arrive at a place with a predetermined aesthetic is arrogant and negligent.
This is not an objection to artistic originality, because the problem is
not necessarily with architects being artists. Creative skill and ingenuity
are invaluable, particularly now, when commercialism threatens more than
ever to stamp the world with its cookie cutters. The problem is with architects
using their own cookie cutters.
Gehry's recent designs for the Corcoran Gallery, in Washington, D.C., and
Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, are virtually identical,
as are Daniel Libeskind's entry to the Corcoran competition and his proposed
addition to London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Like commercial real-estate
development, this approach sees each project merely as another opportunity
to peddle the same wares. We condemn Wal-Mart and McDonald's for failing
to distinguish one place from another, but we applaud Meier and Gehry for
the same thing. Gehry's work may be exceptionally beautiful and exceptionally
expensive, but its attitude toward place is glorified Starbucking.
When asked about consistency, Mies famously replied that one couldn't create
a new architecture "every Monday morning." But why not, especially
if every Monday we find ourselves building for different people on
a different site with different purposes using different materials? Every
project offers possibilities for invention within its individual conditions.
Mies thought of architecture as an expression of time, not of place. One
is considered universal, the other circumstantial. Of course, the unanimity
of cultural values is one of the fictions of Mies's work and of Modernism
in general. By definition, the International Style refused to differentiate
between places. Although we no longer believe in a single language--architectural
Esperanto--our most celebrated practitioners still speak with the same voice
everywhere they go.
The AIA recently began promoting itself as "the voice of the architecture
profession." But whose voice does the profession itself represent?
If architects do not speak for communities, we risk becoming obsolete. In
order to concentrate on abstract design, we have already relinquished many
services to developers, builders, and other economically driven forces.
Given the rising need for responsive and humane environments, architects'
tendency for self-expression could result in the disintegration of the profession
altogether, unless we rethink our role. T. S. Eliot urged poets to serve
poetry by illustrating the capabilities of verse instead of their own personas.
If places are to communicate fully through architecture, the architect must
fade into the medium. Can we be selfless enough to silence our own
voices?
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