Put a Cork In It
How has the AIA's New York chapter chosen to inaugurate its new space? Hold
your ears.
By Philip Nobel
November 2003
The New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects has long operated
out of a vigorously designed but hopelessly becubicled office tucked
in among the upholstery showrooms on a middle floor of a Midtown Manhattan
trade mart. But now, $2.5 million later, the AIA has built, in the parlance
of the institution itself, a new premises: the ground floor,
basement, and subbasement of a random building on a centrally located but
seldom-traveled Greenwich Village byway. The headquarters has room enough
at last for the gallery, auditorium, library, and "resource center"
the chapter's board has always craved.
Everybody deserves a clubhouse. But in what strange way do these architects
herald its arrival? One component of the weeklong celebration of this renaissance
move was a full-day event called the "Design-In Marathon." Beginning
with an address by the executive director at 8 a.m. and wrapping up at midnight,
80-odd "top professionals, talented amateurs, and emerging voices in
the design community" shared their "current thinking" on
how they "affect the city," ten minutes each, one theme per hour.
Though I was not asked to participate in that important occasion, I have
taken the liberty to prepare a brief speech of the type appropriate to that
day. It is transcribed below. If you pause dramatically here and there it
should stretch to fill the time allotted.
A Plea on the Occasion of the AIA's Dedicatory "Design-In Marathon":
Can we talk? Something's been bothering me for a while, and I need to get
it off my chest. It's a tricky thing to discuss, especially here, because
in the noise of discussing it you might think the emergency has passed.
It hasn't. Believe me: it hasn't. This is too serious. Critical, really.
Not something a few words can fix.
No, this drop is too small, and the bucket is too big. Please, please, don't
panic. The truth is an unsettling place. But I'd be shirking if I didn't
just state plainly that the situation is dire. The stakes are high. The
outcome is in doubt. It may be saying too much to say that the future of
architecture hangs in the balance and the continuum of human culture flirts
with the abyss. But it has been said before. And when you take in the scope
of what is happening around us, when you face down that onrushing void,
it is terrible. Terrible in that old sense, the one that remembers terror.
So it comes to this: How will we fill that bucket? How will we fill
that bucket?
I don't want to scare anyone. We need to band together now, link arms and
rally for a final stand, raise our voices as one. Today is only a start.
But I want to be clear about this. I understand that I am part of the problem.
I only wish I could do more--say more, write more--to fix things. Because
someone has to. It's too quiet out there.
Let me just come right out and say it: I'm concerned that there is not enough
talk about architecture. I'm concerned that its trustees--all of us--are
spending too little time preaching about its role in the lives of the many
and its debt to the genius few. I'm concerned that not enough has been said
about its unique and fragile nature, its mysteries and powers, its transformative
magic, its urgency. Are enough people being reminded that architecture--and
architecture alone--can rally the otherwise idle energies of the engineer
and the lesser designers, the bureaucrat and the citizen, the artist and
the artisan, the poet and the priest?
I'm concerned that no one is pressing the case. Which case? There is only
one: that architects and architects alone can save the day. What day? All
of them! But we need to keep talking.
I know, I know. "What about the schools," you say. "The problem's
with the schools." Well, I'm concerned about that too. I'm concerned
that too few teachers are piling the requisite load of theory on their students.
I'm concerned that kids today might not be getting enough discourse.
They say this is a visual generation. Well, we can't have that. How will
they live? How will they think? How will they write? God help us, they might
prefer to draw.
It is a crisis.
How will the public go on? They still need to hear every minute or so that
the world is architecture--spoon to nuts and soup to skyscraper.
That the architect is central to the viability of society, that without
him--without us--there is no culture. That in the absence of the
architect's imagination that enterprise falters, chaos sweeps all order
before it, and our very way of life as rational agents on this sphere may
cease to be.
Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist--certainly
many more than will happen--but then they must also pray to be given that
extra courage to use this far-reaching imagination. Friends, we gather here
on high in our proud new premises to unpack the riddles of the epoch and
light that beacon of wisdom that the city's wanderers, in their innocence,
so diligently seek. And as we do, let us remember--no, let us shout it from
the rooftops: Never shut up. Never shut up. Never, never, never--in nothing,
great or small, large or petty--never shut up.
Friends, I yield the floor. |
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Photo by Michel Hsiung, TEN Arquitectos |
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