"I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time."
Paraphrased from Voltaire, it's a lovely encapsulation of how often we write to understand what we want to say, and rarely edit for the convenience of our reader. As my writing tends more towards the siphonophoric, in which each sentence, even parts of them, are more like individual complex animals, connected loosely in an endless, undulating chain of ideas, than they tend towards efficient transmission of succinct ideas, I wholly own Voltaire's self-critique. It's on purpose.
Who am I to explain architecture to anybody? I am a student, green about the ears. I bring the complaints of a life-time user to the desire to practice an art brut, aiming to change a few bricks at the profession's foundation. Empathy is my touchstone. I am here to wander and think aloud in this cavern-complex of words-before works.
I understand concision and its benefits to the impatient, practical reader. As a woodworking magazine editor, I spent years soaked in the wisdom of Strunk and White: the clearest words, the fewest words, the shortest sentences, death to adverbs. How-to writing has a single goal: to help people understand how to do something. Meandering, complex and unresolved thoughts just make readers angry, frustrating their attainment of the goal of understanding.
Wander in a forest of words, and it's easy to get lost, encumbered, frustrated; but stand in an open field the sky broad above, and we feel free. Much great fiction, from Hemingway to King, tends to the sparse.
And yet we keep Proust, Henry James, Robert Burton on our shelves, among so many others. They take our time, whereas Hemingway gives us time. Each is a taste, a preference.
My writing here is yet different. The meandering incompleteness of my process is not to test your patience, but to invite you to slow down and create your own. I write towards insights, knowing many blind spots go undisturbed, many terms used loosely, many aspects forgotten, following digressions as they come up. I don't write to explain anything to you. If I make a definitive statement, how simple or complex is your response? As much as I use these essays to understand something, I hope that you can create your own internal essay about the same topic, as rich and subtle as you have the time and interest to make. I'm not after your approval so much as your engagement with these ideas.
So, here is a summary of my thinking about the Architecture of Empathy, no more concise than before, but a bit more distilled in time and space:
Through the Architecture of Empathy we can live and work in buildings that contribute to our lives and help us thrive in ways we cannot now imagine.
It is not a new direction, or a school of thought, or a design concept, but a process. The Architecture of Empathy cannot be designed, it must be crafted.
The Architecture of Empathy is not an artistic creation. It does not originate in the highly educated mind of an individual. It does not prioritize the aesthetic and cultural statement of the building over practical, or human, needs or considerations. Its aesthetics and functions are not intellectually challenging. Its process does not depend on a hierarchical organization with the paying client at the top, and power/influence moving down through the architect, engineer, contractor, tradesmen, and laborers. It is not impersonal, or international, or regional.
The architecture of empathy is the result of the mastery of architecture as craft, which is necessarily beautiful. It originates in the synthesis of design thought with hand-making. It grows from the traditions and approaches developed across many individual practitioners. It prioritizes practical human needs and considerations, letting the beauty and art of the project take care of themselves. It's spaces and structures are easily intelligible. It is not beholden to the past, nor to any idealism of what humanity should or could be. It is personal, in that each role understands the end user intimately, respecting them for who they are. It depends on a heterarchy of contributions, in which the roles of client, architect, engineer and tradesmen are arranged like spokes on a wheel of which the project is the hub.
The Architecture of Empathy is a process not an end. It will lead to as many different forms as there are people and needs. It requires practice, repetition, listening, adapting, understanding, and selflessness. The Architecture of Empathy is nameless, and does not strive for fame, rather competence.
For it to work, grow, and lead to actual buildings, each member of the project must think unconsciously in these terms. If not, the result becomes intentional art, and a performance, a strutting about a stage.
The closest I've seen to this process is when friends or communities gather to build something none could do on his or her own. When "you just need a shed," and friends gather to help put it up, its success depends in part on your collective knowledge, mastery and craftsmanship, but also in how well you now one another, what need the shed serves, and what works in your lives. The design vocabulary consists of what you know, what you like, and what you can build from the mix of competence and economy. I think Emmanuel Pratt practices something akin to this in Chicago.
It's hard to be empathetic with a total stranger: a generic client, businessman or factory worker. Factory design rarely involves the architect spending a year on the floor with the manual laborers to understand how they work, what they need, what would help them thrive. Human thriving should be relevant to the building's brief.
If you disagree categorically with everything hee, will you still admit our buildings are not what they could be?
And if so, what is your path forward?
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