Intelligent design
Now there’s a hot-button issue. I’m as tempted as I am unqualified to wax poetic on the opposable thumb of the panda or the flightless birds and swimming lizards of the Galapagos Islands, and I know very well that the pages of a topic-specific journal such as The Diapason are not the appropriate place. I’m thinking about the contrast between the usefulness that results from anything that was designed well and the uselessness of poor design.
Boston is both famous and infamous for the massive rehashing of its tunnels, bridges, and highways know as The Big Dig. It’s famous as an ambitious example of the significant reworking of a city, infamous for many billions of dollars in cost overruns and aggravating disruption of the city’s life for well over a decade, and for tunnels under the harbor with fatally collapsing ceilings and hundreds of leaks.
Intentional design
One component of the Big Dig is the Zakim Bridge, purported to be the world’s widest suspension bridge, which crosses the Charles River, connecting the underground Central Artery with Interstate 93 going north out of the city toward New Hampshire.
Conceived as part of the Big Dig, the Zakim Bridge in Boston is simply beautiful. Its striking lines dominate views across the city from every angle. It’s breathtaking to come out of the tunnel looking straight up the bridge. Driving from the west, looking down the Charles River, the bridge reminds one of a sailing ship. We live in Charlestown, a neighborhood across the harbor from downtown, parts of which are warrens of curving and crossing Revolutionary War-era streets. As we walk those streets we are amazed at how often you come around a corner to see a view of the bridge framed in the center of the street. It’s a wonderful design—so wonderful that I can’t recall hearing anyone criticize it.
Ignorant design
I often tell colleagues about the church that engaged me as consultant to help them acquire a pipe organ for their new sanctuary. They had instructed their architect of their intention to have a pipe organ—the building should be prepared to accommodate one. I traveled to visit the church and was surprised to see that there was no place in the room where an instrument of sufficient size could be placed. I looked at the room from every angle, thought of how an organ might be placed on a cantilevered shelf, and remembered photos I had seen of an organ located in a huge flower-pot suspended from the ceiling, but I simply couldn’t see where an organ could go in this building.
After I had been in the sanctuary for a couple hours, the organ committee and architect arrived for the meeting. The architect unrolled a drawing that showed a nice organ façade on the wall on the left side of the sanctuary. It was an outside wall. It was my unpleasant task to inform the architect in front of the committee that an organ would require six or eight feet of depth behind that pretty façade. Neither the architect nor the committee knew that. There would be no pipe organ.
Function follows form
As I’ve lived most of my life in New England, I’ve long been familiar with century- (even centuries-) old church buildings. Built before the introduction of public address systems, hung or dropped ceilings, or steel-and-drywall construction techniques, the buildings were made of real materials heavy enough to support their structures. The height of a ceiling was determined by proportion: following observations made in places like Athens more than twenty centuries ago, if a room was “so many” feet wide and “so many” feet long, the ceiling had to be “so many” feet up. It’s pretty simple math. Most people agree that the ceiling in the Parthenon was just the right height!
The majesty of a room’s acoustical properties would be a direct function of its size. The larger the building, the heavier the walls must be to support the higher roof. Place an organ of appropriate proportions on the long axis of the room and you could hardly fail. We might hear a big Hook organ in a large church and say, “those people really knew something.” But you can also say that some designers today may know too much.
We see modern worship spaces decorated like living rooms with plush carpets, and ceiling height determined by the clearance necessary to accommodate the Home Depot chandeliers. We’re given 18 feet of height for a pipe organ in a building with 450 seats. It’s destined to fail before the first note is sounded. So along with our artificial climate, artificial sound system, artificial proportions, and artificial flowers, we are doomed to using an artificial organ. And because we can, we drive the artificial organ with a stoplist suitable for a room with an 80-foot ceiling. Thirty-two-foot organ tone does not sound good in a room with an 18-foot ceiling.
Last month while shopping for Christmas presents in Harvard Square, I came across a book that I needed more than anyone on my list: 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick, published in 2007 by the MIT Press. I read the entire book standing in the store before I bought it. It’s 5¼ inches tall and 7½ inches long, perfectly proportioned to present his 101 thoughts on 101 pairs of facing pages. On each right-hand page is a pearl of architectural wisdom. On each facing left-hand page is Mr. Frederick’s illustrative sketch.
Some of Mr. Frederick’s points are pretty basic and practical. Number 1 is “How to draw a line:”
Architects use different lines for different purposes, but the line type most specific to architecture is drawn with an emphasis at the beginning and at the end. This practice anchors a line to a page and gives a drawing conviction and punch. If your lines trail off at the ends, your drawings will tend to look wimpy and vague.
Oh, I get it, when you’re designing something, you should mean to do it. The facing page shows two versions of the same sketch—one anchored to the page, and one wimpy. Point taken.
Others are more theoretical. Number 11 is “Use ‘denial and reward’ to enrich passage through the built environment:”
As we move through buildings, towns, and cities, we mentally connect visual cues from our surrounding to our needs and expectations. The satisfaction and richness of our experiences are largely the result of the ways in which these connections are made.
He’s talking to me about the Zakim Bridge. See a glimpse of it as you head up one street, be denied as it disappears when you turn a corner, see it from another angle as you cross the next block, come up out of the tunnel and safely cross the river. What a reward.
Number 28: “A good designer isn’t afraid to throw away a good idea.”
Just because an interesting idea occurs to you doesn’t mean it belongs in the building you are designing.
How many buildings and how many pipe organs have suffered as they try to do and try to be too many things at once?
Number 33 is a good one: “If you wish to imbue an architectural space or element with a particular quality, make sure that the quality is really there.”
If you want a wall to feel thick, make sure it is thick. If a space is to feel tall, make sure it really is tall.
What did I just say about the thickness of walls?
Number 95: “A decorated shed is a conventional building form that conveys meaning through signage or architectural ornament.” The accompanying sketches show a small shoe-box building dwarfed by a sign saying “Drive-thru Sunday Services,” contrasting a proper looking church building with a pitched roof and a cross on top. One is captioned “meaning conveyed by signage,” the other “meaning conveyed by architectural symbol.” If it looks like a duck, it is a duck.
And number 96, a purely practical observation: “Summer people are 22 inches wide. Winter people are 24 inches wide.” Sketches—a woman in a bikini and a man in a parka passing each other in opposite directions.
On several occasions I’ve attended convention workshops for organbuilders led by architects. Each time the conversation has dwindled to a litany of horror stories—indignant organbuilders anxious to prove that architects have no idea what they’re doing. But how many organbuilders have designed instruments in which chest-bungs cannot be reached, reservoirs cannot be removed for releathering, and how many have designed organs that look too big, too small, or fail to complement the design of their buildings.
Which brings me back to Mr. Frederick’s number 86: “Manage your ego.”
If you want to be recognized for designing a good or even great building, forget about what you want the building to be; instead ask, “‘What does the building want to be?”
In the world of artistic expression through design this seems counterintuitive. Anyone who’s seen one or two buildings designed by Frank Gehry will instantly recognize another. Does Mr. Frederick imply that Frank Gehry’s success is due to successful management of his ego? Or as you walk through the various corridors and spaces inside Disney Hall, do you find that you’re moving comfortably through attractive spaces, moving logically past necessities like water-bubblers and rest rooms, or hearing music in an environment that’s both aurally and visually spectacular? I do.
Deceptive design
The Gothic cathedral is perhaps one of the grandest repeated architectural forms we have. I’ve been fortunate to visit some of the great examples in Europe, where you marvel at what the artisans were able to do eight or nine hundred years ago. They hoisted huge stones hundreds of feet up—one of the towers is 349 feet tall and was finished in the 1140s. These workers would have been the first people in their community to be up that high—to look down on birds flying, to see the vast view across the countryside. It must have been terrifying, and it must have been hard for them to describe at home around the dinner table. But what they built is so true and so real that the building is still used daily the same way it was used when it was new. We were at Chartres on a Saturday when there was an impressive succession of weddings underway. Entire wedding parties were lined up in the square. As soon as one was finished, a man with a mobile phone called the organ loft and the next procession began.
I know several cathedral-scale Gothic-style buildings that are really concrete and steel affairs with plaster interiors molded to look like Gothic stone tracery. You know it the moment you walk inside—the sound isn’t right. There’s an aura about a building made of real carved-by-hand stones piled on top of each other to form columns and traceries that support a ceiling that’s a hundred feet up. Now that’s a building that can have 32-foot sound.
Inspirational design
Recently I was at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. I’ve been there many times, and each time I’ve found new treasures that are part of the fabric and lore of the place that offer fresh inspiration. Around the doorway leading out the north transept, you can find six-inch mice carved into the stone a little above head height. There’s an alcove with a statue of Martin Luther King, commemorating the fact that he gave his last sermon in that building a few days before his assassination. There are hundreds of carvings of saints, political figures, and theologians. And there are some carvings of the stone carvers who built the building.
The windows are extraordinary. Framed in the ancient forms of Gothic arches, they feature brilliant contemporary designs. On a sunny day, the church’s interior is ablaze with colored light—a stunning and magical effect. One of the great windows on the south wall of the nave depicts stars and planets and includes a piece of rock from the moon, presented to the cathedral by the astronauts of Apollo XI. In side and lower chapels you find mosaics depicting the same classic biblical scenes found in the great ancient churches using the same ancient techniques and materials but featuring dazzling contemporary designs. It is the juxtaposition of modern expressions framed in ancient architectural forms that I find most moving about this building.
The National Cathedral stands as a great metaphor for meaningful change and progression of expression. There is something in this building for everyone to appreciate, and neither the ancient nor the contemporary overwhelms the other.
The National Cathedral is located on top of a hill where it can be clearly seen from five miles away on Interstate 95, joining the Washington Monument and the United States Capitol as high points on the skyline. In fact, the central tower of the cathedral is the tallest structure in the city. Drive through the city and catch a glimpse of it once in a while between the trees, around the corners. Arrive at the intersection of Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenues and be rewarded in the presence of such a massive and brilliant masterpiece. There’s not a wimpy line in the place. The space has been imbued with reality—the walls seem thick because they are thick, the interior seems tall because it is tall. The signs out front are simple and tasteful—this is no decorated shed. I doubt that Matthew Frederick had anything to do with the design of the National Cathedral, but his little book helped me understand it a little better.?
