This text by Rob Krier was first printed in 1975 as a postface to 'Urban Space'. It is also present in the 2005 bilingual re-issue. More than thirty years later, this text is (sadly, probably) still up-to-date.

Rob Krier
LET'S PUT ARCHITECTURE BACK IN IT'S PROPER PLACE

This was how a dozen or so of Germany’s most eminent architects concluded a New Year’s manifesto on architecture in 1974, published in a number of architectural periodicals. At the same time a year later, when architects were not alone in having lapsed into melancholy, I was prompted to draft a reply to their rallying-cry. I hope it will be clear by now to everyone who has read my book just what I mean by the city and its architecture. I have made extensive use of illustrations to bring out my full meaning. I believe that many of my arguments can be strengthened by a postscript in the form of a manifesto, What has disfigured our cities to such a degree is not only the loss of urban space discussed here but also the mediocrity of the architecture. My brother Leon, who teaches architecture in London, has made a great contribution through his application of fundamental theoretical tendencies. The worth of these tendencies will be demonstrated by the debate on a professional level which I hope will be stimulated by this book. My architectural work has acquainted me with the likely opponents of such a theory of urban space. They will not be found in the ranks of those who use or live in our cities, but will spring from a mass of ‘specialists’. For it will be they who will see their irresponsible treatment of architecture challenged.

(1) Architects

Every building is designed by an architect. They alone are responsible for their creations, and in my opinion only they can be held accountable when gross errors occur.

The architectural manifesto to which I have referred reads too much like a feeble attempt on the part of its authors to absolve themselves of a cultural culpability whose magnitude and threat to their position they fully recognise. And because it is bad form socially and professionally to point the finger at one’s colleagues, only one of the demands of their manifesto was aimed directly at architects, and then only to exhort them to remember the superiority of their mission. This is asking both too much and too little!

I don’t want to let the writers of this ‘mea culpa’ off the hook yet. I must stress that I am not only attacking eminent, award-winning, successful architects, but also the generation which has not yet made its mark on the German building scene. It is irrelevant for the architect to bemoan the fact that his client has no understanding of design problems, and that the architecture produced on commission must necessarily reflect the taste and preconceptions of his client. Most clients can be talked round, where there is sufficient professional conviction and commitment on the part of the architect, although of course this will eat into his fees. And let’s be honest, fewer and fewer of us are prepared to take this first step. How terribly revealing it is that no-one can be expected to comply with this outrageous demand – except poets and dreamers perhaps.

How many of our colleagues have the strength of character to turn down a commission when the client refuses to accept the quality which the designer would like? I am arguing then that we, as architects, should face up to the responsibility which is ours from the moment that we put our name to a feasible design, and that we should stop laying the blame for our won inadequacy on the wicked client’s doorstep. Let us put ourselves in the position of someone who wants to buy a lamp. Our hypothetical customer has no professional expertise in the production or sale of lamp. He is therefore quite passive, simply looking forward to having his tastes met by a specialist, and a specialist alone, who has devoted his whole life to the lamp problem, and as a result my reasonably be expected to know something about it. Let’s leave out the question of the utility and functional adequacy of the said lamp. Our customer is offered such a wide range that after visiting three or four shops, he masters his indecision and in desperation makes a choice which suits his wallet. For even the untutored customer soon realises that well-designed lamps are always expensive and that the protracted search for a good, reasonably priced article often comes to nothing. Whether he is buying shoes, hats or furniture, the same problem is all too familiar to him.

We have all had experience of the lamp buying syndrome, and have all asked ourselves which criteria govern this kaleidoscope of kitsch.

Basically, the problem of the quality of the lamp is closely related to the problem of the quality of a building. Who is responsible for the mediocrity of the merchandise: the manufacturer, the designer or the consumer? The manufacturer and the designer set up a cliche-ridden customer profile based on their questionable market research. They deliberately use seductive designs, almost totally divorced from the function of the object, to increase sales. And who can criticise the consumer for making a wrong choice when he is confronted with such a proliferation of trash?

The architectural client finds himself in the same position!

I am constantly aware that laymen expose the negative qualities of our built environment with unerring certainty, simply as a result of their comparison of old and new. The response of the professional to this criticism hedges the central question with remarks like:

‘We are constrained by economic viability, technology, traffic, politics…’ But none of these constraints justifies the superficial treatment administered to our patient ‘architecture’. We have always known the patient in this ailing condition and have difficulty in imagining him healthy.

The call for ‘more design’ in our manifesto indirectly raises the question of what the nature of that design should be. Just as in our example of buying the lamp, in architecture design is open to many interpretations. Above all we must establish what role it plays in an overall architectonic system. The three most important determining factors which characterise architecture are function, construction and form. None of these factors takes precedence over the others and none can be neglected in favour of another. In the design process each aspect must be developed in parallel and neither organisation, construction nor form can be considered separately. Thus architecture, as a result of this coordinated process, must always provide a meaningful expression of inner structure, without necessarily exposing the ‘innards’. The form of the human body has always been the prototype for structural principles in architecture. In addition, nature provides us with countless other models whose visible aesthetic qualities are perfectly in accord with their biological system.

Quite simply, the concern for form is the fundamental problem of architecture, and one which cannot be solved in purely verbal terms. The architecture we are talking about must be illustrated, if only through drawings. So any polemic on the subject in the form of a manifesto must remain a piece of empty and esoteric trivia, and the notes I am writing now should also be seen in that light. However, this in no way diminishes the value of a discussion of form.

What form architecture may adopt, it must always create the same aesthetically controlled impression as the example from nature mentioned above. I have yet to see a tree which looked aesthetically wrong or defective. The same is true of landscape.

Architecture should engage interest not only because it is fashionable or novel. It should also remain sensitive to changing functional requirements, and be characterised by features whose intrinsic strength is such that the overall effect is not harmed by signs of use and wear and tear. Only a handful of masterpieces which have survived from the past show us what the true qualities of architecture should be. Our age has an extraordinary dearth of such examples.

Let us emphasise yet again the principal conclusion of this section: that the architect, and the architect alone, is responsible for the form of his work.

The remarks which follow deal with the origins of ‘second-rate architecture’ and the audience to which my remarks are addressed consists of its authors: the architectural profession.

(2) Planning time…

is clearly something which most of my colleagues cannot manage to fit in. The fee scale which architects have set up in fact only covers the cost of the most perfunctory work. If we look at the problem from this point of view, no-one can be reproached for showing too little concern for architecture. It is essential that the reform of the fee scale, which has been under discussion in parliament for years, be settled once and for all. This is not to say that we could necessarily look forward to better architecture as a result. Time is of the essence in the planning process, and the architecture of the thirty years since the war has suffered from being built prematurely before the underlying ideas had been fully worked out on paper. From time immemorial architecture has been realised through the medium of drawing. These drawings have always been produced manually, which is convenient but slow. This laborious method is similar to the creative process of the painter, musician or author. Science has yet to prove that the design process can be effected with the help of electronic aids.

Question: ‘Why should the architect not attempt to meet his schedules in the shortest possible time with minimum expense and maximum profit?’

Answer: ‘He defines objectives which by their very nature are to do with meeting man’s most central needs as an individual and member of a social group. These needs are not purely functional in character, but also have ethical, social and cultural implications. This means something more than the normal run of consumer goods. Architecture supposedly has an unlimited life, and so will stand of an unknown length of time in a landscape which will be affected by it either positively or negatively. Every building, no matter how private it is intended to be, has a role to play in public space whether it likes it or not, and God knows it is liable to become a permanent cultural irritant.’

In the field of architecture then, the most basic laws of commerce and management cannot be applied literally. The time factor is normally restricted by these laws, but in this case must be relaxed to allow the complex interplay of function, construction and form to be adequately developed. As a rule, those designers generally regarded as outstanding need as much time as possible before handing their design over to the builder.

(3) Building time…

is another important factor in the creation of architecture. It is almost entirely dictated by the financial plans of the client and so often exerts disastrous and inescapable pressure on the design team. One of the favourite selling lines of the speculative builder is an emphasis on rapid building time. Apart from increasing the likelihood of repairs, this consideration will cease to be relevant in the future.

(4) The monopoly of planners…

Not only is architecture usually planned and built too hurriedly; also, too few architects try and design too much in the time available. Here again, the profession has fallen into the trap of succumbing to the temptations of the free market economy. Work commissioned has become gigantic in its scale. The public sector, in an attempt to keep on top of the work, looks to the design team to solve the problem rationally, completely and unanimously, by working flat out and drawing on the full range of its professional expertise.

I have no wish to question the capability of the well-organised team. By and large, post-war architecture in Germany has been carried out in a perfectly organised way. The virtue of organisation has not been in short supply in this country. But the uniform dreariness of recent large projects produced by these teams has driven even the layman to the barricades. This is a good indication of the healthy commonsense of those who use buildings and gives rise to the hope that the reform of architecture is possible as a result of outside initiatives. I have said that architecture cannot be marketed like any other consumer product. We must learn from history that large-scale projects are not automatically better handled by correspondingly larger teams. The laws of the production line cannot be applied to the design and production of architecture. Large-scale projects cannot be dealt with rapidly – even by large practices – unless the problems are simplified. Technical optimisation will all too easily lead to an overstepping of the limits which man, as a fixed point of reference, can tolerate, both physically and psychologically. Here we come up against the problem of scale, which will be more closely examined in its own right at a later point.

The fascination of our historic cities derives from the almost infinite variety of their spatial forms and the buildings which shape them. Every age rationalises available technology in its own way, and this applies equally well to timber-framed buildings as to large brick or sandstone structures. Architecture has never suffered as a result of this: quite the opposite! The wealth of expression results above all from the fact that the scale of project came within the compass of the individual architect, that enough time was available for detailing the often endlessly complicated building elements, and that the client also understood and promoted architecture as an art-form. People still knew how to build in ways appropriate to both the town and the country. In the towns, buildings were expected to participate in a dialogue with the substance of the past and not to stand disconnected from the basic structural elements of the town as they do today, sustaining their own peculiar existence in permanent isolation. Every new urban building must obey the overall structural logic and provide a formal answer in its design to pre-existing spatial conditions!

I would go as far as to say that this is a key formula which, if correctly interpreted, may radically cure our unbalanced ideas.

I have suggested that the complexity of our historical towns is somehow tied up with their scale. This involves private housing as well as palaces of more generous proportions. The compulsive addiction to unarticulated and brutal gigantism is a phenomenon of our time. Never before in the history of building has there been an age in which identical elements have been repeated horizontally and vertically with so little variation as they are today. Without a doubt, this is a product of purely mathematically calculation. From a purely pragmatic point of view I would have some faith in it if large projects were structured to enable many small architectural teams to work on them. These groups of super-individualists would have to be able to work together in such a way that their product (for example, an estate of 500 units), when completed, would seem to come from a single mould, with the gain of greater variety and without ruining the client financially.

Much has been said recently about participation. In this book, I am arguing in favour of the participation of our many unemployed architects in the important building schemes of our day. My only fear is that the profession is not susceptible to change from within. I feel that our education has not quipped us for this. The legislators could do something towards helping this crippled profession to its feet by encouraging participation through the establishment of appropriate competitions.

(5) Planning and design is a craft…

which is exercised at the drawing-board. Any architect is charge of an office who spends most of his time on management and getting jobs loses not only the habit but also the ability to draw. Many of our colleagues are actually proud of this and point to it as a tribute to their success. I know of no good architect who has drawn badly: and none who has failed to cultivate the art of drawing with the passion it deserves. The perfection of the spatial idea is directly linked with perfection in drawing. Skilled management and verbal adroitness are of no use here. Anyone who opts out of the discipline of drawing has forfeited his professional status.

(6) Architecture is not a fashion…

to be discarded like a worn-out shirt in exchange for a now one. But this is exactly what happens today. On the international scene, architectural ‘styling’ changes as fast as the cut of trousers. A style which hits England one year will reach Japan in the next, apparently refined in some respects. We live in an era of unlimited technological and formal potential, and it is precisely which reveals itself as the Achilles’ heel of the age, which bears all the marks of an experimental period of expansion. And yet we treat this freedom a bit too lightly. What I optimistically refer to as a period of expansion is seen by others as a symptom of cultural decline.

Without wishing to pass judgment on these views, I would simply like to offer a word of warning against seeing everything in black and white. Neither technology nor anything else has fulfilled the hopes placed in absolutes. Adolf Loos’ attack on ornament was in its way as immoderate and implausible as the blinkered interpretation of the slogan ‘Form follows function’. The truth in architecture has much in common with the philosophical dimension of existence: neither can be discussed superficially. Fashions cannot be pinned on to them. I believe that future generations will have little hesitation in getting rid of our architectural blunders. Our generation is bequeathing to its children a vast rubbish dump of non-recyclable building materials. I am repeating my request to architects to control their individual arrogance, not to allow themselves to be caught up in superficial fashions and to bear in mind the fundamental features of architecture which outlive all fashions.

(7) Scale…

features prominently in all these remarks. I do not want to fulminate against large complexes and tower blocks, as people used to rage against the railway and the steam engine eighty years ago. I only want to suggest that tower blocks for example also take up a lot of space which has no further justification than to provide a setting for the tower block. The open space gained has never been put to appropriate use. Empty green spaces between tower blocks inhibit communication as much as the buildings themselves. Streets and squares on a small scale have for thousands of years proved that they work ideally as zones of communication. By ‘small scale’ I mean distances easily covered on foot, or (where height is concerned) the number of levels accessible by stairs. This all sounds very old-fashioned, but must be seriously taken into account if due respect is to be paid to the fixed unit of ‘man’ which we alluded to earlier. This factor concerns me all the more since most of the tower blocks with which I am familiar were built that way for no very good reason. They are little more than billboards in an unusually favoured position, announcing on the skyline the power of a company, a city authority etc. We are sick of such idiocies; no-one cares about the way they flaunt their wealth. With their superior view over town and country  side, many have become physically comfortable islands of loneliness.

We are still not well enough informed about the effect of this type of building on people’s lives. I find man too valuable to be used as a guinea-pig. But others do not share my scruples on this score! Since I have had children of my own, my attitude to the problem has changed.

(8) Our defective sense of history…

is to blame for much false interpretation of the past and also characterises our relationship with the future. The wish to cut oneself off from the heritage of the past is extremely short-sighted. By doing so, one deprives oneself of thousands of years’ worth of experience. At the beginning of the century, the pioneers of the modern movement frivolously flaunted this attitude. And yet all of them had enjoyed a sound education and were very knowledgeable about history. Their attitude can easily be dismissed as a defiant reaction, intended above all as a harangue against their position in society, and against their fellow students at the Akademie who remained stuck in their old ways. It was a different matter with the pupils of these pioneers, and with their students in turn. They felt able to do without the grounding which had fitted the pioneers for their transformation into ‘moderns’. And we today, armed with our pitifully inadequate know-how, must make up for a great deal that has been neglected. I have a faint suspicion that a new pioneering situation will grow out of this.

We have learned how little is achieved by technological advance and how rapidly the glow of new inventions fades when they are backed by nothing more than technological novelty. This does not denigrate the usefulness of experimental technology: it simply puts it into perspective. Care must be taken that it does not attempt on its own to initiate new development while making unjustifiable claims for universality.

I would go so far as to maintain that nowadays it is more useful to imitate something ‘old’ but proven, rather than to turn out something new which risks causing people suffering. The logical and attractive building types and spatial structure left to us by anonymous architects have been improved upon by countless succeeding generations. They have matured into masterpieces even in the absence of a singe creator of genius, because they were based on a perfectly refined awareness of building requirements using simple means; the result of an accurate understanding of tradition as the vehicle for passing on technical and artistic knowledge.

All my dire warnings inspire considerable gloom, and one fears that it will prove impossible to do justice to the demands I have outlined.

However, not all the blame should be laid on architects, whether they are involved in building or administration. To be fair, some of the rubbish should be dumped back in the universities, for it was there that the whole avalanche started rolling.

© Rob Krier & UMBAU-VERLAG 2005