North of California
Excerpted from the publication, SHIFT: Design as usual—or a new rising? The publication accompanied the FutureDesignDays Conference held in Stockholm in 2005.
North of California
The paradoxical relationship between architecture and technology is embodied by a place at the intersection of the latitude 47° 54’ N and longitude 122° 31’ W. All of eight behind Greenwich Mean Time and once called a cultural dustbin, Seattle, Washington is an epicenter for global shift. This place is one of great natural beauty, surrounded by mountains and water and formerly forested by great groves of Douglas fir; at once geologically beautiful and geographically isolated. Today, the entrepreneurial spirit of the place has helped usher in a digital revolution, just as yesterday’s aviation inventors helped connect east and west.
As one of the alleged birthplaces of tomorrow’s way of life, Seattle is the ideal incubator for a question that eludes easy answers: Can the tradition of design as a creative act involving hand and mind, pen and paper, continue to have relevance in the 21st Century? Should it? Are hand-drawn designs and hand-made crafts the hallmarks of some ancient civilization that must, like the Phoenician Carthage, be remade in a new Roman image? Will this paradox vanish as those of us who live in this time disappear?
Maybe so or maybe not. Maybe technology—particularly technology used for the design of dwellings—is already filling a design vacuum as the old ways pass into memory. But if a change is coming, it’s going to take more than a mere century to unmake the tradition of thought that’s as intrinsic to creation as the urge to build. The apparent dawn of a new age—even as the sun has yet to set on the old one—that is what makes this paradox so compelling.
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“Drawing”, says Susan Lambert of the Victoria & Albert Museum, “is the most basic skill of both the artist and the designer… the creative idea made visible in the preliminary sketch.”
The act of manually drawing is as much mental as it is physical. From the Beaux-Arts tradition to the present, the physicality of drawing—using pencil or something like it on paper—has been the fascination of countless artists, architects, and critics alike. Drawing is a thinking process bent toward art—whether it is painting, sculpture, architecture—in its infancy. The drawn line conveys basic mysteries depending on how it varies in weight, value, and emotion. A line can be created using countless mediums: lead, ink, charcoal, or even a pixilated sequence on a screen (which seeks to imitate drawing but lacks the tactical quality of pen on paper). When I discuss hand drawings versus computer drawings with my colleagues, we seem to agree the brain and hand can lead to ideas that surely would not have happened electronically.
Computers can’t sketch. They have no imagination of their own (not yet). User interfaces haven’t evolved to the point where all those ones and zeros can engage the human imagination. That’s why the design process is not well represented by the computer. There’s no on-screen metaphorical equivalent for the early tentative ideas, the maturation of ideas into concepts, the emergence of a design from the deep recesses of the brain. Digital likenesses lack the instantaneous rush of inspiration and, paradoxically, the weeks and even months of life it takes to refine an idea into something that can be communicated and built.
With engagement as a guiding principle, my partners and I expect our staff to draw both ways—on the computer and on paper. Technology could theoretically abbreviate the time required, but whatever efficiencies are gained are negated by the need (more than ever) for the intimacy of labor. Technology has made mind-numbing complexity possible—is that a good thing? As the world rapidly embraces the computer as the design tool of choice, I find us drifting farther from the emotion that is the signature of a hand drawing.
So I’ll make a bold prediction: that the need to express by hand will continue to flourish. Drawing can be accomplished on a digitized tablet—but does it engage the artist? Can it be read with as much clarity of purpose as a hand drawing? Is this electronic medium as portable? A pencil and paper are mobile; sketches can be scanned digitally and sent anywhere in the world—a wonderful combination of 21st century technology with that of the 14th. Limiting oneself to the confines of a computer monitor is so 1999.
“Drawing is a means of finding your way about things,” says Lambert, ”and a way of experiencing, more quickly than sculpture allows, certain try-outs and attempts at the act of converting an idea into lines.” Drawing is thinking, intuiting, beginning.
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For several generations, Seattle has been a hotbed of beginnings—not to mention the associated paradoxes. Its inhabitants (which include a large number of Scandinavians) are drawn from many places around the globe. The city was founded by young entrepreneurs, people who must have said: This is a place to invent and be inventive, so let’s clear the land, lower the lakes, drain the swamp, knock down a hill or two, make a new island, and deepen the harbor. After all, we came here to make our presence felt!
Seattle grew because the greatest entrepreneurial instigator of the times, the railroad, decided to locate here. It built an economic legacy by exploiting the natural environment which is its signature: first with forest exploitation (i.e. the timber industry) and followed by over-harvesting the waters (i.e. the fishing industry).
In the last fifty years, Seattle has incubated such industrial and commercial giants of our time—notably in planes and computers—that it has enabled its shift from a national to a global perspective. Our best known businesses—Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Starbucks—have made possible today’s clichés of global mobility: the jet-setting business-person, the portable office stowed in a laptop bag, the uncanny ability to complete holiday shopping from a far-away hotel room, and the trademark recycled cardboard cup that is ubiquitously carried throughout the world’s airports and business districts.
Not bad for a bunch of laid back, outdoorsy, transient introverts who are hemmed in by mountains and surrounded by water. What went into the mix to allow those industries to begin and grow? What creative nexus made companies that might be considered a life force in our world? Did the local environment affect creation? With mountains all around, I wonder if Seattlites turned to invention because they lacked any long views. Perhaps inventing was a way of expanding into the environment that was hidden beyond the mountain horizon—at first by finding a way over those mountains, and later by finding a way through them.
But if local environment really does matter, doesn’t that mean design is intrinsic to a place—fundamentally different whether you’re in Milan or Shanghai? Is globalization just a myth when it comes to design? Maybe Seattle’s attempt to allow the global sharing of information is just a fruitless quest for technology’s latest Grail – so, what does this paradox – perhaps brought on by technology—have to do with the future of design and housing in particular?
For now, it seems, buildings are still created largely by hand. Perhaps someday, major components will be fabricated on an assembly line and connected on the site as the natural conclusion of the dream (or fantasy?) But so far, that dream hasn’t materialized. Why not? Because lifestyles, communities, and culture require more variety than that available on an assembly line. People in the United States continue to prefer the label “Made by hand” to the commoditized “Made in Insert Country Here,” and I expect the same need for local hands extends worldwide. The desire for uniqueness continues, with each piece and detail different. Growing. Changing.
It seems to me that the digital and the physical are naturally at odds. While the former is one of software, wiring, and wireless; the latter is physical, tactical, and dependent on human vagaries. That’s why Seattle remains both global and not, simultaneously a center for technology and not all that changed from the cultural dustbin of its former life. This paradox is at the center of today’s design. The more digital technology and globalization open new communication channels and methods of creation, the greater the need for the same old tools: mind and hand, pen and paper. Actually I think this is rather exciting. It is the uniqueness of this that allows me to be in this tug of war.
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As the potential for design has become more complicated, I’ve found myself returning to the minimalist tradition: simplifying, drawing with fewer lines. I increasingly think it’s only the reflection of our design that has really changed. The old metaphors still work.
Whenever I interview for an architectural commission, I always bring a prop with me to show. My favorite visual aid is a 300-year-old leather book. The content is of no particular significance, but I think it’s the perfect metaphor for how to make a beautiful building because the book has the ability to transport you to a beautiful place. It’s a survivor, well worn and wearing the patina of time. The detail of the typeface shows the importance of intricate craft. I may have to get it rebound at some point, but I expect to continue using that old book because it makes my point better than any multimedia presentation.
It’s clear that I am not technically inclined, but I am intrigued by technology. It can invite new spirits into a work that otherwise might never pass from the subconscious to the page. I’m currently designing Seattle’s Wing Luke Asian Museum. Located in an historic building constructed in 1907, it’s a reminder of the role the immigrant Asian community has played in Seattle’s history. In paying homage to this history, we’re using computer-aided imagery to accentuate the new design, ghosting figures of the building’s past into the vision for the future. The images mingle together, past and present; a good example of how technology and reality can collaborate to create a kind of engagement. Used to complement reality—rather than to replace it—technology holds the key to expanding the realm of possibility.
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The paradox of the cyber world and the real world can be represented through materials. Steel, for instance, can be left in its natural state, as it would appear when leaving a rolling mill. A little wax to seal it and even the cutting marks remain, indelible reminders of the human touch preserving its strength. This physicality cannot be simulated. One must confront the earthiness, the realness of the material itself, and the subtle nuance that the material can evoke throughout the day in an infinite number of lighting and climate conditions. As we move further and further into the digital world, we, as humans in constant search of our humanity crave a stronger connection to the human touch—evidence that this material is connected to earth and has been manipulated by man.
The paradox is of course that the digital world can be anywhere – it is without texture, without emotion.
As we have considered the nature of a steel—a dense, solid material—so too should we consider another material on the opposite end of the light-blocking spectrum, one that’s also made as a result of industrial manufacturing methods: glass. We know that glass is mass produced in countless different ways. It can be hand cast, blown, etched, and sandblasted. Glass allows the artist-craftsman and designer to reveal himself by manipulating the quality and quantity of light passing through it, offering more room for experimentation. Glass has the infinite variety of a snowflake—it is experienced differently depending on time of the day, the light outdoors, your vantage point—the opposite of digital mediums, where exact copies of designs can be replicated infinitely.
Glass has many qualities resulting from the unpredictability of the material. The unpredictability is compounded by the inability of the computer to model the ephemeral quality of light and shade. Glass has varying illusive qualities, whether it reflects, shimmers, or glows. The craft—the small marks of its making, the tiny air bubbles somehow trapped inside, the varying thickness and textures—catch light, curve light, and distribute it in unfettered ways.
Perhaps the paradox creates a tension – a necessary ingredient for growth and the design process. Even creating a pathway for the use of technology and its counterpoint – the hand, they are but means to create a sensual architecture. Architecture of emotion. Architecture where light is both mysterious and direct. Where the density of the material surrounds and provides refuge or catapults to prospect. Architecture that is physical and spiritual, even magical. Architecture created for mankind. – Rick Sundberg, 2005