From design to construction site
Can architects truly be proactive in the making of their work?
Designing and building spaces for living, from humble dwellings to the grandest castles, are acts of the architect's profession that go back to the dawn of human history. Admired or hated, but always judged by their design gesture, architects have gradually moved away from the making of their creation, the construction site, especially since the Industrial Revolution.
Between the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, technological tools took over architectural design (BIM, CAD, virtual reality) and they are very welcome, as they let creation prevail over the mechanical task of drawing. At the same time, however, we see a systematic devaluing of the design gesture, where intuitive making on site prevails over thinking, and architectural drawings are often mere legal formalities left in a corner of the site. The builder's experience and "intuition", rather than the design, end up running the traditional building process. With their current training and conduct, architects, with rare exceptions, end up passive in the face of the construction market. This is closely linked to architects not knowing all the construction possibilities, such as industrialised construction, which cannot happen without good design, and so they leave it to others to decide the best way to build.
Architects are part of a great machine, a cog in the construction industry, but that is no reason to refrain from proposing construction innovations, since they have a great responsibility to their professional and social mission of making this world more beautiful, welcoming, liveable, safe and sustainable.
It is up to architects to master and understand the dynamics of the world around them and to work towards good architecture, among other things by adding high formal and construction quality, including features that ensure social and environmental sustainability and, above all, designing for the real world, without ever forgetting that to design is to bring poetry to a place.
So yes, we can be proactive rather than passive architects in the reality of the construction industry. To do so, besides being better prepared by universities, we need to take a new, more horizontal position towards our projects and our professional practice. Bringing architects closer to the site and to the other people who make their work happen will certainly make a difference to their practice and to the effectiveness of their work.
Logic and creativity
Many believe that architecture is conceived through creativity alone, but that is only half the truth. You do need to be creative, but without ever forgetting that there is a whole logic, of both perception and use, in conceiving a project.
Architecture brings together many sciences, from philosophy to mathematics. Architects must be able to understand every aspect of a project, including the intangible ones, and use them to create the best possible solution for their clients. When we manage to combine logic and creativity in the same design, we reach what I would call design fulfilment.
Understanding how people's brains perceive colours, shapes, contrasts and light: all of this influences how spaces are perceived. It is also necessary to consider visual comfort, circulation and the purpose of each space, understanding and studying every point of the project and how each person would perceive it.
Creativity is not just about developing artistic forms but also about creating low-cost, self-sustaining and at the same time timeless solutions, always seeking lightness and beauty to improve people's quality of life. That requires studying every possible solution for each case. Whether a project is large or small, what matters above all is meeting the needs of each space, suited to its use.
When leading the development of an architectural project, it is often necessary to check whether what the client wants is exactly what they need. Our professional role is to guide, never to impose ideas, always presenting the options actually available, based on the logical composition of the project and on specific points created for that client.
Here at our studio, for example, our basic premise is to deliver visually timeless projects with future maintenance very well thought out, because use and adjustment over the building's lifespan are inherent to architecture, and we do not want a building to lose its functionality before its time or cause unnecessary trouble for clients. To achieve this, architects must equip themselves with tools to test the structure, comfort and accessibility of the project before it is built. Simulations and calculations are needed at this stage, which shows one of the facets of the inseparable relationship between logic and creativity in architecture.
