Architects talk funny

Protagonist: Here, listen to this: “Our environment is complex enough. I have always tried to battle against chaos”. That was Dieter Rams, you know, designer on show in London’s Design Museum. But why doesn’t that message get through? There’s enough iconic, blobby buildings already, messing up our skylines and costing the earth.

Narrator: You are more the old “less is more” school I can see that.

P: Well, when what we’re talking about is the size of that monstrous tower in Dubai I certainly am. You know that PoMo mantra, “less is a bore”, I so wish it had never been said.

N: Yeah, that was Venturi.

P: Correct. Still, it’s worth remembering that a lot of architects say wonderful things, all cuddly and humanist and full of social justice, and then they build whatever the highest-paying customer wants anyway. That side of architecture is kind of covered by this other slogan I heard recently: “Mess is the law”.

N: I guess. But is this talking about the mess created by architects? Or is it not really talking about mess at all, just mouthing off ike an architect. As in, that rhymes and sounds vaguely meaningful but it’s probably just pretentious  c**p.

P: OK. A lot of the mess is created by architects and their clients. But actually, it’s got to be true that mess is the law in the world. Nature doesn’t do straight lines, people do.

N: Architecture should be like nature?!

P: No, not at all. But I think there’s something to be said for reminding architects that people and things will spill over their clean, straight lines, that life is inherently messy. Walk into an architect’s home, at least in London, and you’d think they were all anti-colour and anti-child. All white and clean, hygienic to the point of neurosis.

N: And dressed in black. Anyway, you surely didn’t come up with “mess is the law” did you?

P: No, that was Jeremy Till, English architect, academic and well, semi-professional provocateur, currently at the helm of Westminster University’s architects. Actually, in his recemt book Architecture Depends he claims the quip was graffitied on the walls in his former institution, University of Sheffield. The book is a polemic against the excessive rationalism of architects and, I might add, planners. Basically he’s arguing that architects suffer a kind of autism, in that they refuse to recognise that the world is complicated, disorganised and full of surprises. Till doesn’t like hi-tech architecture much either, has a preference for things that go with rather than against the grain of what’s already there.

Which makes me think of what is so interesting about Helsinki’s architecture. Much of it is, or was, quirky and bizarre and creative, but at the same time it never really went against the grain of its environment. Not until recently anyway.

N: To go back to the argument that if people design spaces for outdoor seating in Helsinki they should put it in the sunshine and not as in the New Senate Square plans …

P: Exactly. And that thing that’s become so annoying, architects talking green and waxing lyrical about sustainability all the time, like even when they’re talking about anti-natural unpleasant places like Canary Wharf. They just can’t stop themselves from talking sustainability, it drives me nuts! But well, it sounds less pompous and less like rhetorical claptrap when it’s said by Finnish architects. Maybe it’s because for them it’s natural to work against nature in a natural way by using their natural human creativity.

N: !!!!?

P: I mean, think sanua – it produces 100C in a small room when outside it’s -30C – totally innovative but still weirdly natural.

Dodo – a healthy dose of humanism

Narrator: Did you know that the Finnish Association of Architects or SAFA gave out its annual prize for commendable sustainable architecture today? It didn’t go to architects but to the “small but peppery” (pieni mutta pippurinen and that’s a quote from the press release) environmental organisation, Dodo. Gratifying to see that YLE reported it too.

Protagonist: Dodo? Those the guys who did that urban gueriilla gardening last summer?

N: The very same. The committee commended Dodo for its work

Dodo on tuonut tervehdyttävän humanistisen vireen teknisesti painottuneeseen keskusteluun ja avannut uusia näkymiä kaupunkisuunnitteluun,

or, my loose translation:

Dodo has brought a healthy dose of humanism to a debate that’s often technologially biased and it has opened new perspectives on urban planning.

P: Nice to hear architects can appreciate ordinariness too. Not that guerilla gardening and the energy needed to run an organisation like Dodo are ordinary …. I’m really pleased for Dodo and for Safa.

N: You don’t look so happy though.

P:  I’m pondering what’s going on with Architecture, capital A, in Finland. It used to be that it went with the grain, the environment. But now it’s full of this iconic stuff, being bold, and making a statement, not being content with the ordinary. The latest conversations about this are around the question of how to use up the space in Töölö Bay, where should they put a new library, one to catch the attention of the whole of Europe. Big, eye-catching and expensive, or something else? And if it’s not iconic, it doesn’t care about or recognise specifics, like the fact that Finland is in the north, the seasons are really different, and that if you have restaurant or cafe seating outside you want it in the sunshine, otherwise you need to produce the weather too.

N: Designer sunshine? You’re not talking about the plans for the Senate Square by any chance are you?

P: Among other crimes, yes. They’ll have to use those awful gas heaters at the very least. Yeuch. But hey, that’s a relatively small crime. It’s the expensive, difficult-to-manage massive and eye-catching stuff that Helsinki has so far been blessedly free from that’s the real problem.

N: As you’ve been pointing out on this blog. But hey, isn’t that the standard these days? Isn’t everyone aiming to make a grand statement with buildings now? Architecture IS starchitecture – otherwise it’s just a bicycle shed – or whatever.

P: Maybe. Still, London’s Design Museum has two great exhibitions at the moment that praise the small, respecful and still breathtakingly beautiful. They seem to start from the premise that actually we’re in an age of austerity now and better live with it. One of them is on Dieter Rams, the industrial designer whose Braun electrical goods are on show – and if like me you were a kid in the 1970s, you’ll recognise from your childhood kitchen. Seems to me he could have been a Finn. His approach chimes with what I do think is, or was, a widespread view in Finland, that design is better when it doesn’t shout. And perhaps that architecture is better when it goes about giving pleasure, shelter and form without screaming about it. And when it functions. Less is more…

N: And the other exhibition is about David Chipperfield?

P: Yes. Beautiful stuff.

N: Does it have anything to do with Helsinki?

P: Not really. It just reminded me of the potential of quiet, thoughtful  architecture, David Chipperfield, that is. Quite different from what we’ve had on earlier posts on Designer hotels in the shape of the design of the Swiss flag. More the kind of stuff that would enhance the natural cycles and human pleasures that Helsinki still has to offer. And by the way, it’s cycles and pleasures that Dodo are all about.