Architects in the 20th Century have, with great success, signaled to society that they are anguished artists or sympathetic anti-heroes. This image has been enshrined by film and TV. Think of The Fountainhead, Indecent Proposal and How I Met Your Mother. This signaling has been arguably successful, so successful in fact that those who believed it the most were architects themselves, not the public at large. To the rest of the people, they cannot figure out what we do and how the work we do is relevant to them. Yes, some may find the anguished artist persona somewhat amusing but that’s as far as it goes. Why we are there or why engage us or what justifies our fees are still questions many ask. When asked, architects pontificate about “value” which encompasses the same cliches that sound like mantras of self-help from the noughties. This failure in communication is largely responsible for articles like the particularly vile piece Giles Coren penned for the Times a few months ago. The profession cannot be blamed for Coren’s venom but its lack of messaging has created fertile grounds for it to fester.
But the recent trends are even more worrisome, because most architects have sought refuge in moral authority, perhaps out of genuine conviction but also because it is self-serving. The smug contentment in being sanctimonious has ironically steered the discipline of architecture from what should be an admired discipline into a tacitly loathed one replete with self-righteousness and virtue-signaling.
If architecture is a discipline replete with innovation and bringing delight to people’s lives, is it being signaled by the profession accordingly? Or is the sanctimonious and didactic tone doing the opposite? If we are agents of positive change in society, then why are we such killjoys?
For a discipline predicated on innovation and making human experience better, somehow the notions of joy and delight are shameful taboos so most architects seek solace and purpose in stoic misery. This is why the profession signals negativity and stern morality which makes people feel guilty and bad about themselves rather than upbeat and excited. In other words, rather than take people on a journey of wonderment and excitement about fantastical opportunities and joyous possibilities, we drag them them kicking and screaming down the road to hell, all the while while we’re deprecating them.
Take the example of cross-laminated timber (CLT) which the profession sanctifies as the panacea to the climate emergency and the silver bullet to environmental depredation. Venerated for its supposed sustainable credentials, how do architects convince developers and users to adopt something so many architects are zealous about like CLT?
The way many architects present CLT to the public (as well as to their peers) goes something like this:
Concrete is evil. There is no acceptable material other than CLT. If you are not a fan of CLT’s, you’re a selfish, evil person. If you question CLT, then you need to be cancelled. If you don’t like CLT, you’re single-handedly responsible for the environmental catastrophe. How can you even consider anything else?
PS_Did we tell you that we’re award-winning?
In other words: doom and gloom, pontificating, patronising and judging.
Whereas more useful messaging could go more like this:
CLT is cool. CLT is sexy. It looks great. It feels great. It smells great. Oh, did I tell you that it is ethically and sustainable sourced? CLT would be touted as the must-have material in any environment. CLT spaces would be all over Wallpaper, GQ, Tatler (not the trade press which would automatically relegate it to the realm of the uncool, or to quote W1A’s Siobhan Sharpe: “ you’ve bought a one-way ticket to yawnsville”).
I don’t personally endorse CLT nor am I comfortable with the zeal to cut down trees nor am I convinced by the messianic hype surrounding in my professional circles (nor am I particularly against it - horses for courses). What I am talking about here is how architecture, which is both a service and a product, needs to be framed. Our discipline has a lot to learn from advertising which successfully combines innovation in service as well as innovation in product with innovation in communication. Advertising also capitalises on human psychology and behavioural science, so it is a discipline of understanding the user and winning them over, not bludgeoning them with assumed morality.