Speaking Architecture

Speaking Architecture

Imagine that every house is a poem, and every skyscraper is a novel. Imagine that each component of a building is a word: beams and columns are nouns; kitchens, stairs and showers are verbs while the windows and furnishings are adverbs; the flooring materials and light fixtures are adjectives.

It’s helpful for me to think of architecture as language, and of each style as a dialect. An architect can be fluent in Colorado Mountain Contemporary. A client likes to speak Bauhaus Modernism. A student learns the grammar of Spanish Mission and French Country. It’s not surprising that designers refer to the stylistic elements of a building (trim details, window types, finish materials, ceiling treatment, etc.) as the “vocabulary” of the architecture.

Christopher Alexander (Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley) suggests the idea of “pattern languages” by which we “speak” our built environments into existence.

Many architectural creeds constrain design by rejecting such-and-such traditions or prescribing this-and-only-this strategy regardless of context. Alexander’s idea of pattern language hinges on the freedom of being able to create an infinite variety of solutions to design problems, responding specifically to each unique situation. A design strategy that might be unacceptable in one context might be the perfect solution in another.

But this doesn’t mean that anything goes. Bad writing is still bad writing, and the rules of grammar exist for a reason. Most likely everyone can relate to the experience of being in a house and thinking “I would not have designed it this way.”

Over time, I’ve begun to suspect that what makes a design successful is the way that its composition responds to the needs and desires of its owners and users. I think about how I feel in a space. That porch makes me feel peaceful. This entryway feels grand and impressive. In the nook I feel secure and snug. I think simple intuition can be a useful judge of the quality of a design.

I think that learning how to “speak architecture” (how to design well) is an ongoing process that I’ll never be truly finished with. I’m slowly but steadily gaining insight and inspiration; I love every minute of it. Working at TKP Architects I get to collaborate with people who have “written” countless beautiful houses, whose experience has taught them what it is to speak architecture that is meaningful, appropriate, and satisfying to those who inhabit it.  

This space is composed from different elements (think of these like words). Bench seat, base cabinet, wall-sconce, rustic timber, open stair rail: these patterns relate to each other in a meaningful way to create the character of the room.

The house is a cohesive whole made up of different patterns, in the same way that a narrative is one entity while still being made of thousands of separate words.