Research Symposium 2009: Changing Practices

15: Architecture is not architecture is not architecture is not architecture

Jeremy Till University of Westminster The title of my lecture is Architecture is not architecture is not architecture is not architecture If we are going to talk about the changing practices of architecture it is worth, very quickly, unpicking what architecture means in various contexts, and the conflated understandings of architecture. The way that those understandings have been conflated might be the cause of some of the problems that we are currently facing, but also knowing the problems may be the means of understanding how to escape them. I also thought, since we are in the RIBA building, I would illustrate my points with the RIBA, but to do that I also need to establish my own credentials. I am a member of the RIBA because I always think it is better to be churlish from the inside rather than attack from the outside, so I will be churlish about the RIBA but also come up with some suggestions. Very quickly I want to go through the idea of architecture as a profession, architecture as a practice, architecture as a product. The first definition of architecture is as some sort of profession. A profession defines itself, or rather is required to define itself, in the establishment of a stable knowledge base. If the knowledge base of the profession falls apart, then the profession is in some way seen to be fragile. In its very first incarnation, before the Royal Charter came along, there was an organisation called the Institute of British Architects. In their first publication they wrote, as a justification for their existence: An Institute of British Architects must obviously be advantageous to the country at large, fulfilling its responsibility to public opinion for the direction and maintenance of national character for taste and for forming a body to whom individuals may have recourse to its opinion on professional matters. Many will say that the world has not moved on very much and that actually this statement is a very good summary of the self-defining nature of the profession and also the limited service that the profession can provide to the country in terms of aesthetic control. However, you do not get a Royal Charter by being so openly selfserving, so when we get to the Royal Charter, we find a much more noble thing about the advancement architectural knowledge. The defining feature of the profession and its charter is that this knowledge must in some way be categorised, it must in some way be stabilised, and this is exactly what keeps out the great hordes of the unwashed because only experts can have access to that specialist knowledge. This, then, is the first definition of architecture architecture as a profession which is then defined through its stable knowledge base.
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The second definition of architecture namely architecture as practice - is where we start to get a bit nervous because it is in practice where the stability of that knowledge base begins to meet the contingencies of the outside world; we try to transfer the stability of the internal knowledge base of the profession into the real world through architectural practice.

Research Symposium 2009: Changing Practices

Of course, at that moment things begin to go awry, because the universalised nature of the knowledge base cannot cope with the various particulars of the real world. At this stage the profession tries to iron out those lumps, those accidents, those vicissitudes, those things that are uncontrollable through a series of techniques. The most well-known is to try to construct architectural practice as linear sequence, as exemplified in the RIBA plan of work. One of the suggestions that I would have at the end of the day is that this document is dispensed with, that it no longer becomes the definition of an architectural service. It is, however, a very interesting piece of work because, if you look at it, there is a whole set of descriptions of what happens within the building process and, miraculously, the architect has to be involved in all of them. There is a nice quote from Reyner Banham who says a professional is a man with an interest, a continuing interest, in the existence of problems and what the RIBA Plan of Work does is to set up a set of problems and, hey presto!, the only people who can solve those problems are the architects. But equally, as we have seen very extensively today in Harriets work and Indys work there are multiple ways that an architect might operate beyond the limits and limitations of the RIBA Plan of Work. More than that, the RIBA Plan of Work has been used as a method of divide and rule i.e. up to Stage D you get a design architect and after Stage E you get a production architect which can and has been exploited by clients. So something which was meant to control the vicissitudes and contingencies of the external world, in practice has actually become a way of controlling practice and controlling the profession. The RIBA Plan of Work in its very limits is actually restricting the way that we might change our practice and because, of course, fees are related to the RIBA Plan of Work we actually get sucked into it. My suggestion is that we try to abandon that as a model of architectural practice. The next definition of architecture is architecture as product and we are now beginning to enter the confusion and conflation, because the profession is about knowledge, product is about objects and yet architecture is used to describe these two very different contexts. The definition of architecture as stuff is a defining, clear and received version of what architecture is. The only people who can make that stuff are the architects, so the architect is identified with architecture as stuff in most peoples minds. Of course the RIBA perpetuates this perception through a system of awards, through a system of accepted codes of what is good and what is bad stuff, and that is then played out through the media. That is why I say the original statement, for the direction and maintenance of national character for taste is perpetuated within things like the RIBA awards system. The conflation is actually intentional; the knowledge of the profession begins to describe architecture as practice which then leads to a certain type of architecture as product, which in turn forms the knowledge base for the profession. So what we get is a closed circle in which architecture becomes a controlling circling system, at the centre of which today we have the RIBA.

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If you do not believe me I would like you all to turn around and look at the back. I wonder if anyone has actually ever looked at this mural. (Illustration 1 to come) In the centre we have the RIBA Council Chamber which is the place of the production and the codification of architectural knowledge. Sitting in there we have figures called architects who, in the centre, in this expansive and wonderful, generous manner, are taming the natives of the world through dropping architecture as a product onto these unsuspecting but ever so willing suspects. So there is a sense of the RIBA in the centre of this circle of profession-practiceproduct. The RIBA is not called the Royal Institute of British Architecture, it is called the Royal Institute of British Architects, so what it does is to stabilise the position of the architect in the centre of this internalised and supposedly strong circle.

Illustration 2: Architectures outside But this self-defining circle turns its back on something rather important, which is architectures outside, all those events, forces and contingencies that are beyond the direct control and definition of the profession. Architectures outside is like Banquos ghost: it is always there but we do not know quite what to do with it. It is all those things that we know that architecture is involved in, but are just too complex to engage with because they are outside our professional value system. It is, as Sunand has said and Tatjana picked up in her list, to do with the consequences rather than the object of architecture, it is to do with the effects of architecture, it is to do with all those things that we are not fully in control of but we know in our heart of hearts that we should be thinking of. The way I want to deal with this exclusion of architectures outside, and to see the limits of the triangle (illustration 2), is to hold up the lens of ethics to each of these conditions.

Research Symposium 2009: Changing Practices

First, if we look at the ethics of architecture as a profession, we find the most tragic definition of ethics of all. For instance in the ARB Code of Practice it states: the code should be central to the life of an architect, not only as a source of ethical guidance but also as a commonsense indicator to the principles of good practice. You then look at the detail of the code and find the terms are all to do with short term protection and the duty of care to the client. Just listing keywords from the heading of each standard is enough to show the ethical paucity of the ARB code: Acting with integrity Adequate professional, financial, and technical resources Truthful and responsible promotion and advertising Conscientious execution of work Regard to users Maintain professional and technical competence Security of clients monies Adequate indemnity cover Manage own finances prudently Promote the standards of the code Organise work responsibly and with regard to clients Deal with complaints promptly and appropriately. Regard to users may hint at a wider responsibility, but when you actually dig down into that they are absolutely clear that your first responsibility is to the client, but if you can actually think a bit about the user that would be good too. This approach is similarly played out in the RIBA Code of Professional Conduct as well. So this would be the third thing I would be rid of in the RIBA. I have got rid of the Plan of Work, I have got rid of the picture and the final one is to get the RIBA to rewrite their code of ethics. If you look at the code of the Institute of Engineers, there is a very different approach: it says quite explicitly that the engineers first responsibility is to society at large over and above that to your client. Why cant architects start there? Let us now look at the ethics of architecture as a product and the long history of the sad association of ethics with aesthetics, of morality with tectonics, of the clarity of the building with the clarity of society, of in some way the idea that a brick has morals, that a shadow gap is redemptive, and that we can save the world through beauty. I wanted a picture of the RIBA Charter so I put RIBA Charter into Google images and somehow that landed me at a Flickr Group which collected a series of pictures of shadow gaps shown in illustration 3.

Research Symposium 2009: Changing Practices

Illustration 3: Shadow gaps Flickr group

So Google did the conflation of architecture of profession with architecture as product rather beautifully. At the bottom of the group page it says: The shadow gap in architectural designs; submit your image and influence the world. OK, there is humour here, but for me a rather black humour. So, I took some pictures of shadow gaps in my house, and I asked if I could join their group (illustration 4).

Research Symposium 2009: Changing Practices

Illustration 4: My own shadowgaps The scary thing is that these two conditions of so-called ethics, the ethics of aesthetics and the ethics of the profession, allow practice to get on with the most appallingly unethical production, as Jonathan Charleys brilliant film showed. On the basis that, on the one hand, I am being ethical, through the very fact that I am a professional and I signed up for this code, and on the other hand that in some way I am being ethical through the idea of the morality of beauty the production of architecture is allowed to completely ignore the real issues of the production of the built environment and its social and political context. So, as a quick example, the production of so-called innovative form in Dubai is done on the back of labour camps. The way that we avoid confronting these difficult ethical issues of architectures outside, is through recourse to the protection of the ethics of the profession and the ethics of architecture as product, both of which are in fact phoney ethics. So my plea is that we move away from the conflation of architecture as these three conditions, and away from the RIBA in some way sustaining this conflation, and so wrapping up this self-defining and internalised system of architecture. My only plea therefore is that what we need to do is to move to the consideration of architectures outside and, in particular, the ethics of architectures outside. This is poignantly summarised through Zygmunt Baumans understanding of ethics: To assume an ethical stance means to assume responsibility for the other. Baumans other is a multitude. It is much wider than the client, it is all those people who brief, build, occupy, view, review, remake and inhabit architecture. The need to recognise ethics of architectures outside becomes the necessity for changing practices. 6