The New as Refinement and Repair*

* refinement: The act of improving something by making small changes: in particular to make an idea, theory, or method more subtle and accurate.

* repair: To fix or mend a thing suffering from damage or a fault.

Since the 1950s, the vast majority of architects have considered ex novo originality to be the most important dimension of their work. In theory, decoupling design from precedent is the philosophical justification for conceiving virtually all new architectural projects as autonomous works of art; it is especially the case for projects that challenge the cultural and social status quo. In practice, this belief in the inexorable superiority of all that is unprecedented has amounted to the rejection of too many foundational design patterns and conventions; the adoption of high technology as the basis for determining aesthetic values; and the elevating of faith in the future as a pretext for engaging in unbounded formalism. The damage done through the relentless pursuit of originality has generated a state of worldwide physical impoverishment and spiritual confusion never before seen. Modernism’s promise of an improved new human habitat coupled with a superior form of society has not been delivered, nor will it ever. Instead, the role of the architect and of architecture itself have been reduced in scope and importance: from operating on behalf of the common good to serving the interests of the few. In the process, architects and architecture have been peddling literal newness at all costs and promoting a futurist vision that seems increasingly out of reach.

Expecting that every new building independent of its program and place can be designed as high art and serve as a perpetual catalyst for ethical renewal is a quixotic undertaking at best. It sets up an impossibly high bar for every project to clear and guarantees a Sisyphean fate for architecture: always aspiring to the highest possible ideals and constantly coming up short. This has indeed been the experience of the recent past. It is not really surprising that for every beautiful modernist building ever designed in plan, section, elevation, massing, and details, tens of thousands of ugly and impermanent ones have also been produced—buildings that distinguish most if not all the urban expansions around the world. This may be principally due to the lack of talent, education, or relevant skills of the average architect. But more than that, designing an “Architecture of Our Time” has been such a vague and subjective mission that it is impossible to ever bring it to fruition. Ultimately, the current dominant architectural strains have delivered and continue to deliver a catastrophic trio of worldwide outcomes: A uniform and unstable human habitat; an environmental meltdown; and a social, political, and spiritual malaise that have left humanity reeling. Forgetting their professional oath to durability, utility, and beauty, most architects have become blind to these dire accumulated consequences of their design choices and actions. The foreclosure of any possibility for an architecture of cultural continuity and physical healing has become the regrettable current architectural status quo.

Unmoored from the wisdom of tradition, architects have been generating a tsunami of normative, impermanent, and unlovable buildings. The urban framework that these are mostly attached to is an endlessly expanding, car-oriented sprawl. As these anti-urban wastelands have become rapidly unserviceable and as their spread has increased exponentially, addressing the declining quality of our habitat has emerged as the top priority for safeguarding the future of the planet. It is becoming increasingly clear, though, that we cannot afford to replace all underperforming and deteriorating buildings with new ones because the capital, technical know-how, administrative will, and material and energy resources to do so do not in fact exist. As a result, it now appears certain that we are rapidly approaching the moment for an urgently needed architectural and urbanist reset, one that elevates urbanism linked to building preservation and nature conservation as the principal ways to mitigate the cataclysmic worldwide failure of the modernist project. Not only by practicing preservation in its early definition, as saving single ranking buildings and landscapes, or in its later incarnation, as saving whole neighborhoods or planning new ones compatibly with historic ones, but rather by practicing preservation as a radical version of architectural newness that can be dedicated to repairing the failed environments we have inherited and will continue to inherit in alarming numbers.

This new kind of architectural newness will focus on regenerating the out-of-control twenty-first century cities of the world by addressing their redesign in combination with the reuse, restoration, and rehabilitation of their existing infrastructure, buildings, public spaces, and landscapes. This will be accomplished through a design process that incorporates the increasingly relevant considerations of resilience and sustainability. In this context, resilience means avoiding the constant replacement of buildings by selected demolition or mass clearance and instead producing hybrid projects composed of both new and existing parts. The resulting buildings will be of an open-ended form, more easily adapted, transformed, and repaired in response to social and technical change. Also in this context, sustainability means the judicious blending of both time-tested and innovative materials and construction techniques, as well as passive and active energy systems. This approach generates buildings whose usefulness and durability are extended by their low operational and maintenance costs and easier repair over time. These design ingredients contribute to the long-term physical continuity of the human habitat as well as its beauty, meaning, and lovability. This is particularly the case if they have been designed and are being serviced by a bottom-up process that includes the involvement the people who inhabit them. It is entirely possible that in the next fifty to a hundred years the opportunities to engage in this kind of reformist architectural practice will far outpace the now-dominant architecture of new, isolated, exclusively self-referential buildings.

What ideological changes will this emerging preservation-, resilience-, and sustainability-based design ethos require in order to be effectively launched and to prosper? First and foremost, it will require a sharp shift in our understanding of the role of time, place, materiality, and energy in the framing of Architecture. Regarding the question of time, two such changes will be necessary. The first is the adoption of a diverse, culture-specific, continuist architecture to replace the reductive and homogenizing “Architecture of Our Time.” The second is using the living design and craft traditions of the world to ensure the long-term life of buildings by enabling their maintenance or transformation to be carried out in their original character and style. Regarding the question of place, it is imperative to restore architecture to its original role as the art of recombining new and existing civic buildings, the urban fabric, the public realm, and the landscape into notable, permanent place ensembles. Likewise, it is imperative to pay close attention to the context in which buildings currently exist, and to the inspiration, precedent, and guidance that they may provide to complete, long-term place-making. On the technical front, we must rethink the basis for best rebuilding the world in a manner that includes the utilization of all possible kinds of construction know-how, depending on the task at hand and the project location: traditional and new, high and low, pure and hybrid. And we must couple these diverse construction methods with levels of environmental performance that are place specific and energy frugal. Finally, we must power buildings and infrastructure with renewable energy generated at scales large and small, and with sensitivity to local climatic conditions. The hallmark of this future architectural culture should be fluidity in use, variety and continuity in form, longevity in building fabric, and life-cycle economy in service.

The task of worldwide reconstruction is so immense that the launching of an Architecture of Preservation, Resilience, and Sustainability should also be enabled by public policies different from many currently in force. Such policies would include managing change by subsidiarity; relegating decisions affecting planning, zoning, and building regulations to the appropriate institutional or government body; rewarding labor-intensity in construction to privilege skilled craft work; subsidizing an economy of material permanence and clean energy; and shifting taxation to support the construction of buildings for the long run and away from measures such as depreciation, that induce their rapid consumption, disposal, and waste.

Finally, the single most important dimension of this kind of radical architectural newness, the antidote to the blind pursuit of design originality and starchitectural elitism, is aspiring to another kind of public morality. Directly related to the effects of design on individuals and on communities, this kind of public morality rejects the idea of modernist form as a catalyst for perpetual social and cultural turbulence and is instead dedicated to architecture as beauty and service. Respecting the architectural heritage of all cultures, focusing on their physical and spiritual improvement through community-building, attending to education as the relay of ideas and skills from one generation to the next, and through it all, giving us hope that a shared urban future in balance with nature is indeed possible.

STEFANOS POLYZOIDES Professor and Dean The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture