What is good architecture? A Commentary by Donald H. Sepulski on what you should know about architects.

Three Classic Professions and the Future

Of the 3 classic professions being medicine, law, and architecture; architecture is by far the least understood by lay persons. All of the professions have those individuals who have risen to notoriety, but does it mean they are the best or have the skills necessary in getting publicity? At this time in the course of civilization, publicity is more important than skill.  Media makes success. This has long been true for architects. Frank Lloyd Wright and LeCorbusier, for example were exceptionally flamboyant publicity-seekers.  If they were living today they would be plastered over television, billboards, and the web.  As much as I admire their accomplishments, as a practicing architect, I do not think the human race can afford their approach as architects. We are reminded every day that we inhabit a fragile world. It is time for architects to make real substantial accomplishments; let their building demonstrate this; and leave the pedantic verbal nonsense behind. You expect a physician to save your life when it is in jeopardy. You expect a lawyer to spare your hard earned fortune. I will expand why it is just as important to select a truly-skilled architect.

U.S President and architect Thomas Jefferson sent a message to the world about his new country as portrayed in this building at the University of Virginia. It was a message about political power and sophistication known to the Roman Empire.

What Can A Building Do For You?

This is the most important question that I can pose if you compare the responsibility that physicians and lawyers have to their clients with those of your architect. Only when you ask this question: What can this building do for me? do you make a demand upon your architect  to produce a predicted result.

Traditionally, buildings have been designed to  1) Enclose the occupant’s activity in a functional manner, and 2) Portray with the building exterior a degree of success or power. A large corporate headquarters building, for example, would be expected to accomplish both goals, as would a major governmental building. Function can be in a variety of forms. This is a subject that we explored in studying the design decisions that went into building the grand cathedrals of medieval Europe. Surprisingly, spirituality can be a function.

In our contemporary world most building projects are dominated by a single concern, which is return-on-investment. Nearly all building developers who must answer to a financial accountant, be it for the taxpayers, or private investors, seek to provide space that functions at the lowest possible cost. This is where answering the question; What can this building do for you? begins to generate compromises. The American Institute of Architects would say that this is a primary concern of their members. It may be true, but an architect who would consider himself a member of the architectural elite, and demand exceptionally high-dollar fees, is seldom concerned about a budget. He has personal grandeur on his mind.

In this new millennium the cited question has a new answer, and it is one never conceived by another architect since the Roman Empire’s Marcus Vitruvius began his design work for one of the most demanding clients in history, Julius Caesar.

Introducing AOM: Rethinking Architecture for the New Millenium

Consider this statement that appears in the beginning of my book manuscript on the subject of architects and architecture:

“In the same respect that birds build nests, beavers build dams and bees build hives, Mankind is compelled to shape the environment in which it lives. We term the product of this effort “Architecture” and we know the process as “Design”.

AOM is an acronym for Architecture Of a Millenium , and more specifically, Architecture Of the Mind. It is a well-referenced work of “Historical Science” and is the copyrighted and trademarked work of Donald H. Sepulski- Architect. Once you understand the concept of historical science, which is best exemplified by Darwin’s “Origin of Species”, you will see the validity of this new application of the architect’s role for civilization, and you will understand why the author looks with sadness and trepidation at the work of many architects that have been held in high esteem during the last millennium.

In my book, I review the key accomplishments of architects from primitive times through the present knowing that the definition I give to great accomplishment would me considered very severe by my contemporaries. I describe hundreds of years in between accomplishments of building construction that are significant. This is because my theory of AOM dismisses much of what modern architecture has been about, because prior to the modern era, great buildings have predominately been the paramount accomplishment of an institution that dominated civilization and human wealth over a long period of time. Such institutions have been powerful governments and religions. Most of these construction projects took many generations to complete.

Birds, Bees and Man

To accurately understand the practice of architecture, you must first observe the night sky. When looking up at the stars, you are doing the same thing, and reacting in the same manner as a primitive man some 20,000 years ago. This man might have been unusual for his time, because his physical stature was bent over, not fully erect as we are today. The daily concerns of these early humans was not in the sky, but on the ground and in the forest around them. They were most often occupied with foraging for food and staying out of view of predators. A rare member of this early humanity took special notice of the night sky and was mesmerized by it. He was the tribe’s shaman, or witch-doctor. His special intellect gave him unusual power of observation, and that observation gave him power among his fellow men.

 
My statement about birds, bees and beavers being compelled to shape their environment should be put in context with this observer of the night sky. Animals have minds that are magnificently programmed for their survival. The human species has a mind that gives him free will, and allows him to explore alternative courses of action. Not all humans are equally endowed with minds that assure survival, so it required an exceptional mind to provide directions that others could follow. The tribal leader, and royal families in later times, were the ones who had exceptional minds to organize a military and protect the tribe. Survival of the tribe, however, was an on-going concern in-between  battles. In these intervals the shaman played an important role in the spiritual and physical health of everyone. He unknowingly became the very first architect.

The First Architectural Design

There was no recorded history when the first architectural design was accomplished, and it might have occurred separately among pockets of primitive civilization simultaneously around the planet. Never-the-less, the event was the most important thing humanity had ever witnessed. It was the design of the first human shelter; the first house. Humans no longer had to search for caves, high trees or another opportunity within the natural surroundings, to remain healthy and safe from those who would harm them.

The human mind worked in it’s amazing manner to inspire a very clever design, perhaps shown to them by the shaman. It is likely that the shaman, the observer of the night sky, decided to have his architectural design emulate what he saw. He saw a dome-shaped heaven above, and believed that this was the shelter that God had provided; it was the extent of the known world. The shape of his design should not surprise anyone. It is found by anthropologists to have existed in just about all parts of the world in primitive times and is illustrated below:

Architectural History and Science                              

There are two forms of science, analytical science and historical science. Analytical science is the more familiar form that we learned about in high school and hear about every day. It is based upon the “scientific method” in which experiments are conducted with the goal of validating a theoretical event. Chemists are analytical scientists who experiment with basic elements in varying conditions to predict their reaction with blind studies. This is the classical Bacon scientific method.
 Charles Darwin is the best example of an historical scientist who employed a different method to predict a result. The historical scientist is a diligent observer with a scientific theory that he hopes to validate by recording and analyzing his observations. He works over a long period of time to put pieces of a scientific puzzle together and describe a pattern that should lead to a predicted result. The analytic scientist works with a much shorter experiment and can produce a result more quickly. Therefore, the theories that are tested in his experiment are less controversial, while those of historical scientists, like the “Origin of Species” may never be resolved.

AOM, Architecture of the Mind, employs both methods, but on different levels. AOM is a theory, a very broad scientific theory that uses observations of human development since the being of recorded history. On another level, AOM relies upon short-term analytical science to predict future human development and human reactions in specific environments that we create.

Architectural history, the recording of human building construction activity, has always been part of art, not science, in intellectual discussion. AOM departs from that. This author, and architect, theorizes that all human activity is the product of a developing species and that extraordinary buildings are often benchmarks of human development. The construction of the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, for example, were not the product of a primitive mind. In the thousands of years since that accomplishment, the human mind has developed further, has produced even more amazing products, and will make accomplishments in the future that seem impossible to us now.

                                   
                                          
The Abacus. Computer and Architecture

Almost all cyber-engineers would agree that contemporary computers are still little more than machines that cipher. The original computer, the ancient abacus, was the human mind’s way of creating artificial memory. Numbers no longer had to be resolved within the human brain, but could be done externally. Once humans realized that computations could be made much more efficiently outside of their bodies, scientists immediately began to speculate that there may be other things that could be done which are currently impeded by our slow minds. They are now exploring the limits of artificial intelligence which will produce architectural environments in the mind. 

Contemporary architects are often slow-minded people that function in their work like the shepherd who did not own an abacus. He had to recount his sheep every morning. This has not always been true. My review of architectural history will examine how architects of extraordinary buildings over the last millennium used their minds in an extraordinary way. It is a manner of using their brain that produced architecture so significant that the human species would not have developed as it is today without it. Architects at this time need to emulate their manner of work, but they are like lost sheep. The computer engineers are the new shepherds who are taking the human species into the future. AOM is the path that architects need to be on to have any relevance in the new millennium.

Biology, Medicine, Architecture and Space

If humans could provide for their own survival as efficiently as animals there would be no reason for this book or the concept of AOM. We would be doing the correct things in face of global warming, and other environmental matters that dangerously stress our species, by following our instincts. However, our survival instincts were traded off for free-will a long time ago, so we now must use our minds to construct the means for our survival.

Our minds have us armed with valuable scientific knowledge, and more importantly, we have the means to record our scientific discoveries for future reference when a survival problem is recognized. Once the science is known, however, it must be broadly applied to have significance.This is where architects on our planet have an important role to play, but are not currently trained to participate..

Advances in biology, and their application through medicine, have grown at quantum speed. This may be due to the conception of time that we have in our civilization, where we expect science to have practical application to us immediately. It also is the effect of hundreds of year’s worth of scientific activity being recorded and compounding into an endless saga of discovery.  This speed of discovery has made us into a very impatient species. This impatience has had some people look at alternative medicine with greater comfort; when the pill does not provide a cure quickly. They choose to revisit natural medicine known throughout history with the hope that our species was somehow wiser in the past. The fact is, all known medicine is valuable, but it’s effectiveness is strictly tied to it’s application.

This author’s inspiration came out of his education, practice of architecture, the influence of mentors and a dream. Great ideas often have come from our mind’s practice of recording experiences and sorting out their significance during our sleep; a solution to a complex problem that was contemplated while awake appears in the form of a dream. In my dream I was given the assignment to design a space-station; I argued with the aeronautical engineers that were my support team, realized how I needed to do my job, and created AOM, Architecture of the Mind.

Defining Our Physical World

One could say that this is what architects do. They make plans to show how a multitude of materials can be arranged in a form that defines a volume of space. This defined space is a building, otherwise termed architecture. In today’s world many buildings, such as private residences and industrial structures are not built from the plans of an architect because the repetitive nature of the design does not seem to require the financial