Is High Concept Engineering Eclipsing Design in Architecture?  

pt2
Unsnagging the engineering and the design virtues of Renzo Piano's CAS is more complicated. He started with such a high concept for CAS that a Hollywood producer would be envious of his pitch. I'm lifting the ground up and sliding a building under it, he reputedly more or less pitched. It is a catchy concept. A good high-concept may be defined as a premise for something that can be expressed in a single sentence expressing physical action and instantly grasped as something new and different. Piano's concept is VERY high.
Alas, Hollywood has learned the lesson that not all great concepts make great movies. Why? First, what makes a high concept fascinating, understandable and memorable sometimes cannot fill up 110 minutes of screen story. Second, compelling high concepts invariably hinge on a powerful logic of action. Note: I pick up the ground and slide a building in under it. Compare this with the high concept of a slasher movie: I put six kids in a house and kill five. Or the second degree of freedom pitch for Alien: Jaws in a can.
Renzo Piano: I lift up the ground and slide a building in under it.
Wow! Its so vivid. You can just see it. And you can just see the faces of the CAS board of directors, some scientists, and some money bags, after listening to a 5 other architects drone on about detailed models, registering: hey, I get this! after Renzo pitches and sketches on a pad of paper only. This is design taken totally Hollywood, at least in the sense of a pitch. Score one for Renzo.
But is the building this high concept pitch enabled as great of a design as it was a pitch? Or is it a high concept structure with engineering virtuosity than design virtuousity?

pt3
First, let me say Mr. Piano seems incapable of building something ugly. I have grown to be an admirer (though not a n intense fan) of his work, since Koen nudged me, and I investigated his work.
I admire Piano's flare at finding a concept and then working it through as thoroughly as possible into a building that is then informed by the concept at every level of its form.
At the same time, his buildings seem to me never to quite transcend the concept into being irreducible buildings--my ideal of what great architecture ought to achieve. They always remain, IMHO, ultimately, thoroughly worked out concepts.
Pompidou Center, which he did with Rogers, is utterly fascinating and a conceptual icon, and yet in the end it raises the inescapable question: yes, but why organize all the infrastructure as exoskeleton? Isn't it better to protect the infrastructure from the elements using the walls and roof than not to? Doesn't reducing the walls to just membranes to protect people kind of diminish the potential utility of walls? And isn't it a hell of a lot more work to paint every nook and cranny of infrastructure than it would be to paint walls? Isn't ease of external maintenance a rational utility, too?
What we see in Pompidou Center is an engineering exercise in externalizing technology, rather than what I would call design. I mean, outside of paint, how much design choice did Piano and Rogers really have once they committed to the concept of externalizing the infrastructure (should it be called extrastructure?)? Whether pipes, ducts, and conduit are inside, or outside, they pretty much go where they have to go to maximize function and minimize cost.
It is worth noting that the Pompidou Center does not have extraordinarily unique function or environment dictating its externalized infrastructure. It was done to be different. It was done to call attention to the building. Any steel frame box made of any material could do what Pompidou Center does. So: in the end, the only rational justification for the Pompidou Center approach to architecture is that if it works better, is cheaper, lasts longer, is more beautiful, or whatever other measure of utility you might like to apply. If Pompidou Center were any of these things, then we would likely have seen a lot more of this kind of architecture solving problems everywhere...but we haven't. And we haven't frankly, because it was a clever high concept, but a dumb design idea.
As a former real estate feasiblity analyst, I would instantly have vetoed this design. Why? Because infrastructure is way more expensive to build and maintain than walls and roof. I'd rather build more walls and roof and less infrastructure. Put bluntly, Piano and Rogers built a building with less space and more infrastructure. It is just dumb. Some times I like to use big words, but dumb is all I can say about this building.

pt4
Now, consider Piano's Klee Museum. It is not dumb at all. In fact he practically succeeded in getting rid of walls, which is a virtue in a feasibility analysts calculating mind. It is an undulating wave of metal frame sided only at each end with glass walls. It is quite a concept visually, too, and, again, it is quite an elegant engineering exercise. Renzo was learning. But how much design is really involved in the Klee? Not much I would argue. Mostly engineering. And remember that behind the wave concept the Klee museum is essentially Quonset huts with the trough of the curve let in. The idea of quonset huts go back to Bucky Fuller in WWII I believe. Military bases used to be full of them. I would imagine Mr. Piano saw some of these in his childhood in war ravaged Italy and thought: I lift them up and slide the troughs in under them and, presto, I have a multi-partitioned building with only walls at each end! And yet the wave concept in the Klee building never disappears into the building design. It is always front and center. The Klee building is not about the building. It is about the undulating wave.
Compare this tendency for the concept never to transmogrify fully into a building with say, someone like Wright, another guy who claimed to work with concepts. Wrights buildings are almost alchemical in the way they transform their concepts into buildings (except when he was doing pre Columbian voodoo that he do not so well in LA). Ask the average person about a Wright building, and they will say, "that's the darnedest house I ever saw," whether liking it or not. Ask the same person about the Pompidou Center and they will say, "look at that building with all the pipes and junk on the outside." Or ask them about the Klee Museum and they will say, "Wow, look at that wave."
So to summarize my thoughts about Piano before wading into the CAS, what I admire about Piano's work--its generally high concept thoroughly carried through--is also what I find his shortcoming; that his buildings never seem to fully transcend their high concepts. Fully working through a concept in a building is not the same as designing a fully integrated building that is beautiful, useful and financially feasible, as well as, rational in its trade-offs with environment.
Okay, so what about the CAS? Is it great design, great engineering, both or neither? And does it transcend its own high concept? And is its catchy high concept useful, or goofy.
Let's consider the high concept first.
I am lifting the ground up and sliding a building in under it.

pt5
It may be a nifty concept striking what seems a fresh cord with folks today, but, well, the hanging gardens of Babylon predate it in originality a bit, don't they? I guess the British Isles made use of sod covered roofs back to the time of Braveheart, or before, though the grass growth may have been volunteer rather than planned. And then of course, there were the sod houses like those my grandmother were born in. What I'm trying to say here is that using biomass for roofs is not original and it has always been used for its cost effectiveness and its insulating qualities.
To the extent that the concept of covering roof with a sort of super absorbent, green bio Kimby reduces water run off, it makes great sense. I've always thought water run off from roofs should be kept on-site and used to grow plants there. And if covering a roof with biomass helps Renzo design a building without AC, then that is a two for one deal that can't be beat. I would only add that the roof should be planted to grapes, fruits and nuts and these should be sold to people to eat and drink, thereby cutting down on the uneccessary shipments of same to the building, there by saving lots of waste transportation of Coke and Twinkies (the latter of which was once attributed as the cause of the assassination of a San Francisco mayor, but I digress). Regardless, all of the above are examples of engineering, rather than design, IMHO.
Now, in traditional design terms (those that include aesthetics), this high concept fails in my opinion. Within the site, it creates a sharp, sudden and incongruous environmental discontinuity, rather than ameliorating one. The green layer goes along and then suddenly jumps 20 feet straight up, then falls 20 feet straight down at the other end of the building. This does not harmonize with any other environmental discontinuities in the area.
Also, considering the aesthetics of the green roof in terms of the surroundings beyond Golden Gate Park, the three domes do not look like the undulating topography behind them. They look like three domes covered with grass and portholes.
All of this is a way of saying: good engineering, weak design.

pt6
Now, let us examine the counter sinking of the building, so that a third of the glass walls appear to be below grade and facing beveled earth that may eventually be covered with biomass. Let me put it this way: garden apartments were once advertising puffery for basement units with one open side you could walk in and out of. They were tried and it was found that the public did not clamor for more. Piano has, in effect, created a garden museum, at least the lower floor of it, unless of course there is only one floor with a very high ceiling, in which he has created a garden museum in its entirety. The effect of this may be pleasant and nurturing. I cannot say until I go in. But I fear it will be rather closer to the effect of a garden apartment. Regardless, beveling the ground around the counter sunk building will like create a cool air collar around the bottom third of the building walls, as cool air likes to fall into ravines, whether natural, or man made like this one. Strike another, then for engineering to make sure this building does not need AC.
But let us consider the wisdom of two elements of this design in an earthquake zone, where a 9.0 earthquake is considered to be a significant probability within the next 50 years.
Let's concede for a moment that in yet another stroke of engineering excellence, the frame and roof of this building can stay put in a 9.0 shaker.
I still foresee two potentially lethal problems.
I doubt the aquarium will withstand the 9.0 shaker without rupturing, which means an enormous amount of water is suddenly going to rush out in all directions and, in addition to killing a lot of people as it would in what ever kind of building it were housed in, it will create an enormous amount of standing water floor below grade. At first a wading pond will result. But then there will be the long fire sprinkler system further raising the water level. And there will be the ruptured water and sewer lines that inevitably occur and they too will flow into basin of this building. And this will inevitably interact with all sorts of building electricals that will continue to operate, according to earth quake design specs, on back up power units, and I would predict all of this back up power will begin to short and electrocute survivors caught in knee deep water.

pt7
The other problem I foresee is that those glass walls will be separated from the frame and do one of two things. Either they will shatter, if they are not strong enough, thus leaving a berm of huge glass shards that are exceedingly difficult to climb over in a panic without goring yourself to death. Or they will fall in tact on to the beveled ground; then tip up, and effectively create a glass lid over the beveled area around the building foot print. I don't know if this would for certain make ingress and egress nearly impossible, but I reckon it might.
Now, I know many will say, oh, but the experts must have already thought that through and there is nothing to worry about on those counts. Maybe, but experts are among those most prone to getting tunnel vision about solving the problems assigned them and ignoring the problems they are creating with their own solutions. The experts were looking at this building as a problem in building an environmentally efficient and envionmentally friendly building. As a result they were trying a lot of new things. And they had a man in Piano who had already a great reputation from Kansai airport for building earthquake proof buildings. This is a recipe for creating unforeseen consequences like I am referring to and to others I am not keen enough to anticipate. But trust me: when you take experts out of their comfort zones, they are not experts any more. They are experimenting and one tends to experiment on the problem at hand, not the unforeseen problems.
Now let's stop hand wringing about earthquake safety and move onto whether or not this building transcends its high concept and achieves an irreducible unity, or does it, like some other of Piano's buildings fall into the category of thoroughly worked out concepts that do not transcend their concepts.
At first, second, and third glances at the pictures from many angles, I would have to say CAS is yet another example of Piano's brilliance failing to achieve an irreducible unity in architecture. Ordinary persons are never going to look at the CAS and say that is the darndest thing they ever saw. They are going to say: wow, look at that huge museum with the grass on the roof!
And architecture critics are going to continually point to the innovative environmental design and to the brilliant problem solving related to getting by without AC and so on.
But neither the architecture critics, nor ordinary persons are going to look at CAS and say, "Wow! that is one of the most beautiful buildings I ever saw."
And so, considering that Renzo Piano is one of the most talented and daring architects of our time, and he keeps building buildings that are long on engineering and technological and environmental virtuosities, I am inclined to answer the question in the title of this post this way: yes, it appears thta high concept engineering is eclipsing design in architecture.

O.K.
I'll go first. the first thing i was motivated to do after reading your essay, was to look up the words design and engineering. some of the definitions run right over each other. There seems to be no real distinction at times. the other issue i see is that architecture is a special case of design and engineering anyways. It seems to me a normal state that these two mix. My understanding is that when a building is designed it is tempered by all the engineering constraints that are built into building codes as well as the physical functions of the building. It seems a far cry from the design of a lamp in which the engineering (the electrical parts) is a given, and the design (how to present the light} is the to do for the designer. another thought that occured to me is that even for a designer, engineering can be a critical influence on design. the Eames' would not have come to their ground breaking designs for plywood and fiberglass without the extensive engineering of these materials up front. if you are only speaking of visuals for design of a building, perhaps in this age of the increasing untenability of suburbia and serious energy and environmental issues, aesthetics will be judged by how well these concerns are addressed.

so that
the future of architecture may well be that a concept of beauty will be closely tied to efficiancy or even become a function of it. for years i have personally seen efficient cars as beautiful for the poetry of getting much from little. I suspect that any auto designer could come up with a bmw, all you need to do is throw money at it. not much of a challenge there. but make a car that is the least expensive to buy and operate, reliable and very efficient, and there is design worth celebrating.

Hi Glassartist...
Here are my thoughts that you just triggered.
Design to me is a combination of aesthetics and engineering.
Engineering is strictly about how you make something that functions as you wish, regardless of how it looks.
Design to me is about integrating engineering of function that can be formalized into the mathmatical language of engineering with aesthetic orchestration through form languages that may, or may not be formalized mathematically.
Another distinction between design and engineering is this: the end result of design is always highly subjective; the end result of engineering is highly objective. When a product is engineered, it either works as intended, or does not. The criteria of function are clear and objective. The design of a product entails some function, but the appeal to the consumer of that function is inherently subjective on the part of the consumer. We can objectively engineer a car to perform to certain specifications. We can design that same car to perform to those expectation with the same engineering, but we ultimately cannot know if the design will be accepted by the consumer until the consumer makes subjective judgements about its desirability.
I absolutely agree with you that moral ethical values may change to make efficiency and green design and engineering much preferred to other forms of utility, even to the utility of beauty.

pt2
But at the same time, I think that once one makes the value shift to desiring more efficiency and/or environmental friendlyness in one's products, then one quickly comes back to the issue of how do we not only engineer these products to be efficient and environmentally friendly, but also how do we make them beautifully.
Beauty is beauty. Beauty, or aesthetic appeal, is one of many facets of a thing.
Aesthetics are the rules of making things beautiful and appealing.
Beauty is not function.
Function is function.
Beauty is not efficiency.
Efficiency is efficiency.
We learn this all the time in the innovative things we make.
At first, all we care about is getting the function right and just try to make it as inoffensive looking as we can.
But then at a certain point, we begin to try to differentiate our product with beauty, or improved aesthetics if you will.
It is like it takes some time for producers and consumers to get sufficiently used to the new function, to begin letting our aesthetic urges kick in.
An example of this in my life time would be regional shopping malls. For the first 25 years of their existence, a mall could be ugly and flourish simply because it was new and a monopoly in its market and massively improved shopping efficiency of the consumer (one stop etc.). But then everything shifted to malls and butt ugly box stores encroached. And so to keep their customers, malls had to begin to think about visual and contact point aesthetics. They had to be made more plush and less ugly.
PCs are another example. Plain manila boxes for 20 years; then suddenly, translucent with all kinds of forms.
Cars are another. The Model T came in any color as long as it was black; then many car lines with every color in the rain bow and style, style, style.
We can be certain of three things in life: death, taxes, and the early stage of any major new product emphasizing function and paying little attention to aesthetics. There are of course exceptions. Certain large corporations and certain exceedingly wealthy persons find ways to avoid taxes almost entirely. And certain new products, like an iPod, with the rare CEO who has a sense of aesthetics informing him, insists on a splendidly designed product, as well as one with sound engineering. But for the most part, ground breaking new products often take several iterations before they become informed by a truly appealing form language.

Before even...
...attempting to comment on dcwilson?s essay, I should admit that I know little about architecture. I know large parts of what is known about its history, both past and present but as an industrial designer I have a kind of Hegelian attitude toward that part of design that is called architecture. The more our societies evolve, often on the edge of popularism, toward democracy, the more architecture seems to grow as an anachronism. While even bastions like medicine are crumbling, architecture maintains it status of a discipline in which elitism is raising higher and higher barricades to defend it?s privileged position. The complexity of legislation, financial mechanisms and professional protectionism are the cornerstones of this barricade and it is unlikely that any of them will fall soon. So, architecture, for better or worse will continue to hold on to it?s position in which very few people hold on to the authority to decide over both the overall character and the particular qualities of the build environment in which we all have to live. That this authoritarian position is rarely challenged tells us more about the willingness of our society to grow toward true democracy than about the arrière-garde efforts of architects, but as someone who works in a design profession that consciously has made itself dependent on user preference, it is difficult to put myself in the shoes of an architect.
This being said, I also want to admit that I am not a big McDonough fan. His ?Cradle to cradle? might be a contribution to spinning the environmental debate in an optimistic direction, it is so self promoting and superficial in it?s analysis that it barely qualifies as a step in the right direction. His architecture is formalistic and the ?green? features are the only elements that make it worth any attention. The formal language is part of a pool in which we have been dipping for the last thirty years. If aesthetics is not his concern what are these curved roofs and triangular support elements about in the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies?
In my view, design, engineering, architecture are all part of our ?how to? knowledge.

cont.
What separates them is not scale or technology but method. If it were scale the large airbus or any large aircraft for that matter would be part of architecture etc. It is part of architectural history that the balance between engineering and design has shifted continuously. Gothic and renaissance architects were also in charge of engineering, including the design of small and large tools (Brunellechi was one of the masters in crossing the disciplines. He was not only one of the sculptors of the doors of the Florence baptistery; he also designed the Duomo and the famous structure that made the building of the cupola possible) Early modernist architects were still very much in the forefront of technical developments in the use of concrete, design of curtain walls, innovative construction like Gaudi in his search for Catalan identity.
Since his early experiments with rubber sheets programmed to serve as versatile casting forms for concrete shells, Renzo Piano has never clearly made a distinction between architecture and engineering, so the question that dcwilson is raising hardly applies in his case. I have not seen the California Academy of science building?otherwise I am sure dc and I would have visited it together?so I can only admire the analysis dc is sharing with us and add very little to it. But the general question is one of the most important ones architects and anybody concerned with architecture could ask. Yes architecture has grown to be only skin deep. With few exceptions, what we as willing or un-willing architectural consumers have to put up with is architectural cosmetics. To support that point I would defy anybody to find in any architectural magazine an analysis of the CAS building that shows the kind of depth and width that dcwilson?s contribution to the DA forum is showing.
My personal opinion on the significance of the Georges Pompidou, the Paul Klee Museum or any other Renzo Piano building is not very interesting in this discussion but I would like to contribute with the idea that we do not need architects if we had good engineers, nor do we need engineers if we have good architects or designers or any other combination we can think of. It is an invention of early 18th century to divide the ?how? (engineering) from the ?why?(arts) I always understood that design was the reconciliation of both ?why do you make it? and ?how do you make it?

I hope so!
Is High Concept Engineering Eclipsing Design in Architecture?
I hope so!
If design and architecture go on looking for beauty, falling in deeper and deeper Narcissism, is what design and some sort of architecture needs!
Well, after all it will be not the first, nor the last time in history
In the end of 19Cent/beginning of 20 century had happen...
Architects with good taste vs engineers
When they constructed the Tour Eiffel (the engineers), the architects (from the beaux arts, of course!) needed to put some leaves and flowers to make beautiful such an ugly structure! (as you can imagine, them were removed very soon).
But to me, my point of view, in a general position, the problem is that in our society, is that: You are a designer, he is an engineer, I,m an architect, S is a Journalist, D is a real estate agent, she is a Biochemist, and so on.
That,s remind me an ad I saw from an University:
Leonardo Da Vinci, What he was?, he was a painter? Or a sculptor? Or an Inventor? He was all!
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A distinction between design and engineering is: the end result of design is always highly subjective; the end result of engineering is highly objective.
,,,,,,,
Excellent!
Here DC is pointing/ very near to point something:
,,,,,,,,,,
We can be certain of three things in life: death, taxes, and the early stage of any major new product emphasizing function and paying little attention to aesthetics. There are of course exceptions. Certain large corporations and certain exceedingly wealthy persons find ways to avoid taxes almost entirely. And certain new products, like an iPod, with the rare CEO who has a sense of aesthetics informing him, insists on a splendidly designed product, as well as one with sound engineering. But for the most part, ground breaking new products often take several iterations before they become informed by a truly appealing form language.
,,,,,,,,
About the 3 r d certain, Great!,
but I think, I hope, I strongly believe, that this exception (the Ipod, not the only one, let me remember others), it,s becoming, it will be the norm of the future.
If it will not became a norm with the hand of designers, will be most provably with the hand of ,,managers,,. (Designers, wake up before it will be too late!)
(It,s funny how in management books explains them, what design is, and how important it is..).
Don,t forget to add it in the manifesto!
ps. After all, eclipsing, will mean we will not need to use so often the "glasses" DCwilson recomened.

Koen,
When I look at products that you have designed, I see irreducible unity in the finished product. Isn't that a wonderful garlic holder, I say, even though I know you are combining porcelin and ceramic for a constellation of reasons.
Or I say isn't that a wonderful flower vase, even though I know that it is designed in part to be cat proof.
You make these objects seem simultaneously new and as if they have been there forever, or should have been. Thus, there is even a unity of the sense of time in your work.
I noticed the same quality of unity in your cookware designs that you shared with us, and I notice the same quality in the Tilt-a-Bowls. The bowls were flat on one side, but I did not look at the bowls and say, "Hey, look at that bowl with the bevelled side on it." I did not even look and say, "hey, look at those tilting bowls." I said, "Hmmm, now those are striking looking bowls."
This is what I call irreducibility unity of design.
I have seen this irreducibility in everything from salt shakers to skyscrapers.
I realize it takes hard work, rigorous training, great talent, and a kind of genius to achieve it.
I know we can't expect it every time out from everyone, or even anyone.
But I believe architecture, as well as, design, or any other plastic art, or applied art, ought to aspire to it and should at least occassionally held up to this high standard and assessed.
Why?