On our profession

Nicola Di Battista develops the idea of the architect’s profession as the third part of the architectural process that he divided in four, each one discussed in as many editorials.

Tullio Pericoli, Mestiere, 2017. Oil on board
This article was originally published on Domus 1012, April 2017.

 

Continuing our reflections on architectural design, we turn this time to the subject of our profession. We have deliberately waited to talk about this aspect only now, instead of at the outset. This is because, after describing two stages of our work that we have called awareness and imagination, the practices, rules and customs of our profession are so compelling, precise and peremptory that they cannot be confronted at once, headlong. It is also one of the reasons why in our attempt to describe a possible theory of architectural design we chose to divide the work – which nevertheless remains a unitary whole – into sequential  phases, each of which has its own autonomy. This allows each of  them to exist independently with its own specific structure and personality. Indeed the autonomy of these phases can be so strong as to suggest that even by themselves, taken singly, they could actually offer sufficient material with which to accomplish projects. We might even feel convinced that this simplification, this reduction, could allow us to reach our goal sooner. Many architects have thought that to accomplish a good project all they had to do was stick to a recipe that could be followed on each occasion almost automatically, for example by considering only the rational facts of the work and delving into interminable analyses. The phase that we have defined “awareness” may have led some to think that it alone would be enough to complete a good project.

As a matter of fact, the same can be said even more evidently of the phase that we have called “imagination”. To be able to implement a project by inspiration, with an instantaneous and resolute creative act is the secret dream of many architects: “You close your eyes, think hard, and there it  is”. Unfortunately, the habit of carrying out projects in a state of trance is very popular nowadays. Clearly these two attitudes, the first analytical and reflexive, the second creative and imaginal, have the same objective: to carry out architectural projects in absolute autonomy. Maybe that’s precisely why there are so many adepts and advocates who choose one particular road or another based merely on their own character, attitude and personality. If this is true of the phases that we have called awareness and imagination, it is so to the utmost degree in the case of our profession, which is what we are here to discuss this time. And yes, a person’s profession is that magic word that describes the capacity of each of us to realise something through a combination  of actions, movements and gestures.

A profession is all about work. It is the very practice that leads to the accomplishment of a given thing, for example an architectural project, by means of the continuity of the work itself. To discuss this, we had best start from what we consider to be a terrible and obstinate misunderstanding, one that lingers even now in the sphere of university training: the belief that a profession can be learnt at school, that university studies in architecture will enable students to learn the architect’s profession. Nothing could be more spurious. Anyone who has at least once in their lifetime had a job to do or a trade to practise will know that there is only one way to learn how to do it, and that is to do it.

For the architect, it is dangerous to start from the concept of a profession

In fact, a profession or a craft can be learnt only by practising it. Little by little and with a lot of hard work, we will get to know its particular procedures and rules, its compulsory passages, its tricks and secrets. We are convinced that university training must be part of a student’s growth. It must enable him or her to choose, to be informed of the great heritage of knowledge that humanity has produced. It should help students to prepare a forma mentis, which, once they have become architects, will enable them to make the right choices. In short, the university ought to be more concerned with “what to do” than with “how to do it”, which instead is part of the profession. It may sound obvious, but considering what is happening around us today, it still has to be repeated that the what ought to always come before the how. That is why for the architect, it is dangerous to start from the concept of a profession, whereas its attainment is indispensable. Architects cannot and must not start from their profession, because that will inevitably induce them to do only what they know how to do, thus constricting their actions to the ambit of what has already been done, the already known. We know instead that imagination is formed independently of our material capacities; it precedes them, has other sources and different objectives. Before acting, we need to observe and listen, which is why architects cannot simply work by doing, a practice better suited to handicraft. 

To return now to our train of thought regarding awareness and imagination, intended as phases of our work, it could be said that  after they have been carried out, the project is done because we have decided what to do. But on closer consideration, it transpires that everything still has to be done. So, clearly at this point the next phase, the one that we have called profession, becomes fundamental and necessary to realise what has been imagined, to concretise, to render real and visible what we have intuited and prefigured through imagination. It is therefore to the profession that we assign the task and the honour of converting into reality what we think could be done. Without it, all this would remain only a dream, wishful thinking without the slightest possibility of taking any concrete and real shape for the benefit of humanity and human habitation. At this point our profession becomes paramount. It takes what has been imagined to transfigure it into form. At the beginning, it does so cautiously, especially if what it sees, what it has to handle, has not been done before or is little known. But then, as it gradually comes into being with less distance and is increasingly taken up as a challenge, the capacities of the profession will be utilised to bring about the project at hand by giving it form.

To transfigure into form, in our case into architectural form, what has been imagined, is the task, the goal and the mission of the profession. All this is attained after a lot of long and complex work dedicated to determining the contents to be transfigured. Since we are talking about collective contents belonging to humanity, the forms derived from those contents will likewise be collective. They will be so to the umpteenth power, because they are visible and peremptory. Those forms will be there to represent the final, tangible result of all the long and daunting work that goes into an architectural project. Only in this way will true and full forms arise, and not formalisms of no use except to themselves. Forms will emerge with the capacity to create the fixed stage for our lives on this earth. Those forms will enable us to live fully, and in the course of time they will survive even beyond the contents that determined them. Even after many years, they will recount the long human adventure. In order now to better outline the issues closest to the profession phase, we should go back for a moment to what we were saying earlier about the autonomy of the project phases that we are describing.

The project, as we know, is a single whole. We have  speciously but consciously divided it into phases only to describe it better. At this point, we cannot help noticing that these same phases possess a life of their own. Each has its own rules, practices and worlds that can make them live on their own, to the point of seeming self-sufficient, capable of completing an architectural project by themselves.

Architects cannot simply work by doing, a practice better suited to handicraft

If this is true, as we have seen, for awareness and imagination, then it is even more so for the  profession, which possesses even more means and tools to carry projects through. As we know, this is its strength, but also  its weakness. Precisely the peculiar characteristic of our profession – its having the requisites to turn contents into forms – has in the course of history frequently driven architects to rely only on it and its rules to find the answers they were looking for. They assumed it was their right to think that this was sufficient to produce good  projects. This goes for other disciplines too, such as engineering and others that habitually frequent the world of architectural design. Legally recognised professionals have gradually been  concerned with creating architecture despite the fact that they  have no specific competence in the field, have not completed adequate studies and have not served a proper apprenticeship. The belief that the profession alone is sufficient to fulfil the requirements of an architectural project has opened a breach in our contemporary world for other professional figures besides architects.

Conversely, architects – and in this case also the disciplinary sphere to which they belong – have not done much to circulate their efforts and assert their authoritativeness. On the contrary, architects seem to have thought that this simplification would be a nice way of avoiding the issue, disguising themselves on each occasion as architect-engineers, architect-artists, architecteconomists, architect-politicians, and so on. All this has brought the free profession of the architect – a profession born to improve and enrich people’s lives beyond the satisfaction of primary needs, and with the main goal of responding to a collective interest, inherently making its  practicians place the interests of the community before their personal interest – to degenerate into crass professionalism. We propose architecture and architecture alone to oppose the professionalism in the field, whose only aim is to use its skills for personal gain, to satisfy the requests of this or that client; with architecture only we oppose the distorted use of the profession, its techniques, functions, needs and more. This is why architecture cannot be reduced to something else, not even to its profession, which in any case does not fully represent it. Were it to be deprived of the rest, it would become a parody of itself.

We propose architecture and architecture alone to oppose the professionalism in the field

This said, we can now continue our discussion by starting out from the moment in which the second phase of our work is concluded: the one we defined as imagination. It is the precise moment in which we have decided what to do, which road to travel. This is a very special moment in our endeavour. Having decided what to do, we feel more relaxed and have the overwhelming sensation that the bulk of our work is done. In reality, we know well that everything remains to be done, and if we fail to transfigure into forms the work done up till that point, all our effort may end up in failure. At this precise moment in the architect’s mind, a full inversion of tendency occurs. Until then, our propensity was entirely focused on understanding the work to be done, acquiring knowledge, listening, and becoming a sort of sponge willing to soak up everything. In this new phase, the architect will radically change his behaviour.

Everything becomes timely and precise. The chosen road is followed and at this point, only now, the architect will allow himself to be  guided by his profession and its rules. In a certain way, he will grow  deaf and blind to everything else. He is no longer willing to listen to everything, but only to what is of interest to the profession itself. He is so completely engrossed in his task that nothing else matters  much. In this phase only the doing matters, and the profession gains the upper hand, dictating rules and deadlines. Its certainties become the mainstay of the work, which in turn becomes feverish and exciting. We are in a hurry to finish and see the result. At this point in time, no phase can be skipped. The tools available to the profession are used, along with the tricks of the trade, and we can let ourselves be guided by them and nothing else, almost  automatically. The work becomes hectic, and different moments alternate. Sometimes the head tells the hands what to do. Other times the hands suggest new and different thoughts to the head. The hands might reposition actions already completed, or call into question or confirm things determined before. At times we may even be amazed at what the hands can do, even independently of ourselves and our thoughts. Bit by bit, everything sorts itself out and falls into place. As if by magic the project takes on shape and is built.

Action becomes rapid, everything seems done. But there is still something wrong. We don’t quite know what, but something doesn’t yet seem to be in place and is not as it should be. So we continue to work, adding and subtracting, moving things around and so on, until, at the last moment, it is time to close and to deliver the finished work. This is a thrilling moment of our job: when the finished work is  there before us, signed off, complete and ready to be looked at, which we willingly do. Oddly, at that point, now that our work is done, we feel almost astonished at what we have achieved, amazed and pleased to have done it ourselves. We admire it as if it belonged to others, and can do nothing but gaze at it and wonder again at what we have done.

At this point, the third phase – that of the profession – is finished. The work we have done does not belong to us anymore. It will be handed over to the client if it was commissioned, or to a jury if it was done for a competition, or to a teacher if it was done for a university exam. The destinations are different, but the substance is the same, and the job is done. Our task has been completed. We have travelled the full time available to us to realise our project, and we have done so to the best of our abilities. Now we shall go back to being what we were before, a little different perhaps, altered a bit by the project, but not all that much. Anyway, the work has reached its conclusion. So our work is done, but we sense that something is missing from  our theoretical discourse, that we still need to answer a few questions. All we need to do is add the next phase to the  work: that of freedom. But that is another story, to be told in the next editorial. 

Top: Tullio Pericoli, Mestiere, 2017. Oil on board       

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