Every Week is Architecture Week

The week of April 10 to 16 was Architecture Week, a commemoration conceived by the California Council of the American Institute of Architects and anointed by the state Legislature.

According to the council, the idea behind the dedication of the week was to focus attention on how much the designs of the state’s 14,000 registered architects affect the way we live, work and play.

Certainly, if we have a week for secretaries, we can have a week for architects. Given the shape of our communities and cities, anything that might raise the public’s design consciousness, be it a sand castle competition or an architectural tour, should be encouraged.

Frankly, I consider every week Architecture Week. Unlike, say, a piece of sculpture in a museum that one may or may not visit and view, there is no avoiding architecture if you live in the so-called civilized world. The sculpture, when out of vogue, can be hidden in a corner or stored in a basement, but a building once constructed can be expected to stay where it is for at least the length of its depreciation schedule.

A common joke in the generally humorless architectural profession is that doctors can bury their mistakes but architects can’t. The not-so funny kicker to that joke is that it is usually not the architects involved that have to live with the mistakes, but those who use and experience their buildings.

This thought was prompted by a few letters and photographs I received recently from readers that, ironically, came in the mail that also carried the various press releases heralding Architecture Week. The letters were in response to a column I wrote last month on the local design profession’s initial Orange and Lemon awards, and suggested some buildings be added to the list of lemons, and be published here from time to time.

Not a bad idea, but I would appreciate it if those nominating lemons identify themselves and include what they, in particular, do not like about the buildings, while noting the addresses so I also can view them and possibly name the offending developer and architect.

One of the events of Architecture Week was the announcement by the state AIA Council of its annual design awards for projects designed by its members. The focus seemed, with a few exceptions, not to be on what is new and noteworthy, but on what has been previously shown, published and praised, and pointed up some continuing problems with the jury process in this and other design award programs.

For the record, top honors went to the firms of William Turnbull Associates, of San Francisco, for the design of a private club in Hong Kong; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), also of San Francisco, for an office complex in the Netherlands, and Moore Ruble Yudell, of Santa Monica, for a housing project in Berlin, West Germany, and, in collaboration with the landscape architecture firm of Campbell & Campbell, the Carrousel Park at the Santa Monica Pier.

Winning merit awards locally were William Adams for the Archilla Clothing Store in Santa Monica, Morphosis for the Kate Mantilini Restaurant in Beverly Hills, the Architectural Collective for a multi-use project on Sunset Boulevard, Bissel Architects for the temporary structures for the papal Mass held in the Los Angeles Coliseum last year and Eric Owen Moss for a warehouse in Culver City.

Merits also went to the Austin Hansen Fehlman Group for a clinic in San Diego, and SOM, Backen Arrigoni & Ross and Fisher-Friedman for various projects in San Francisco.

In addition, the Firm of the Year Award went to SOM, of San Francisco, and a new award, called the People in Architecture Award, to Bull Volkmann Stockwell, also of San Francisco, for a design of a visitors’ center at Point Reyes that responds “to the varied needs and abilities of people using the facility.”

It is not that most of the projects are not worthy of recognition. I, for one, found the design of the Carrousel Park a delight, Kate Mantilini’s engaging, and Archilla’s provocative.

And what I have read and seen in the professional publications of a few of the others appeared interesting, though, as I pointed out in a column last month about the Sunset Boulevard building, such presentations can be deceiving, especially when manipulated by photo-publicists and uncritical editors and writers.

From my perspective, it seems the jury consisting of a trio of architects from Boston, Portland and Fayetteville, Ark., was influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the prior publicity of some of the projects as they have made their way up the award ladder.

And even if the project is flawed, once it has gotten a mention in, say, the Progressive Architecture magazine annual awards program, or included in a photographic survey of local AIA winners in Architecture or Architecture Record magazines, it tends to stay on the ladder.

What has become sadly obvious in the ego-involved architecture profession is that regardless of the quality of their work, architects, to get recognition from the public and peers, must shamelessly promote themselves and their projects. That includes showing it wherever they can, publicizing it however they can and submitting it for awards, with the hope of having a friend or acquaintance on the jury vaguely familiar with the project.

Unfortunately, helping also these days of fads and fashions, is having the project styled, not to serve or express its use, but to be provocative and make a Statement with a capital “S.” The S also could stand for self-serving and shallow.

Hearing self-appointed avant garde architects trying to rationalize their abuse of materials, form and function in the name of architecture has to prompt a certain incredulity.

Nevertheless, trying to stand above the wave generated by the self-appointed avant garde and architectural elite is hard. Jurors want to be au courant, as do most editors, writers, students and groupies in the design field, especially now that architecture has become so trendy, and select architects and developers, who are celebrities.

That is what happens when the label on the product is valued more than the product; when the architect becomes more important than the architecture, and when the architecture becomes more important than the people it is suppose to serve.

Happy belated Architecture Week.