quare id faciam?

'Any building must have a life of its own'

A fairly abstract but nevertheless thought-provoking bit from 2006 AIA Gold Medal winner Antoine Predock's oddly thrown-together-feeling web site:

I don't do an architectural concept sketch and see if the program has anything to do with it. It is embedded in the work from the very beginning and the discussions with clients with respect to the performance life of the building are very exciting and lead off into many interesting directions in terms of the programmatic intensities in the work. So the program figures continually with the different ingredients of energies that go into the first moves or gestures toward making the piece that becomes a building. The disclaimer with respect to the program would be that we know historically that buildings through the ages change their program and this ephemeral notion of program has to do with political overlays, cultural norms or evolutionary change in what was functional content. The Pantheon changes from a pagan temple to a Christian church overnight, so these kinds of tremendous reversals are also part of the possibility. This means that any building must have a life of its own, in a way independent of program, but of course accommodating the original program. So when architecture becomes solely program-driven and is merely a functional diagram, without other admixtures, it becomes a rather empty determined condition. Like a body without a soul.

The Pantheon example suggests some historical questions to be traced: what in fact was the character of that change from pagan to Christian use? But I have no opportunity to trace them here, now. And Predock's point depends little on the particular example given, anyway.

The quote is the better part of a brief design process discussion on the 'Clay' page at Predock's site. At right, a photo of a Predock design model in clay – this one from the page describing the studio's El Paso Federal Courthouse, set to open in 2007.

You can listen to a pretty interesting 12-minute interview with Predock by going to the AIA's podcast page. (Scroll to bottom.)

posted by paul bowman @ 11:20 PM