A SCIENCE LAB BUILDING requires an extraordinary array of utilities to function properly. (Southwestern Community College Health Sciences Building, National City, CA)
Our bodies are made of integumentary, skeletal, lymphetic, respiratory, muscular, nervous, digestive, urinary, endocine, cardiovascular, male and female reproductive systems. Our buildings are made of foundation systems, metal or wood framing, concrete masonry, pre-cast or cast-in-place concrete enclosing systems, exterior finish systems, roofing and roof drainage systems, door, window and fenestration systems, wood, steel, masonry or concrete structural systems, heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems, electrical power, water supply, waste water, gas, lighting, data, telecommunications, security, fire alarm and fire suppression systems, ceiling, floor and wall finish systems, casework, fixtures and equipment systems.
DIGITAL MODELING has allowed us to not only design the infrastructure but to place it within the building to minimize conflicts and facilitate construction. (Southwestern Community College Health Sciences Building,
National City, CA)
FLUIDS AND GASES are delivered and ejected from the lab spaces through an intricate infrastructure of pipes and conduits with manual and automated safety valves, flow controls and shut-off mechanisms. (Southwestern Community College Health Sciences Building, National City, CA)
Increasingly, our buildings have evolved to reflect the same complex interplay of systems into which our bodies evolved (structural/skeletal, respiratory/mechanical, digestive urinary/plumbing, telecommunications/nervous and so on). The integration and coordination of increasingly sophisticated building systems consume ever more of our attention as architects. But just as we are more than our biology, our buildings are more than their systems. Our buildings, like our bodies, are (can or should be) designed to support more than functionality or mere survival, but rather lives worth living, life. We are not robots and our buildings are not machines.
What drove this proliferation, our need for and obsession with especially electrified and mechanized building systems? High school history teaches us that in the west we emerged from the “Dark Ages” into the age of “Humanism” which in turn brought us the “”Enlightenment” which gave forth science out of which cascaded the variety of applied sciences and engineering disciplines to which we are now accustomed. We captured electricity, mechanized movement, automated data collection and transmission all ostensibly aimed at achieving a higher quality of life: efficiency and comfort advertised as prosperity and progress. It was exciting. It captured our imagination. We got hooked.
TWELVE SYSTEMS constitute the whole of the human body. We know how they work and interact with one another. We know what makes a body function but we don’t know what makes a person a person.
To this day, we value science as a superior form of intelligence if even sometimes at the expense of our intuitive, emotional and spiritual intelligence, or what philosophers and thinkers now call general intelligence, to distinguish from robotic or artificial intelligence (a useful tool to be sure, a hyper-scientific pursuit if ever there was one and illusory that we claim it as “intelligence”). We apply the scientific mindset to almost everything we think about and do. We engage in political science, social science, behavioral science, nutritional science, environmental science. And yet our societies are troubled, our eating habits are poor and our environments out of balance. Not so out of the dark after all.
WHEN WE GOT BEYOND CUT STONE AND COOKED EARTH we discovered a whole other world of means with which to structure buildings and give expression to such structure. Such systems began to resemble our own skeletal structure perhaps a sign of evolution and progress. (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France, 1868; Japanese Pavilion, World Expo, Osaka, Japan, 1970)
INSPIRED BY RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM British architect James Stirling created daring structures and complex geometries that appeared to defy gravity in ways which were nevertheless hiding in plain sight.
We got hooked on comfort and efficiency too and are now locked in a battle with ourselves over just how comfortable and efficient we can make our built environment even as it comes at the expense of the livability of our natural environment or even our mental health. We are told that the modern economy of the southeast United States would not exist without air conditioning, but maybe this has disengaged southerners from the terrible beauties of where they live. Here in the southwest, we outfit our buildings with fire alarm and fire suppression systems (sprinklers), fire-retardant materials and other fire-resisting measures, because maybe we westerners build buildings in places and with materials we ought not to such as wood stick houses in the arid hinterlands.
HAVING PAINTED OURSELVES INTO A CORNER by disallowing enclosing facades and ornament we have tried everything to animate buildings such as pulling utilities out to the perimeter of the building then painting them bright colors. (Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, 1978; Resnick Pavilion, LACMA, Los Angeles, CA 2010)
AMERICAN ARCHITECT LOUIS KAHN pulled so-called functional elements such as stairs, elevators and mechanical shafts to the perimeter of the building, thus employing “service” components as the primary expressive means with which to give the building shape.
BUILDING CODES CHANGED a hundred years ago after devastating fires across the United States that forced the retroactive installation of additional stairs (fire stairs) across what were once simple, elegant street facades. Then it became a way to decorate buildings. (Typical New York apartment buildings, 1800s; Getty Centre, Brentwood, CA 1997).
And something even odder has happened. Around the turn of the last century having exhausted the classical language of architecture then bored ourselves with the ransacking of the world’s history of “styles” then having decided that decoration was corrupt and engineering pure, we turned to the forms of infrastructure and technology as a way to shape our buildings. It started out as “Hey, we don’t build buildings the way we used to, we should make new buildings look like what they’re built of (steel not stone) and how they’re built (mechanically not manually)” . Then this morphed into something even weirder “Hey, our buildings are boring, we’re not supposed to decorate them, so let’s employ the look of technology to make them look cool.” Building systems became decoration. Then we gave up. Hospitals, research institutes and universities are so invested in technology, and in their pursuit of science so removed from any sense of even their own humanity, they see their buildings as nothing more than networks of utilities.
HOSPITALS ARE ONLY A SLIGHTLY EXAGGERATED illustration of what has occurred in building design since the Enlightenment—increasing reliance on technological infrastructure, diminishing commitment to the quality and health of the built environment. (Greenwich Naval Hospital, London, England, ca 1700, Paimio Sanatorium, Finland, ca 1930, Cedars Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles, CA 1972)
HOSPITALS NOW are little more than containers of equipment.
Now it’s “Hey, our buildings consume a lot of energy, we need to make our systems more efficient”. Even in all our earnestness about mending our ways –so- called “sustainable design” --we don’t seem to learn our lesson. We rely on techno-scientific solutions, bells and whistles (motion detectors, computerized air quality controls) instead of learning from experience--5,000 years of it-- in which we learned to make buildings in sync with our humanity and in balance with our environment. Instead we make lifeless buildings on life support.
AS MUCH AS WE TRIED to incorporate natural ventilation for these two college buildings in downtown Los Angeles they wouldn’t have it. At one point, a computerized system was suggested that would automatically open and close windows when the AC was turned off and on. The facilities management team responded that they would end up bolting the windows permanently shut. Hence, no operable windows and a ton of mechanical equipment on the roof. This building cannot be operated without the aid of life support. (Los Angeles Trade Technical College, Los Angeles, CA 2010)
WHILE NOT THEIR SOLE PURPOSE the pedestals upon which this library sit presented an opportunity for the housing of mechanical, electrical and plumbing equipment as an alternative to the very expensive basement that was standard practice years ago and unsightly rooftop mounted equipment that has since become standard practice (Riverside Main Library, completion Q3 2020)
IMMENSE EFFORT and coordination with a variety of engineering disciplines was required to keep the deep coffered ceiling at the top floor of this library in West Hollywood free of mechanical equipment (ducts, supply and return registers, controls). Air from forced air units on the roof (concealed along with condenser units behind 8 FT tall parapets) flows in ducts across the top of the roof down cavities within the perimeter walls of the building and into the room from the walls surrounding it via concealed registers above a projecting soffit. (West Hollywood Library, West Hollywood, CA 2011)
A GLASS BUILDING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA made sense in this location just 500 FT from the Pacific Ocean where the influence of the ocean creates a microclimate different from even 500 FT further inland. Two layers of glass form an insulating barrier against the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter (mornings and evenings throughout most of the year). Secondarily, the cavity between the two glass walls functions as a return air duct for the heating and air conditioning system.
AIR CONDITIONING in arid climates can be achieved through the ancient techniques of thick walls, layers of covered outdoor space at the perimeter of buildings, exterior shading devices and the free flow of air. (California mission, ca 1700s; Chaffey College Main Instruction Building, Chino, CA 2010)