**AN OCCUPIABLE OCEAN BLUFF** became after months of deliberation on community and environmental needs, desires and concerns the singular (and un-replicable) innovation that provided a path forward for what to do with this key beachfront site. (Oceanside Beachfront Master Plan and Feasibility Study, Oceanside, CA 2021-22)

In our time innovation talk seeps into every corner of our world from popular culture to education, elementary through university. We celebrate the innovators--the Apples and Teslas. Innovate or die is our mantra. But what is innovation, when, and how does it take place and toward what end? How might we receive and apprehend the value of innovation in technology, engineering, or science differently than we do in art? And where in the practice of architecture (engineering and art) are we in most need of innovation?

**INNOVATIVE, SUSTAINABLE, AND ICONIC** are not words with which anyone would describe a single-family home-- 3-D printed or not--nor would the word “consistent” be that which would describe an architect who postures a commitment to “sustainable design” while also associating with such an endeavor-- a parlor trick at best and an assault on the environment at worst. (Proposal for “3-D printed homes” by Lennar Home Builders, ICON Construction Technology and BIG Architects, Austin TX, 2022)

**GRIFT** was the word used by this VR critic to describe this attempt by an architect to design a digital environment in which NFTs could be bought as souvenirs—not to mention the obvious evasion of architects’ responsibility to real reality. (VICEVERSE, a virtual reality project, BIG Architects, 2022)

We used to talk about inventions. We admired engineers like Bell (telephone) and Edison (light bulb). The technology behind Tesla’s electric vehicle was invented almost two centuries ago in 1830 by an American engineer Robert Anderson and the rudiments of computing technology that run it have been around since at least 1946 when computer engineers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly built the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania. We had widely available electric cars in America by the 1890s and computer systems in cars by the 1980s.

**INVENTION AND ENHANCEMENT** are the words with which to describe first the creation of the battery over two hundred years ago, then its advancement in our time. (Alessandro Volta with his battery ca. 1800 left; Elon Musk with his, right ca 2017)

**ORIGINS AND APPLICATIONS OF THE BATTERY** (Volta’s original, above; Tesla’s battery pack, below)

**ORIGINS AND APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTING** (ENIAC, University of Pennsylvania, 1946 above; Tesla’s dashboard, ca 2010 below)

By the early 20th century, though, automobile manufacturers abandoned electric and instead went with internal combustion—the economics and politics of Texas oil having intervened. Then at the end of the 20th century environmentalists embraced electric (overlooking, myopically, the underlying assumption that cars however powered could ever be environmentally friendly). We first got GM’s EV-1 and then Toyota’s (“pious”) Prius that satisfied the early adopters and holier-than-thou crowd.

**DESIGN MATTERS** in that we are always more than penitent creatures in our deliberations on what’s the “right thing” to do. (Toyota Prius, ca 1995 above; Tesla Model S, ca 2010 below)

**A HISTORY OF FITS AND STARTS** might describe the American experience of the electric vehicle first widely marketed as a marvel of sophistication and elegance as early as the 1890s then squelched by Texas oil then revived a century later first as a moral imperative then finally as the sexy thing to do (e.g. Tesla models S3XY)

Poor range and the inconvenience of charging intervened. Capitalizing on recent increases in the capacities of batteries (invented by Alessandro Volta circa 1800), wisely creating its own network of charging stations, and most importantly creating a car with comparable aesthetics, acceleration, and speed of (dare we say it) “traditional” cars, Tesla captured consumers’ imaginations, made a lot of money and (because of the money) enhanced the status of its high-profile owner. But really, it’s just a better car (or a different one).

**THE ENGINEERING INNOVATION** that was Brunelleschi’s solution to the construction of the dome in Florence was unique-- neither scalable nor fit for consumer consumption, nor was it intended to be-- the rewards being the accomplishment itself on behalf of the people of Florence. (Duomo, Florence, Italy, 1436)

**INNOVATIONS IN CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS** such as steel reinforced concrete inspired a generation of architects to rethink the configurations and shapes of buildings (Domino House diagram, above; Villa Savoy, below Le Corbusier, France, ca. 1920s)

**EXOTIC SHAPES** made possible by the innovation of steel reinforced concrete construction debuted a hundred years ago, have yet to and may never exit the stage. (Falling Water, Mill Run PA, 1936, Frank Lloyd Wright, left; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, Frank Lloyd Wright 1959, right)

All architects are (and should be) to a degree engineers. When Filippo Brunelleschi figured out in 1436 how to build the dome in Florence without the need for conventional centering and Irving Gill in 1910 employed tilt up concrete construction as an alternative to the labor-intensive bearing wall construction he admired in the missions of southern California, each did so in his capacity as an engineer and innovator. While we always welcome innovations in engineering and construction and the introduction of new materials and methods, most efforts over the last century have sought not to improve outcomes but instead reduce cost and quality at the expense of outcomes.

**TILT UP CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION** was conceived by Thomas Edison as early as 1903, first employed by Robert Aiken who held the first patent and famously adopted by Irving Gill in southern California in the first two decades of the 20th century (La Jolla Women’s Club, Irving Gill, La Jolla, CA 1914)

**THE FATE OF TILT UP** concrete construction devolved from the earnest ambitions of Thomas Edison and Irving Gill a century ago to its decidedly cynical and destructive applications at distribution centers and warehouse sites across southern California.

Before the industrial revolution before engineers coopted our language, architects employed the word invention to describe designs. Every new design was an invention because it required a response to a unique context, its place and time, the unique purposes for which it was conceived and conditions under which it was realized --this even though the rules of design then were more circumscribed than what we would allow today. We are as artists partly like actors and musicians for whom interpretation is our art (character and composition). Committed architects constantly innovate, but our innovations are one-off, they cannot (or should not) be scaled up and hence in our time our limited economic rewards and therefore our limited status.

**THOMAS EDISON** had hoped to perfect an affordable mass produced and widely available home built entirely of concrete, which in the end proved too complicated to build, unscalable, uneconomical and a century later little more than a curiosity. (Thomas Edison with is all-concrete house prototype, 1910)

**WE GOT MANUFACTURED HOUSING** which while providing shelter accomplished little else other than the proliferation of dehumanizing environments and injured landscapes

The novelty of engineered consumer products that can be scaled up such as Tesla’s car, or the video cassette recorder or the fax machine before it, always fades. Technological innovations absorb into our lives, then they bore us and then they annoy us, then we reflexively seek magic in the next new thing. But technology is neither magic nor art, it “changes the world” less than the prospects of its propagators. Art, on the other hand-- good art-- which makes no such claim really does “make the world a better place” (more than just a different one). It lasts.

**INNOVATIONS IN MATERIALS TECHNOLOGY** that render affordable exterior finishes with equivalent or better environmental, performance of natural materials are always welcome (White marble printed porcelain tile applied to the new Riverside Main Library, Riverside, CA 2021)

**ECONOMICALLY ENRICHED INTERIOR ENVIRONMENTS** made possible by contemporary applications of wallpaper (invented in France ca. 1675) are increasingly made affordable by new printing and adhering techniques applied to a wide variety of new sheathing materials. (Gun metal black printed wallpaper at UCLA Hedrick Study, Westwood, CA 2017)

It is embarrassing to witness status-starved architects steeped in Silicon Valley envy engage in hypocritical activity under the guise of innovation to accomplish little more than improve their street cred. What is--it is fair to ask--innovative, sustainable, or iconic about a 3-D printed single-family home, by now a tired trope, the supposed embodiment of the “American Dream”, that we now know to be an environmental predator? This is the kind of innovation of which we are today in need the least and for architects a distraction and an excuse to avoid that of which we are in need the most. If we as architects were to focus on our job—which at the very least would be to improve our environment-- were we to regularly do our best even when no one is looking we might find that talk of excellence will have seeped into every corner of our world, and that would be in our time a real innovation.

Innovation Envy /July 7, 2022 by Johnson Favaro

Featured BLOG Posts

CONTACT US