On Grass

Architecture, mostly, is obsessed with spectacle.  So used to hearing the word ‘no’, when finally engaged with a design problem, architects overact and pack as many of their best ideas into the project as possible. The result culminating in jewel-box, high-bandwidth buildings whose worth is measured in press coverage. Often overlooked by the critics celebrating or admonishing a given work is the banal canvas upon which these master strokes are applied. So many hundreds of thousands of square miles of the world is covered with grey concrete, black asphalt, white gypsum walls, and green grass. These default surfaces exist as an unremarkable backdrop that allows the formal gymnastics of architecture to occur on.

We are missing the point. The high-performance works can exist only in contrast to a low performance setting. However, these seemingly innocuous surfaces covering the planet are the real site of architectural production. The engagement of the ‘banal’ [sites, systems, products, methods] is more profitable than staging actions and events which move through them.

To ignore this seemingly dumb landscape by simply adding dramatic projects onto it, whether “minimal” or “excessive,” amounts to little more than retransmitting generic architectural calculations. What really matters in any calculation is not the particular result, but the frame of reference, the assumptions built into the system of counting. To produce the kind of hesitation in the everyday flow that is the mark of the thoughtful architect may require resisting the temptation to simply add, to cultivate the capacity to say less or even to say no.