Howard Davis, The Culture of Building, Part I, "Buildings as Cultural Products:" chapters 1-3

The first three chapters of Howard Davis's The Culture of Building leave much discomfort to one seeking to complete a degree in architecture in a university setting. The culture of idealism in which one is saturated in American architecture education seems at odds with the commonly understood pragmatic end of such an education to permit one to practice architecture legally in a world largely portrayed by Davis as indifferent to architectural creativity at best, and fearful of it at worst.

Creative solutions are encouraged in American architecture education, particularly in the studio. Outside of the apparently infallibly set realm of statics and technology, "preconceptions" are to be challenged, whether that of structure, space, identity, or tectonics. From the Davis’s discussion of the informal settlement in Pune, India, to the contemporary American subculture of building represented by popular home magazines, there seems to run a common thread of reluctance to deviate from the known at the seeming expense of creativity. Challenging preconceptions is a fearful thing to the Pune dweller and New York City developer alike, as it means challenging the wrath of the monsoon in one case and of the market in the other. Creative solutions are risky undertakings in architecture, as buildings carry the responsibility of ensuring human survival and the necessity of a huge investment of resources and energy.

In order to find a happy solution to the dilemma found in the relationship between American architecture education and the building cultures for which it trains the architecture student, one may examine the dynamics between conservatism and liberalism in American politics. In theoretical simplification, conservatism represents the conservation of the status quo, whereas liberalism represents a liberation from it. In an ideal democratic society, the status quo is built up by the will of the people, or at least as they are represented by the majority. New solutions that continue to work tend to be upheld many more times by many more people as solutions that will continue to work, and thus become established solutions. We operate upon much knowledge simply held as truth as no one can possibly test knowledge on their own as in laboratory experiments; we trust our doctors to prescribe drugs that will fix us as they trust that pharmaceutical scientists have concocted the drugs in a scientifically sound manner. In addition to the potential waste of energy and resources to undertake a task, new solutions present the obvious risk of being bad solutions. As liberalism presents new solutions that reflect both the ever-changing specifics of reality as well as the hope for a betterment of the present reality, conservatism protects against bad solutions by challenging and testing solutions proposed by liberalism. Liberalism is popularly associated with university culture, a safe haven where philosophical and scientific ideas may be tested presumably without endangering society at large with dangerous ideas or radioactive explosions. American university architecture education can be seen as a safe breeding ground for new architectural solutions, to be tested by realities of building culture and technology as they thrive outside the studio.

While one may hope that this model harmonizes the incongruity between the shiny idealism of university architecture education and the muddy pragmatism of building culture, glaring rows of light-frame “McMansions” fronted by water-guzzling lawns interspersed by glorified warehouses of commerce encompassed by seas of asphalt continue to consume our land and deceive our hearts’ desires for the good life. A rethinking who really is protecting who in the relationship between architecture education and building culture. Universities find roots in medieval monasteries, which have protected knowledge from times past through the copying of manuscripts. Ancient Christian tradition holds that the monks protect the world by sanctifying the hours of the day and night with their prayer. Might architecture schools be monasteries where the idealism of architecture as art be kept aflame in a materialistic world not necessarily driven by the pursuit of the ideal?
American architecture education can be seen as liberal in that it presents new solutions that have the potential of being great solutions. It is conservative in that it holds on to concerns elevated above the fleeting. One recalls the hopeful paradox presented by an author who claims that avant-gardism is the faithful carrying on of a tradition of bettering and making perfect that has sustained the arts and sciences of ancient times, from the master builders of the Gothic age to the gentlemanly draftsmen of the Enlightenment.