Architecture: Systems and Humanity

Systems and humans are entities often seen as antithetical to each other. A system often implies the simplification of humans into numbers, statistics, and rigid patterns. The commonly held negative connotations of systems and simplification are founded. Systems can be misused by those in power to subvert other humans for their own selfish needs. Systematic simplifications, while good in intent, carry the danger of misunderstanding by those ignorant of their intent and their role within the larger system, racism arguably being a familiar example of such ignorance. However, there is nothing wrong in this simplification in of itself when systems are kept as servants to human will to the end of bettering human life. Architects are overseers of systems that collectively fall under the term “architecture.” Such architectural systems range from the miniscule represented by tectonics to the majuscule represented by what might be termed “society building”.

Nowhere is the role of tectonics and its clarity more apparent in architecture education than in design-build courses. Not only is the conception of space demanded of design-build students, but also the putting together of space beyond the imaginary into the physical, through the gathering and assembling of material objects into a finished work of architecture. Put into a world dominated by the outdoors and the material, design-build students may fall into the trap of abandoning the wisdom of systems developed on paper, especially when met with the pressure of a tight schedule. Grids and consistency of approach fall in the wayside in favor of constructing things as they are needed and solving problems as they arise. Grids and consistency of approach, when used effectively, are systems meant to enhance communication and understanding between and among designers and builders. Clear and comprehensive tectonic thinking simplifies decision-making by minimizing time wasted deliberating over each problem as they arise. Design-build students learn the dire consequences of overlooking the design component of building when miscommunication results in wrong moves and unpleasant incoherence in the final product, and poor tectonic conception results in too many special moves that require too many trips back to the hardware store. A design-build project with healthy tectonics is not only built efficiently by persons who understand each other, but stands with harmoniously pleasing coherence, a result of the effective use of systems to better human life, be it the builder or the user.

In a scale much larger than a five-week design-build project and in more general, less concrete terms, architecture students are part of the elite armed to effect positive change on society by their university education and their own predisposition to invest in that university education. A good university education teaches the effective conception and application of systems and inspires students to put into motion these systems through the ideals it imparts from its store of human experience at its best. Successful architecture students are empowered to design good buildings that work with other good buildings in larger compositions of the built environment, whether at the scale of campuses, towns, or nations, themselves designed collectively and systematically by the likes of engineers, planners, or lawmakers. All too familiar are the ills of buildings and communities left to their own devices in the unfamiliar world of consumerism and globalization brought about by human progress. Those to whom the reins of systematic design are invested are charged with the responsibility of stirring and harnessing human progress to the positive. Architects and other people of power and good will should not get lost in the numbers and get fooled by the simplification of data. In so doing, they give architecture and power a bad name at best and at worst endanger humanity with the systems they have conceived to the end of improving human life. Systems are a means to an end, and the end is man himself. A good architect listens to a bit of Immanuel Kant’s Second Maxim: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.”