A Not So Gentle Manifesto

We have betrayed our art.
We have overserved our art…

Under the pretext that we can't address all problems at once, we have chosen to address that which is important, over that which is urgent.

It is part of the architect's job to determine which problems get addressed and with which priority. Paul Rudolph has correctly pointed out that Mies is capable of producing beautiful buildings only because he chooses to address a very limited number of problems at a time.

Increasingly capable systems and cheap energy have allowed architects to prioritize aesthetics over environmental context. Comfort inside these buildings was delegated to these systems, decoupling it from design choices. This helped cement the international style. A movement whose very name suggests that the same architectural language could transcend local conditions, unlike vernacular architecture, which emerged from them.

As a society we looked at the Farnsworth house by Mies or the Glass house by Johnson and we celebrated them. We took these houses as role models to be emulated.

Everywhere.
Anywhere.

Taking for granted how one would actually feel inside. This is already the realm of the machine, not the architect. It’s not a coincidence that Le Corbusier refers to the house as a “machine for living in”. He goes on to state:
"The Plan proceeds from within to without; the exterior is the result of an interior".

It's as if modernism forgot that architecture is meant to mediate between the inhabitants and the climate. Comfort became a problem for the mechanical engineer to solve, not a problem of design.

Robert Venturi came closer:
"Architecture occurs at the meeting of interior and exterior forces of use and space".

The exterior started to take a more important role. It could no longer be the residue of an interior plan: the building also had to respond to exterior forces. But these are limited to forces of use and space, still no reference to climate.

It wasn't enough. Venturi's definition still seems to be in line with another slogan of the modern movement: form follows function.

This latest slogan was used to do away with ornamentation. Yet, with the environmental agenda of the current times and the lack of contextual anchoring, ornamentation has come back in the form of green roofs and solar panels.

Comfort should stop being treated as a set temperature to attain and maintain simply because we can. It should be again coupled with design choices. Architecture needs to reclaim responsibility for comfort from mechanical systems.

These systems should compensate for exceptional circumstances. Not for poor design choices.

Architecture has to be much more than a symbol or a material expression of the internal functions. It should start from the individual but reflect its context. That is its environmental and its cultural one.

And form should follow comfort.

I use these tools very intentionally. Not to replace architectural thinking, but to give visual coherence to ideas I otherwise would not have the time to draw manually while balancing practice, teaching, writing, and content production.

A.I. was specifically used once the text was ready, for proofreading and double checking ideas. The technology accelerates representation, but the architectural judgment remains human.

Refer 5 readers and I’ll send you the Thermal Comfort Design Guide for free.