A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT ARCHITECTUREAND IA PRACTICE

For the IASummit 2011 Panel “More than a Metaphor”Andrew Hinton / andrewhinton.com

Julia MorganArchitect

It was the early 1900s and Julia Morgan was already an established architect on the west coast. She’d designed banks, schools, hospitals and homes; >>she’d redesigned the historic Fairmont Hotel after the San Francisco fire in 1906; >>and had a client named William Randolph Hearst who kept her busy with ongoing additions to his sprawling castle. >> she had even designed a number of buildings for the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and was essentially the official architect for that organization on the west coast. An interesting thing to note about these examples -- Morgan generally didn’t work within a single architectural style or mode. She employed whatever styles and modes were appropriate for her client and for the needs of the job. In 1913 a woman from the Hearst family asked Ms Morgan to design a conference center on about 30 acres of land she had donated near Monterey, California.

fairmont: alamedainfo.comhearst: listsoplenty.comywca: oaklandmarks.blogspot.com

“Lone Genius” Architects1880s - 1930s

The world Morgan was working in was one dominated by the ego-driven architecture you heard about from Jorge.

patersonymca.org

There were also examples of YMCA architecture ... which had an established approach for the architecture of its buildings. >>In fact, there’s a book on the subject, called Manhood Factories … and that’s how they were seen: machines for the processing of Christian American manhood. There was an efficient, linear, industrial approach fitting the 19th century worldview. Typically they were big square Georgian Revival or Neo-Romanesque building where everything is contained in one factory-like edifice. >> And every room has a purpose, designed for processing a particular aspect of manly character.

Julia Morgan: Architect of Dreams - G. Wadsworth

But with the conference center, she took a different approach. She visited the site walked along the beach and among the dunes, and thought about what the conference center was for, and what the land it was on could mean. She sketched some thoughts about how the space could be best shaped to support restful, reflective community, and thought the natural setting was an important part of that context. She decided it should be made up of multiple lodge buildings set among the low sandy rises, because the setting itself was meditative and inspirational.

Text from “Julia Morgan: Architect of Dreams” Ginger WadsworthPictures from: berkeley.edu

Asilomar Conference Center

She designed the buildings so they would accommodate and enhance the natural patterns of a human community in such a setting. Constructed largely of redwood and native stone, the lodges feel like part of the landscape. They have casual rooms, many with fireplaces, designed as much for encouraging gathering behavior as producing warmth. The center is flexible, organic and open, but it also nudges residents toward communal cloister and gathering together, without forcing the issue. It gives people the room to be people, to have private moments and public ones, and to understand which is which and why. It establishes appropriate contexts for the varieties of human behavior intended. Why do I bring up this example?

asilomar aerial & walkway: http://www.westernspectroscopy.org/images/Asilomar_aerial.jpgbig chimney picture: Neovenator.com building under tree: jessicaroemischer.blogspot.com

Asilomar Conference Center

One reason I bring it up is because this conference center has a history in the information architecture community -- it was the meeting place for the founding of the IA Institute; originally called the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture, largely because of the example set by Julia Morgan’s work in that place.

It doesn’t engineer the behavior of its

inhabitants, it encourages & accommodates their

behavior.

Asilomar Conference Center

Another reason for bringing this example up is that I think it’s especially appropriate for how we design networked places today ... it’s a great example of ...>> a design that doesn’t engineer the behavior of its inhabitants, it encourages and accommodates their behavior. She didn’t design the experience, she designed the conditions within which people can have the experiences on their own, to make their own meaning.

asilomar aerial & walkway: http://www.westernspectroscopy.org/images/Asilomar_aerial.jpgbig chimney picture: Neovenator.com building under tree: jessicaroemischer.blogspot.com

CONTEXT

BEHAVIOR

INHABITANCE

Morgan was a pioneer, prefiguring later architectural thinkers like Christopher Alexander, >>in designing for natural patterns of human behavior, >> in understanding the context within which the work is done, >> and in raising the importance remembering that people have to live with and within the design.

So how are you practicing IA? Personally, I don’t hear these issues discussed nearly enough in the day to day work of people doing the work in the trenches. All too often I see practitioners either choosing or being bullied into going straight from a requirements document to wireframes. Or going straight into a site-map of linear, static structure, without considering the organic, behavioral context of the people who will have to live in the thing that’s being made. The semantic structures we create are just as architectural as anything Morgan made ... they’re dwellings. As a community, we need to aim higher -- and always be remembering that we’re creating dwellings ... places where people live, talk, learn, fall in love, and do their work.

WHATPLACESWILLYOUMAKE?

So what can you learn from people like Julia Morgan? And what places will you make?