Phenomenological analysis in the design

process Anthony Ward

School of Architecture, University of Auckland, New Zealand

This paper reviews some developments in architectural education, based on the Integrated Design Subschool of the University of Auckland School of Architecture. These developments are related to issues of the 'rationality' of the architectral design process and of the Modern Movement. The 'rationality' of

modernism is shown to be a myth.

Keywords: architectural design, architectural education, modern movement, design process, phenomenology

The Integrated Design Subschool at the Auckland University School of Architecture was founded in 1983. It was formed as a reaction to what a group of staff took to be the continuingly arbitrary evaluation of student work at end-of-year 'juries'. Its specific aims were to:

• render design criteria more objective so that evalua- tion might proceed along more rational, systematic lines

• integrate into the studio design process all form determinants

• teach studio design developmentally, with increasing- ly complex problems from beginning to end of the School's four-year course. (It ought to be noted here that the rest of the School's studios are 'vertically integrated' - students from all years doing the same projects.)

Modernism to have flagged somewhat. Rationalism is now something of a dirty word in architectural educa- tion, having been apparently discredited alongside the Modernism with which it was supposed to be connected.

In this paper I will try to show how Modernism never was rational, and how Post-Modernism represents simply another form of the same irrationality. I will show how this irrationality stems from a flaw in the architectural paradigm itself (which is morally bankrupt) and I will describe how this bankruptcy is intimately connected to a misunderstanding of the actual mental process of design, of rationality and of phenomenology insofar as they represent conflicting aspects of current architectural theory.

I will go on to describe some measures which have been taken in the Auckland University School of Architecture as a response to this perception.

These aims are entirely consistent with this author's recorded involvement with design methods over the last 25 years, and devolve naturally from that experience. Over those years there has been a concerted effort within the architectural profession to 'rationalise' the design process, which seems, with the advent of Post-

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND

The post-war years in Europe saw a massive surge of rebuilding with which the traditional processes of design were unable to cope. Mass production techniques were

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applied to the building industry at a large scale for the first time, and along with these techniques there evolved a need for good quality control. The performances of materials were studied first, and from this, through disciplines such as ergonomics, the performances of whole systems, including buildings, were soon under scientific scrutiny. Heating, lighting, acoustics and structural performance were most amenable to objective analysis, and these sub-disciplines have tended to flour- ish in the intervening years, as more data has been derived from performance studies. As these fields have become more specialized, however, they have tended to become less easy to integrate into the design process itself. The increasing sophistication and specificity of their information tends to render them difficult to assimilate into the actual mental processes that designers use, and so lately they have fallen into some disrepute within the architectural profession, as integral compo- nents of architectural design.

Interest in quality control did not confine itself simply to the external technologies, but extended also into the domain of the design process itself, in the not-unrealistic expectation that a significant improvement in the quality of the process would lead naturally to far-reaching improvements in the quality of the product, and it was here that the most difficult aspects of the problem were manifest 1. While it was relatively easy to objectify (and hence render value-free) those aspects of the system which were amenable to measurement, the process for design itself is not so constituted, and is, in fact, permeated with value judgements of the most opaque kind 2. These are extremely resistant to objective analysis, and form in fact the very basis of that which the designers themselves think of as 'architecture' - the essentially aesthetic core of the discipline. More recently, this difficulty has led to the exclusion of the 'technologies' from the architectural paradigm, and architects have tended to revert to the primary visual aspects of design, which they see as their natural domain.

All of this has happened in the profession at the same time that the general public have become more aware of the sensual poverty of modern architecture. The profes- sion has therefore been subjected to condemnation from a world of consumers grown increasingly aware of their environment, and this has led to a major reassessment of the professional image. The philosophical association between Rationalism and Modernism was the first thing to come under scrutiny. If unpopular architecture meant Modern architecture, then (to a profession struggling for survival in the recession of the 70s), Modern architecture would have to be discredited.

The earliest attempt to do this was, perhaps by Robert Venturi 3. He attacked that sine qua non of Modern architecture - that 'form follows function', and demons- trated instead that the meaning of a building could be separated from its function, and that its public image need have very little connection with the technological content of its design. He proposed a new 'packaging' of architecture, in much the same way that an advertising firm might 'upgrade' the image of cornflakes - by

Figure I. Best Products Showroom, Sacramento 1977 (SITI£ architects)

redesigning the packet. The image of architecture was what was important, and indeed, by extension, it became the ultimate criterion against which good design was assessed. This was manifest in the Post-Modern move- ment, in which rationality was clearly repudiated, and irrationality was, to a large extent celebrated. Perversity and playfulness were valued in the new architectural iconography, as brilliantly characterized by the SITE group in the United States (Figures 1, 2).

THE MYTH OF RATIONALITY

In architectural education this process has tended to create a major conflict, and it is this conflict which stimulated the formation of the Integrated Design

Figure 2. Best Showroom, Houston 1975 (SITE architects)

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Subschool at Auckland. The Post-Modernists have tended to assert that Modernism was the natural extension of rationalism, and that since Modernism was now no longer acceptable, Rationalism also must be suspect. All of the analytical processes which had been associated with rational design were therefore seen to be antithetical to architecture itself. Yet there exists another interpretation of the failure of Modern architecture to which this author and his colleagues in the Subschool subscribe. This was most eloquently described by Peter Blake, in his book 'Form Follows Fiasco '4 in which he asserts that the Modern Movement was never rational, but was, in fact, founded upon a series of professional myths, of which 'Form Follows Function' was just one. Tom Wolfe has asserted much the same thing in his incisive 'From Bauhaus to our House '5 The essential thesis of both these works is that Modern architecture was founded upon deception - upon a collective myth which, in order to sustain itself, had to be kept disconnected from the reality of its own productions. Wolfe, for instance, describes how the essentially social- ist basis of Modern architecture (with mass production creating a Utopia for the proletariat) produced unlivable 'project' worker housing, extremely expensive Barcelona chairs, and an art and architecture which very few of the proletariat could themselves stomach. An architecture which operated upon the basis of such massive self- delusion could hardly be termed 'rational'! And yet when the Post-Modernists eschewed Modernism, they incor- rectly denigrated Rationalism by association. The fact is that architectural design has never been rational, though it has many times claimed to be so (Figures 3, 4).

Figure 3. Reitveld's zig zag chair (1934)

Figure 4. Reitveld' s steltman chair' (1964)

It is my contention, which I will detail in this paper, that this contradiction in Modern architecture is inherent in all architecture, and stems, in fact, from a flawed aesthetic paradigm upon which the whole edifice of the art of architecture is built.

THE AESTHETIC PARADIGM

Ask any architect what it is that distinguishes architecture from 'mere' building and he or she will undoubtedly fall back upon a set of statements about order or proportion or scale and so on - all of which have one thing in common, and that is what they have to do with aesthetics. Aesthetics is, then, the sine qua non of architecture to the profession as a whole. It is that which distinguishes 'Architecture' from 'Building' and it is worthwhile taking a closer look at the aesthetic paradigm if one wishes to eliminate inherent contradictions within architecture itself.

The first thing that one might say about the current aesthetic paradigm is that it is morally vacuous. (This is intended as a statement of fact rather than a critical judgement.)

The aesthetic paradigm is morally vacuous because it excludes social, political and ethical considerations. Pick up any architectural magazine or read any architectural criticism and you will rarely fred any reference whatever to social, political or ethical considerations. You will probably fred positive reference to the building as an aesthetic object, a work of art. A recent review of Philip

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Johnson's PPG Tower in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for instance said:

Two features of PPG Place make it memorable: the first is the organisation of space around and between the six buildings comprising the complex . . . The second (is) . . . the virtuoso use of reflective glass. 6

The review goes on to extoll the quality of the building's detailing, its thermal performance, and its visual impact:

What makes this application special is the pleating of the curtain wall into a sequence of facets which pick up speed and energy at the four corners. (These corners have a crystalline silhouette, that in plan recalls the wall geometry of Renaissance military fortifications such as those proposed by Michaelangelo.) (Figure 5.)

What is interesting about the appraisal is that it contains no references whatever to the experiences of the building's occupants, to the economic policies of PPG as a corporate entity, to the investment structures which generate such buildings at the expense of high unemploy- ment artificially generated through Reaganomics to keep wages low and profits (for further investment) high. Instead, the reader will note the absolute emphasis upon spatial, visual criteria, underlining and reinforcing their primacy.

Of course it would be absurd to expect such political issues to be expressed in an architectural review. This would not be about architecture at all. Which is precisely my point. The aesthetic architectural paradigm upon which the profession bases its very conception of itself is so abstract as to exclude all social and political issues. Such issues are seen to lead the critic away from architecture itself. They are seen to be the province of the

Figure 5. PPG Tower, Pittsburgh by Phillip Johnston

economist, the politician, the corporate capitalist struc- ture, but not of the architect.

Yet there is no denying that political, social and economic constraints are perhaps the most influential forces which shape our environment. The investment policies of banks, the tax incentives on buildings, the zoning ordinances which force people out of the centres of our cities and fill up the vacuum with cheap profitable office towers all exert more influence upon the environ- ment than any constraint over which the architect assumes some measure of control. The social, economic and political forces are the forces which shape the environment. But architects assume what they believe to be a 'pure ' , apolitical stance with respect to all of this. By maintaining their collective belief in the essential ab- stractness of the aesthetic values, they collude with a social and economic system based upon deep principles of the status quo. In this respect, the purported apolitical posture of the profession can be seen to be just another kind of political ideology, a child of capitalism itself.

I do not wish to enter into a discussion here about the advantages or disadvantages of the capitalist system. I wish only to make the connection between its essential tenets, and the aesthetic architectural paradigm upon which the professional operates, which is to say, one which excludes social and political factors by definition.

Once we see this connection, we will realize that the supposed 'rationalism' of the Modern Movement was not rational at all, since it excluded social and political factors (through the adoption of the current aesthetic paradigm) while at the same time proclaiming its social and political mission with evangelistic zeal.

Nor was the delusion confined to the capitalist democracies. Even the Russians (from whom Gropius, Corbusier and Mies took their inspiration) were capti- vated by the mass hallucination of Modernism. This was not so surprising.

The contradiction of values around which the aesthetic paradigm accretes itself is built into Marxism from the very first. Marx himself at tempted to address the problem thus presented by 'beautiful ' artefacts created in respressive societies:

But the difficulty lies in not grasping the idea that Greek art and epos are bound up with certain forms of social development. It lies rather in understanding why they still constitute for us a source of aesthetic enjoyment, and in certain res~aects prevail as a standard and model beyond attainment'.

He goes on to equate Greek art with the cultural and social childhood of society, which still carries the charm of childhood and the ability to make us children again. But as Roger Taylor points out in his book 'Art an Enemy of the People':

In terms of a concealed attitude about how to sift what was of value in contemporary art, Greek art could not count as valuable, but as the tradition in which Marx's whole intellectual life was embedded held Greek art to be of value, then Marx had to find a way of explaining its enduring significance 8.

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He continues:

But of course the 'high' ideal which art is is simply the set of social practices of bourgeois society: the whole of these practices cannot be thrown away without dispensing altogether with the 'high' ideal 9.

Taylor's contention is that Modern art is no more revolutionary than traditional art, since the very concept of Art is a mechanism by which the ruling elite defines itself. (More of this later).

Lenin compounded this dilemma in an attack on the Proletkult movement:

Proletarian culture is not something that suddenly surfaces without our having any idea of where it comes from, it is not the invention of the people who claim to be specialists in proletarian culture. All of that is preposterous. . . All the culture that Capitalism has left must be carefully preserved, and it is on this basis that Socialism must be built, otherwise it will be impossible for us to create the life of a communist society z°.

It is little wonder, then that the new architecture of the Revolution never really lived up to its liberating aspira- tions, containing as it did an inherent contradiction from the very beginning - a seed with defective chromosomes. The young avante-garde architects of the Soviet Union during and immediately after the October Revolution of 1917 had been trained at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in the best traditions of bourgeois classical style. Their values and aesthetic philosophies were entirely those of the upper classes. It was predictable that they should apply these abstract aesthetic values to the new architecture after the October Revolution. This inevitability was compounded by the complete breakdown of the Soviet economy (wracked as it was with civil war, foreign intervention and the collapse of industry). The dearth of work available after 1918 forced those young architects who still pursued their professional vocation into the production of highly symbolic paper projects, never to be built, but attempting to capture the spirit of the Revolution in visual form 11. Tatlin's famous monument to the Third International was typical (Figures 6 and 7).

This building, intended as the seat of the Internation- al, housed in three abstract volumes - a cube, a pyramid and a cylinder supported by a complex structure of cables and all contained within an enormous spiral, was the clearest form of pure expressionism - completely devoid of social or political content except through the abstract expression of its form 12.

The abstractness of these designs was compounded by their inevitable unreality. The frustrations of the young architects spilled over into increasingly unrealistic enter- prises in which the abstract form was itself canonized within the profession with heavy symbolic meaning. Asymmetry became a God (as a direct reaction to the symmetry of the Tzarist buildings) and was then imbued with meaning absolutely - as though asymmetry had or has an essential meaning separate from its social or political context.

Figure 6. Tatlin's monument to the 3rd International

The intention was no doubt honourable, but the execution, based as it was upon the existing aesthetic paradigm, albeit in reactionary form (to cut off the past entirely) was doomed to failure. There is little evidence that the new architecture ever achieved popular support

I r--4"

Figure 7. Tatlin's monument to the 3rd International

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amongst the people of Russia any more than it has amongst the people of the West, and when Stalin finally purged the profession of its Modernism and reverted back to the traditional, if somewhat heavy Classicism, he did no more than to confirm that the paradigm remained intact.

The 1932 Competition for the design of The Palace of the Soviets casts an interesting insight upon the struggle between the social rationalists and the formalists. The winning entry, by Zholtofsky, though a complete Clas- sical piece is no less abstract and formal than one of the acclaimed 'modernist ' (but losing) entry by Moses Ginsburg. Both rely upon simple, abstract forms, and though one (Zholtofsky's) is symmetrical and decorative and the other asymmetrical, and devoid of decoration they are both completely abstract in their formalism (Figures 8 and 9).

Western architects like Le Corbusier grasped the 'new' Modern formalism from their Soviet counterparts, and at tempted to apply it in their own Capitalist context. But as Antatole Kopp points out:

The more or less explicit insistence of the majority of (Western) modern architects on the social aspects of architecture did not change the fact that only those projects that could be adapted to the requirements of an existing society had a chance of being carried to completion ~.

And so the essential philosophy of the profession - the belief in the abstractness of beauty, remained intact, in spite of vast social changes in the Soviet Union, and great ambitions to discard it by Western Architects. It is this paradigm which is still with us today - no longer in the old package of Modernism, but now seductively garbed in the finery of Post-Modernism.

THE HISTORY OF AESTHETICS

It would be wrong to assume that this mystification of aesthetics is a recent phenomenon, or that it comes about entirely as a result of blind social forces. All of history can be seen as the recorded propaganda of the historically successful (which is to say the ruling class). Just as the

Figure 8. Z holto f sky's Palace of the Soviets (1932)

Figure 9. Ginburg's Palace of the Soviets (1932)

history of the United States, Australia, and New Zealand is the recorded history of the colonists, and not of the indigenous peoples whom they replaced, so the history of aesthetics is the recorded propaganda of those who had the most to gain from its conception and formulation.

We assume that 'Art ' as we know it has always been the same. This is not the case. Our current conception of Art is very recent and came about as a result of a major political shift in society. This took place between the 17th and 18th Centuries. Prior to that date the commonly accepted notion of Art to which we collectively subscribe did not exist. In his book, 'The Social History of Art ' , for example, Arnold Hauser assembles a great deal of evidence to support this contention ~4. Adkins Richard- son reinforces this perspective when writing of Leonar- do:

For him the suggestion that the panel painting by a routinely competent artisan might not be art would have been meaningless. Such transcendent, exclusive concepts of value did not exist for the Quattrocento. . . Art was invented by a later industrial age ~5.

It is interesting to speculate how and why this change took place, since it has considerable bearing upon the content of the paradigm. Roger Taylor makes the convincing argument that our current notion of Art was invented in the 17th Century by an Upper Class who saw their status and power being eroded by an emergent nouveau riche whose power base was that of developing rationalism, science and (their progeny) industry. He says:

The scientific life was concerned with the advancement of knowledge, but in opposition to this the artistic life, as it was now conceived of, contested for the status of a form of knowledge (my italics). Thus the early theories of art (art in the modern sense) coupled art with truth, and the truth which art was directed to celebrate in order to be art, was very concrete and very much known, namely the old cosmological and social order, which the growing domi- nance of the bourgeois trends was threatening and would soon overthrow 16.

In support of his thesis he quotes Adkins Richardson:

It can be argued to considerable effect that the very notion of

58 DESIGN STUDIES

absolute standards of decorum in life was already a response to the incursions of a 'patent nobility' (drawn from the wealthy middle class) upon the ancient privileges of the nobility of gentle birth 17

Taylor concludes his argument with the assertion that Art is a fetish:

As this is so, so mystification becomes part of the concept of art. From outside the form of life, one can say that art is nothing over and above what the bourgeoisie classifies as art, . . . but from inside the category, such a thought is intolerable because it dismantles the beliefs that go with entering into the activities of the category. The beliefs posit the objective superiority of those things singled out as art and, thereby the superiority of the form of life which celebrates them, and the social group which is implicated. It is out of this sort of logical mystification that the category of art emerged in the first place, that is, as an attempt on the part of the old order in society to make out (that) its life was somehow committed to a superior form of knowledge 18 (my emphasis).

One can begin to see the parallels with architecture, and the process of logical mystification to which it also seems to have been subject. There is to this author a direct connection between this process in Art (and the abstract aesthetic paradigm upon which it is based) and the act of painting or sculpting when compared to the distinction with which architecture separates itself from the act of building. In both cases, the dual concepts of Art and architecture detach themselves from the fullness of life, irrespective of whether this is done under the guise of Modernism or of Post-Modernism. Art and architecture are defined by the ruling classes whom they also define. Art and architecture are therefore political phenomena par excellence, dealing, as they do with the structure and process of power relationships in society. It is a measure of the extreme sophistication of the collective myth which forms their very foundation that they purport, above all else, to be apolitical. It is this myth which must remain intact for the existing social order to survive, and which must be repackaged every time the general public begin to suspect the underlying truth.

This is precisely what has happened in the recent history of architectural theory. Rationalism, has once again (as in the 17th Century) been relegated to an 'inferior' form of knowledge, and along with this relegation, the whole political question of architecture has been again buried beneath a mystifying mountain of sophistry.

THE MYTH OF PHENOMENOLOGY

Having cast out the baby of Rationalism with the water of Modernism, architectural theories have fallen back upon the primacy of 'imagination', 'experience' and 'phe- nomenology'. It is assumed that since the 'logical', 'analytical' processes led us into a sensory cul-de-sac, the way out must be through the unfettered, free expression of design concepts, undiluted by practical constraints. 'Paper architecture' is once more a significant profession- al currency. As Gordon Bandshaft is reported to have

said of Michael Graves in May of 1980, when Graves was given the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize for Architecture:

We used to give prizes to architects for doing buildings. Now we give prizes to architects for drawing pictures ~9.

What had been true in Russia in the early 1920s is true once again. The elucidation of architectural ideas has again been canonized at the expense of a re-evaluation of the paradigm. The problem is that abstract ideas are themselves worthless unless they be tested in reality, and this cannot be done with grace, because that reality contains a social and political element against which the paradigm itself would be found wanting.

It is thus a corollary of Post-Modernism as encouraged in schools of architecture that the testing of ideas against real constraints must be discouraged, and that instead the primacy of self-expression, supported by a doctrine of value-relativity, must be encouraged. Phenomenology has been recruited in support of this educational philosophy, but phenomenology itself has been twisted to maintain internal consistency.

The dictionary* defines phenomenology as:

The science of phenomena; description and classification of phenomena.

Phenomena are similarly described as:

That of which a sense of the mind takes note; immediate object of perception.

The reader will note that there is no mention here of an absence of logic, or rational comprehension. Indeed the opposite is true. It seems to this author that the description and classification of phenomena is indeed a very systematic procedure, and that phenomenology, rather than being a woolley catch-all of unlicensed self-expression is, in fact a serious scientific discipline with its own rigorous methodologies.

The reader who is interested in a most elegant example of this methodology might refer to R D Laing's early work with schizophrenics carried out at the Tavistock Institute in London 2°. Laing and his colleagues were attempting to understand the experiences of their sub- jects in terms of intra-family communications. They interviewed each member of the 'patient's' family separately, and systematically. Then they interviewed them in pairs, and then collectively. They also asked specific questions in what we might call a circular fashion. Of a couple, for instance, each might be asked to respond 'I like/dislike him/her; he/she likes/dislikes me; I think he/she likes/dislikes me; and so on. When all of the answers were overlaid what emerged was a clear picture of experiential confusions between family members which were entirely consistent with the group's informal communication structure, and these confusions of roles and identities seemed to be closely related to the actual experience of the schizophrenic patients.

*Please note that all dictionary defmitions are taken from the Concise Oxford Dictionary (6th edition) ed. J B Sykes, Oxford 1976.

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I cite this example because it most clearly indicates the systematic nature of good phenomenological studies. It seems to this author that the elegance of the model which Laing and his colleagues used - its circularity was an essential feature of their success. They were able to pinpoint internal inconsistencies of value without once impugning the relativity of sanctity of those values. The argument is usually put that since phenomenology has to do with the 'immediate object of perception', and since each person's perception to measure either the object (without destroying the perception) or the perception (without destroying its essential individuality). In other words, there is nothing which one can systematically do to understand perception, because there is nothing against which this understanding might be measured. The beauty of Laing's model is that it solved this problem through the application of an analytical structure which did not violate its own internal consistencies. No such model has ever been developed in architectural educa- tion, and so it is neither possible to refute nor accept the design ideas which are therein presented against anything other than personal whim. This is a very serious defect, because it means that the essential mystifications of the architectural paradigm remain intact, since it is never possible to subject them to systematic analysis.

The reader will understand by now that this author believes this omission to be not the result of random processes, but the political process of architecture itself. A true shift in the architectural paradigm must therefore begin with a demystiflcation of this process, and this cannot be done without embracing the political content of architecture directly.

First, though, we must look more closely at the structure of the myths themselves. So far we have investigated their political and historical content. Now we must look at their epistemological structure:

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF ART

If we refer to the Dictionary, again we find that rational is described as follows:

Endowed with reason, reasoning; sensible, sane, moderate, not foolish or absurd or extreme; of or based on reasoning or reason, rejecting what is unreasonable or cannot be tested by reason in religion or custom (my italics)

Here is a clear indication of the relationship that exists between rationality and empiricism. 'Reason' is de- scribed as:

Form or try to reach conclusions by connected thought, silent or expressed (my italics)

If reationality has to do with connected thoughts, then empiricism has to do with experience, and is defined as:

Based or acting on observation or experiment, not on theory; regarding sense data as valid information; deriving knowledge from experience alone

A differentiation is therefore made between connected thought, on the one hand, and sense data on the other, and while the Dictionary describes rationalism in know- ledge as opposite of empiricism, this author prefers to view them as necessary bedfellows in the survival strategy of the organism.

It will be argued later that these dual thought processes are connected to the distinctions that we make about Art and Science, and that they are causally connected to the mystification of the architectural paradigm.

It has been accepted practice in modern society since C P Snow first spoke of 'two cultures' to see Science and Art as representing opposing realities. Notwithstanding this author's prior contention that Art is itself a politically induced concept, the prior question of why the political needs of the 17th Century gentry accreted themselves around Art objects remains unanswered, unless we assume that there is an essential distinction to be drawn between the process and experience of what we have come to call Art, and those of what we have come to call Science.

The distinction which we have drawn between reason and experience may here indicate a clue. Reason, we have seen, involves connected (ie. sequential) thought, while experience, (I would suggest) involves a more instan- taneous process usually associated with feeling.

The dictionary defines the verb 'to experience' thus:

To meet with, feel or undergo.

The implication is that experience precedes intellec- tion, and is quite distinct from it, the one being direct, non-verbal and involving a multiplicity of sense data, the other being (silently) verbal, sequential and exclusive of sense data upon which it must reflect.

We now know that these two different processes do in fact exist, and that each is located in a different part of the brain, the rational, verbal processes on the left side, and the experiential spatial processes on the right side 2~.

I have previously written at length concerning the nature of these matters with respect ot the process of design 22 and will not do so again here. Save to say that the distinction does exist, and that it is this distinction of process around which the 17th Century gentry built their aesthetic paradigm. The problem is that its inconsisten- cies were never subject to scrutiny because that is not the function of the artistic process, but the function of the intellect and the experimental components of conscious- ness together, and it was precisely the cooperation of these dual aspects of consciousness which the invention of the paradigm itself precluded. One cannot and could not challenge the essential structure of the value system of Art without ceasing to be artistic.

I have alluded earlier to the 'delusions' and 'mass hallucinations' of Modern architecture, and I have contended that these delusions are being sustained and de fended by the cur ren t t rends towards Post- Modernism.

I now wish to make clear that when I use the words 'delusion' or 'hallucination' I am not speaking metaphor-

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ically, but about an identifiable clinical condition, a 'hallucinatory exaggeration of one's own personality or status' or (Hallucination) 'apparent perception of exter- nal object not actually present'. I am speaking of nothing less than the mass self-hypnosis of a whole culture.

The implied relationship between the internal percep- tion of the self and its connection to the external perception of reality is clear and important, for just as a deluded person has a specific self-image which is causally connected (and mutually reinforcing with) his or her perception of external reality, so also in architecture the image which the profession has of itself is also connected to its perception of the aesthetic realities of architecture. We have already suggested that the architectural self- image is one of social superiority, maintained in spite of the clear messages to the contrary which are reflected back by the community. In order to sustain the delusion, therefore, it is necessary that the person (or the profession) be extremely selective of the sensory informa- tion available, while at the same time narrowing and intensifying the attention given to this information. This is an almost classical definition of the state of hypnosis 23 and the author would suggest that the architectural profession has, in fact been indulging itself in mass self-hypnosis, and using the aesthetic visual stimulus as a means of induction.

We know that the right-brain process is closely associated with the induction of hypnosis, and that the process of hypnotic induction necessitates the cessation of left-brain analytical thought and a switch to right brain function 24.

The concentration by artists and architects upon the purely spatial, non-analytical components of reality and consciousness represent nothing less than the collective self-hypnosis of the whole profession. This contention is further supported by research into hypnosis:

(Auto)hypnosis involves the construction of a special temporary orientation on a small range of topics and a suspension or reduction of the generalised-reality orienta- tion, (which) means a switch from the left to the right hemisphere of the brain (my emphasis) 25.

The kinds of things that artists and architects do reinforce this self-hypnosis:

One of the most direct and powerful of the non-dominant (right) hemisphere's accessing techniques found by hypnot- ists is that of having the client create visual images in his mind's eye 26.

Every person has a preferred sensory channel (referred to as a representational system). Artists and architects whose discipline lays great emphasis upon the visual component of perception tend to have greatly preferred visual sensory or representational system, and this acts positively towards the increasing cessation of analytical thought:

Clients will differ greatly in their ability to see pictures in their mind's eye. In general, clients who have as their most highly valued representational system a visual system will

respond most satisfactorily to this technique of visually accessing the non-dominant (right) hemisphere 2y.

I would suggest that the preoccupation with visual data, and the suppression of analytical thought which characterize the current trend in architecture and architectural education represent continuing aspects of this mass self-hypnosis.

At the Auckland University School of Architecture this perceived trend away from 'rational' constraints and towards more abstract, less objectively verifiable designs was what led to the initial formation of the Integrated Design Subschool.

In its second year I had occasion to be working with one of the second year students in my studio class. We were doing an environmental, contextual study of a site overlooking Auckland's Waitemata Harbour. One of the students, a female, had drawn a map of the site on which she had indicated with an arrow, the location of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. When I pointed out to her that her arrow was, in fact, some 70 degrees east of the actual location of the bridge, she retorted, 'So what! That's where I feel it is!' This is perhaps an extreme example, but it serves to indicate the primacy of personal experience over objective verification which has de- veloped at the School. This has been continued directly with the students themselves, many of whom say they prefer the liberating, non-objective right-brain daydream- ing encouraged by non-analytic design processes as a reaction to a lifetime of deadening left-brain program- ming induced by the primary and secondary educational systems. If this is the case, then it may be that the source of most of our problems in architectural education lies not in the Schools of architecture themselves, but in the educational system which precedes them. Yet the interac- tion between the left and right brain processes seems to this author to be fundamental to the architectural design process, and this 'interaction' is neglected by design projects which only emphasize non-analytical processes. It is as a reaction to this tendency that most of my own work is directed.

This work initially involved the establishment of the Integrated Design Subschool in 1983, and since then a clear concentration upon projects which embrace the political and social aspects of design, and which attempt to reveal to students the inconsistencies of the paradigm upon which their profession operates.

INTEGRATED DESIGN

There have been several attempts in Schools of Architecture around the world to develop programmes of Integrated Design. The Auckland University School of Architecture Integrated Design Subschool is one such attempt. Because it is the one with which I am most familiar I will use it as an example from which to draw some generalized conclusions. When it was conceived in 1983, its specific aims were to:

Vol 10 No 1 January 1989 61

• render design criteria more objective so that the evaluation might proceed along more rational, sys- tematic lines

• integrate into the studio design process all form determinants

• teach studio design developmentally, with increasing- ly complex problems from beginning to end of the School's four-year course.

In these matters it has achieved varying degrees of success, though there is still room for much improve- ment. While the staff are in agreement about the aims of the Subschool there is some disagreement about how these aims might be effected. Not all of my colleagues share the clearly political view espoused in this paper, for instance, and this has real consequences for the kinds of project which we are able to address. I suspect that the majority of educators involved with integrated design (not just in Auckland but elsewhere) think of it primarily as a mechanism for integrating the technologies. At Auckland I suspect that when we originally spoke about 'integrating all form determinants' what we meant was integrating engineering, construction, thermal respon- siveness and so on, into our process. This is actually quite difficult, and requires extremely quick and efficient modelling techniques which operate in a form closely related to the ways (verbal and non-verbal) in which designers think. This has been inhibited by the non- completion of our Design Aids Laboratory in which most of these modelling practices were to be conducted. A great deal of work still needs to be done in this area, and this work will I am sure, be extremely productive in terms of improving the integrated design process itself.

There are other form determinants than technological, though, which play an important role in design - perhaps more even than the technological and those are the personal and the political. I believe that the client and the political context of any design project are extremely influential, and therefore in my Second Year studio I tend towards projects with real clients and with a real political component. Chief amongst these have been the Alternative Aotea Centre Project (Figure 10) which has already been written about extensively 28 and the High- bury Study (Figure 12). This latter study was commis-

i ¸̧

Figure I0. The Aotea Centre project (1985)

Figure 11. The Highbury Study (1986)

sioned by the Birkenhead Business Association as a direct means of affecting the physical and commercial develop- ment of Highbury (an Auckland Suburban City) through direct political action prior to the upcoming Municipal Elections 29.

In this latter project all of the contesting parties to the election (including the incumbents) have now adopted our study proposals as their respective platforms for District Scheme changes under the Town and Country Planning Act in the elections of October this year (1986), and we have every anticipation that the proposals in our report will be actually carried out. Since they included the recommendation of significant public participation in the planning process there is a very good chance that we may, through our architectural recommendations, be able to actually affect the political process itself.

Figure 12. House in Santa Cruz, California (1972)

62 DESIGN STUDIES

What characterized each of these projects was a new kind of group design process, the Integrated Group Design Process (IGDP) which was based upon a set of rules and principles quite different from those which are normally used in group projects, and tailored to intro- duce an analytical component into the phenomenological processes of the students.

THE INTEGRATED GROUP DESIGN PROCESS

This author's first significant experience with group design processes took place in 1972, while an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. In that year a group of seven undergraduate students asked me to supervise the design and construc- tion of a real house for a real client as a class project. I agreed, and the students lodged an advertisement in the local newspapers saying, in effect, 'Architectural stu- dents will design and build your home for free if you provide the land and the materials'. From a dozen or so replies they chose one for their client, in Santa Cruz, some 60 miles south of Berkeley. Eventually, a small house was built much to the satisfaction of the client but not without considerable abrasion and ill-feeling in the design process itself (Figures 12, 13). The process seemed laden with conflict, and it was with deep reservations that in 1974 I agreed to run the project again, this time with 15 students.

An appraisal of the first project 3° revealed what I believed to be some clear sources of conflict - mostly in the areas of communication. These were:

Figure 13. Santa Cruz student-built house

• The fact that students had been competing to satisfy the client that 'their' design was the best. (Nine designs were actually done)

• The fact that students, in comparing designs seemed to be frequently talking at cross purposes, with different understandings of the same issues.

• The fact that criticism was an essential component of the appraisal system.

• The fact that we did not start with an objective, clearly articulated and unanimously agreed programme, save that of building a house.

In the 1974 project I agreed to proceed, but only upon the basis of some unanimously agreed ground rules:

• That there would be one collective design • That all decisions regarding the design must be

unanimous • That we would use the (as yet unpublished) Pattern

Language 31 as our common language system • That appraisal was to be based upon positive rather

than negative reinforcement (based upon the notion that there is no such thing as positive criticism)

• That in the event of clear disagreement, no member of the team had the right to try to change the opinion of any other member

The difference between the two projects was startling, not just for myself but for all of the participants. Follow-up studies indicated quite dramatic changes of awareness by the students not just about themselves and their relationships, but also about architecture itself 32.

The process itself was extraordinarily smoothe and creative. Because the participants were under no threat of censure, each student participated to an extraordinary extent, and ideas flowed free from the fear of ridicule. (Similarities between this process and that of 'Brain- storming' are limited, but appropriate).

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the project involved the inversion of normal value systems. Since it was assumed unanimously that every participant's ex- perience was equally valid, disagreements based upon different experiences of 'reality' which would normally have become a source of conflict between participants, became instead an indicator of inappropriate form. Good design form was thus identifiable as that with which there was unanimous agreement. Thus the emphasis of the group was naturally directed not towards areas of interpersonal differences, but towards areas of agreement, and indi- vidual differences of perception were used as a key to greater understanding of the design problem.

The implications of this are quite important. Good design is no longer only a matter of personal opinion (which might differ from person to person) but is immediately identifiable as that which transcends personal opinion and reaches areas of consciousness beyond the verbal, and which, moreover, is objectively verifiable to the degree to which it approaches unanimity of perspective.

This is to turn the normal value system of architectural design upon its head. It assumes, for instance, that the

Vol 10 No 1 January 1989 63

Figure 14. The Woodside House (1974)

normal egocentric value system is no longer valid, and that another value system takes its place - namely the belief that the combined consciousness of the group has its own logic, its own strength, its own preferred reality. Students who have been conditioned by 20 years of educational indoctrination into the primacy of indi- vidualism and competition find this a very difficult adjustment to make. At first I ask them to take it 'on faith' (there being a sufficient incentive in the project itself). As the process evolves, however, faith usually dwindles and enthusiasm expands.

The results in 1974 exceeded all of our expectations, and the Woodside House was finally completed to the total satisfaction of all of the participants (Figures 14, 15).

The model which was first developed in 1974 has been modified somewhat since its use in Auckland, although its essential characteristics remain the same. The require-

Figure 15. The Woodside House (interior)

ments of whole school assessments, for instance (to maintain parity across subschools) means that there is a constant pressure upon students involved in group processes to produce individual designs for their folders which will compete with those produced in other, more traditional subschools, in which great emphasis is placed upon individual expression and abstract design projects. This is compounded by the fact that the Integrated Design Subschool staff are outnumbered 2:1 at the end-of-year jury, where voting upon final grades takes place. The staff are currently seeking ways to separate the grading processes of their students from that of the rest of the School. In the meantime, however, the pressures which this grading dilemma has caused have resulted in the modification of the group process.

I now ask my students to produce a series of individual designs (for their folders) on a series of group cycles. In

S Counselling room locations

I I

Workshop locations

I i b

Figure 16. Differing student location choices for (left) counselling rooms and (right) workshops in a Health Centre project

64 DESIGN STUDIES

Figure 17. Students working on Aotea Centre project

other words, we begin from a common brief and produce a series of designs. These are then reviewed positively. Each student is asked to indicate (say) five things that he or she likes about everyone else's designs. If there are 20 students then each person has a list of 100 positive statements about their design. There is, of course, a lot of overlap, and those features which are common, and which through discussion become unanimous are then added to the brief for the next design cycle, and so on. In this way each student may produce four or five individual designs, each becoming increasingly similar to those of other students as the common brief expands.

Where areas of disagreement still exist regarding fundamental issues, this is taken as an indication of the need for more research in that particular area. Often at

times this 'research' is of an unusual nature, involving non-verbal processes such as Guided Daydreaming, Roleplaying or what we might call 'dialoguing of forms'. In trying to agree a location for a particular activity, for instance, we might remove the design context but retain the site context as a background so that the dispersal of locations across the different designs is self-evident (Figure 16). Each location might then 'Gestalt' a conversation with its neighbours. In this way, blockages in the analytical process can usually be cleared, and the design allowed to proceed.

Throughout the process the testing of ideas and design ideas is held to be paramount. Sometimes these are tested against the aspirations of the client, or against actual physical site constraints, and, of course, against the ideas

Figure 18. Taking the Aotea Centre project to the people

Vol 10 No 1 January 1989 65

proposed by other participants. But the testing does not confine itself to the 'rational' or 'analytical' thought processes alone. Techniques for accessing 'right- hemisphere ' processes form an integral part of every project but they are always seen as an extension and partner of the analytical component , rather than antithe- tical to it. In this way the analysis of the experiential and the daydreaming of the rational complement each other, and the true meaning of ' Integration' becomes clear.

Design becomes not only a means of integrating technological features into the creative process, but is a medium whereby the individual designer grows and matures through personal intergration of aspects of consciousness that our culture would otherwise have us keep separate (Figures 17 and 18).

REFERENCES

1 Broadbent, G and Ward, A (eds) Design Methods in Architecture Lund Humphries, London and New York (1969)

2 Rapoport, A 'Facts and models' in Design Methods in Architecture ibid., pp 136-147; see also Daley, J 'Psycholo- gical research in Architecture - the myth of quantifiability' in Architects Journal 21st August (1968) and Daley, J 'A philosophical critique of behaviourism in architectural design' in Design Methods in Architecture op. cit., pp 71-76

3 Venturi, R Complexffy and Contradiction in Architecture Museum of Modern Art, NY (1966)

4 Blake, P Form Follows Fiasco Little, Brown & Co., (1974) 5 Wolfe, T From Bauhaus to our House Farar, Strauss,

Girvoux (1981) 6 Architectural Record October (1984) pp 192-199 7 Marx, K Grundrisse (Introduction) (ed & trans) D McLel-

lan, McMillan, London (1971) 8 Taylor, R Art an Enemy of the People Harvester Press (1978)

p 73 9 ibid., p 72

10 Lenin, I Quoted in Marxist Esthetics by H Avron. Cornell University Press (1973)

11 Start, S Frederick Melnikov Princeton University Press (1973) pp 32-33

12 Kopp, Anatole Town and Revolution Doubleday (1970) 13 ibid., p 10

14 Hauser, A The Social History of Art London (1962); see also Kristeller, P O 'The modern system of the arts' in Journal of the History of Ideas Vol XII (Oct 1951) and Vol XIII (Jan 1952)

15 Richardson, Adkins, J 'Illustration and Art' in British Journal of Aesthetics (1971)

16 Taylor, R op. cit. (1978) p 44 17 ibid., p 43 18 ibid., p 48 19 Wolfe, T op. cit. pp 130--131 20 Laing, R D, Phillipson, H and Lee, A R Interpersonal

Perception Tavistock Press, London (1966); see also Laing, R D and Esterson, A Sanffy, Madness and the Family Tavistock Press, London (1964)

21 There is much documentation on this subject, but see: Ornsteia, R E The Psychology of Consciousness W.J. Free- man & Co., San Francisco (1976); Blakeslee, T R The Right Brain McMillan (1980); Luria, A R The Right Brain and Psychological Processes Harper & Row (1966); Luria, A R 'The functional organisation of the brain' in Scientific American Vol 222 No 3 (1970) pp 229-238; Sperry, R W 'A modified concept of consciousness' in Psychological Review Vol 76 (1969) pp 532-536

22 Ward, A 'Design cosmologies and brain research' in Design Studies Vol 5 No 4 (1984) pp 229-238

23 Shone, R Advanced Autohypnosis Thorsons (UK) (1985); see also Shore, R E 'Hypnosis and the concept of generalised- reality orientation' in Tart, C T (ed) Altered States of Consciousness Doubleday (1969) pp 249-250

24 Shone, R op. cit., p 58 25 ibid., p 58 26 Bandler, R and Grinder, J Patterns of the Hypnotic

Technique of Milton Erichson Meta Publications (1975) Vol t p 185

27 ibid., p 186 28 Ward, A and Hunt, J 'The alternative aotea centre project'

in New Zealand Architect No 6 (1985) pp 22-31 and also in: EDRA 17 Proceedings, Atlanta, Georgia (1986)

29 'The Highbury Study' - A Second Year Report by Auckland University School of Architecture. pub. (Limited Printing) Birkenhead Business Assn. (1985)

30 "Architecture 191 A' - A report on the Santa Cruz House by students of the University of California School of Architecture, Berkeley (1972)

31 Alexander, C, Ishakawa, S and Silverstein, M A Pattern Language Oxford University Press (1977)

32 "The Woodside Experience' An exhibition of the project history and its retrospective evaluation University of Califor- nia, Berkeley (1975)

66 DESIGN STUDIES