Lecture Response: Digging Deeper

Response to Amin Taha: “The Measure of Architecture

Having grown up in London and seen Amin Taha’s work displayed in the Design Museum, I was curious to learn more. Admittedly, I was a little disappointed by the lecture’s focus on stone as a material, as opposed to Taha’s design philosophy—more practical than even last week’s designated “practical architecture lecture.” Nevertheless, having bagsied writing the lecture response for Taha earlier in the semester, I followed up by conducting an interview with him via email, reproduced here in condensed and edited form:

Tian Hsu
The lecture preceding yours, by Patrick Bellew, addressed sustainability through high-tech innovation. You engage with sustainability through a “low-tech” shift from brick to stone construction in the UK. Who is right?

Amin Taha
Patrick would likely concede that, in temperate areas, low-tech passive environmental controls outweigh high-tech mechanical controls, which are required in more extreme environments. We would both agree on high-tech soft(ware) solutions with low-tech / low-embodied carbon physical installations.

TH
Is the substitution of low-carbon materials a cure for all aspects of the ethical crisis architecture? Utilitas, firmitas, et venustas… Do any elements remain unaddressed?

AT
Certainly not answering all ethical questions. Of the many I listed—from fire and structural safety, cost control for clients, equity from the design studio to community engagement and to construction and operation—the lecture went on to focus on sustainability.

The studio begins from there, then moves on broader ethical outcomes outside a client redline property boundary, that can also be triangulated as better value for a client.

The easiest example is the brief from a secondary school for a new dining hall and library building. They expected it to be located in the middle of the campus, but we placed it instead on the property boundary line so that the building form would complete the adjacent high street. Doors faced both the school and the high street, so the building opened into campus during school hours, and then turned to open to the public on evenings and weekends.The school gained, locals gained, the high street was enlivened. And the library and dining hall looked lovely too.

TH
You mentioned that stone is a luxury in the UK but a commodity in Italy and France. How does this difference translate into the architecture of those countries? Does it lead to a more rigorous or more diverse use of stone in their built environments?

AT
Unfortunately, by ubiquity and skill normalization, the Corbusier (and Max Dubois) Dom-Ino concrete slab remains the default system even where stone is cheap. Go to Ghana and poorer locals will use handheld saws and wheelbarrows to extract basalt blocks, while middle classes wait for concrete and steel to be shipped across the seas to complete their “modern” homes. We evidently need a turnaround, not least in the perception that modern progress exists in high-carbon materials and structure.

TH
You’ve spoken for Constructs, The Architecture Lobby, in Hastings Hall, and now for Paprika! Is there anything about yourself you haven’t yet said publicly that you’d like people to know? Now is your chance!

AT
I could start but wouldn’t know where to stop. Just to reiterate:

While architecture might be your passion, you can look around at your non-architect friends and find ten years or more have passed and the meagre architect’s income has somehow frozen you in a twenty-something flat-share lifestyle. Have parallel Plan B. Whatever it is, allow it to supplement and probably exceed your passion income.

Design and build beautiful things that give you and those living there pleasure. We need more beautiful environments, not more drones sitting in offices.

Whether side hustling as developer, practicing as an independent architect or employee, apply some core beliefs to your work, too. Discuss and develop them with friends and colleagues. Agency to change means understanding the issue and learning what tools are needed and how to use them. Otherwise it’s hot air, likely to irritate and compound the problem.

TH
How has teaching at Yale differed from the RCA?

AT
After Harvard GSD, Yale and the RCA are surprisingly similar. Friendly and supportive, which I keep putting down to luxuriant carpeting. Cant think of another institute that has it, so must be it.

TH
Thoughts on your lecture’s cocktail of the night: the Stone Sour?

AT
Loved it, could have had several more but had to have dinner early to leave for an absurdly carbon-heavy conference tour to Hong Kong and Dubai and London to proselytize on low-carbon construction!