Building the Architect's Character

Explorations in Traits

Kendra Schank Smith, Albert C. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317199175
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Pratica professionale in architettura

An understanding of architects' character traits can offer important insights into how they design buildings. These traits include leadership skills necessary to coordinate a team, honest and ethical behavior, being well educated and possessing a life-long love of learning, flexibility, resourcefulness, and visionary and strategic thinking. Characteristics such as these describe a successful person. Architects also possess these traits, but they have additional skills specifically valuable for the profession. These will include the ability to question the use of digital media, new materials, processes, and methods to convey meaning in architectural form. Although not exhaustive, a discussion of such subjects as defining, imaging, persuading, and fabricating will reveal representational meaning useful for the development of an understanding of architects' character. Through the analogies and metaphors found in Greek myth, the book describes the elusive, hard-to-define characteristics of architects to engage the dilemmas of a changing architectural landscape. Building the Architect's Character: Explorations in Traits examines traditional and archetypal characteristics of the successful architect to ask if they remain relevant today.

Chapter 1

Defining

It has been traditionally part of architects’ character to clearly define their future buildings the process of design. But architects have greater responsibilities than just defining buildings: they also influence the definitions of a culture’s cosmos through their creations. Definition is described as comprising the essential characteristics of the thing being defined. It presents meaning for things that are not clearly understood, in a context of things that are understood. The act of defining can be similar to the act of designing in many ways. Architects define through measuring, creating boundaries, establishing manners of dwelling, play, and the cultural rituals that inform architectural design.

This exploration will be illustrated with examples of how architects have traditionally measured in an effort to determine if their character has undergone changes. This chapter will investigate five characteristics of architects in an effort to clearly define, understand, and create an architectural measure that inhabitants can engage with; recognize manner and select appropriate modes within which to design; play with ideas and media; and set boundaries to establish order. Specifically, it will investigate the chiasmus formed between defining the design and designing the definition, and will attempt to clarify the relationship between definition and design. As a means to engage architectural definition, the discussion will employ the story of the prototypical architect from Greek mythology, Daedalus. It will consider the design of his labyrinth that has been traditionally invoked as analogous to the creation of order.¹

There are solid reasons for choosing Daedalus, although some might believe that Prometheus would be a more appropriate Greek god to explain definition in the context of architecture. After all, it was he who stole fire from the gods and presented it to humans, an act that has been interpreted as an analogy for technology. Prometheus has been credited with creating humankind, a powerful act of defining. However, we find that myths concerning Daedalus, although he was human and not a god, are more suitable in the context of definition. He designed and built the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur, a metaphor for humanity’s search for order. The labyrinth represents a ritual that helps architects in their search for knowledge, and presents an analogy for the things that they do not know. The story of Daedalus and his labyrinth built to hold the monster offers an archetypal explanation of the architect’s position within early society. This myth presents a recurring theme that reflects the common ideals of Greek culture, especially in regard to how they viewed architects. It not only delineated, but also reinforced the social position, customs, and cultural importance of architects within Greek society, and demonstrated their relationship to humans, technology, construction, and the gods.

Figure 1.1 Bas relief of a labyrinth (Tuscany, Italy). Source : Beatrice, CC-BY-SA-2.5-IT.

Figure 1.2 Depiction of the Minotaur on ancient Greek pottery (Madrid, Spain). Source : Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España, CC-BY-2.5.

Though it is not necessary to regard the tale of Daedalus as a true story, it remains important because it was commonly believed to be an analogy that offers poetic insight into current conditions.² Analogies are forms of inference, since the assertion of some similarities between two things is extrapolated to encompass their likely similarities in other respects.³ With this description, the myth is told through the following story:

Having killed his nephew Talos out of professional jealousy, Daedalus was forced to leave Athens. He went to Crete, where he served in the court of King Minos at Knossos. Among his amazing achievements, there was the construction of a “daidalon”, a life-like wooden cow covered with leather in which Queen Pasiphae hid to seduce a magnificent bull (a gift from Poseidon to the Minoan King) with which she had fallen in love. Daedalus’ success with this task confirmed, once again, his skill as a demiurge. When, after seducing the bull, the queen gave birth to the Minotaur, Daedalus was asked to design a structure to contain this monster.⁴

While the myth itself serves as an analogy, the creation of the labyrinth by Daedalus may be considered a metaphor for the creation of architecture. The labyrinth represents human existence and Daedalus as its creator presents a paradigm of order, the “primordial ideal of architecture.”⁵ He addresses humans’ basic need to find order in a chaotic environment and formulates this order with the Knossos labyrinth. Daedalus’ ability to create order is likely the reason why he held an important position within ancient Greek society. To further elaborate on this position, Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux writes:

All sources agree that he (Daedalus) was an Athenian, son or grandson of Metion, a man who had been endowed with “metis,” a kind of practical intelligence and ingenuity which could be deployed in many ways but was mostly associated with the wisdom of craftsmanship in the Athenian tradition…While in Athens, Daedalus worked as a sculptor. He was the reputed inventor of agalmata, statues of the gods which had open eyes and moveable limbs, a compelling manifestation of the mystery of divinity (the verb “to see” was reciprocal in Greek: whoever saw was also seen, and the blind were invisible). These statues were so lifelike that Plato remarked upon their amazing and disconcerting mobility, which was accomplished with techniques that are clearly those of the daidala. Daedalus was also an inventor. Pliny enumerates the instruments that he invented while in Athens, including the saw, the axe, glue and, more significant for architecture, the plumb-line (cathetos or perpendiculum).⁶

The architectural historian and theorist Alberto Pérez-Gómez suggests that the name Daedalus is a play on the Greek word daidala which appears in archaic literature as a complement of the verb to make, manufacture, to forge, to weave, to place on, or to see.⁷ Daidala were the implements of early society and included defensive works, arms, and furniture. Pérez-Gómez writes of the importance of the daidala:

The “daidala” in Homer seem to possess mysterious powers. They are luminous—they reveal the reality they represent. It is a metaphysical “light” of diverse and often bizarre qualities, evoking fear and admiration. “Daidala,” particularly jewels, are endowed with “charis” (charisma) and thus with “kalo” (beauty) and “amalga” (festive religious exaltation). “Charis” is a product of “techne” (art, skill, craft) but it is also a god-given grace. This mysterious emanation, whether artificially created or given by the gods, has the power of seduction. “Daidala” are therefore capable of creating dangerous illusions.

“Daidala,” or art objects, can appear to be what they are not, and the metal plates give a value to the objects that they would not otherwise have. The principal value of “daidala” is that of enabling the inanimate matter to become magically alive, of “reproducing” life rather than “representing” it. Hence the word also designates “thaumata,” marvelous animated machines with brilliant suits of armor and scintillating eyes. The more primitive Homeric texts emphasize the ability of the “daidalos” to seem alive…⁸

Certainly, Daedalus can be linked to the daidala through his creation of automata such as lifelike statues, a machine-like cow (which he built for Queen Pasiphae), his wax-and-feather flying machine, and finally the labyrinth at Knossos. Daedalus’ ability to create the machine-like daidala placed him in an extremely powerful position in his society. Again, the labyrinth at Knossos serves as a model of society’s attempt to find order. Pérez-Gómez writes, “The labyrinth is a metaphor for human existence: ever-changing, full of surprise, uncertain, conveying the impression of disorder.”⁹ In this way, the daidala (mechanism) of the labyrinth symbolizes the ancient Greek cosmos.

The monster symbolized a seemingly chaotic message sent from the mythical Greek gods. A key concept behind the understanding of the Minotaur as a monster arises from its origin in the Latin words monstrum, which means portent (an omen or prodigy), something marvelous, and monere, to warn.¹⁰ In a way, monsters are similar in meaning to soothsayers in that they foretell the future.¹¹ The labyrinth demonstrates an understandable definition of an ideal (more perfect) message. Here is the connection between Daedalus, the labyrinth, and definition. To understand aspects of architects’ character, it is important to begin with defining.

Architect as Definer

The myth of Daedalus relates that he designed the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur. Through the marking out and subsequent building of the wall, Daedalus defined how its inhabitant, the Minotaur, would be confined. The myth, the labyrinth, and the monstrous Minotaur were attempts to define to humans the unexplainable; similarly, architecture can be used to help explain by creating definition. It is for this reason that it is part of the character of architects to be able to define clearly.

Concerning definition, the philosopher John W. Miller writes, “by what method, therefore, can the study of philosophy proceed?…Only through the definition of a term.”¹² The etymology of the word definit...