YOU CANT DESIGN THE ORDINARY

N.J.HABRAKEN

Originally Published in:

Architectural Design
1971
YOU CANT DESIGN THE ORDINARY
1.
The ordinary is a quantity in itself
it is not the cheap or the banal
or the lesser thing.
The ordinary can have great quality.
A quality that is not necessarily proportional to affluency
or technical ability.
2.
So called primitive cultures are known
that show a great harmony in the relation
between ordinary man and his ordinary environment.
Our own environment shows that
in a time of great affluency and productivity
the ordinary can be in a state of
disarray and backwardness.
3.
To act as a designer in the field of housing
and urban growth
one must know the ordinary.
4.
Architects today accept the fact that they
have to deal with problems concerning
the ordinary.
They do not know however that from all professionals they are
perhaps the least equipped
to deal with the ordinary.
5.
To profess love for the ordinary, to have
interest in the aspects of everyday life
is not proof that one knows
how to deal with the ordinary.
6.
The architect has always been
the one who dealt with
the extra-ordinary.
The history of architecture is the history
of palaces, churches, castles, town-halls.
Architecture has always been
the extra-ordinary achievement in building.
7.
Architecture always has been:
the thing complete in itself.
The singular thing.
The thing that withstood time.

Architecture always was

the static conception.

8.
Architecture was a challenge to time:
time is the succession of seasons
the succession of generations
the fragility of life,
of birth and death.
Architectures purpose was to stop time.
A stone, immovable in the flowing
stream of the ordinaary.
9.
Architecture was to
shut off the transient and fugitive world.
to leave the monument,
a testimony to later generations.
10.
The ordinary:
is never a thing complete in itself
is never singular
is never in opposition with time.
11.
Architecture is, by its own nature,
static
(although its shapes may be dynamic).
12.
So,
architects are designers of monuments.
They deny it today.
But maybe they are the least equipped
to deal with the ordinary.
------------------------------------
13..Most people in the world live
in buildings that never have been
touched by architects.
Through history 99 percent of all buildings
were built without the
aid of architects.
About 50 years ago
architects discovered the ordinary.
They discovered dwellings, factories,
farm buildiings, roads, dams, dikes,
bridges, railway stations, office buildings,
recreation facilities, streets, shols,
schools, restaurants, pubs.....
Architects discovered poverty, congestion,
bad housing conditions, damp, darkness,
lack of trees and plants.
( much to their credit).
They declared that the ordinary was
within the range of architecture.
14.
But that declaration was, to be sure,
not the discovery of the ordinary
as such.
It was to say that hencefoth
the ordinary should be architecture.
15.
Once I heard an architect complain
in a public speach
that monumentality was lost.
This age - he said - knows no
monuments anymore, only utility.
He was wrong,
this age knows only monuments.
It does not know the ordinary.
16.
Modern architecture approached the ordinary
as so much possible monuments.
The factory became a piece of arhitecture,
the school became a piece of architecture,
the water tower became a piece of architecture,
the dwelling became a piece of architecture.
17.
Town planning became
the arrangement of pieces of architecture.
18.
Functionality was the justification
to make architecture of everything that could be bult.
19.
Le Corbusier discovered the ordinary.
His instinct told him that the great
challenge of this age was found in the
ordinary dwelling.
The unit dhabitation is a monument.
A thing complete in itself (a unit indeed).
A singular conception (of great beauty).
A thing that will defy time.
The problem ws not solved.
It was stated.
20
Frank Lloyd Wright said:
I believe that Holland will go far
along the line of architecture:
it is there that the architects seem to have taken root im my
work.
Of course it will as usual
never be on a large scale. And God forbid that -
because then I should feel that I had become commonplace!
21.
The architects discovered the ordinary
(much to their credit).
But they applied to it the tools of architecture:
space, light, proportion, unction,
mass, texture;
nothing wrong with that
but you cannot feed the ordinary with it.
22.
You cant design the ordinary,
the everyday world is not just an addition
(or a composition) of designed things.
23.
King Midas could make a wish.
And he asked that everythig he should touch
would become gold.
King Midas could not eat,
when he touched the daily bread
it became gold.
He could not nourish himself with gold.
24.
The architect has the Midas touch
which kills the ordinary.
Everything he touches becomes architecture
and there is no everyday environment left
that can nourish;
that can give life.
------------------------------------

25.
The ordinary is the source of creativity.
Creativity is an everyday thing
and as such almost unknown.
26.
Creativity is the ability to find a solution
in a new situation.
The ability tho do the right thing
in a situation without precedent.

27.
We believe in the specialization of the
ability to create the physical environment.
The artist believes in it.
The architect believes in it.
Technical people believe in it.
ordinary man believes it.
They all believe tha creation of the
physical environment is something
you can leave to a specialist.
28.
We take it for granted that
ordinary man is responsible for
the education of his children;
the way he dresses,
the way he feeds himself,
his relation to other people,
his relation to God.
When everything is said an done
the ultimate responsibility is
the responsibility of everyman.
29.
We have specialists for education,
politics, food production, clothing manufacture,
religion and human relations.
But whatever these specialists do has to
be sanctioned in everyday life.
No creation can nourish the world
before it becomes
the ordinary thing.
30.
The theologian knows that he cannot
decide about the relation between God and man.
The sociologist knows that he can not
decide about the relation between man and man.
The politician knows that he can only deal
with the forces created though the ordinary.

But the architect dreams about deciding

the relation between man and
his physical environment.
31.
Because of industrialization it is the specialist
who produces most things,
and calls them products.
However, producing (and designing) products
is something else than
producing (and designing) an environment.
32.
The more we produce
the more things we have that accompany
our daily life.
The more things we have to give a place
in our daily life
the more we have to create our own environment.
We cannot leave that to the specialist.
33.
A dwelling is an environment.
A dwelling cannot be designed
(you can design a house, a flat,
a castle, a hut; but not a dwelling).
A dwelling is the result of action
in ordinary life.
A dwelling is an act,
not a shape.
34.
Dwellings cannot be the product of designers.

But dwellings can be the result of

ordinary people making decisions about
things made by specialists
and who, by so doing,
create.
35.
If the architects really want to deal
with the ordinary,
they must stop designing dwellings.
They must stop the production of dwellings.
A dwelling is an act.
36.
If the architects really want to deal
with the ordinary,
they should make the act of dwelling possible.
They should make it possible for people
to house themselves.
They should design the products
that enable ordinary people
to house themselves.
37.
To deal with the eordinary physical environment
does not require production
but for cultivation.
38.
Architects who profess love for the ordinary
should become gardeners.
The gardener does not make,
he cultivates.
39.
Our new cities ar make-believe gardens
with plastic flowers.
Artistic, exotic flowers, original
in shape an colour perhaps;
much stronger than real flowers even,
And produced in great quantity
And arranged professionally.
40.
Plastic flowers ar most beautiful
when they are new.
They can, after production, only detoriate
irreversably.
41.
Our new cities are most beautiful
when they are only designs.
They can, after production, only detoriate
While the trees that we plant in them
grow.
And when the trees are fully grown
the buildings are obsolete.
To deal with the ordinary
is to make it possible that ordinary
man can act.
Not to design dwellings,
but to make the act of dwelling possible.
Not to design cities
but to make gardens in which
dwellings can be cultivated.

You cant design the ordinary.