When a community decides to build for itself in order to give space and face to a shared public realm, its architect is commissioned to plan not just one, but two houses. The first of these houses is both more essential and more difficult to describe; it belongs – in a way that few other building types do – both literally and figuratively to all of us. This house belongs to the world of the imagination, to collective memory, to our desire to transcend the boundries of self. The second of these houses belongs to the world of the immediate and the circumstantial: this is the world of the program, budget, context and building codes, of fashions in style and theory. While community and profession demand of the architect that the second house be firm, functional, even beautiful, for many of us the true measure of the architect lies less in her ability to competently build that second house (something that, we hope, should be taken for granted) and more in her ability to evoke the first house.
If the amount of material dedicated to the second of the two houses of assembly is overwhelming, authoritative texts on the first house are few and far between. There exist, of course, countless monographs on public buildings, town halls and community centers. But for all their helpfulness, these tend to dwell on the specifics of the second house rather than delving into the generalities of the first. They tend to offer us, to quote Quatremère de Quincy’s formal definition of the terms, particular models rather than exploring the more vague yet potentially more fecund nature of the type behind those models. While a good architect will know as many models as an accomplished lawyer or doctor knows case studies, with models there always remains a danger of getting lost in the contingencies of the individual case while losing sight of the building’s most vital reasons for being. To subscribe to the kind of (arche-)typological thinking suggested by Quatremère is to attempt to probe deeper (and so, to eventually go further) than those schools of typological thought based directly on function or form: it is to imagine the essential nature of a space free from the binds of time and circumstance.
Attempts to evoke the qualities of that metaphorical first house of assembly have been as constant in architecture’s history as their manifestations have been fragile. Now, as ever, that space is challenged by forces that would undermine it. Today these challenges come in many forms: the private branding of public space, the tendency to reduce public architecture to mere spectacle, a private retreat from the public sphere, the gradual loss of common symbols and rituals around which to gather, etc. We recognize the fragility of our spaces of appearence and this is one reason why we value them so much when we find them. (Michael Merrill)
If the amount of material dedicated to the second of the two houses of assembly is overwhelming, authoritative texts on the first house are few and far between. There exist, of course, countless monographs on public buildings, town halls and community centers. But for all their helpfulness, these tend to dwell on the specifics of the second house rather than delving into the generalities of the first. They tend to offer us, to quote Quatremère de Quincy’s formal definition of the terms, particular models rather than exploring the more vague yet potentially more fecund nature of the type behind those models. While a good architect will know as many models as an accomplished lawyer or doctor knows case studies, with models there always remains a danger of getting lost in the contingencies of the individual case while losing sight of the building’s most vital reasons for being. To subscribe to the kind of (arche-)typological thinking suggested by Quatremère is to attempt to probe deeper (and so, to eventually go further) than those schools of typological thought based directly on function or form: it is to imagine the essential nature of a space free from the binds of time and circumstance.
Attempts to evoke the qualities of that metaphorical first house of assembly have been as constant in architecture’s history as their manifestations have been fragile. Now, as ever, that space is challenged by forces that would undermine it. Today these challenges come in many forms: the private branding of public space, the tendency to reduce public architecture to mere spectacle, a private retreat from the public sphere, the gradual loss of common symbols and rituals around which to gather, etc. We recognize the fragility of our spaces of appearence and this is one reason why we value them so much when we find them. (Michael Merrill)