Four Walls and a Roof
by Reinier de Graaf
Architecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form that shapes the world as it pleases. Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession challenges this notion, presenting a candid account of what it is really like to work as an architect. Drawing on his own tragicomic experiences in the field, Reinier de Graaf reveals the world of contemporary architecture in vivid snapshots: from suburban New York to the rubble of northern Iraq, from the corridors of wealth in London, Moscow, and Dubai to garbage-strewn wastelands that represent the demolished hopes of postwar social housing.
Four Walls and a Roof tells the story of a profession buffeted by external forces that determine — at least as much as individual inspiration — what architects design. Perhaps the most important myth debunked is success itself. To achieve anything, architects must serve the powers they strive to critique, finding themselves in a perpetual conflict of interest. Together, architects, developers, politicians, and consultants form an improvised world of contest and compromise that none alone can control. Here is a brief excerpt.
Someone asked me shortly after I graduated, “Why did you study so intensively for so long? Isn’t architecture basically just four walls and a roof?” The bluntness of this question took me aback, and twenty-five years later I still struggle to come up with an answer.
Throughout my career I have tried to justify to others — particularly to those outside my profession — why my job is important and why it should qualify as a source of pride, especially in the face of much of our built reality. Even while writing this (on a train, on my way to work), I cannot help but be overcome by a sense of shame when I pause to look out the window. The vast majority of the built environment is unspeakably ugly: an infinite collection of cheaply made buildings engaged in a perpetual and bloodless contest over which can generate the most “interest” for the lowest budget. Nothing more, nothing less. “Modern” architecture — the kind of architecture most of us claim to profess — hasn’t helped; it has mainly proved to be a facilitator, an extension of the means to conduct this pointless contest, only at a faster pace.
Why do we — contemporary architects — wallow so deeply in the grand visions we offer? Where does it come from, this God complex — the inclination to view ourselves as authoritative on virtually everything? Despite a century of architectural mission statements, earnest treatises, and urgent manifestos, the world seems disenchanted. I have yet to meet a client, a public official, or any user who is truly interested in the grand promises we make, the lofty motivations we offer for our decisions (apart from costs), or, indeed, much of what we say. Let’s face it: architects speak to architects, and as far as the rest of the world is concerned, they can remain forever silent. They should simply get on with their job of designing buildings, which, if they are any good, should speak for themselves.
I often wonder whether we would be better off if we were a little more discreet about our profession, like the old guilds of masons, secretive sects of builders who acted as custodians of centuries-old trade secrets, shared through mystic handshakes, rather than imagining ourselves as the great inventors and knowing announcers of “radical” revolutions (which, in architecture, happen approximately once a week).
The focus on the importance of individual figures in architecture primarily masks architecture’s failing as a collective. The hype around contemporary architecture and the myth of the individual genius that comes with it are convenient decoys that allow us to shed any notion of collective responsibility and to engage in a disingenuous crusade against what are ultimately our own sins. But how much longer can we boast of the relevance of our profession before our complicity in what is being done in its name catches up with us?
Statistics indicate an alarming trend: an ever-growing number of architectural offices of ever-shrinking size, with ever fewer projects in the pipeline. Imagine the ultimate outcome of this trend: a fully atomized sector in which the number of practices equals the number of architects, all desperately in search of clients willing to give them serious responsibilities. Most of their working day will be consumed by writing mission statements. What better way to fill the time between one project (some time ago) and the next (not any time soon)? The smaller the offices, the smaller the audiences for the architects to address. In the short term, a professional scene of many small offices will lead to more visionaries to whom fewer people will listen. From architects speaking to architects, we will evolve to every architect talking to himself.
There is a scene in the film Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders in which a clearly deranged man delivers prophecies from a highway overpass to six lanes of passing traffic below. He screams at the top of his lungs, and the contents of his speech are eloquent and persuasive, but the drivers below, shielded by their steel shells, remain immune to his words. The man goes unheard, but that only inspires him to raise his voice further.
To what extent does this man resemble the contemporary architect — a person purporting to possess privileged knowledge, to which everyone around him appears deaf; a person who stands motionless while every- thing around him is in motion; a person who prophesies from a bridge, looking over the people below (whom he keenly refers to as “the masses”); but also increasingly a needy person, far removed from the wealth with which he was once associated, and, if economic indicators are anything to go by, soon to be a lone drifter, in search of shelter — of four walls and a roof?
