Complexity and Contradiction

The processes used in computational design are by necessity both complex and contradictory. In multi-objective optimization, the primary objective is to identify the contradictory objectives that emerge in all successful design problems. Complexity is a field of study that has emerged to model unpredictable and highly dependent systems.

The failure of modernism to deliver high-quality environments stems from the failure of orthodox modern practitioners to respect the true complexity of the design problem. The complexity that results from dealing and negotiating with various parties in an open feedback loop of unpredictable agents — such as politicians, developers, industrial flows, and citizens — is an integral part of the design and construction process in largely democratic nations. There are many constraints that are a latent presence in all design projects which are not typically addressed in architecture school.

"Vernacular is the architecture of expedience." — Richard Fernau

The modernist tendency to reduce the problem to criteria and parameters that respond merely to material, efficiency, and production speed surrenders the architect to the naked objectives of the design problem. The skill at this point lies in the ability of the architect to frame the naked design problem in a way that is elegant in its representation, and attractive enough to its larger ecosystem that it survives a potentially tumultuous gestation and is born — or fully constructed.

What we stand with today is a perverse hybrid of modernism and post-modernism where there is an appreciation for decorated sheds in popular architecture. The decoration is driven by expediency — what is the easiest material to install fast and cheap. There is then a negotiation with the image within the community. If the construction is too plain, it risks signifying that the larger company is also plain, cheap, or not creative. The influence of the community on the design is typically articulated in the façade.

Perhaps the most ubiquitous symbol of the decorated shed is the Wal-Mart store. With 8,970 stores in 15 countries, these projects of expedience have a great deal of morphological variation in their manifestation in various communities throughout the world. Wal-Mart is a strange paradox. Never before has any single entity processed as much revenue as Wal-Mart, with more than $421 billion in sales (2011). The architectural presence of Wal-Mart lies in its scale — in terms of sheer size as well as quantity of instances of the gargantuan stores. More than 1.5 billion square feet (56 square miles) has been covered in one-story layers of concrete slab, vinyl tile, conditioned shopping mega-pleasure zone, and corrugated metal roofing. The area of the earth that has been processed by Wal-Mart is 30% larger than the entire city of San Francisco.

How complex is that? Wal-Mart is a machine that turns resource into product and presents itself to the world as a symbol of exactly what it is supposed to be: honest and efficient. The exterior of the Wal-Mart can be skinned to coalesce more with the community. A community that does not have a Wal-Mart will typically fight the presence of the store, as it can be detrimental to local businesses who cannot compete with the prices Wal-Mart can demand for its goods.

"…is it not standardization, that is without a creative use of context, that is to be feared more than standardization itself?" — Robert Venturi¹

We must address convention, unconventionally, as Venturi suggests. How can these stores respond to a truly complex and contradictory model of the social and physical environments that they influence? The model universally accepted within the United States — of approaching through a forest of densely packed automobiles — must end. The vernacular environment is diseased.

Footnotes#

1. Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. ↩