Architecture is Awesome #15: Building a Legacy

The Acropolis, by Leo von Klenze [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is another in my series of posts inspired by 1000 Awesome Things, the Webby Award winning blog written by Neil Pasricha. The series is my meditation on the awesome reasons why I was and continue to be attracted to the art of architecture.

If architects do their jobs well, the buildings they design will be sturdy, functional, and beautiful. If they are, the buildings will be well-used, cared for, and lasting. And if the buildings are lasting, they will outlive their authors, setting the stage for many lifetimes beyond those of the original players involved in their conception. The most-cherished, most-useful, and long-lived buildings are bequests from one generation to those that follow. They comprise the legacy their original owners, builders, and architects leave behind for others to enjoy.

Architects bear a responsibility to pour their lives into the making of places and buildings that will have repercussions for many years. This responsibility is not unlike the tremendous one parents bear when raising their children; each child must be cherished and nurtured to become loving, valued members of the family and society. Parents pass on their thoughts and beliefs to their children, and they in turn to future generations, so they live on as a tradition and culture. In this sense, children are a continuation of the lives of their parents, a biologic and symbolic form of immortality. Buildings likewise provide architects with a creative symbolic immortality, as buildings have the capacity to change the lives of others long after their designers have passed on.(1)

Ultimately, only the greatest of edifices are spared from turning to dust, and their enduring permanence sometimes comes at the cost of losing the vitality spurred by their initial purposes. Whether they will last for fifty years or a thousand, the buildings we design tell as much about ourselves as they do the place, time, and culture of their origin. What we make reveals, in some measure, who we are and were. To paraphrase the Athenian statesman Pericles, what we leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. The important thing is to envision the profound and positive impacts our buildings will have upon those who will use and encounter them.

Life, as we all know, is a precious thing. We all have so much potential for good. It’s incumbent upon us to do something meaningful and beneficial with the short time each of us has on this planet. The responsibility is humbling. The legacy every architect builds during his or her lifetime should be important, respectful, and of help to the lives of the generations it will touch. If it is, that legacy becomes a significant part of humankind’s epic, wondrous, and AWESOME heritage.

Next Architecture is Awesome: #16 Skyscrapers 

(1) Read more about symbolic immortality here.