How Architecture Works

I rode the train, as I usually do, when I recently traveled to visit my parents in Vancouver. One of the luxuries traveling by train affords me is time to read a book, often a title from my collection I hadn’t entirely completed reading before. In this instance that book was Witold Rybczynski’s How Architecture Works. As Amazon’s editorial review states, How Architecture Works “. . . answers our most fundamental questions about how good—and not-so-good—buildings are designed and constructed,” and is a revelatory “grand tour of architecture today.”

Subtitled “A Humanist’s Toolkit,” the book provides both laypersons and architects who’ve lost their way with a conceptual framework for thinking about the experience of architecture. According to Wikipedia, Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and underscores a concern for their relationship to the world. From a humanist perspective, this suggests architecture is best considered and appreciated through experience. Rybczynski asserts the most useful entry into architecture is provided not by theories or abstract concepts—let alone rules—but by learning from the canon of built works. In doing so it becomes apparent that while all architects address similar problems—aesthetic, practical, urbanistic—they may arrive at a variety of successful solutions.

For anyone interested in a non-ideological discussion of architecture, How Architecture Works is a great primer. The book is very easy to read, but certainly not dumbed down. It provides a toolkit—ten essential topics of architectural concerns—which helps the reader understand what architects are trying to do when they design buildings. Rybczynkski presents these topics (Ideas, The Setting, Site, Plan, Structure, Skin, Details, Style, The Past, and Taste) by way of anecdotes and a relaxed manner that prevent the book from becoming overly didactic. Notably, How Architecture Works includes an extensive glossary providing a dictionary of arcane architectural terms that are knowable by design professionals and historians but may be unfamiliar to the uninitiated.  

I’ve enjoyed reading Rybczynski’s books and articles for many years. Besides How Architecture Works, I also own The Most Beautiful House in the World (1989) and The Biography of a Building: How Robert Sainsbury and Norman Foster Built a Great Museum (2011). I eagerly anticipate his too infrequent blog posts, each of which is reliably pithy, matter of fact, and even-handed.

He is a frequent contributor to ARCHITECT magazine, and has written in the past for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Saturday Night, and Slate. He also taught architecture at McGill and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Urbanism. From 2004 to 2012 he served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. Importantly, he practiced architecture professionally, so he knows how buildings are designed and built.

Like me, Rybczynski spent his formative years in Canada, he in Montreal (though born in Edinburgh, Scotland) whereas I grew up in Vancouver. Despite the undeniable historical, geographical, and cultural differences between Quebec and British Columbia, I think we share a trait that betrays our mutual Canadian-ness: a pragmatic conservatism that shapes our perceptions of what we consider to be good design. As Rybczynski said in his review for ARCHITECT magazine about a new book on the subject of Canadian modern architecture, “Canadian architects have tended to steer clear of polemics and extreme theories, and have avoided showy architectural effects. Partly this is a question of national character, but mainly it’s just too cold.”

My American colleagues and friends may not entirely understand, but the “national character” of Canadians is a real thing. Canadians enjoy the luxury of not living in the center of the storm and therefore benefit from an outsider’s perspective. They (we) do see the world differently. Canadians are more internationalist than Americans, and less individualistic. The common good is important to Canadians; this extends to an idealistic belief that buildings should be of demonstrable benefit to society and that a civic culture builds cities. There is also no core Canadian identity, which translates to a loose plurality of beliefs. Accordingly, more so than their American counterparts, Canadian architects generally understand for a given design problem there may be multiple, equally suitable results.  

This pragmatism underlies Rybczynski work. He writes:

“As someone who has practiced architecture, I find it difficult to excuse technical incompetence in the name of experimentation, or to overlook functional deficiencies for the sake of artistic purity. Architecture is an applied art, and it is in the application that the architect often finds inspiration. I confess to a partiality for those who face this challenge squarely, rather than withdraw to hermetic theories or personal quests.”

His Canadian upbringing aside, I simply find Rybczynski’s style of prose engaging and eminently readable. Unlike the books authored by some architects—which can literally be exhausting to read—I always find his writing accessible and interesting. He isn’t prone to writing manifestos or diatribes. He’s not a polemicist. That said, he doesn’t shy from staking out provocative positions or calling others out when warranted. For example, he contends in the book’s introduction that "the rationalizations of architects are usually unreliable, intended to persuade others rather than to explain." As architects, we should allow our work to speak on our behalf, which—if it is good—will speak to everyone. We should let architecture emerge from the act of building, recognizing that its spirit is expressed through our mastery of a coherent visual language.

I highly recommend reading How Architecture Works.