Posted by  Paul Malo on February 01, 2002 at 10:47:50:

In Reply to:  Re: Critique of the Super Stars posted by Richard Haut on February 01, 2002 at 09:49:15:

Simon posted a quotation on the student forum:

"A good question is greater than the most brilliant answer."
Louis Isidore Kahn

The problem frequently encountered with both the visiting super stars and the resident practitioners is that both may be more interested in solutions than problems.

Often the celebrity architect has a predesigned project--the building he wants to do next--or else, like a successful author, he is expected to continue to recplicate his admired work without deviation. On the other hand, most practicing architects are not venturesome in exploring new solutions--let alone spending much energy in asking new questions. Generally the rule is to stick to the tried and true. We know how to do this well--why gamble on anything different?

Furthermore, as I can attest from experience, the overhead of carrying a staff and maintaining support services is a real consideration for the practitioner. Unlike the academics, who have time and leisure with a guaranteed stipend to speculate about new questions, the incentive for the practitioner is to get the job done as expeditiously as possible. Asking new questions is not the way.

One of my mentors observed that most architectural progress (or at least more architectural thought and exploration) occurs in slack periods, when practitioners are not fully occupied cranking out work . In this sense the Great Depression, for instance, although a time of hardship for individual architects, may have been a more productive time for architecture than the boom years after World War II, when architects became "corporate" and highly productive of often banal work.

It's not coincidentaly that Kahn was an academician first, and a practitioner second. It's not coincidentaly that Corb never expanded his cramped, alley-like office on the Rue de Sèvres, to become a production operation. He also (as I have heard, but never confirmed) generally spent half a day painting--his "research," perhaps.

The point is that those who contibute most to architecture are not those who build the most buildings, but those who devote the most thought (like Kahn and Corb) to asking new questions.

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