Risk: A Letter from the Editor
Experience Manifest in Post-War Sarajevo
I spent my first morning of architecture school lugging a set of Francis D.K. Ching books across campus, only for them to go largely untouched for the rest of the year. Instead of learning how to draw the perfect floor plan, we spent weeks sketching shadows and building cubes. Hundreds of them. We made lovingly detailed drawings of household objects (egg beaters, garden shears, door locks) and explored their various states of motion in model and collage. We attempted to understand abstraction by diagramming classical paintings. And always, we presented our work in front of our peers and professors.
At the time, these exercises were frustrating - not just for me, but for the entire class. We signed up to study architecture. So why weren't we modelling and drawing buildings?
What we didn't realise at the time (and what we only came to appreciate later) is that we were being introduced to the principles at the very core of architecture and design. We weren't being taught how to make architecture, but how to think like architects.
We learned pretty quickly that there was no such thing as a "right answer". We learned how to defend our ideas, but also how to understand and accept criticism. And we learned not to be precious with our work: to redraw, rebuilding, and rethink constantly.
In later years, we learned the "stuff" we initially expected: how to draw that floor plan, what makes abuilding passive, how structures stand. Combined with criticality and evaluation, these skills allowed us to develop increasingly complex projects that were both practical and thoughtful. Like architects do.
While architectural education varies (sometimes dramatically) from school to school, it nearly always comprises those twin cores: the qualitative (the way of thinking, or the "why" of architecture) and the quantitative (the way of doing, or the "how" of architecture.) Where qualitative skills are subjective and developed laterally, quantitative skills are objective and learned linearly. The quantitative aspects of architecture are about answers, the qualitative ones are about questions. (There are no right answers in design, but there are in force equations.)
In school, these two elements are weighted and taught with roughly equal importance. But somewhere in the transition to professional practice, the scales tip. Working life as an architect has a lot more to do with answers than questions, and often means prioritizing quantitative goals over those with less obvious incentives. Making time to discuss and critically evaluate work is peripheral when there are deadlines to
follow and budgets to meet.
The result is a business model that supports safe, results-driven design practices, but doesn’t encourage the evolution of ideas that can only come through investigation. Projects of the same type tend to repeat
the same architectural orthodoxies (you may notice this in the diagram and project sections), and result in functional buildings with pre-proven outcomes.
In many ways, this is what makes large-scale architecture projects possible. Buildings require immense capital investment – investment more readily made when there’s some assurance of outcome. But this
narrow focus can make a casualty of creativity, of exploration – of risk.
The Opacity Initiative (of which this book is an early exercise) intends to balance the scales, reinvigorating a culture of discourse and exploration within everyday practice. In August 2016, we held a juried review at the University of Minnesota, inviting five outside critics to look in at projects submitted by HDR’s various offices. Where deserving, projects were awarded “selected” or “mentioned” status, denoting the most admired and most discussed work, respectively. Like any time you present yourself or your work, this felt like a risk. The jurors were under no obligation to award any project anything if it was not truly deserved. But, risk or not, it was (and is) invaluable feedback. Criticism, when given and received in the spirit of progress, broadens the outlook of all participants. Outside perspectives allow us to see our own work not just from new eyes, but from new minds.
Opacity is still new, and many of the opportunities afforded by maintaining a culture of criticality and risk are still opaque to us. There is more we can do, and much we can learn. The benefits of rediscovering the qualitative approach will be inherently difficult to quantify, and will likely be frustrating (just as it was in school). But balanced with continued expertise in the quantitative, it has the potential to enrich our work tremendously.
The greatest risk in the Opacity initiative lies not in encouraging ourselves and others to be critical, but in failing to apply the lessons we’ve learned. This is our challenge.