What is a Great Architect?

While at GHOST, I filled pages upon pages with notes, with sketches and scribbles.

Much of what I wrote centered about beautiful details, admirable intentions, great materiality… I was so impressed with skill, talent, insight, and approach. I began grappling with the question of what I could learn from these great buildings and these great architects. With how I could be part of the development of a body of work which was that compelling. How can I grow as an architect, and consistently have that joy of actually contributing to something?

In thinking about how to become a great architect, I realized I’d never fully taken on the task of articulating what it means to be great. So, what is a great architect? And I don’t mean to talk just about people whose buildings are renowned. I mean talented designers, whose work gets built, whose work is livable and lovable, and whose work lasts.

A great architect is someone who gets it. Someone who is capable of synergy. Because great architecture is about that incredible moment when everything comes together. It is the material, spatial, structural, and emotional construct which becomes the great space, that the architect has to be able to conceive of.

A great architect is detail oriented – because, the devil is in the details, and because the way that your hand slides down the rail of the stair really is integral to whether or not the building’s great, and so is whether or not it keeps out water, for 20 or 50 or 100 years.

A great architect strives for balance between being creative and pragmatic. Because we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, when what has been done actually works. And because we need to understand, always, that what has been done is not the only option. A great architect sees the potential that others cannot. A great architect’s solutions are different, not just for the sake of difference, but for the joy of novelty and for the incredible appropriateness of the response to the need.

A great architect is incredibly curious. And not only curious, but a life-long learner, someone who seeks knowledge. They know enough about the material the client desires to understand right from the parti sketch, what is possible, probable, desirable, and how far the limits can be pushed. The great architect knows how to incorporate the realities their construction will encounter into their conception, their creative notion of what should be. Without being limited by what has been done before, mind you, the great architect conceives of things which are doable, efficient, logical, constructable, desirable, things that will work better. A great architect is well-read, well-spoken, they know about the impact of color and shape and form, they are a little bit of a psychologist, a sociologist, an anthropologist.

A great architect is attuned and open. They listen to everyone they meet, they soak up the site, they ask questions of the client, they study the masters whose solutions have worked before.

A great architect is, perhaps counterintuitively, highly intentional. They have a mission to achieve, and they pursue it even to the point of being ruthless. Their mission may be for sustainability, afforadability, for art or reflection or the creation of heirlooms. In thinking about this, I’ve realized that it doesn’t even matter what they are passionate about. That only affects who, specifically, will find their work compelling in the end. But to produce great architecture, we have a mission that is embedded in everything we do.

A great architect is highly consistent. The strongest work I have seen in my life’s admiration of architecture has been highly consistent – literally a body of work, a developing theme, a consistent aim. This seems to be a character distinguishing between architects who are great and architects who have done a great building.

A great architect is [what IS the term for a lover of beauty??]. They have an eye for detail, an appreciation for and expectation of beauty. They know about the golden rule, the modulor, about harmonic colors, peaceful rhythms, about prospect and refuge. They are a connoisseur – it does not matter of what, but that their spaces remind us to savor.

A great architect is a great communicator. Because all great architecture is the work of a team, and the architect must be able to convey to everyone what they seek, so thoroughly that they get what they want – or something even better.

A great architect is inspiring – they remind us that THIS is the way things should be. Their work can lift us up because they have such great expectations of the human race, and of individuals.

A great architect is an artist. They can draw, or paint, or write poetry… they can do something which is about that elusive act of creating something from nothing, from everything. About exploring oneself and the world and coming away with meaning, catharsis, value, beauty.

A great architect is not interested in needless complexity, but in simplicity and elegance, in having the least number of moving parts to get the job done. They understand that while novelty has its place, the floor plan must actually work, the flow of traffic must actually be smooth…

The list could go on forever. A great architect has compassion, imagination, sympathy. They are collaborators who can compromise, they are humble. They are self-aware, self-confident and self-critical. They are a study in balancing contradictions. A great architect is just another passionate, hardworking, human being.

Unfortunately, my internet search for ‘consensus’ on what makes an architect great turned up little of value. The ‘greats’ themselves don’t have much to say on it. Sir Norman Foster didn’t include the term ‘great,’ but he did say “you have to be an optimist… you have to be a realist, but you have to be an optimist.” Frank Lloyd Wright thought that it took a “cultivated, enriched heart.”

A great architect is not an expert in all things, but in bringing them all together.

In the end the definition is very personal, because I really don’t mean – or at least, not just – who are the architects getting published today or remembered decades and centuries later. I mean, how can I become skilled at contributing to a comprehensive, complete, elegant structure that moves its inhabitants towards joy and reflection without their even noticing that it significantly improves their lives? How can I become skilled at synergizing my original intention – beauty – with their original demand – shelter – and the hundreds of other factors, such as sustainability, structure, budget, satisfying geometries, code, geographies, technologies, cultural constructs, material limits…

I think for me, the great architects are those whose built projects work and are compelling.

What is the point, in the end? Why does it matter what makes a great architect? Because if I can continue striving towards being a great architect, then perhaps I can make great architecture.

GHOST 13

While in Nova Scotia, I felt that I was in the company of great architects. Many more great architects than I had ever been exposed to in person before. They were great speakers, writers, drawers, they crafted compelling narratives about their work and about their role in catalyzing an architectural team and a client to do something beautiful, meaningful, great.

In trying and failing to write about ghost in a comprehensible way, I very courageously ‘gave myself the summer off.’ While this consisted of not doing much from my to-do list, it also consisted of reflecting on ways to make that to-do list a mile and a half longer!

Distance has helped, but so has the pressure cooker of waiting. Part of why I couldn’t write about GHOST is that I was simply overwhelmed. I couldn’t articulate anything because I had been blown away by how much there was to soak up, and I was saturated. It’s a relief to remember that most of what was presented, and discussed at the dinner table by the rest of us, was a life’s work.

I hoped that by letting it cook, I would be able to convey all the WISDOM. And JOY. And FERVOR, that I was surrounded by at ghost. That I can strive for every day. My questions at the time swirled around what to do with all these convictions?

The speakers brought up a few times a notion they’d been grappling with while planning GHOST – which was to come away with a manifesto of sorts. Perhaps the theme, the desire, the key tenet was, this grappling with how to DO GREAT WORK. How to engage the site, how to engage yourself, materiality, culture. How to create beautiful, compelling spaces, which actually make the world a better place.