Here is a Manifesto a la Rachel:

I. A Complaint

There is nothing more depressing and terrible then being a young architect, a student, having a mind brimming with possibilities, (often ridiculous and untried, but energetic and driven nonetheless) and being stomped on by other senior architects and professors:

Why are you doing this?
Code will not permit such a tight corridor! Maybe in Europe, but not here!
Would the client want this? That is too inconvenient.
Who would pay for that!

And they say all this having dealt with the real world themselves.
And that is exceptionally disheartening.

It’s as if the young architect is beaten into submission before they even get a hold of their diploma. There will be lawsuits! There will be budgets! There will be code! And somehow, you must change the world with your design despite these restraints that are placed on you, even before you are given the opportunity. We graduate with a hoard of monkeys already on our backs – the domineering client, brandishing a glossy-paged magazine article praising the beauty of some New-England gabled-wonder. The building inspectors and attorneys and historic commissioners: moaning, groaning and making those ‘tisk-tisk’ noises as if it were the only sound they were capable of making. We haven’t even met them yet but we already feel their weight and our hands and minds sigh with fatigue.

How do we remedy this? We don’t dump the client – it for them that we build. We do have a duty to design for them. Like the mother who loves her rambunctious, pain-in-the-ass child, we can’t leave them, we’re connected. We must guide them, help them, look out for them. We can give them something that no one else can provide. We must affirm our ability to deliver what no one else can. Also, we cannot dump the regulators of building, whomever they may be. We just can’t. Unless we want to design from a courtroom or pay fines through our noses.

We must change the way that these publics see architecture. We must do this through example. We must make good design accessible to all, not just to a television network of China or the worshippers of Barcelona. Good design must be touched, tasted, experienced. It must be felt. To know good design is to want good design. I think of a good friend of mine, who detested fish. It smelled, it was slimy, how could it taste anything but terrible? And then, with encouragement, he tried sushi – beautiful, perfect, pure sushi. It wasn’t from some specialty shop in New Japan – it was from the university dining hall. It was readily available. He paid the three or so dollars, picked up his chopsticks, clumsily brought the little piece to his lips… and suddenly, the ingredient he had disdained for so long was suddenly delicious. He then craved sushi – and not just the California roll. He wanted salmon sashimi, an exceptionally fishy fish. He savored it all. He tried new sushi from new places. He was welcomed into a new culture through the food he experienced. Likewise, one can welcomed into a culture of Architecture through their designed environment.

People must be exposed to design, to live it, to breathe it, to have it pull at their heartstrings and affect their emotions and physical state. Perhaps it is not beautiful or spiritual – the people have felt this before – but it exists, it IS. It is like the smell of a gas station or that of a cow pasture, or like the annoying uncle that everyone still loves. It is so definitive and declarative in its existence. It is not rambling, and wishy-washy, and pathetic. It is Architecture, not just a building.

I AM HERE, you can LOVE OR HATE ME, just as long as you KNOW ME. To know this Architecture is to be conscious of it. To be conscious is to understand. And to understand is to be know. With an aware populace, a more flexible climate can emerge in the realm of practiced architecture, and true leaps and bounds can occur.

Toes can be stepped on, people can be made uncomfortable. True invention is never absorbed without a qualm. The sushi is strange – it is slimy and cold. The gasoline is heavy and flammable. The cow manure is thick and sickenly-sweet. But it’s there and you know it. And with these things, you can feel full and content, you can drive to new places, and you can fertilize the corn that will find its way into your morning cereal.

It is thus through the restrictions the everyday has placed on design that Architecture will conquer. Architecture must find a way to slip through the back door, creep into the minds of the modern man, whisper in his ear, slap him in the face, tickle him under the chin and tackle him to the ground. It must do this all through the experience it provides and/or contains. Because experience is what will link designed space and projects to the modern man. Humans live through a realm of experience.

If Architecture can grow some balls and be this experience, then people will become conscious of design. Children will play in the sandboxes of architecture and Amersterdam will not be the only city where good design is offered on par with food and air and water.

Thus:
1. Architecture needs to stop being everyone else’s bitch and do something. It’ll be hard to overcome the initial protest, but it must be done.
2. Architects must realize that architecture must communicate through experience and narrative. It must appeal to the way the humans perceive. Intellectual, formal approaches have a place, as they push the envelope and lead to stimulations, discourse, and invention, while, at the same time, the way humans live cannot be discounted. We live through sensory experience. This includes context, program, and siting strategies.
3. This architecture must be applied to the modern everyday and to the special. The everyday, to get mass exposure and experience, and to the special, so it will not be forgotten and become part of an already jaded experience. The everyday and special will offer different, but equally innovative and good, design, albeit in different ways and levels.

Good Architecture and design will thusly be more incorporated into mass modern society, and a greater climate for architecture will ensue. We not be trying to go on endless missions to the moon. We shall go to mars. We will explore the galaxy and quest to travel at the speed of light. We will Invent.