Presentation to Memphis Chapter, A.I.A.

Francis Mah — November 10, 1977

This talk was given to the Memphis chapter of the American Institute of Architects in November 1977. Mah had been practicing for twenty-five years and was executive vice president of Walk Jones & Francis Mah, Inc. He opened by admitting he didn't like giving talks, mostly because "as I get older, there seem to be more questions than answers."

I don't like to give talks because I usually panic at the idea of public speaking, but mostly because, as I get older, there seem to be more questions than answers.

I agreed to talk tonight because it might be helpful to the younger architects to hear the public confession of a repentant architect. My contemporaries will learn little from my talk because their experiences have been similar to mine, and because they are probably as jaded as I am now.

I will try to make this talk as honestly as possible, telling of mistakes, surprises and expectations; unlike the presentations that you and I have heard, when you wonder: if that guy is so good, why are his buildings so bad.

I said earlier that there were more questions than answers. It is an awareness that comes, not in school but in your first job. You have just finished architectural school at great cost to your parents and probably to your own future with student loans and the like, you have learned all the school can give you, but your employer says you know nothing. To know everything and still know nothing is a paradox that stays with you for a long time until you realize the amusing irony that most of your teachers never practice.

The practice today bears little resemblance to the practice in the past. There are no Fountainheads with Howard Roarks lurking in the background with explosives — liability insurance is too expensive. Although, there are a couple of buildings of mine I would like to blow up, and I know of many by others that should be blown up. There are no individuals like Frank Lloyd Wright with flowing mane and cape, nor Stanford White and his girl on the red velvet swing. There are no visionary dreamers like John Ruskin or Sir Thomas More. They are all gone forever. I am not suggesting that the good old days were all good, for, when Michelangelo was plastered against the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he was in no position to negotiate with the Pope about extra services or even overtime pay.

The practice today is very different. Like big business, its goal is profits. But, unlike big business, the architect must develop a good product to stay in business and unlike big business, the major part of his profits is not money, unfortunately, but the satisfaction of doing something good.

The client is also different. There are few individuals; most clients are an amorphous blob, whether bureaucratic, corporate, or institutional, with conflicting demands and uncertain goals. He looks like this, especially on Monday mornings. Middle management is even worse — building committees, the medical staff or the maintenance crew. They make no decisions but they give you the hardest time.

The architect must use all his resources to deal with these clients.

In looking back, I often wonder why I was so dumb for so long. It was years after school before I understood the practice. I learned a lot on this project. It was a huge project of about 800,000 square feet. Our original concept was a complex in concrete with a series of ascending terraces rising from Monroe to Madison. Under this landscaped terrace were the bank's security and its parking. The entire complex was framed by two towers, one for the bank, the other for a hotel.

Carl Morse was our construction consultant and he rejected our scheme, because, as I learned from him, buildings were investments to be paid out as quickly as possible. The design objective was to maximize the amount of rental space within the building area. It was to develop a repetitious module to accommodate tenants of all needs and sizes and as a consequence of that act, develop repetitious columns, beams, windows, etc., all of the same size for the greatest construction savings.

Given those constraints, I studied all the glass boxes that everyone was doing at that time — SOM, Harrison and Abramovitz, etc. This was in the Fifties, energy was cheap, the country was comfortable, as comfortable as Eisenhower was on the golf course.

It became obvious to me, that if one is going to do a glass box, copy the best, which was Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building.

This building was to me, the epitome of the age of technology. Its order, simplicity and clarity was a triumph of the mind, speaking of logic and reason. Its proportions were exquisite — the window, the spandrel, even the bays at the plaza level were proportioned to the Greek idea of perfection, the Golden Mean.

The building cost $17 per square foot, cheap even at that time. Bankers and people from all over the country came to see it. They were pleased with the design and cost, and hired Carl Morse and every other consultant on the job except us, which was the other lesson I learned on this job — humility.

We did other glass boxes, exceptions were dealt with as directly, the trusses for a clear span were used to lift this room into the air to create an entry porch.

With the development of reflective glass, the glass boxes became prismatic volumes to catch and reflect the nuances of light on its surfaces.

The massing of our buildings is the result of meeting program and budget requirements. The program for this project developed a building 100 feet square by 100 feet tall. As an abstraction, it could have been a giant cube on its site, except for the needs for windows and doors.

First, we cut out the corners to provide windows. Next, we articulated the stairs, to provide other windows and increased its verticality. Since the stairs must provide access to the roof, we raised the walls to line them up with the stairs, increasing its verticality.

At this point, the appropriate expression was that of a bearing wall. However, my engineer said it would be more economical framed as a post and beam. We were faced with a philosophical dilemma: do you fake it and get it within the budget, or do you keep your principles and not build. The answer was obvious, I sold out.

We had 18" columns and 8" walls. On the lower levels, the wall by-passed the columns giving us a 26" wall, in the middle, the wall was flush with the column to give us 18", at the upper level, the columns were flattened within the 8" walls. It was still too skinny, so we cut the corners at a diagonal, giving us the hypotenuse of the side and an apparent wall thickness of 33". This is one example of what architects must do to realize design objectives without adding cost to the project — the cost is to one's principles.

With the development of new building types, new forms were required to serve those needs best. Gradually, there was a need for multiple cores to provide the proper distribution of services.

Sometimes, it was necessary to separate the types of traffic between staff and public in hotel/hospital. Sometimes, as with an open ended plan for phased construction, these cores became additive modules with each increment of expansion. The glass box with its central core was becoming less appropriate.

It was particularly obvious in the open classroom with its needs for subenvironmental controls. Modules were required to bring services to each teaching station.

I realized then, that with the proper interface of the building parts, each part loses its own identity and is fused into a giant composite in the process. The building was reduced to its simplest and most rudimentary form, consisting of only two components, one vertical, one horizontal.

Because of its simplicity, it was adaptable to become a building system and it created a new scale and modulated its spaces with a different order.

For the first time, we can give form and structure to the energies that create the life support systems for all buildings — because a building is not just a pile of stone, it requires a structure.

These life support systems represent better than 50% of the cost of buildings but they are still largely ignored by architects in their program and design, and are usually relegated to the engineer to put somewhere.

At this point in time, it occurred to me that if all matter and life on earth follow basic physical laws. Even in the simplest chemical compound, the bond between the elements has only one specific arrangement to form that compound. It also has the capacity to reject any superfluous or redundant parts. The DNA with its double helix structure consisting of four basic parts spells out the genetic code for all the varieties, abundance, and complexities of life.

Surely, if all matter and life on earth obey these simple laws, why not buildings.

If that assumption is right, then there must be an underlying cellular order for all buildings. That order must have these characteristics:

1. The proper interface of all building subsystems will give the building services their form and structure.

2. A design concept will be appropriate only if it serves both program and service needs optimally.

3. There is only one specific arrangement of services that will serve that program need best.

4. This duality between program and service will exist at any scale.

5. Its expression will be honest, delight in the unexpected and will be void of any premeditated images.

And, if those characteristics are true, then we can begin to perceive building in a new way. We will be able to enlarge our vision to make our buildings like this: water, rocks, fish, leaves, bamboo. A wise man intuitively came to the same conclusion when he compared women built like this to brick houses.

We don't have time to discuss other aspects of the practice — environment, water, trees, topography; sensory, light, color, texture; energy, conservation.

But I would like to spend my remaining time to talk about something I know nothing about — the future of the practice.

The history of architecture to me consists of three parallel developments.

The first was in man's prehistory when there was a balance between man and his resources that provided him with food and shelter.

The second occurred in 500 BC when the Greeks developed its archetype, in the Parthenon, which created a hierarchical order that never existed before. It was a compelling form and it persisted throughout the history of architecture and in a perverse way, still persists in every suburb in this country today.

The third development started in the 18th Century in England with the Industrial Revolution when man aided by his science and technology exploited all his resources so that today, those resources are all but gone.

I don't think the future is in its technology with its questionable solutions and serious environmental consequences. Nor is the future in its archetypes, for forms developed out of form, void of contents, soon become stylistic pretensions, a parlor game for elitists and dilettantes.

I think the future is in man's prehistory, before his fall from grace, when he dealt with design problems directly and honestly. Forms were shaped by their needs, not frivolous styles, which explains why his tools — axe, saw, scythe — his musical instruments — flute, violin — his buildings — barns, silos, bridges — still exist in their original forms today.

I think we can use this simple philosophy for our future buildings to develop forms that will be appropriate and economical to meet the increasing needs of a growing population.

I think it can provide us with alternatives to the blight, squalor, and ugliness of our cities, which are now formed by those buildings which represent 95% of the construction in our cities — all the junk we are conditioned not to see.

With its timeless quality, these forms will have a larger role to shape and improve the quality of our public spaces.

With its simplicity, these forms will become one of many nameless buildings, so necessary to cities because they form the background which frames the magnificent boulevards of Paris, or to give character to 5th Avenue in New York City, or to provide the ambience of the city of San Francisco.

I think we can do it and, if we do it correctly, future artists will remember us as kindly as these artists did with their unforgettable images of their own cities — like Utrillo, Dufy, and van Gogh or the haunting images of De Chirico.