BUILDING IS WAR
NOVEMBER, 2010

While sitting through yet another planning commission hearing, listening politely to neighbors’ concerns (all valid, if not necessarily relevant), tip-toeing through building code minutiae with plan checkers and sorting the wheat from the chafe among various budget-busting proposals from contractors, I find myself returning ineluctably to the same throbbing conclusion: building is war against inertia.

Before drawing our swords and stabbing aimlessly at shadows, however, let’s recognize that inertia in reasonable doses is actually essential in a democratic society to slow down ill-conceived projects and to insure that there is time for a deliberative process that considers multiple views and compromise. Without sufficient deliberation, a community’s voice cannot be heard and it will feel – and in fact sometimes it will be – steamrolled by a developer’s juggernaut and the government that permitted it. Even in a non-democratic society, without requirements for open deliberation, inertia is borne of lethargy, but even lethargy can serve the oppressed people by at least slowing dictated projects that are much less likely to be in the people’s interest anyway. Although we all want progress (or say that we do), we don’t want to make mistakes that we may have to live with for generations, and a little inertia to slow us down is probably a good thing.

Unfortunately, inertia, like every powerful natural force, acts equally on all that it encounters. It is neither good nor bad. Inertia's greatest weapon is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy inherently resists change while ostensibly existing to facilitate it. With equal disregard, institutional bureaucracy can slow down a bad idea until a better idea comes along just as easily as it can slow down a really good idea until it loses enough energy to keep moving forward. As Newton first formulated, to overcome inertia requires effort. “Effort” can be in the form of the physical effort to move dirt and lift steel in the air, but it can also denote the effort required to overcome cultural and legal hurdles, to secure financing, and to manage complex processes. Effort can be measured in the tons and yards of dirt to be moved or in the time and dollars required to overcome cultural and financial obstacles.

Contrasting with Newton's first law of inertia is another dictum for the building industry: without destruction, there can be no construction. The very act of building anything destroys or at least displaces the something else that was occupying that space previously, and usually there were many something else's. Usually, the destroyed things are at a minimum some dirt, grass, trees, and possibly older structures. This destruction naturally meets resistance from the defenders of dirt, grass, trees, and older structures. But, the “things” destroyed by the act of building can also be less obvious such as the account balance that is “destroyed” when funds are “displaced” from an owner’s bank account to pay for the project, and they are no longer available for future potential projects. And, the destroyed thing can be completely intangible and abstract, such as when a client's multi-faceted dreams for a hundred new houses are consolidated into a single vision that will become the actual new house (and eventually the old house) in which he will live. The act of building, with its need for financing and concrete decisions, leaves in its wake the debris of all other potential projects for which those funds and those decisions could have been used.

Sometimes caught between a desire to do good and a duty to serve the client, an architect might be tempted to “strike a balance” between the inertial forces gathered against change and the destructive forces that underpin it. Resistance to change is often institutionalized and faceless such as a building department, bank, or neighborhood group and probably well-intentioned, trying to preserve something it regards as more valuable, such as money, buildings, neighborhood patterns, or trees. Indeed, architects must be patient with – even empathize with– the very people that often slow them down and consider that as licensed professionals they have both legal and ethical duties to the public health, safety and welfare that transcend their immediate design problems.

But, let’s not mince too many words into a hash of Kumbayah. Architecture must be constructed to be complete, and it is the architect’s professional duty to shepard her client’s projects to completion. Any architect with an active project is a change agent in society and therefore - always, unavoidably and inevitably - an adversary of the forces of inertia aligned to stop him or slow him down. Government speaks for the electorate. Banks speak for capital. Neighbor groups speak for communities. Architects speak for the buildings. It’s our job.

So, perhaps building is like war (well, it is a struggle anyway) and architects may only soldier one side of it. But, just as passion and compassion are not mutually exclusive, the destructive forces that drive change are just the Ying to the Yang of inertial forces that slow them down. As I sit through yet another commission hearing and prepare to speak, as I sift through a contractor’s list of reasons he should be paid more to do less, as I listen to my client’s accountants explain why my project “just doesn’t pencil,” I trust that the other side is well prepared to do their job, and they can trust that I am well prepared to do mine.