The problem isn’t with the house. The problem is the tendency of architects to admire and give their prizes only to work that is unlike anything ever seen before. That’s avant-gardism, the knee-jerk love of novelty for its own sake. Instead, architects need to find a way of recognizing the merit of work that is excellent but does not try to win notoriety by shocking everybody’s preconceptions.
Eck is right. Architects sometimes act like members of a private priesthood, a secret club with its own set of values and its own language. If that’s how they behave, argues Eck, they are probably not going to get hired.
As he says, “We need to get the public to like us again.’’
‘Site Lines’ explained
Site Lines is the new name for this architecture column. The name is a pun, meant to include both the sightlines by which we look at the world and also the lines with which we write about that world. I define architecture pretty broadly: It’s the art of making places. Places may be rooms, buildings, streets, gardens, or cities - everything we build for ourselves to live and work in. Site Lines will explore them all.
