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20 / BUILDING DIALOGUE / March 2020 Reshaping Our Buildings, Cities through Lessons of the Past: Moving from Technology of the Car to that of the App O ne of the most optimistic things I heard lately was a long view, with regard to cities and civilization. The impact of the car, a technology that literally and figuratively drives us apart, is only a speed bump in the longer pattern of humanity’s move to urban living. Interestingly, the car, in its short life, has had more impact on architecture and cities than any change in building technology. Similarly, I expect that the next big changes in ar- chitecture and the way we build are more likely to come from apps and changes in mobility than new materials or architectural theories. If we were to pick apart the layers of a building, we would see the way that architecture is shaped by culture and, in turn, shapes that culture. Look around at the city and you will see the build- ings that form your world. Those buildings are driv- en by both tangible things (bricks and mortar) and the intangible (codes and culture). We often pull these concepts apart to make it easier to discuss but in reality, every building has to address both, and most failed buildings tend to sway too far in one direction or the other. One easy example of the overlap between the two is the discussion about “base, middle and top,” which has been part of the architectural discourse since the first books on ar- chitecture. What is the base, what is the middle, what is the top? This started as a purely technical problem of foundation, enclosure and roof. However, as the technical limitations around structure and weather were overcome, the conversation evolved to aes- thetics and connotation. By the time of the ancient Greeks, each layer had grown to have prescribed meaning and associated rules. In the European Re- naissance, this science and the philosophy of “base, middle and top” became ladenwith rules of geomet- ric proportion. Today, not every building is required to have a “base, middle and top” for historic, philo- sophical or artistic reasons, but they are required to address reality. Buildings touch the ground and the sky; a bottom and a top. What happens in between: a middle. This is not about farmhouses, McMansions or be- spoke sculptural buildings floating in the middle of large empty landscapes. Buildings apart from their neighbors follow a different set of formal rules. This is about buildings within the urban context. Build- ings in places that exist due to our social nature and for our social needs. It is the buildings of cities in particular that must touch the earth and the sky well. Middles serve as easy starting points because they cover most of a building and the possibilities offered by technology continue to evolve. From cur- tain walls of glass, to curtain walls of brick. to amaz- ingly thin concrete panels only a fraction of an inch thick, modern technology allows massive buildings to be wrapped in paper-thin layers. Architectural practice and discourse have become enamored with the amazing expressions of form, function and or- nament that facade technology has made possible in wrapping the middle of a building – so much so that the top and bottom have been squeezed down to their bare minimums: paper-thin ideas. This is not to say that no thought has been given to the base – the front door, the retail level, the park- ing garage wrapper – but it is fair to challenge the depth of those thoughts and built conditions. Many modern buildings have a strong focus on the dom- inant skin expression used in the middle and then approach the base from a begrudging perspective of bringing the middle down to the base or matching the immediately adjacent context. Perhaps a deep- er look at the base could be an exploration of what it means to meet the ground, meet the neighbors or meet the pedestrians. Meeting your neighbors does not mean matching your neighbors architecture, adding more glass or arbitrarily copying historic solutions and motifs. “Meeting” refers to an interaction; people actually talking to their neighbors requires an architecture that facilitates lingering on the doorstep to have a conversation. Adding glass is easy; facilitating civic Andre LH Baros, AIA Architect, Shears Adkins Rockmore In the Details Getting lost in our “tiny screens.”