Building the Unseen

Surely among the most commonly quoted phrases about architecture, Goethe’s axiom that architecture is “frozen music” beautifully communicates architecture’s ability to profoundly move us and pays deference to the music’s composer, the architect. It supports an idea that architecture is an art that can be appreciated by fully immersing oneself in the experience it offers, but is to be primarily “listened to” passively as an audience member. While it is a striking metaphor, architects risk perpetuating a potentially deleterious perspective of their profession if it is not questioned. What if, perhaps more accurately, we thought of architecture as a musical instrument, not as the music itself? What if we considered the architect the instrument maker who creates everything required to make music, also recognizing that the instrument is a work of art to be appreciated for its firmness, commodity, and ability to delight? ¹ If we indulge this other perspective for a moment, then we might recognize that music comes from the activation of the instrument (space) by people and nature. The Pantheon is “played” by light pouring through the great oculus, marking time through its slow path along the building’s curved walls, perhaps illuminating rain joining its descent to the marble floor, reflecting the footsteps and whispers of visitors. If architecture is the instrument, then great architecture is an instrument that fully allows life and the poetic to flourish by all who use it. A small, well-loved house, thoughtfully designed and adapted by its owners over time, might be less grand than the Pantheon but can still allow for music to thrive in its walls. And if architecture is an instrument, then a thoughtful collaboration with the music makers, both human and ecological, will likely promote a better result. While lacking the punch and poetic brevity of Goethe, this metaphor is merely offered as a demonstration of how deeply embedded beliefs within a traditional conception of architecture might be challenged to recognize that an emphasis on the user and the unseen impacts of design can potentially shift thinking and practice toward a more meaningful approach to twenty-first-century design—a shift in approach to making architecture that is inclusive, participatory, and socially engaged. Within this framework, this chapter will discuss this shift in approach that guides the projects and pedagogy of the Center for Public Interest Design (CPID) at the Portland State University School of Architecture. This approach is led by the recognition that it is the unseen impacts, the nonphysical dimension, that ensure the long-term success and impact of public interest design work, and the area of architectural education that we are trying to develop through research and strategic fieldwork.