Albert Einstein was 26 when he published his “Special Theory of Relativity.”  James D. Watson was 25 when he and Francis Crick discovered the architecture of DNA, arguably the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetime.  Steve Jobs, another early bloomer, believed that you couldn’t trust people over 30 to come up with radical innovations.

Working for decades with Nobel Laureate Jim Watson and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on developing that renowned research campus, I also have learned that the road to scientific achievement is not a straight line between two points, but rather a meandering, eclectic journey that should encompass the arts and humanities, interdisciplinary collaboration and sociability, and even sports and outdoor pastimes, such as bird watching.  Now in his 80s, Watson still plays a mean game of tennis. Science does not thrive in a sterile vacuum: the broader the interests of the inquisitor the better.

This bias towards precocity and intellectual diversity makes the job of designing science and math facilities for nascent Watsons all the more challenging and important. Today’s students are our future, and that future is near at hand.   We get a few short years to inspire them so they can go out, over the ensuing decade, and nudge the world in the right direction.

How does one do that?  Well, in part, you have to create excitement about science, math, and engineering: design places not simply to impart facts and figures, but flexible spaces where young people want to be, hang out after class, share ideas, and test what they have learned through real world applications. Rather than purveying “pure” or theoretical math, keep it real, as they say: engage students, for example, in using formulas to calculate the volume of greenhouse gas emissions – and how to mitigate them.  And provide venues where they can show off their discoveries to the whole school and beyond.

Students need to know that learning mathematics is not an end, but a means to greater understanding of how the world works. At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, computational mathematics is crucial to molecular genomics – as are the weekly concerts, visiting scholars, and the bucolic campus environs.  I like to think that the architecture there, which is continuing the “Village for Science” vernacular ethos, contributes as well.  Each of these varied facets facilitates discovery and innovation.

At the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) in Missouri, we are trying to apply these principles to a new science and math building for its Upper School, grades 9 through 12.  The design commingles the classrooms for the various disciplines; the spaces are large enough to accommodate breakout areas, varied configurations, and even laboratories in some cases so that questions can be answered both verbally and tangibly.  Think of your garage where you do projects – where a messy vitality inspires enlightened tinkering.

At MICDS, we are designing common spaces for the disciplines to cross-pollinate and engage the larger student body, places for robotics and for exhibiting finished work, venues to drop and roll things about, to launch stuff, to act out ideas.  And just so scientists don’t monopolize all this fun, we plan to integrate the new building with the existing campus, showcasing what goes on inside.  A Center for Community highlighted by an 800-seat amphitheatre will make this new science building welcoming to the entire student body and the surrounding community as well.

Science should not be pushed to the periphery or stand apart like a scholastic orphan or wallflower.  The creativity and even whimsy of the humanities is relevant to the process of discovery.  Similarly, a curriculum that pigeonholes science is short changing its liberal arts offerings.  The two go together, like the hemispheres of the brain; we can’t pretend to understand the world without them both.

Jim Watson once said, “Science moves with the spirit of an adventure, characterized by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, will be simple as well as beautiful.”  Steve Jobs said that we need places that foster creativity: as he would put it, “Why join the navy when you could be a pirate.”

The era of the incandescent light bulb, initially patented in 1879 by Thomas A. Edison, is under assault through a combination of market forces and legislative fiat – primarily because it has been an energy hog. In 2007 the federal government mandated that the bulbs become more efficient beginning next year – although there are some loopholes in the law for specialty incandescent models.

As proof that our hi-tech world is spinning ever faster, consider this: compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs), the energy-efficient upstart that began challenging Edison’s 19th century technology a few years ago, already have competition from LEDs, or light-emitting diodes. Also in the field of challengers, if something of a dark horse at this point, is ESL technology (electron stimulated luminescence).

What used to be fairly straightforward proposition – what’s the wattage? – has become complex and even controversial. Some people believe incandescent bulbs are getting a raw deal, that their light is superior and that they can be made more efficient and longer lasting, for example, through the simple act of employing a dimmer switch. And even though manufactures are producing more efficient incandescent bulbs to meet the new standards, there has been and will be hoarding. Many people, however, are voting with their wallets and a desire to reduce kilowatt consumption (lighting accounts for just over10 percent of an average household’s energy usage).

But with or without them incandescents, the lighting world will never be the same. Soon bulb packages will be carrying labels to inform consumers of such variables as lumens (a measure of brightness), estimated life span and yearly cost, as well as the more familiar wattage (which is a measure of energy use, not brightness). Consumers like me now have more options.

About five years ago, I accepted an offer to try out a newly launched LED version of an interior light fixture designed ultimately to replace the recessed down light. With the help of Centerbrook Facilities Manager Bill Rutan, it was mocked-up in a false-ceiling panel outside the office’s accessible restroom. At the time, it was the first attempt at using LED as an interior ambient light source – a quirky arrangement of 16 LEDs in four rows of four set behind a parabolic louver, shining down intensely and filling the small space with useable light – well sort of.

Some beneficial features of LEDs are their compact size, direct intense light and low energy consumption. Controlling, aiming, and diffusing that light is the challenge. This first brave prototype still lacked anti-glare features – glancing upward at it is blinding – and the ambient light, albeit bright, had a color temperature that was so cool it was almost blue, which is unflattering to objects it is illuminating. The initial LEDs only produced a cold white light (or solid blue or red) and had to be used with filters to get an acceptable warm light similar to incandescents. The filters reduced their output so much that a warm LED was not cost effective. Now the manufacturers have devised clever ways to warm the light with minimal loss of lumens, and are improving production techniques that promise to lower LED costs even more.

Back then, the manufacturer’s rep actually advised me against specifying this product for clients. Because the light source was, in fact, the entire fixture, it was more expensive than incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs (still is, though less so). It had inherent issues with heat dissipation, which can shorten its legendarily long lifespan if not dissipated, and was not especially versatile or sustainable. The diodes could not be replaced individually on the theory that they are extremely durable and long lasting, and manufacturers had not designed for reclamation or recycling. Once the LEDs life ended, in about 10 or 15 years, the entire light fixture would need to be discarded, not simply the bulbs.

So calculating energy savings and labor costs for maintenance and replacement, the numbers still didn’t add up. Besides, the next generations of LED, and the engineering of the fixtures designed around them, would be better, the rep said, and they are. But I went ahead anyway and acquired the unit (it was a free sample), but only for the home office. It is important for us at Centerbrook to experience for ourselves the products that could potentially be used on projects for our clients. There is nothing quite like living with lighting to appreciate its pluses and minuses. So the sample fixture was installed and is still with us, an historical artifact.

As LED technology has progressed and its potential applications have expanded, we have used it in-house and beyond, including: the second and third generations of those recessed down lights; linear pendants for offices, corridors, and classrooms; gallery spotlights; for outside walkways; and signage illumination. LEDs light our newest office bathroom, designed by partner Jim Childress, as overhead lighting and in a recessed strip application that accents a slotted wall feature which serves both as decoration and natural ventilation. LEDs’ advantage over CFLs is not based on “lumens per watt,” or brightness per watt of energy, although the two are fairly close; it is in the fact that LED is much longer lasting, five to ten times longer than CFL bulbs and two to four times longer than linear florescent lights.

LEDs have always been a good option for museums where objects on display are sensitive to ultra violet light. They emit zero UV rays. At a biomass heating facility that we are designing, LEDs are slated to be used for select exterior and interior applications: on outside doors in discrete fixtures offering a concentrated pool of light, and on inside track lights where they are aim-able and flexible to accommodate multiple potential uses of the space.

Other reasons that the purveyors of compact florescent technology are nervous is that LED lighting is more durable, starts instantly to full brightness, is easily dimmable, and doesn’t contain harmful mercury. LED manufacturers have further responded to sustainability concerns by creating fixtures with replaceable chip boards.

We will be watching to see if, and how long LED reigns as king of the mountain. The technology is changing so rapidly that it might not reach the summit before another new light source, like ESL, begins to eclipse it. Judging from the buzz in the industry, it may not be long before that becomes a horse race.

Edison Bulb image from edisonian.com

I can’t assure myself that I know what “current” buildings will look like in 2060, but I’d wager that most of the buildings that we’ve built in 2010 will still be around.  And many of those will be starting to have appeal as “antiques,” considered charming if only for their quaintness and naïveté.  They will not be technically up-to-date; but people will try to make do in them since their age adds attraction.  Why is that?

Here’s why: The more we learn about the universe, the smaller and more insignificant we seem in comparison.  That feeling will only increase in the future, unless society determines, in response to our cosmic marginalization, to pretend anew that we are the center of it all.  But if we can’t pretend anymore that it’s all about us, we’ll need to find other ways to center ourselves, and the past helps us do that by locating us in both time and place.  We like the past, for the most part, because it makes us feel more secure.  Someone, if not us, lived here, and that gives us a sense that there really is a “‘here here.”  It is comforting to feel that we are part of an ongoing continuum of life despite our own mortality.  We are not drifting in the cosmic sea: where we’ve come from helps to tell us where we are and where we are going.

The past also helps us claim our places.  The late architect (and our former partner) Charles Moore once wrote that the essence of building is territorial.  We see great struggles over territorial claims worldwide.  From the Middle East to urban slums, people harm one another to keep hold of their places.  Building in our society, for the most part, is a far gentler way to handle our territorial urges (though I’ve seen some pretty nasty zoning hearings.)  In any case, if we need to claim places so urgently, then historical entitlement to them might help us feel at home, even if it isn’t really our own history!

Clapboard Saltbox, c. 1672

So it is likely that in the future, say 2060, the past will reign somewhere for somebody. They will still need to know who they are, where they are, and need to claim their turf.  Their past (and roadmap to the future) will include both our past (i.e. clapboard saltbox houses or classical detail), AND our current architecture.  People will dote on it and restore it, if it is appealing.

That suggests that we make sure our buildings last, with durable, handsome materials that look better as they age.  Let’s make them flexible, to accommodate changing uses without requiring dismantling.  Let’s make sure they use minimal energy to make them easier to heat and cool after fossil fuels diminish.  And let’s make them appealing with uplifting space and light, a connection to Nature, and endearing symbolism and craft.  Our grandchildren deserve that.  Hey, you know, we’re making the future and not just the present.  We are collaborating with the future.

"Real Modern", Mies' Tugehndat House

Miami Beach, "Moderne" hotels

Now in some cases, the past doesn’t seem so great.  After centuries of pogroms and the Holocaust, European Jews did not find the past inspiring; rather, it was threatening – just as it must be for billions of underprivileged or downtrodden people around the globe today.  So it is not surprising to find that Jews, not just the well-to-do but the middle class, too, were among the biggest supporters of early modernism.  Tel Aviv and Miami Beach were developed in strikingly similar Art Deco/Moderne styles.

The "Mediterranean" Venetian Pool in Coral Gables

A few years earlier, right near Miami Beach, WASP developers from Cleveland had created Coral Gables, Florida, starting with a variety of “tasteful” seed villages that channeled old, picturesque places:  provincial France, Spain, Norman England, and Greek villages.  The Jews wanted none of it; they’d been run out of all those places.  They wanted and needed a future, a new future.  This suggests that simply looking back to find a way forward may not suffice.

And of course, buildings are often a product to be sold (developers actually call their new homes “product”).  And developers sell “product” by highlighting its latest and greatest elements, whether a new kitchen appliance or clean energy system.  Institutions do the same, to sell to their donors.  Sellers always want a “WOW” factor (to use their worn term).  That too often results only in a different appearance, which will, in turn, look old soon enough.  Our market economy loves planned obsolescence.  But is that kind of revolution (as in revolving) ultimately uplifting and sustainable?  Is novelty any better than sentimentality?

So now we’re back where we started, looking to a new future.  But what should it be like?  Stay tuned.

I have a friend whose job is to maintain boats.  He labors on white decks varnishing, painting, and caring for wood and composite materials.  He’s been doing it for thirty years.

Recently he told me he’s noticed boat materials are degrading faster than ever.  He said fiberglass and composites don’t resist chalking and pitting as well as they once did, and even renewable materials, which can be re-painted and re-varnished to be kept spiffy, require more work.  He believes the problem lies with hotter sunlight and harsher acid rain.

We choose modern materials for their sharp looks and durability on boats and buildings.  But if my friend is correct, maybe some of these materials are not so durable after all, meaning they won’t necessarily weather well.  The difference from boats is that we can’t be expected to wash, polish, and wax our buildings.  Buildings have to stand for the ages.

In small samples the cool new materials that we’re considering always look compelling.  Nobody wants to think about how a material in a little sample will look after years of weathering on a big wall.  But we should.  We should ponder how our new high-tech materials will look five years, ten years, fifty years, even further out to the point when they’ve really been battered badly by sun and rain.

We need to be able to visualize how the colors fade and even, in some cases, will change hue and value.  They may become pitted.  They may become rusted, and on the surface they may have hard-to-remove streaks that are plain ugly.  But that really doesn’t answer the most important question: how will the discoloration caused by weathering actually look on the building?  Maybe it will be OK, assuming the envelope has not been compromised.

To figure this question out, we have to push harder and visualize the material over time  in situ –that is, not in and of itself but on the façade subject to the incessant dripping, streaking, and splashing over time that will be imprinted on it.  Will the weathering effect be handsome or ugly?  Making that determination is the hard part, because you have to picture how every change of plane, or every bas-relief element on the façade, might direct water, and then you have to decide what kinds of marks the water will leave, and, finally, if they’ll look good or bad.

Divinity School, University of St. Andrews

I offer a truism here: the more predictable and regular a façade’s bas-relief pattern, the more pleasing its weather streaking will be over time.  For traditionally designed buildings where façade details are organized into predictable layouts of ledges, string courses, window sills, and water tables, weathering tends to underscore façade aesthetics.  But for buildings with purposefully unpredictable exterior, geometries and protruding elements that are irregular or off-the-orthogonal, weathering probably will be harder to predict and almost certainly will be odd-looking.

The architecture of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland offers a case in point.  Weathering of traditional façades there underscores rational layouts of windows and ledges.  In contrast, the angular, irregular elements on the façade of Sir James Stirling’s 40-year-old Andrew Melville Hall, while extremely interesting in the abstract, have spawned patterns of discoloration and deterioration in the field from Mother Nature that I’m sure were unanticipated and that I believe do not contribute to a positive aesthetic effect.

Andrew Melville Hall, University of St. Andrews

This is no argument for traditional façade detailing, but an observation that weathering of façades is as much a factor with our shiny new modern materials as it ever was, if not more so, and that we ought to pay attention to the patterns that develop on them, for the effect can be a surprise.

A Portfolio of Probabilities, Syd Mead for US Steel, 1961

It is time for architects to think about the future; I mean REALLY think about the future, not try to “look like the future,” or contemplate next week, but consider the way-out-there tomorrows, say 30, 50, or 100 years ahead.  And not what it will be like, but what it SHOULD be like.  In this post I will tackle why today’s future has gotten so dark (compared with yesterday’s future).  In subsequent entries, I will opine on the world our grandchildren will inherit with the assumption that it can be brighter than contemporary cynics believe.

Looking back (always a good thing when you are about to look forward), we enjoyed periods where the deep future inspired expectant awe rather than constant apprehension.  I recall my childhood in the 1950’s when the likes of Buck Rogers zoomed across our TV screens, followed by the Jetsons not long after.  Those visions portended progress; the future would be better than today.  GE declared ‘Progress is our most important product.”  But the optimism faded, perhaps trumped by the lingering horrors of wars (hot and cold), genocide, and the A-bomb.  Or perhaps after we reached the moon, we realized that not much had changed in our lives.  We still had war, poverty, discrimination, and miseries and some of our apparent advancements turned out to be horrors, like thalidomide, or the fouling of the planet by energy generation.

In architecture, the promise of modernism also got stale in mid-century with corporate concrete and glass boxes, suburban sprawl and highways blanding up the landscape.  Postmodernism rose as a reaction, but today we see modernism rising again.  This time around, however, it seems to be a faux futurism, eager to be “not yesterday” rather than looking into the real future.  Certainly it has its joyous moments, in the spirited whimsy of Frank Gehry, say, but much recent work seems to evince decadent cynicism.  The hippest architects make their buildings artful by making them cold or foreboding.  You can see this on recent covers of Architectural Record, where we find buildings that have generic-looking cores of simple gridded structures, or plain-Jane boxes which have then been slashed and gouged, as if the architect is screaming “not this!”  If we believe Stendahl when he declared that “Beauty is the promise of happiness,” then these structures are looking for beauty simply by denying the past.  Their point seems to be that the future is not the past.  Of course it isn’t.

The case that I’ve heard from some of these architects is that our art should reflect our times; ergo, a world full of terrorism and repression should be reflected in dark buildings.  I suppose they believe another old saw, that truth is beauty.  I maintain that this is a form of cultural whining.  If things aren’t great, let’s make them better.

Klaus Bürgle, 1968

Let’s get optimistic and think about what might be!  Or better yet, what should be.  If we don’t have a destination, we’ll just run in circles, chasing our tails.  For all the cynicism out there, I submit that we have made progress, technically and culturally.  People are healthier and safer and live longer worldwide.  Our technology, science, and medicine are better.  Our means of communication have improved.  Our politics are better.  Believe it or not, there are more democracies around the world than ever, more openness.  We have a black president, something that was unimaginable until it happened.  We have made progress.  Let’s believe in it, and build on it.

What do we want?  Of course I imagine a world where humans figure out how to share resources to eradicate poverty, and manage to improve our lives using fewer resources, leaving the world better for the following generations.  We have all heard (if not shouted) the need to be greener.  Buildings are estimated to account for 40 percent of all greenhouse gases, so it’s no surprise to hear all fifty U.S. Governors call for buildings to be carbon neutral by 2030.

But what do we want beyond that?  How can we make our places BETTER?  What will make us all safe, sound, happy, satisfied?  What will make our world uplifting and sustaining in 2060.  Let’s think that way when we start our next design.  I will.  Stay tuned.  I plan to imagine possibilities in greater detail, in future posts.