Metaphiers and Metaphrands

A city is a large house and a house, a small city, says the ever quotable Leon Battista Alberti, whom I have quoted before here. Like all the pithy architecture quotes about form and function and less and more and the ontological aspirations of bricks, this one lands with an authoritative yet unenlightening thud because we never get to the follow up: in what ways are city and house alike? are they alike in any meaningful way?  And, where does such a comparison get us?

 

I’ve always preferred to think of it as a sociological/administrative metaphor rather than a spatial one. In that way, it opens a way of thinking about the complexities of running a city--the shared yet distinct interests of different populations; the judicious stewardship of resources; the need for a clear decision-making hierarchy.  Although there certainly is mapping of functions and there are metaphorical urban living rooms, it’s not really the form or structure of house and city that are similar, so much as the city as a collective body and the house as household.  

For a metaphor to serve its intended didactic purpose the listener has to have sufficient familiarity with one of the terms to cast the bright light of understanding on the other term and generate the big epiphany we all crave. The city, you see, is quite like a house; and of course, you know about the house.  Take what you know about the house and contemplate the city.  Now, see how that understanding of the city bounces new light on your prior understanding of the house?  What makes a metaphor powerful, though, is when the comparison strains familiarity, when the metaphier and the metaphrand produce a new way of understanding.   

Put a group of architecture students in a room and run that metaphor by them and it oddly may not work so well.  What they know best--and what we all knew at that age--isn't house and city really, it's the campus, that magical mystery mesocosm between house and city, and between the intimate protections of childhood and the big city. The very knowledge of house, of household, that they need to pry open the metaphor is pretty thin: they are a few years removed from the houses of their youths, which were administered and stewarded by others. They—and this is a generalization of course—manage only their own resources; their control over their social space is transient and contingent.  They borrow, share, rent, move. Liberated by technology from the tether of the land-line, their personal area codes indicate only where they lived when they reached communications maturity, not where they are.  

temporary political place-making in Oaxaca, MX,  photo by Douglas Palladino

The monolithic words “city” and “house” aren’t sufficiently exercised to be sufficient anymore. It can’t compete with Alberti in succinctness, but for the Millennials an  urban campus is a great shared apartment; a shared apartment, a miniature urban campus, where "campus" rings closer to its original meaning of a field, a temporary making of place surrounded by something else.  And,  maybe the terms "house" and "city" have become stale to us all.  There is a line of thinking in urban theory that says the contemporary city is unknowable; that the beloved formal clarity and legibility of the traditional city persists only in precincts for nostalgic consumption.  Perhaps the house is equally unknowable, in which case the metaphor holds, just not in the way it is usually deployed.

The Hunch

It starts with the solitary intimations of a problem, of bits and pieces here and there which seem to offer clues to something hidden.  They look like fragments of a yet unknown coherent whole.  This tentative vision must turn into a personal obsession; for a problem that does not worry us is no problem: there is no drive in it, it does not exist.    

Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension

A problem that does not worry us is no problem.  No problem!  Isn’t that the point?  To have no problems?  Hey man, no problem.  No worries.  I don’t have a problem with that.  You got a problem with it? 

Like “criticism,” the word “problem” has a very different meaning in creative or scientific inquiry than it does in casual conversation.  It’s the nature of scientific problems that epistemologist Polanyi is talking about in the quote above, but it applies equally well to design, particularly in design research, that mysterious territory of abduction, selective historiography, and innovation.

I shared this quote with my Comparative Urbanism class to shore up my own theories of problem-setting and solving because the syllabus emphasizes “independent research” on a topic of the student’s own choosing.  The word “research” looms opaque and intimidating over design students.  Am I supposed to be a scholar?  Am I supposed to be proving something?  Disproving something?  How is it all supposed to help me design, when I close the LOC or Avery website and start sketching? How do I choose a topic? A thesis question?  (If you really want to torment a graduate student, be sure to ask, every chance you get, no matter the subject of the conversation, “but what’s your thesis question?”)

It begins with The Hunch, my shorthand for what Polanyi more eloquently explains in his little but dense book The Tacit Dimension.  The Hunch comes from perception, experience, and exposure.  It is personal, but if we are dedicated to contributing to our chosen fields, it can’t stay that way.  So, as we reflect on where The Hunch came from, we have to figure out a way to interrogate it.  Historical research? Primary sources? First hand observation? Interviews? Design research is catholic, small c intended; it opens its eclectic arms to embrace bits of the scientific method, investigative journalism, historiography, and detective work, not to mention leaps of creativity. It’s easy to be transgressive in design research, to spill over accepted boundaries and make inappropriate noises.  Oddly, that’s its strength because its goals, its ends, are quite different from these other forms of research.  What’s important, though, is for the designer to determine exactly what standard of scholarship is necessary for action.  And then be completely faithful.

I have a hunch. I’ve had it for a while but haven’t yet done the research necessary to own it.  It is personal, constructed on my time spent in Williamsburg and Washington, but its significance isn’t limited to me.  It is a good problem, and it obsesses me with a constant background buzz, begging for attention.  It’s this:  That the late 17^th century plans for the two royal capitals of the Virginia and Maryland colonies, Williamsburg and Annapolis-- both designed in the 1690s by Sir Francis Nicholson—influenced L’Enfant’s plan for Washington a hundred years later. There’s a lot of correlative evidence for this with various asides and casual mentions by John Reps, Larry Vale, and others of similarities among these cities, but I’ve yet to see anything that documents an actual influence.  And, I have my own slightly conspiratorial theories about that.  What would I need, aside from simply elevating this hunch to the top of my research to do list, to write the definitive urban proof?  Some correspondence between the father of our country and his architect, maybe something like this…

Dear Peter,

I’m glad to hear you’ll be tackling the Capital City project!  Your letter was quite persuasive.  You’re so right that no nation has ever had such an opportunity…no pressure, though.  BTW, Tom will come around, I’m sure, but you know how he is. He’s a smart guy—won’t let anyone forget that he went to William and Mary—but on this project he’s just not thinking big enough. 

The whole French connection will be a big selling point, even though things are looking a little rocky over there right now. Still I see your point that just a nice plan of rond-points and diagonal avenues overlaid on a Cartesian grid isn’t enough to make decisions about where to locate important buildings.  So by all means, make use of that Nicholson fellow’s work in Maryland and Virginia, but let’s keep that to ourselves.  Mentioning an English precedent?  Too soon, Peter. Too soon.

Cheers,

GW