by Andrés Duany
Council Report III/IV, April 2003

In response to an age rife with ecological and social stress, within an economy so powerful that both the urban and the natural are decisively affected by the pattern of human dwelling, for a design profession burdened by a conceptual overstructure consumed by the esoteric and the transient, we set forth these principles:

It is essential that the discipline of architecture take substance from its own tradition and not be subjected to artistic and intellectual fashions.

It is essential that the disciplines of architecture engage the disciplines of engineering and sociology but not become dependent on them.

It is essential that the discipline of architecture interacts with the imperatives of economics and marketing but not be consumed by them.

It is essential that the language of architecture be in continual evolution but not in the thrall of the short cycles of fashion.

It is essential that certain self-designated critics, those who do not possess the craft and experience of building, should not be granted undue influence on the reputation of architecture and architects.

It is essential that architects take an unmediated voice in the press to explain and defend their work themselves. (Architects should affect this demand by canceling their subscriptions to those publications that do not comply.)

It is essential that the design schools accept the responsibility of teaching a body of knowledge, and not just attempt to incite creativity and individualism. Students should be exposed to the general vernacular and not just to the very few geniuses that each generation produces. Emulation of the exceptional does not provide a model for general education.

It is essential that students be exposed to the realities of design practice, not excluding the apprenticeship system, as there has been no more effective and realistic method of education. Most of the finest buildings of all time were the result of apprenticeship.

It is essential that architectural expression assimilate the culture and climate of its region, and the urban context of the building, no less than the will to form of the architect.

It is essential to a true urbanism that architecture be practiced as a collective endeavor and not as a means of brand differentiation in pursuit of the attentions of the media.

It is essential that architecture retake general responsibility for an urbanism that is currently desiccated by the statistical concerns of zoning, building codes, traffic and financing.

It is essential to recognize that while architects may not be native to a place, architecture does tend to be; and that any architect is free to practice anywhere so long as their design acknowledges the character of its place. It also necessary to acknowledge the opposite: that architectural influence has traveled along cultural and climatic belts to positive effect.

It is essential to observe that architectural style is independent of politics. The most rudimentary observation will reveal that buildings and cities are neither democratic nor fascist; that they easily transcend the ideology of their creators to become useful and beloved to other times.

It is essential that architecture not become a pawn in the culture wars. It is a falsification of history to considered a style permanently representative of this or that hegemony or this or that liberation. Such relationships can be easily proven or not with a glance at the production of Roosevelt and Mussolini - they are tenuous to the point of being meaningless.

It is essential that codes be confined in their prescriptions to building type. Typological discipline is necessary to the creation of urbanism; architectural expression is the responsibility of the architect.

It is essential to observe that participation in a permanent avant-garde is an untenable position that consumes those who do. Architects at the peak of their craft must not be marginalized merely because their cycle of fame has passed. Architecture is not a consumer item.

It is essential that the architectural schools be liberated from the thrall of sociologists, linguists and philosophers. Those who are primarily dedicated to other disciplines should depart to their own departments from which they can continue to educate architects in the proper measure.

It is essential that architecture should incorporate authentic progress in material and production methods, but not for the sake of innovation alone.

It is essential that architects endeavor to harness the most efficient systems of production in order to make the best design available to the greatest number. Only those artifacts that are reproduced in quantity are consequential to the needs of the present - we have the problem of large numbers.

It is essential that we engage the mobile home industry, the prefabrication industry, and the house plan industry. These are efficient methods to provide housing. The current low quality of their production is a result of nonparticipation by architects.

It is essential that architects endeavor to publish their work in popular periodicals. How else will the people learn?

It is essential that the techniques of mass production affect the process of design, but not necessary that it determine the form of the building. It is essential that the techniques of graphic depiction, whether actual or virtual, not determine the design of the buildings. The capabilities of computer-aided design must remain as an instrument for the liberation of labor and not a determinant of form. Just because a form can be easily depicted does not mean that it should be constructed.

It is essential to understand that it is a humiliation for architects to accept the star system wherein they perform for the opinion of an absurdly small number of critics. Such critics are empowered only because they are recognized as such by the architects themselves. This applies only to self-designated journalists, not to architectural historians, who earn their standing through research and documentation rather than through mere personal opinion. Historians, on the other hand, are an essential support to the knowledge base from which architecture evolves.

It is essential to recognize that each building should, insofar as possible, be coherently composed. A building is not to be the simulacra of an absent urbanism. Authentic variety in urbanism can only result from the multiplicity of buildings by multiple designers. True urbanism is the result of many eyes, hands and thoughts, preferably intervening sequentially.

It is essential that traditional and contemporary architectural styles be considered to have equal standing, as they represent parallel, persistent realities. They may be used badly or well, but their application and their critique should be on the basis of their appropriateness to context, and their quality, rather than fashion.

It is essential that we not grant contemporary buildings relative dispensation for having been created in the so-called modernist era. They must be held to a standard as high as those of our predecessors. After all, the means available to us are not less than theirs.

It is essential to state that aesthetic review boards are objectionable and to acknowledge a preference for controls by rules and laws rather than be subjected to the whims and opinions of individuals.

It is essential that architects work concurrently with landscape architects in the process of design. Landscape architects in turn must respond to buildings rather than impose their autonomous layouts. The ground is not a canvas and nature is not material for an installation piece.

It is essential that architects, like attorneys, dedicate a portion of their time without compensation to improve the quality of design available to those who do not otherwise have access to professional design.

It is essential that architects should participate in the political arena so that those who affect the built world at the largest scale may have their advice. It is intolerable to have pervasive decisions made by those without an adequate design education.

It is essential that architects vow to support each other against those who, through relativist argument, undermine architecture's potential as a social and ecological instrument for the good. Time and effort spent weakening and denigrating architecture and architects harms us all.

It is essential that we not impose untested or experimental designs on the poor, as the likelihood of failure in such cases has proven to be very great, and they are powerless to escape its consequences. Architects should experiment, if at all, with those wealthy enough to patronize the avant-garde. They can afford to move out.

It is essential to understand that there is a confusion between creativity, which we accept as a necessary element of design, and originality, which is a false ideal that when pursued at all costs is destructive to architecture. The worship of originality condemns our cities to incoherence and the architect's life's work to unwarranted obsolescence.

It is essential that, because so much of the craft of building has been lost, architects allocate a portion of their time to its research and recovery and to the sharing of the fruits of this endeavor by teaching and writing.

It is essential that buildings at the very least incorporate a passive environmentalism in siting, materials and the performance of its mechanical elements.

It is essential that the analysis of current everyday building not result in the conclusion that the people are automatically prone to kitsch. It is pandering to give them only what they already know.

It is essential that architectural history present as role models not just the form-givers but the masters of policy: Cerda, Haussmann, Burnham, Frank, Moses, Bohigas, Stimman, and Madragal should be as well known to architects as Palladio, Mies or Venturi. After all, they had a greater effect on the built environment. Talented students who are not seduced by form making should not be lost to architecture when municipal administration is sorely in need of their abilities.

It is essential that architects learn to respond to the natural, architectural and urban context if it is of value. If the context is not suitable, then the proper response is to inaugurate it to be so. Buildings have been able to be fitting without loss of creativity. Not until this is common will the proliferation of architectural review committees cease to bedevil both good and bad designers.

It is essential that the architectural vernaculars of the world are the subjects of systematic study in schools and, more importantly, that they be available as models for the design process. We must recover the vernacular mind. Good, plain, normative buildings must again be dependably available everywhere and to all.

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