All Buildings Are Interesting

Kate Wagner Mar 15, 2018

"Consider this statement: All buildings are interesting. There is not a single building that isn't interesting in some way."

1. The author's idea

To say that something is interesting is not a qualitative statement - it does not imply that all buildings are “good” or “bad,” or that all buildings are Important Architecture® - only that they are interesting.

When I tweeted this idea, several folks responded in the comments with buildings they thought were Not Interesting, yet somehow interesting enough to warrant a web search, image download, and a response to the tweet. Most of these buildings were part of our everyday mundane American landscape: a university building, a ranch house, an Applebee’s. However, as the discussion unfurled, it quickly became evident that even the most quotidian buildings are, in fact, interesting.

Botanists bemoan what is called “Tree Blindness”: a phenomenon where, for most people, trees are only a green background for literally whatever else is going on. Tree Blindness keeps people from understanding the world they live in on another level, from having a personal connection to the environment. Knowing the names of the trees on my street makes each of them special and memorable. If one of them were to be lost - like the hemlock, which is being tragically eviscerated by the wooly hemlock adelgid - it would be like losing a friend, something that was a part of my world rather than an another alarming headline, lost in an endless sea of other alarming headlines.

I would say that we also suffer from building blindness, which is ostensibly not as serious as Tree Blindness, as the consequences of building blindness are much less dire. Still, being blind to buildings robs us of a deeper level of understanding and interaction with the world around us.

Unlike plants, buildings aren’t meticulously taxonomized. Common systems of analysis such as schools of architectural thought or architectural styles are merely one way of categorizing architecture (and a flawed one, as seen by the wide misuse of the term Brutalism as a synonym for “any concrete building ever”). Unfortunately, these designations are often not applicable to the buildings we see every day.

2. Looking at "boring" buildings

At least one person who commented on my “all buildings are interesting” tweet cited the ranch house as an example of a not interesting building.

Most of us would look at the building above and be able to say it’s a typical suburban ranch. When pressed for more, some might guess at how old the house is, placing it in a certain moment in time, or maybe guessing at where it’s located. Others might say it’s a ranch house with a front porch, or that the plan is L shaped, or remark on the different architectural details, or building materials.

Despite being a house that could be deemed boring, by taking a closer look for more than a few seconds, we’ve looked at the house close enough to know that it is different from some other ranch houses in our personal architectural database. Compare it to the house below, which is from the same source and the same year.

These two are both ranch houses, but are very different from each other! When asked why they are different, you might say that the first is larger and fancier than the second, or that they use different materials, or that the first has a porch or and the other a front-facing garage.

Yet still, we see these two houses, which look quite different, and can say they are both ranches. Why? Where did we learn that word “ranch”? Was it from our parents, or from a song, or maybe HGTV? What tells us that these houses are ranches?

Well, you might say that a ranch is a house that has certain characteristics: it’s more horizontal than vertical; it is “long,” simple in its design, and usually has certain features like a picture window, or an attached garage. You might cite a certain time period (e.g. the 1950s) or a certain geography (the suburbs), or a use (as a family home).

Why do we know that these houses are ranches? There are certain signs that tell us that this is a ranch, and not a Cape Cod, nor a McMansion. Still also, without knowing how expensive either house is, there are certain signs that tell us that the first house is “fancier” than the second house (e.g. the architectural detailing above the porch, the porch itself, the concealed garage).

Above all, what does the ranch house itself mean (or signify) to us? An American Family Home™? (There’s a lot to unpack in that idea alone.) A potential fixer upper? The suffocating isolation of suburbia? American conformity? A bygone era where boys were men etc etc. Cisheteropatriarchy?

3. Our own personal architectural

Most of us will say to ourselves, “I’m not an expert on architecture.” Sure, you might not have built a skyscraper or have read Many Important Architecture Books, but the truth is a lot of us have built up a ton of knowledge about buildings that we see or use every day.

One of the questions I get asked all the time is “What is a McMansion?” I’ve started to trust in others and simply say, “A McMansion is like obscenity: you know it when you see it.” Which is true! If McMansions weren’t an architectural (and cultural) phenomenon, nobody would read this blog. You all know what a McMansion is. You all know what a Ranch is. Most of you know what a strip mall looks like.

We’ve built up all kinds of personal databases of buildings. Some of them are pretty general: split level houses, gas stations, water towers, etc. Some are more specific: fast food chains (new), fast food chains that haven’t been remodeled yet, “new” apartment buildings, dilapidated hotels by the sides of highways, office parks, churches that used to be something else, etc. (I personally have a category called hospitals built in the early 00s that were doing Postmodern Prairie chic.)

We often don’t think about why brands (especially fast food chains) brand their architecture as well as their logos. All of us can vaguely picture a McDonalds, any McDonalds. Brands have created their own architectural icons for the sole purpose of sticking around in your personal architectural encyclopedia.

Like I said earlier, a lot of the time we don’t have a common language to describe these buildings. Some people come up with pejorative names to describe built phenomenon (the McMansion is the prime example of this). Others try to define buildings by decade (e.g. 70s malls vs 80s malls).

However, this lack of common language hasn’t stopped hundreds of makeshift historians from relentlessly categorizing buildings, styles, aesthetics, and anything else that can be filmed, photographed, or written about online. And frankly, this work is fascinating, it is important, it is exciting, and it needs to be done.

4. In Defense of the Kmart Scholars

Throughout my short life, I’ve been fascinated with the mundane, because, like most of us in the USA, the word mundane describes many of the landscapes we encounter every day. This long fascination has brought me into contact with all kinds of interesting subjects both offline (historic preservationists, books about common houses and office parks, architectural theory) and online (Flickr groups with 20-something thousand photos devoted to Kmart; filmmakers like Dan Bell, who meticulously documents dead malls; a website memorializing Howard Johnson’s Restaurants, and Tumblrs like @y2kaestheticinstitute).

There are tons of people who are, of their own accord, trying to piece together ethnographies of these landscapes because in the world of the everyday, buildings change quickly and frequently, which makes them interesting, by the way. (How many of the once-ubiquitous McDonald’s restaurants with the red roofs are left, do you think? Some person Online for sure knows the answer.)

On Flickr alone (where I’ve been a lurker for about a decade), there are robust groups such as Vintage Discount Stores, Retail Recycle, Arrow Signs, sub/urbanscape and Concrete Block Walls.. Individual photographers have devoted themselves to taking thousands of pictures of buildings most of us wouldn’t think twice about. One such photographer, Charles Hathaway, a self-reported cook at Mazzio’s Pizza, has uploaded over 10,000 photos of restaurants, hotels, shopping centers, and more, meticulously documenting their changes, what used to occupy them, and their architecture, down to the detail.

Lower-case buildings are fascinating cultural bookmarks. Imbued in them is our collective memory: both of a vast landscape and the individual human experience. They clue us into how people live (or want to live), and how society, aesthetics, infrastructure, and economies change, or are changing. We can read a great deal about the sociopolitical and socioeconomic history of the United States through its suburban houses and its dead malls; its dilapidated factories and sparkling new distribution centers.

Finally, if you look at the buildings themselves for more than one second, you’ll start to notice all kinds of interesting architecture.through composition, materials, massing, scale, architectural style or references (mid-century modern, postmodern; architectural allusions to the past, such as “colonial” theming); and temporary trends (“stick-on” embellishments, or maybe dated color schemes or typefaces).

5. Reading Response

This article is about changing the way we think about classic design, especially when it comes to architecture. It does not just focus on "magnificent architecture" but on the everyday architecture we see in towns and cities. It ties into larger design and architecture movements that care about social justice, sustainability, and making Spaces accessible to everyone.

For example, it involves critical regionalism, linking buildings to local traditions and culture, and adaptive reuse, which brings new life to old buildings. The main point of this article is to show that even ordinary, often overlooked Spaces deserve our attention and thoughtful design. It is all about expanding our understanding of design. Also, the article connected to digital design by focusing on everyday use and including everyone, just as the article talks about the importance of understanding ordinary architecture.

Digital designers can look at simple online experiences that we often overlook such as the concept of everyday architecture similar to our everyday digital experiences such as using a basic website or regular mobile app. These may not seem exciting, but they are important to the way we use technology every day. Designers can focus more on features that help us accomplish everyday tasks, such as how to set up menus, whether navigation is easy, and making sure everyone can use it.

This way, designers can focus on improving the small details that make our everyday digital experiences better, not just flashy or new things.

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