Engineering the future

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2007 by Paul Finch

Towards the end of Vers une Architecture, Le Corbusier said: 'Business has modified its customs: it bears a heavy responsibility today--cost, time, solidity of the work. Engineers in numbers fill its offices, make their calculations, practise the laws of economy to an intensive degree, and seek to harmonise two opposed factors: cheapness and good work. Intelligence lies behind every initiative, bold innovations are demanded. The morality of industry has been transformed: big business is today a healthy and moral organism. If we set this new fact against the past, we have Revolution in method and the scale of the adventure.' There are certain parallels with Business today, suddenly concerned as it is about climate change, corporate social responsibility, and the establishing of environmental credentials in a worried world. Companies line up to assert their claims to be considered 'green', and in the UK, our Prime Minister invites the world's biggest retailer, Walmart, to advise him on low-carbon strategies. Cynics complain about 'greenwash', noting that as yet no food retailer has renounced the air-freighting of supplies from around the world. (Perhaps wind-powered ships will make a come-back.)

Engineers are, of course, crucial to bringing about changes needed to achieve the results that companies wish to parade. This is not an unfamiliar role; after all, they have been at the heart of the life of cities in respect of water, health, transport, heating, cooling, ventilation and light. All have been crucially affected by engineering advances, generally for the better (though one might argue about the impact of highways engineers in certain circumstances). Moreover, much engineering activity is happily oblivious to questions over which architects frequently agonise, for example aspect and prospect, hierarchy, appropriateness, aesthetics. If you want drains you shall have them; ditto roads, tunnels, hot water and so on. Engineers are in the predict-and-provide business, and concepts such as social inclusion have little meaning. Drains are for all.

Architects traditionally relied on engineers to act as invisible friends, except when they wanted buildings to wear their structure (and very occasionally their services) on their sleeve. Safety and functionalism have been assumed as architecture's invisible supports, provided by relatively anonymous back-room boys, psychologically separated from the engineering giants of the industrial age. This model no longer holds, partly because technological advance, particularly in relation to computing, has transformed the speed and quality of service engineers, and partly because of an increasing concern for 'Long life, loose fit, low energy' across the globe. Corb's 'bold innovations' are in even greater demand, and those who provide them are beginning to lead from the front.