Writing Architecture (2/4): Regulations

Illustration: the NTE technical building regulations created by Rafael de la Hoz. Photo: José Ramón Hernández Correa

Build houses. That’s the only thing my mother can remember me ever saying when she asked me what I wanted to be when I was older. So one day she told me that what I wanted to be was an architect. To which I replied by asking who the people were who actually built houses. She said they were architects, people who thought up and drew plans for houses. Yes, but who actually lays the bricks? Dramatic pause. Bricklayers lay the bricks. So then everything was clear to me: I wanted to be a bricklayer, because what I wanted to do was build houses.

That confusion accompanied me for the rest of my life, up until very recently. I went into architecture through sheer inertia, or because I still believed what my parents told me. Take your pick. But houses are really built by bricklayers.

Unless you stop and think that what we architects actually make, plan and build is a place. That’s where things get interesting, because it implies work by delegation: you draw it and somebody builds it for you. And in the last resort, you plan and somebody else does the drawings. And ultimately, you write a series of ordinances or regulations and somebody else executes them, turning them into architectural designs that will eventually be built. It’s a game of Russian dolls. A game of scales.

Regulating a framework for action, which is preferably done by writing, is architecture. I’m not going to enter into criticism of such schemes. Their shortcomings have already been extensively debated and documented. Here I’m talking about their relevance —which I consider absolute. Human beings tend towards entropy. The more of us get together, the faster we slide into chaos. We need to have a framework for action, in writing. We even need written intentions. And a written objective. A reminder that architects make trees but that the really important thing is the forest. And that is truer than ever today, when hyper-capitalism tends not only towards entropy but also towards overabundance. To squandering. To burning our boats. Or when authoritarian regimes, regardless of their ideology, tend (as they always have done) towards the same old arbitrary measures— measures which, even though they may be jampacked with good intentions, are always planned from above and brutally seasoned with expropriations and sundry other irrational impositions.

Someone (in Venice) once said to me that the appeal of Venice lay not in its many unique works of architecture but in the marvellous sense of harmony the city emanates: the fractal nature of its landscape which, wherever you may be and even if you lack any points of reference, leaves you in no doubt that you are living and breathing Venice. The same thing happens with Manhattan, and indeed with many of our own cities’ historic quarters. All this would not be possible without regulations. Regulations, then, are one of the most powerful weapons in architecture—even when they are discredited and far removed from architects’ romantic visions. And talking about them, raising awareness about them, and paying them tribute is a way of furthering the debate over our competencies.

Related articles:

Jaume Prat: Writing architecture 1/4: The book killed architecture, (October 2020)

Text translated by Andrew V.Taylor