Two Hundred Fifty Things An Architect Should Know

March 21, 2025 10:42 AM

I like this advice to architects e.g.

• 23. How to turn a corner.
• 24. How to design a corner.
• 25. How to sit in a corner.

posted by vincebowdren (44 comments total)

Did not find the words "bathroom" or "toilet" in 250 items. Can therefore confirm that an architect wrote this.
posted by PresidentOfDinosaurs at 10:53 AM on March 21 [31 favorites]

Every room should have light on two sides. - Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language
posted by Lemkin at 11:10 AM on March 21 [7 favorites]

44. The theoretical bases for modernity and a great deal about its factions and inflections.

Depending on whether this is a malapropism or not, it's either genius or really, really strange baseball.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 11:18 AM on March 21

What is this, a Cliff's Notes for "A Pattern Language" (Ishikawa, Jacobson, Angel)?
posted by peter.j.torelli at 11:18 AM on March 21

The Cliff Notes for A Pattern Language are the table of contents.
posted by echo target at 11:24 AM on March 21 [2 favorites]

I enjoyed this a poem. And as a poem format for that end of year general knowledge of western civ quiz.
posted by janell at 11:24 AM on March 21 [4 favorites]

> 33. hydrology is destiny [wiki]
posted by HearHere at 11:28 AM on March 21

I have this on the wall. It’s both an honest suggestion (from Sorkin’s very western perspective) as well as a gentle reminder at all of the inputs that go into the creation of a building. It’s my exhibit A when people ask me if AI is taking our jobs.
posted by q*ben at 11:41 AM on March 21 [3 favorites]

↪ Did not find the words "bathroom" or "toilet" . . . search too narrow . . .
• 143. How people pee.
It's 27 years since a new 6,000 sq.m Named Institute was opened in my Alma Mat. The architects drawingshad been circulated to staff Grade-6-and-above. These senior people were thus given the opportunity to give functional feedback on the number of faucets, fume-hoods etc. to install in their labs. My pal Tony went beyond his brief to say "not enough toilets". A few months later, a new draft of blueprints were circulated, with the same # toilets in the service /stair well . Tony repeated his bathroom comment 2x afterwards to no effect. In 1998, the building was opened, and the toilets routinely overwhelmed the cleaners by mid-morning, so the faint-of-heart trooped off to the pub round the corner to use their facilities.

Four years later, a new block of lecture halls was commissioned next door. In the planning phase, wearing my computer-boffin hat, I was invited to a meeting in one of the 1998 lecture halls. The same architects had won the contract and one of them bounced down the stairs with "So many things were wrong with this series of lecture halls that we've brought you all here today to hear your criticisms". I was too polite / insignificant to ask the elephant in the room question "If you made such a hames of the first edition however did you secure this further contract?"
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:42 AM on March 21 [14 favorites]

Also - PresidentofDinosaurs - who designed all of the bathrooms that you like?
posted by q*ben at 11:43 AM on March 21 [2 favorites]

Can someone explain what this is? I'm not an architect, is this some kind of architect meta-joke?
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:50 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

I've forwarded it to two architect friends who will probably grace me with a small smile of wry amusement, and not mention that they've seen it already.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:16 PM on March 21

Did not find the words "bathroom" or "toilet" in 250 items.

Same for "kitchen". I can't tell you how many places I've been in where a kitchen was clearly an afterthought, or at best a grudging concession.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:21 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]

I would add "What a modern library is and what modern librarians and library patrons do."

I have had it up to my BACK TEETH with architects whose idea of a library is stubbornly stuck in 1950.
posted by humbug at 12:22 PM on March 21 [4 favorites]

See the trick is to tell the architects the opposite of what you want when you're getting them to design the library. Telling them what you actually want clearly gets you nowhere but a building that's falling apart, hated by everyone who walks in, and wins lot of awards.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:25 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

23. How to turn a corner.
24. How to design a corner.
25. How to sit in a corner.

Nobody puts Baby in a corner.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:26 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]

Can someone explain what this is? I'm not an architect, is this some kind of architect meta-joke?

See q*ben's comment. The "argument" that emerges here, if you want to call it that, is that architects would make a lot fewer dumb mistakes if they were much more broadly educated, especially w/r/t the failures of their profession (going back thousands of years in some cases), and the ways architecture interacts with history, entropy, and living people. Plus a mixture of a few other random things that I guess could be considered markers of a general, well-rounded, worldly education, or just general "good life advice" (e.g. "144. What to refuse to do, even for the money." is something everyone should know). I dunno why you'd need to know how to make a gin martini though, what is this, Mad Men?

I'm not an architect (though I did temp at an architecture firm, once upon a time), but off the top of my head, I'd add:

251. The maintenance history of Falling Water.

252. The typical annual operating budget for a church; and for a museum.
posted by mstokes650 at 12:38 PM on March 21 [13 favorites]

Both a humane and an expert list, which is a balance that's hard to pull off. There is a nice keepsake paper edition, a memorial for Sorkin, who died of covid.

Also recommended.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 12:54 PM on March 21

33. Hydrology is destiny

This should be understood by anybody who owns a house, boat, car, oh screw it just about anything.
posted by dsword at 12:55 PM on March 21 [5 favorites]

I think I'm up to 10/250
posted by jy4m at 1:03 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

142. The Venturi effect.
143. How people pee.

What a fantastic juxtaposition.
posted by dsword at 1:33 PM on March 21 [6 favorites]

The reason that architects like this poem is not because we can claim to know all this stuff, but that the practice of architecture is constantly wrangling requirements from a countless number of Subject Matter Experts and Client Requirements, and somehow finding a road through them that also works as a structure and says something as a building. You can either rail against constantly being told what to do or revel in it, Sorkin is making a suggestion with this piece. Unless, of course, you are hired as a famous person to make a famous building, in which case most of this list goes out the window.
posted by q*ben at 2:29 PM on March 21 [3 favorites]

Where’s “how people clean houses”? All the things that collect dust that are impossible to reach …
posted by Countess Elena at 3:01 PM on March 21 [9 favorites]

Kind of like how I feel that car designers should know what it feels like to live in a car for a week if you're over 6 feet tall.

Bastards.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 3:18 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]

Nothing on thermal or acoustic properties. Also alarmingly ableist (riding bicycle comments) and inherently Islamophobic (underlying requirements to drink alcohol).
posted by scruss at 3:54 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

I'm not saying that everyone calling out exclusions doesn't have a point, but holy cow doing that without any other contribution to the conversation is not helping make this place the best of the web.

Why just spotlight a flaw when you could provide a link to the kind of thing you want to see included? Teach me something about what's being missed. Make this conversation, this site, and me better.
posted by Inkslinger at 4:24 PM on March 21 [8 favorites]

so here's something on a thermal snafu that affected millions of apartments in the UK: Cold bridging
posted by scruss at 5:06 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]

"thermal snafu" sounds like an accident with a flamethrower.

Also a good user name.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:05 PM on March 21

Thermal properties :
11. The insulating properties of glass.
43. What the planet can afford.
56. How to calculate the dimensions of brise-soleil.
86. The angle of the sun at the equinox.
142. The Venturi effect.
221. How to open the window.
231. The cooling potential of the wind, including the use of chimneys and the stack effect.
203. Which way the wind blows.
208. Where north (or south) is.

I'm pretty sure Michael Sorkin knew about thermal bridges.
posted by sepviva at 7:58 PM on March 21 [5 favorites]

> ableist

I disagree. Search for "wheelchair" then rewind one.
posted by Jra at 11:42 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

Vastu Shilpa or Vastu Shastra?
posted by wrm at 12:29 AM on March 22

Speaking from a non-anglo perspective here. This gives me bad vibes, ever since I first read it. I'm not sure what it is really, but I have a very strong feeling that it's a class thing. I mean I like Sorkin, but this feels wrong. Maybe our profession is still ugly, and still not dealing with where exactly it sits on the scale from working people to owners of people, this is probably influencing everything I see here.
posted by mayoarchitect at 1:47 AM on March 22

Vastu Shilpa or Vastu Shastra?

36. Something about Vastu Shilpa
Sorkin’s use of “Shilpa” confuses a bit, I don’t know if he meant Balkrishna Doshi’s Vastu Shilpa Consultants, or did he mean Vastu Shastra, ancient science of Indian architecture. I will assume it’s the latter, given that item is preceeded by “something about Feng Shui” [archimom]
posted by HearHere at 2:23 AM on March 22 [1 favorite]

Architecture is one of the Things Metafilter Does Not Do Well™.
posted by signal at 4:35 AM on March 22

251. The maintenance history of Falling Water.

I've never been a fan of FLW, and especially of Falling Water. Yeah, kind of neat, but as a place for humans to actually live, not so much. I'm in favor of letting it fall apart as an example and and exercise in why modern architecture sucks and not to do. So many other beautiful buildings we've abandoned that would have taken much less in maintenance to keep alive.

There ought to be a law against putting a Prairie Style house with it's flat roof anywhere that it really rains or snows. A flat roof belongs on an adobe house in the desert. One of the cardinal laws of architecture should be to work with the terrain and the weather along with human needs and constraints. Of the two, this FLW house garners less attention and yet fits where it's built much better. Not so sure of how it's faring longevity wise, but if you like FLW, here's one of his houses that's pretty impressive. Having been in both places, as far as livability, IMO it winds hands down over Falling Water.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:56 AM on March 22 [4 favorites]

Can someone explain what this is?

7. Everything possible about Hatshepsut’s temple (try not to see it as ‘modernist’ avant la lettre)

Hatshepsut in her temple [egymonuments] constructed a facade that follows deep into the past an idea central to Modern architecture: form ever follows function [laphamsquarterly]

I'm not an architect, is this some kind of architect meta-joke?

the meta-joke (if there is one) is a fascist, Philip Johnson, tried to market architecture as a brand: International Style/‘modernist’
posted by HearHere at 7:10 AM on March 22

mayoarchitect, I kept thinking that it was too devoted to showing that the architect was an elite consumer and "from nowhere". Even familiarity with traditions from around the world can be consumerist and... de haut en bas? Condescending in the older sense, the sense that assumes there is a higher and a lower and attention from the higher to the lower is generous.

Which is not a generous reading of what is a fun and interesting list; but my experience of star architecture in my city has not led me to be generous. The more international the name, the less well adapted to the site and use -- and how could this not be? Being international and busy leaves you so much less time and subconscious to understand a place. It's probably not even what you're hired for, really.

I liked the form-follows-function article HearHere linked right above -- mostly a summary of Sullivan's popular work, talking about stuff that post-Johnson (?) has come along with "no ornament", but the illustrations are photos of Sullivan's stylized-nature intricate detail. Which apparently looked, in his day, or at least to him, like form following function!
posted by clew at 11:28 AM on March 22

Mod note: So much to know, so much to share, so it's been added to the sidebar and Best Of Blog!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 1:18 PM on March 22 [1 favorite]

Where’s “how people clean houses”? All the things that collect dust that are impossible to reach …
posted by Countess Elena

The value of cat hair in quantifying cleanability.
posted by Pouteria at 4:59 PM on March 22 [2 favorites]

The more international the name, the less well adapted to the site and use -- and how could this not be?

The term ‘critical regionalism’ was first used by architectural theorists Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre in their 1981 essay ‘The Grid And The Pathway’. It was later reinterpreted most famously by the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton in his 1983 essay ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points For An Architecture Of Resistance’. He presented it as an ‘arriere garde’ solution to the universalism of modern architecture, or the nostalgia and scenography of postmodernism and regionalism – styles that dominated the built environment during the 20th century. The essay recognized context, topography, climate, and tectonics as integral to buildings that adhere to and enrich their spatio-temporal location while abstaining from overt preoccupation with the novel [re-thinkingthefuture]

posted by HearHere at 4:51 AM on March 23

I recently met a renowned architect and interior designer (“but never on the same project,” she told me) in a relatively intimate and at-length setting, where she shone like a jewel. She went to business school and worked as the personal assistant to a fashion designer you’ve heard of. She got that job because she is kind and compassionate in every aspect, and because she understands all of the items and things like the items on this list. She still knows and uses that info in her role(s) today, and what she doesn’t know, she hires people for, without involving her ego. Despite her past clients, she doesn’t have an authoritarian, oligarchal or fascist cell in her body—she’s one of the good ones.

Reading this reminded me very much of her, and today I’m going to try to emulate her. That includes not sending that list to her. From me, to her, sending it might come off as presumptuous and arrogant.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:11 AM on March 23 [1 favorite]

I kept thinking that it was too devoted to showing that the architect was an elite consumer and "from nowhere"

I can see how this list might land as such, but Sorkin had a pretty solid track record, as both an architect and a critic, of vigorously opposing that kind of disembodied expertise.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 7:36 AM on March 23

Every room should have light on two sides. - Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language

When I was about 10, my dad built—with his own two hands—a fancy new house for us to live in. I had an enormous bedroom of my own, in a corner of the house. It was a long rectangle, and the only window was on the short wall. I never forgave my dad for building me a corner bedroom with only one window in it. To be fair, this was in the throes of the energy crisis of the 70s, but still. My best friend lived next door, in a house built just before ours, and their corner bedrooms all had windows in both walls.
posted by Well I never at 8:28 AM on March 23

Are we certain this isn't a song by David Byrne
posted by gusandrews at 9:42 AM on March 23