As designers, we are tasked with planning out how physical objects will be made. The word design is similar in its meaning to the word plan, and although we may have new associations for it, designers are essentially planners. The title of designer, then, stands in contrast to the older title of artist because an artist plans and makes the objects. The transformation of the artist (or artisan, craftsman, etc.) into the designer has been described by many as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The dramatic opportunities industrialization created for the economies of the world meant that a large volume of objects could be produced more efficiently if the tasks involved in production were divided up.
In principle this makes sense, and there is nothing unnatural about this transition from artists to designers and laborers. However, in the process of transitioning from traditional to modern economies, the expertise gained by the artist in creating objects has not been retained by the designer learning in a school or working in an office. This is unfortunate because, by definition, the designer or planner must be able tell the laborer what to do. How can our designers wisely guide our laborers in the construction of objects if our designers have never constructed a single object? Of course, the unique expertise of the designer is the task of producing plans and getting these plans to be sold and used. But this does not excuse the designer from the duty to lead the laborer well, and how can any designer, even the most talented, lead laborers without the fundamental wisdom and experience gained through construction?
In The Artless Word, Fritz Neumeyer describes Ludwig von Mies Van Der Rohe’s emphatic position on the trades,
“Mies believed that those who still recommend handicraft methods in the twentieth century in the assumption that they possess an innate ethical value have ‘no inkling of the interrelationships of the new time. Even handicrafts are only a work method and a form of economics, nothing more… But it is never the work method but the work itself that has value.”
And, indeed, Mies Van Der Rohe’s work had great value. But Mies himself was not trained as a designer, he was trained as a mason under his father who was a master mason. A talented architect, Mies thought differently than many of the other avant-garde designers of his day. He commonly used the phrase “the nature of building.”
“Never have the building trades been more talked about than today, and never has one been further removed from understanding the nature of building. For this reason the question as to the nature of the building art is today of decisive importance. For only when it has been clearly understood can the struggle for the principles of a new building art be conducted purposefully and effectively.” (Mies Van Der Rohe, 1924)
The arts in our society are left in an unideal situation. In a traditional society, an artist of great renown and talent would never experience a lack of fundamental wisdom with regard to construction, but most designers in our modern societies have not mastered any craft, let alone worked as a laborer for any significant portion of their lives. Because of this, we see a lack of care for construction in our designers, and lack of care for design in our laborers. The two are divorced. This is the case in almost every “design” field where designers and laborers are significantly removed from each other. The task of the artist, thusly divorced into designer and laborer, will rarely produce objects of quality. After all, I would ask Mies, how can either the planner or the laborer alone and separate really know what “the nature of building” is?
Why did we end up in this situation? Was it because of technology? The Industrial Revolution? Capitalism? Materialism?
In reality, the reason has to do more with the way we value art as a society. Ultimately, objects can only be produced if there are consumers to sell them to. If the producers begin to lower the quality of their product to make the product more affordable, then they expand their market into larger and larger portions of society. What is the significance of this? Unfortunately, most people (in any society) do not appreciate the amount of work and thought that goes into making a quality product. At least, they do not appreciate it enough to make a difference in their purchasing decisions. Most people can (to a certain extent) see the difference between quality and mediocrity, but they do not value quality more than mediocrity given the price point that mediocrity can achieve.
Therefore, we can say that most people’s valuation (or lack thereof) of quality art is the reason why we are in this situation. By most people, I mean the consumers and the producers, the students and the educators, the employees and the employers alike. Also, this is not necessarily a class issue. “Most people” means the aggregate, across all strata of society. So really, industrialization has only revealed the underlying reality of our culture’s current ability to appreciate art.
Under the less efficient system of the traditional crafts, even great artists had to start as humble workers doing manual labor. This meant that all artists, both great and humble, had an appreciation for construction technique and good craftwork. They had a wisdom produced by dealing with the materials they worked with. Being in close contact with the physical attributes of materials means learning how they are best handled, how they are properly joined, and how they will weather with age. Also, most craft traditions instill a sense of aesthetic taste. Style in traditional societies is not the result of the individual’s whim, it originates as a natural correspondence between the necessities of a culture and the physical limitations of the raw material they have available. All of these factors make traditionally crafted objects well-made, useful, durable, and formed out of practical necessity according to the nature of their function. The traditional approach to form-giving is methodical, precedent oriented, and slow to change. Since change happens at a much slower rate, objects and the forms they are given by craftspeople exhibit a much more gradual, evolutionary development.
Refinement and beauty can only occur after years of resolving practical considerations and harmonizing all of the demands placed on the object by humanity and the laws of nature alike.
Regardless of the economic system, the tradition, or the production method, those years of discovery and adjustment must be put in for anything like truly great work to be made.
Maybe this is the nature of building.
If we use the term “building” liberally, “the nature of building” can apply to a shoe, a chair, a poster, a mural, a coat, a car, a tea kettle, a house, or even a space ship. With each object, there are unique conditions, limitations, and necessary functions. The extent to which we understand these factors will be the extent to which our work is worthy of the term “art.”