Architecture as Fire

I got to Brussels Thursday January 26th and enjoyed a couple brief tours by my esteemed professor, Paul Gleye. Although I managed to take a few photos, I was ultimately uninspired due to what would, by Saturday, turn into a hefty fever. So, with the theme of high temperatures and energy (specifically the lack there of) I thought this passage from The Timeless Way of Building would be particularly appropriate.

For some context, this chapter is a series of suggestions for naming a quality of architecture that Alexander repeatedly insists is unnamable…

“A well made fire is alive. There is a world of a difference between a fire which is a pile of burning logs, and a fire which is made by someone who really understands a fire. He places each log exactly to make the air between the logs just right. He doesn’t stir the logs with a poker, but while they are burning, grasps each one and places it again, perhaps only an inch from where it was before. The logs are so exactly placed that they form channels for the draft. Waves of liquid yellow flame run up the logs when the draft blows. Each log glows with full intensity. The fire, watched, burns so intensely and so steadily, that when it dies, finally, it burns to nothing; when the last glow dies, there is nothing but a little dust left in the fire place.”

Fire is an especially interesting comparison for me when it comes to talking about architecture. Growing up, I learned to make fires from the best. That is to say, older boys from scout troop 401 which in hindsight were probably a bad influence when it came to lighting the woods on fire but never the less, I now know how to build and light a fire for many applications. Bon-fires for instance are great for their intense heat and wow factor while a log cabin is a more sensible cooking fire that can keep a steadier heat and will often burn longer per log than a bon-fire.

Log Cabin

Bonfire

Pile of Logs

Both fire constructions are a response to a given need of a situation and both fires can be built poorly or well depending on the experience of the builder. The same applies to architecture. Most fundamentally, architecture gives us shelter from bad weather and harsh climates just as fire is heat consuming a log. Well done architecture accomplishes more than shelter however. Architecture can instill a sense of calm for relaxing or generate a sense of wonder and excitement of exploration and creativity. Both fire and architecture are instinctual human attributes but the unique thing about architecture is that it can’t be discovered, it has to be created.

This difference is likely what first attracted me to study architecture. I learned how to feed and maintain a fire but I was a third party to the inherent energy being generated. Architecture requires full hands-on participation of the creator; it can’t simply spring up from a single spark. This intense connection is the reason for terribly long hours associated with architecture but it’s also the reason to do it. I would argue that, indirectly, the profession of architecture has the largest interaction with the public, second maybe only to food and water.

Hopefully this doesn’t put architecture on too high a pedestal. Because of architecture’s ancient, inherent human-ness I believe that anyone can ‘do’ architecture. I don’t mean to say that people should be able to practice architecture without studying it, four years of college debt forbid me from making such a claim. The reason architects exist is that everyone has a small urge to create their own bit of the world but left to their own devices, it often yields a pile of burning logs. Architects are devoted to instilling the energy, life, wholeness, and ultimately unnameable quality that makes people eager to build the next bit of the world.