Debor ah Berke

Thoughts on
the Everyday
First appeared in Architecture of the Everyday (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1997), 222–26. Courtesy of Deborah Berke.

We exist in a culture where heroes have been replaced by celeb-

rities, and fifteen minutes of fame are valued over a lifetime of
patient work. In this climate the architect must become a celeb-
rity in order to gain the opportunity to build (or else must loudly
proclaim a refusal to build in order to become established as a
critical force). Those who do build tend to produce signature
buildings designed to attract the attention of the media and
sustain the public’s focus, for under these rules architecture
can only emanate from the hand of the name-brand architect.
The built environment is strewn with these high-profile celeb-
Copyright © 2010. Princeton Architectural Press. All rights reserved.

rity products—heroic gestures neither made nor commissioned

by heroes.
What should architects do instead? A simple and direct
response: acknowledge the needs of the many rather than the
few; address diversity of class, race, culture, and gender; design
without allegiance to a priori architectural styles or formulas,
and with concern for program and construction.

72

Sykes, A. Krista, and K. Michael Hays. Constructing a New Agenda : Architectural Theory, 1993-2009, Princeton Architectural Press,
2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ryerson/detail.action?docID=3387334.
Created from ryerson on 2023-09-06 13:38:17.
 We may call the result an architecture of the everyday,
though an architecture of the everyday resists strict definition;
any rigorous attempt at a concise delineation will inevitably lead
to contradictions. Nonetheless, here are some points that may
be related to it.

An Architecture of the Everyday May Be Generic

and Anonymous.
Much like the package in the supermarket with the black let-
ters on the white ground that does not carry a brand name—but
is still a perfectly good container for its contents—the generic
does not flaunt its maker. It is straightforward. Unostentatious,
it can lurk, loiter, slip beneath the surface, and bypass the con-
trols of institutionally regulated life.

An Architecture of the Everyday May Be Banal

or Common.
It does not seek distinction by trying to be extraordinary, which in
any case usually results in a fake or substitute for the truly extra-
ordinary. In its mute refusal to say “look at me,” it does not tell
you what to think. It permits you to provide your own meaning.

An Architecture of the Everyday May Therefore

Be Quite Ordinary.
It is blunt, direct, and unselfconscious. It celebrates the poten-
tial for inventiveness within the ordinary and is thereby genu-
Copyright © 2010. Princeton Architectural Press. All rights reserved.

inely “of its moment.” It may be influenced by market trends,

but it resists being defined or consumed by them.

An Architecture of the Everyday May Be Crude.

There is a freshness to things that are raw and unrefined. Build-
ings that are conceived without polish may be rough, but “rough
and ready.”

Debor ah Berke · 73

Sykes, A. Krista, and K. Michael Hays. Constructing a New Agenda : Architectural Theory, 1993-2009, Princeton Architectural Press,
2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ryerson/detail.action?docID=3387334.
Created from ryerson on 2023-09-06 13:38:17.
 An Architecture of the Everyday May Be Sensual.
The everyday world is sensual. It not only provokes sight but also
touch, hearing, smell. The architecture of the everyday encom-
passes places known by their aroma, surfaces recognizable
by their tactile qualities, positions established by echo and
reverberation.

An Architecture of the Everyday May Also Be Vulgar

and Visceral.
While vulgarity may seem the opposite of anonymity, both are
often oblivious to external standards. This is not necessarily bad:
standards of taste serve to legislate and perpetuate an approved
set of objects. The vulgar rejects good taste and the unthinking
obedience it demands.
In architecture, standards of good taste seem to dictate that
the presence of the body not be acknowledged in or by build-
ings. Architectural photographs rarely show people, and the
true user is often ignored by the architect. The result is sterility.
Visceral presence cannot be denied.

An Architecture of the Everyday Acknowledges

Domestic Life.
There is poetry and consolation in the repetition of familiar
things. This is not to romanticize dreary and oppressive routine;
events need not be dictated and programmed by architects. An
architecture of the everyday allows for personal rites but avoids
Copyright © 2010. Princeton Architectural Press. All rights reserved.

prescribing rituals.

An Architecture of the Everyday May Take on Collective and

Symbolic Meaning but It Is Not Necessarily Monumental.
Without denying the need for monuments, it questions whether
every building need be one.

74 · T h o u g h t s o n t h e E v e ry day

Sykes, A. Krista, and K. Michael Hays. Constructing a New Agenda : Architectural Theory, 1993-2009, Princeton Architectural Press,
2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ryerson/detail.action?docID=3387334.
Created from ryerson on 2023-09-06 13:38:17.
 An Architecture of the Everyday Responds to Program
and Is Functional.
It is a form of design in which program contributes meaning,
and function is a requirement to satisfy rather than a style to
emulate. It resists debasement into winsome reproductions
of another time in the name of “the vernacular” or simplistic
contextualism.

An Architecture of the Everyday May Change as Quickly

as Fashion, but It Is Not Always Fashionable.
If the idea of an architecture of the everyday currently seems
both a little too fashionable and a little too much like fashion,
note that the real architecture of the everyday is subject to differ-
ent forces of change from those that drive fashion. The forms,
materials, and images of innovation in everyday life are often
unpredictable. The next everyday cannot be discovered through
focus groups and market analysis.

The Architecture of the Everyday is Built.

* * *

The initial impetus to search for a definition of an architecture

of the everyday evolved from an ongoing conversation I had with
Steven Harris as we traveled together to New Haven from New
York City and back, twice a week, for nine years. Having been
Copyright © 2010. Princeton Architectural Press. All rights reserved.

friends for almost twenty years, our conversations were familiar

and comfortable, often filled with gossip or reminiscences. Our
commute took us on Interstate-95, the easternmost north–south
run of the grid of interstates that define long-distance automo-
bile travel in the United States.
In retrospect, I-95 was a pretty good place to have a twice-
a-week conversation on the everyday, it being such an everyday

Debor ah Berke · 75

Sykes, A. Krista, and K. Michael Hays. Constructing a New Agenda : Architectural Theory, 1993-2009, Princeton Architectural Press,
2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ryerson/detail.action?docID=3387334.
Created from ryerson on 2023-09-06 13:38:17.
 condition itself; a wide asphalt line on the ground for the trans-
port of people and goods. Over the years of our shared com-
mute, the nameless food and fuel stops became McDonald’s
and Mobil stations—a transformation to name-brandness
apparently sanctioned by some turnpike authority. Similarly,
the exclusive suburban residential developments just off the
highway grew evermore extravagant as the ready dollars of the
1980s purchased houses that were absurd amalgams of aspi-
rational imagery and bombastic size. Our ongoing observation
seemed to find that the banal landscape, the fuel for our conver-
sation on (and subsequent teaching of) the everyday, was each
day becoming less anonymous and certainly less banal.
We realized that the replacement of the ordinary by the
brand-nameable was not an innocent transformation of the
everyday, but rather the usurpation of the everyday by advertis-
ing. To confuse ubiquitous logos with generic identity was to
mistake successful marketing for “popular” culture. Indeed,
today even the idea of popular culture bears an ambiguous rela-
tionship to the everyday. So often it seems to be merely the way
the everyday appears on high culture’s radar screen.
Of course, every aspect of reality is mediated in some way.
But the everyday may still be the place that is least mediated
by the forces that seek to limit or absorb its vitality. This is the
promise it holds. For architects this is a cautionary tale and a
genuine opportunity. We are invited to enter into the real and
the good aspects of everyday life, but we must do so without
Copyright © 2010. Princeton Architectural Press. All rights reserved.

destroying it.
In the opening paragraphs of her 1964 essay “Notes on
Camp,” Susan Sontag writes: “It’s embarrassing to be solemn
and treatise-like about Camp. One runs the risk of having, one-
self, produced a very inferior piece of Camp.” I feel that the same
could be said of trying to make or write about an architecture
of the everyday. The difference between an “architecture of the

76 · T h o u g h t s o n t h e E v e ry day

Sykes, A. Krista, and K. Michael Hays. Constructing a New Agenda : Architectural Theory, 1993-2009, Princeton Architectural Press,
2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ryerson/detail.action?docID=3387334.
Created from ryerson on 2023-09-06 13:38:17.
 everyday” and everyday buildings lies precisely in the conscious-
ness of the act of making architecture. This is precisely where
the strategy I am proposing is most susceptible to criticism, a
fact of which I am well aware. An architect cannot pretend to
be naive. Architecture is not innocent. Likewise, the making of
architecture is a highly conscious, indeed a self-conscious, act.
But the everyday is also not naive. To assume so would be to con-
fuse it with a sugary and debased notion of the vernacular—with
nostalgia for some state of original purity or innocence. The
everyday flirts, dangerously at times, with mass culture. But the
everyday remains that which has not yet been co-opted.
Copyright © 2010. Princeton Architectural Press. All rights reserved.

Debor ah Berke · 77

Sykes, A. Krista, and K. Michael Hays. Constructing a New Agenda : Architectural Theory, 1993-2009, Princeton Architectural Press,
2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ryerson/detail.action?docID=3387334.
Created from ryerson on 2023-09-06 13:38:17.