Richard Meier’s Ten Factors for Architecture

It is rare that we find architects talking about holistic ideas anymore. It is fashionable to talk about materials and sustainability and whatever is the flavour of the moment, but no longer does an architect have a ten point agenda - a personal ideology, a manifesto of sorts. Ideology ends with style these days. While flaneuring in webspace a few days ago, I bumped into Richard Meier's ten factors - his ideas on creating architecture.


I will share my bias right at the beginning - Richard Alan Meier is one of my favourite architects. This is not because of the dogged stylistic route he has chosen for himself – namely his propensity for white buildings and platonic geometry, but because, given the narrowly defined palette he has restricted himself to – the amazing variations and complexities he has explored within that palette, thereby not only mastering these themes but also taking them to their furthest limits, without even once repeating or copying his own previous work. Also he has refused to be swayed by the prevalent 'isms' between the early 60s upto the present. His journey in architecture has been very personal, driven by his own convictions and his own manifesto. I salute the master.

Though Meier may seem a ‘façadist’ at first glance, obsessed with whiteness, and the materiality and formal quality of his buildings, yet it is really the spaces that he generates of which he is most concerned about. Meier talks of ‘placeness’ a great deal. He asks - “What is it that makes a space a place?” And over time, having built-up a significant oeuvre, he has crafted an answer. His answer is – the Ten factors that connect a structure to its environment and thereby hold the potential to transform space into place.

Just like Vitruvius’ Ten Books were guides for the physical ordering and creation of Architecture for a certain day and age, these ten factors, very intensely felt and personally experienced by Meier, have become his personal guides in the design process. He quantifies them as such -

(01) ‘Mode of Being’ – the factor which emphasizes the presence of a building as an independent object
(02) Establishing the structure as separate from identity
(03) Encouraging fantasy and play
(04) Encouraging ecstatic exuberance
(05) Preserving a sense of mystery and adventure
(06) Identifying ingredients which connect the building to reality
(07) Using the act of building as a link to the past
(08) Imbuing a building with the ability to evoke spontaneous feelings and emotions
(09) Facilitating spontaneous exchanges
(10) Asserting the identity of the people

For a full biography of the architect visit -
http://architect.architecture.sk/richard-meier-architect/richard-meier-architect.php

For an incomplete listing of his projects, visit -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Meier