n many disciplines and in life itself, it quite regularly happens that our deep knowledge about something prevents us from seeing its most obvious aspects. Architecture is not the exception. The architect, from the moment he starts studying, eventually stops looking at buildings as any other person would do. He starts finding new characteristics; he comes across new valuation criteria… and progressively loses the innocent sight he used to have before. Sometimes, there comes a time when the professional, immersed in the depths of the discipline, seems to forget about the people that arrive at that place, precisely when he has already left.

A building, as opposed to other kinds of creative projects such as the cinema, continues going through a manipulation process even after we, architects, often stop thinking about it: once the construction process finishes, people start using and enjoying it. Right when the last piece is in place, the last part of surface is painted, and when we can say that we can inaugurate the building, we relax and think that the worst task is over. Is it really over? The worst part, what is really the worst part, most of the times is what is yet to come. Is the moment when those people –that we coldly call users- get inside the building and start moving about in it; start using it, being more or less careful; start inevitably wearing it out. And the building, until then having a good appearance, starts showing all its imperfections without shame. Walls get quickly stained, the facilities prove to be insufficient, the floor ends up being too slippery, and what is worse, a series of reforms, which end up by completing the building deformation process, are needed. And the architect, where is he? Most of the times, and due to his intentions, he is far away.

It is true that there are responsibility bonds that make the author be attached to his masterpiece: if it is not directly, it is through law courts. In almost every case, the insurance covers all damages, therefore, everyone can forget about the problem. Everyone but the inhabitants: They are the only ones who really need the building to be in proper conditions. Moreover, they now have to deal with a different trauma: the building is under construction again, but this time they are inside it. However, we should point out that we are not referring to those involuntary and unpredictable errors concerning design and implementation, which are usually covered by the insurance, but to other kinds of problems less admitted and more likely to occur: those deriving from thinking about the inhabitant as a conditioner, sometimes even as an opponent or an obstacle to surpass, forgetting that what the architect does is done to be inhabited. That is the attitude that leads to the most important conflicts between taking architecture as an artistic or disciplinal symbol and taking it as an object for daily usage.

It is not necessary to be a mediocre architect for these conflicts to happen. History is full of examples of great architecture masterpieces (by creators as known as Mies van der Rohe or Richard Neutra, for example) that were strongly detested or even criticized by its users. The evasive answer is that these pieces of work were not understood by them. Nevertheless, that does not help those that live inside the buildings -that have devoted their time a hundred more times in thinking about it than the architect himself- who now have the possibility to enjoy and suffer it.
Knowing all this, it is incomprehensible to learn how the architecture judgments by themselves avoid making reference to that second period of every construction. People talk a lot about one of the phases, as it is the project, which lasts some months, maybe a couple of years, while the rest (maybe decades or even centuries) is left deprecatingly aside. The recently created and amazing building is awarded by a respectable jury, and becomes part of a great exposition. Some days later, a young handicapped man in a wheel chair discovers that entering in the building is almost an odyssey. Some months later, the janitor wonders who could have been so cruel to put the glasses in such inaccessible places. Years later, the landowner, after looking at the facade totally deteriorated, takes his hands to his head in desperation.

Architecture is an essential and unchangeable need, whose role in human beings cannot be despised in any way. The society cannot allow having architects that, just as software programmers, include amendments in their contracts excusing themselves for “all responsibility regarding any kind of damages or deteriorations produced by malfunctions that the product might have". We would like to invite architects and their critics to be consequent with the value of those constructed objects. It may not be so crazy to generalize the idea of summoning, for awards and expositions, only those buildings that have a minimum of years of usage. As members of the jury, there would be a selected group of people that know nothing about architecture, but they do know about the building itself. Similarly, those documents, such as the relatively new Building Book, that are bound for explaining to the user how to use and maintain the building, would also be useful for making professionals think about what their role should be in the architecture world. This would be a fruitful reflection -a source of innumerable opportunities.

The architect that creates would turn into the architect that assists, alert to any changes. He would always be next to the user to be the mediator between him and the building. In addition, a good building would be the one that can maintain with dignity its original project’s great value once it is being used. Moreover, this should be transmitted to the user as another kind of value: what we simply call quality of life.

The Staff of TodoArquitectura.com