Two days ago, when the idea for this piece came to mind, something strange happened (believe me—I am not exaggerating much!). The idea concerned the relationship between architecture and literature (specifically poetry), mediated by the duality of connection/isolation, or the "publicness" of architecture and the "privateness" and seclusion of the poet's craft. I was wrestling with this idea when that very afternoon, while reading Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov's revised autobiography (translated by Khatereh Kord Karimi, Cheshmeh Press), I came upon a passage in which the narrator (who is a football goalkeeper) describes a match played in the rain: "[...] I let the ball go by me clumsily and retrieved it from the net of the goal. Fortunately, the game swept to the other end of the wet field. A fine drizzle, flagging, stopped, started again. Ancient rooks, with a quaint, almost lush cadence of their moribund cawing, spread their wings about a leafless elm. Fog was thickening. Now the game had moved into the region of vague heads near the goal of St. John's or Christ's or whatever college it was that we were playing. That remote, confused tumult, a yell, a whistle, a thump—all that was as immaterial to me and of as little consequence as if I were a ghost watching a game of the living. Sooner the keeper of a secret than the keeper of a goal, I stood there leaning against the left goalpost, enjoying the luxury of closing my eyes, and then felt the chill of the fog and the drizzle on my face, and heard, in the distance, the brittle fracas of the game, and saw myself as a fantastic, exotic being, in an English footballer's garb, composing verse in a language nobody understood about a country nobody knew." This paragraph ends with a sentence I have not yet quoted—have not yet—one that strikes me as profoundly thought-provoking and deeply related to my idea. Don't worry! I shall quote that sentence shortly! But first, I want to dwell a little on re-reading this "passage," which in the context of the book is not a standalone piece; yet it seems to me it could be a complete and independent passage in its own right. I don't know how much patience you have for this sort of thing; as for me, I have read and reread this short piece nearly ten times and, beyond the pleasure and instruction I have drawn from its spatial construction and prose, each time I have discovered a new point and a new layer within it. I shall pass over the literary qualities of this passage and its description and spatial evocation, masterful as always with Nabokov; though my insights from this passage are indebted to this literary dimension as well. The passage has a nucleus: the duality of the collective (public) and the personal; the duality of group work and the "I" within the group. The medium or vehicle for articulating this is the game of football. Even now, when people want to speak of the mythic virtue of "teamwork," and the supposedly unquestionable importance of "teamwork" (and of course, following from such sermonizing, the ineptitude of "us Iranians" at "teamwork" and all that), they often cite football as their example—that apparent symbol and myth of teamwork.
Nabokov, too, is speaking of football; and he speaks of the commotion of a mass of heads and bodies engaged in group work, along with a fog that symbolically and meaningfully envelops the pitch and the people, transforming them from distinct individuals into a mass, a crowd, a group ("them"), and it is only the goalkeeper (the narrator, the "I") who possesses a kind of identity or distinction from the group. This distinction or identity, in this passage or narrative, is not merely by virtue of the goalkeeper's distinct position in a football team. This distinction is also a personal experience, a private affair, one whose presence has already appeared earlier in Nabokov's book, and now, with that brilliant image of standing arms folded, leaning against the goalpost, and especially the closing of the eyes and feeling the rain drip on his face, in the middle of a football match, is articulated with extraordinary mastery—without the narrator descending into the sort of prolixity I am guilty of here. Close your eyes for a moment (perhaps also to rest from my ramblings!), and place yourself in such a scene: standing watching what is apparently the most collective endeavor in the world, within an all-enveloping fog that makes the group more group-like; and while you yourself are a member of this group, in such a tumultuous, frantic commotion of teamwork, you close your eyes (a goalkeeper who closes his eyes in the middle of a football match!) and surrender yourself to a deeply personal, even private sensation—a poetic sensation in the middle of a football game! Earlier (we are talking some twenty to twenty-five years ago) more so, now less, but always and forever there are moments when, in the thick of architectural work (another one of those myths of teamwork), as I thrash about in the webs of relationship and group and teamwork, I think about poetry. I do not close my eyes; but I think about poetry without anyone knowing or telling anyone. I do not think about poetry itself (what poetry is, for instance) or any particular poem; I think about the act of writing poetry, or as the common phrase has it, composing verse. I think about the moments when I can, free from the chaos of "teamwork," in the most private and lonely, in the most secluded possible state, simply be with myself and write something of myself and, until further notice, for myself. "I saw myself as a fantastic, exotic being, in an English footballer's garb, composing verse in a language nobody understood [...] about a country nobody knew." Especially in those days when I was younger, or as a witty friend put it, "more of a kid," architectural work, beyond the conventional mechanisms of such work—which depends on a variety of specializations (people) and relationships—left little room for selfhood and personal inclination or things of that sort, even in the domain of creation and design, for someone who was nothing more than an assistant and apprentice. The most abstract and conceptual propositions of this "kid" in the domain of architecture, as indeed for even the grandest and smallest of architects, were and are always constrained by a thousand assorted parameters. A highly contentious phenomenon called "money" (the project's budget and economy), a real and exceedingly complex concept called "context," an intractable and insoluble beast called "the client," and the vexing matter of "execution" or the elaborate, never-ending fuss filed under "construction technology"—these readily engulf and sometimes
drain the supposedly abstract and, in many people's view, romantic matter of "creation" and "innovation" in the course of a real architectural project. This is why, when people say architecture is art, at least according to my own definition of art (a pure sensation or the ultimate idea, something akin to poetry), something feels as though a coarse awl has been pressed against me! In the best case, it is only the building/the formed space itself that confronts us (the user, the audience of architecture) with that conceptual and ideational and sensory dimension of architecture. But this is not the entirety of architecture; although how much better if one could extend that idea and sensation to the entirety of architecture (that is, to the economics, the client, and the execution). Nevertheless, architecture—at least for one whose profession it is—is not merely, and for most of the numerous people involved in an architectural project, not at all, about sensation and understanding and concept and idea. In the course of an architectural project, I always strive to give precedence to that dimension of idea and feeling over everything else involved in the shaping of a building/space. It seems to me that the art of the architect is precisely this: to be able to pass the idea—this nucleus, this quasi-poetic image of architecture—safely through the dense filter of utterly unpoetic parameters inherent in the work of an architectural project, and to let it ripen and solidify (well, perhaps this is why they say architecture is art!). It is by no means easy. I always say, half in jest and half in earnest, that the hardest thing in the world is architecture! Setting aside the reductionism of this trite aphorism, truly architecture (and of course any other serious endeavor) is like a struggle—a multi-dimensional, extraordinarily complex challenge; and a mission: a mission for the architect to carry that gem of sensation and idea of place and space safely through the tedium of an endless web of miscellaneous considerations, and deliver it to an audience that, as a rule, is not expected to possess architectural expertise. The further complexity is that even that idea is not the personal, momentary, arbitrary whim of the individual "I." Even that nucleus and idea, which one sometimes imagines to be inspired (though many architects believe in no such thing), if it manages to persist with its original force through the continuation of the work, is itself the product and resultant of many diverse simple and complex parameters. This is how some architects come to regard architecture as merely a "solution" for a better life. Their reference and argument is vernacular and, to some extent, traditional architecture. Vernacular architecture, especially in harsh climates, is not so much a solution for a better life—that is a gift—as it is a solution for being, for enduring, and then for resting. In such a situation, where there is not much money at stake, nor extraordinary technology, nor grounds for the commodification and branding of architect and architecture, architecture is a practical "solution" that has ripened generation by generation, passed from breast to breast, so that one might build more easily, more quickly, and more cheaply; and its primary function is to enable a more comfortable life. Such architecture—that is, vernacular and traditional architecture—seems inevitably wedded to the "pattern." Patterns that predetermine the general structure and spatial composition of every type of building. And the pattern, too—
who can say whose work it is? It is nobody's work and it is everyone's; patterns that have passed through the labyrinth of millennia of knowledge and wisdom of generations and grown ever more perfect. In such a condition, no "I" exists; only "we"! Modern architecture is probably distinguished from vernacular and traditional architecture precisely in this presence of the "I" and the dissolution, or at least the weakening, of patterns and pattern-based architecture. In the "modern condition" (by which I do not mean only the modern architectural movement), patterns are deconstructed one after another. But let us move on; this is an extensive discussion and we are drifting somewhat from the subject at hand. Nonetheless, the "I" of the architect, this modern "I," differs from that personal, private "I," even though both are in some ways indebted to each other. The "I" of the architect, whatever it does, is one among a group that very often does not take this "I" seriously. At least in the capital-driven system, the "I" of the client and the one who holds the capital sometimes, if it does not outweigh the "I" of the architect, certainly goes toe to toe with it. It is not for nothing they say: "The work turns out like its client." This proverb was surely coined by the esteemed architects themselves, to lay the blame for bad work at the client's door! After all, there is another famous saying that doctors' mistakes are buried underground, but architects' mistakes remain on display for all to see for years and years. At any rate, in such a condition—an intensely public and collective one—for years now, every time I find myself thus immersed in a group, and every time those ideas and aspirations are hacked at the root by a thousand ifs and buts of client and money and regulations and technology and contractor and boss and subordinate and so on, my heart yearns for the solitude and seclusion of writing poetry—that corner which can exist anywhere (even in the middle of a football game); but wherever it is, it belongs to me; to this "I" of mine; the "I" of my very self; my personal self; my private "I." Probably such an abundance of "me"s and "mine"s (with every possible vocalization of the m) bespeaks a certain narcissism. And probably it is this same narcissism that causes this "I" either to refuse to submit to teamwork, or if it does submit, there is a certain ennui and impatience and a measure of defiance and dissonance with it, preventing it from being a useful ingredient in the stew that is the homegrown (and in my humble opinion, highly unreliable) version of teamwork. It is probably this same narcissism that makes me long to detach myself as much as possible from the collective endeavor of architecture, and as much as possible, like that football goalkeeper, right in the middle of the match, when all those people are clambering over one another and the clamor of teamwork has numbed everyone's ears and minds, to lean against the goalpost, close my eyes, and surrender to a personal and private sensation—a sensation in which no one, no one at all, has any share, nor can in any way, at least until it has been written and read in the form of a poem, constrain it. And well! With such a disposition, who could be fond of this "I"? In Nabokov's words: "It is not surprising, then, that I was not very popular with my teammates."