Generosity

The notion of generosity in architecture has emerged in various ways and for various purposes. The term is generally perceived to be employed synonymously with abundance, taking on a positive sense in its connotation of something initially unrequested being voluntarily added to a built project – a gift offered beyond the requirements.

Think of buildings that offer the user something more than what the spatial program dictated that makes them more than simply transactional. This may be anything from the cognitive legibility of a door handle that fits your hand and the affordances it offers, to a gathering space positioned between buildings that offers a sunny place to sit on a spring morning or shade on a hot summer afternoon.

As such, generosity in architecture is not simply about giving more, in the sense of that which is unnecessary or superfluous. Often it means the opposite – doing more with less. It can be on a large scale or through small gestures and details. There is generosity in the architect who imagines more from the program they were given than the client originally intended. Indeed, an imaginative design response can change the understanding of how we think of economizing in our built environments.

Anne Lacaton, one of the two Pritzker Prize–winning founders of the French firm Lacaton & Vassal, describes how “economising doesn’t mean reducing, but rather doing more with the same amount of money.”

We respond positively to surroundings that give us more than they are asked to, that communicate a higher purpose, and that are aspirational and suggest something bigger. The feeling of being part of something larger than ourselves increases our sense of connection, empathy, comfort, and hope and enhances our well-being. Design that embodies generosity exhibits responsibility and is durable beyond any basic requirements for sustainability. It positively affects inhabitants and makes lasting contributions to our health by becoming part of our conscious and subconscious experience as we interact with it.

Juhani Pallasmaa and Matteo Zambelli define generosity in architecture as the idea that the architect, through design, provides their view of the world and life. The person using the building experiences the architect’s generosity, which transcends the “naïve realist view of architecture as a professional craft that serves only practical and economic purposes by means of building technology.” In Pallasmaa and Zambelli’s words, “an ‘architectural courtesy’ refers to the way a sensuous building offers gentle and subconscious gestures and pleasures to the occupant.”

Similarly, French architect and critic Francis Rambert advances the idea of architecture that is “generous versus generic” and that gives “cultural, contextual, spatial, and habitable more” to a city and its citizens. He believes generosity also relates to how architecture allows a space to change, adapt, evolve, and be appropriated to suit those who use it, thus making it their own.8 This echoes English architect Cedric Price’s concept of an “architecture of enabling,” represented by his conceptual Fun Palace project, whose notions of flexibility influenced Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’s Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Citing Pallasmaa and Zambelli again, generous architecture “offers an open field of possibilities, and it stimulates and emancipates perceptions, associations, feelings, and thoughts. A meaningful building does not argue or propose anything; it inspires us to see, sense, and think ourselves. A great architectural work sharpens our senses, opens our perceptions and makes us receptive to the realities of the world. The reality of the work also inspires us to dream … but it does not indoctrinate or blind us.”

Thus, generosity in architecture offers three potential schemas for its occupants. The first is how a building evokes an emotional response – sometimes thought of as the qualitative aspects of our engagement – due to its spatial characteristics that may communicate kindness, selflessness, and ultimately trust. The second is how programmatic elements can be added, or more done with less. This is often thought of as the quantitative aspects, like a gift that transcends the transactional requirements to accommodate a building’s spatial needs. The third schema goes beyond the design of a building to the design of a co-creative process that generates the conditions in which many voices can find a home.