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Acceptance Remarks
by Thomas R. Aidala, FAIA

The American Institute of Architects' 1996 Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture January 30, 1996, Washington, DC I would like to thank the government and the 850,000 people of San Jose. I would also like to thank Architecture; that wonderful profession and obsession in which we play. Architecture is sometimes a confederacy of shamans, of wizards and adepts. We have at our disposal large, substantial powers. We can be clairvoyant, magicians, mediums of what is and the spirit of what can be. Whizzo conjurers who can predict an invented future, trick up a picture of that future and make people want it. The power of design and drawing is extraordinary because it can put a line around an idea and make it clear as well as create and shape desire. Design can excite desires other than those quickened by profit. By its transformational powers, architecture and design can enable community. However, in a time when the results of our magic can be catastrophic on a planetary and local scale, it is all more necessary for architects and other designers to figure out how to achieve congruity between our generalized interventions and the particularity of places. What I have found in San Jose is that a community is served better by well designed streets and places defined by o.k. or so-so buildings than a bunch of gourmet buildings attending to their own agendas and not contributing to the definition and grace of the public environment. The good street is about comfort, activity and publicness, the bad street about unease, reduced choice and privacy. The street is persuasive because it is so much more than buildings at its edges. It is the place that can contain all agendas and where we can all experience those agendas, each other and share those experiences. It is the place where larger community is possible, where chance is enhanced, movement universal, order usually triumphant over chaos, communication ubiquitous and Emersonian individuality is subservient to civitas. In other words, the streets and public places, the public realm is the physical and transactional city. As such, it behooves us to think about our streets as much as we think about our buildings, lavish more attention on them if we are going to transform or resuscitate our cities for people use rather than style. Source: American Institute of Architects [ Metro | Metroactive Central | Archives ]