If I react in a certain way to a building when I encounter it, then so far as I am concerned my reaction is genuine, and the way I react will depend on my previous experience. If it is the first time I have entered a Gothic cathedral, say, then I might be puzzled or impressed, seeing it as a place of wonder and mystery. If I have been in many other similar cathedrals then it might feel quite familiar, and I could find it steady and reassuring. I do not necessarily know what the designer intended me to feel. That does not mean that the experience must be without meaning for me. It is worth labouring the point, because architects tend to think of the matter differently. If an architect thinks of the design of buildings as a creative activity, then it is most likely that it would seem most important to work with sincerity and conviction, and less important to act with a view to second-guessing the reaction of an audience. Indeed, working with an eye on the crowd’s response might seem to indicate a lack of authenticity. Buildings designed by this sort of architect will be the way they are because that is how the architect feels they must be, and any compromise with the views of others will be a weakening and worsening of the design. It tends to be the case that this is the sort of architect admired by other architects. To people who do not share the vision, the view may look arrogant and inflexible, but to people who do share it the architect will seem inspired. Conversely, an architect who is sensitive to the audience’s response might take fewer risks, might tend to take a conservative view of cultural change, and might be seen as a reliable performer by the people who commission buildings, but such a designer will accrue no artistic kudos. Architects of this type greatly outnumber the others, but we do not hear about them in books about architecture, because, despite providing what society on the whole wants of them, they are seen by other architects at best as honest and competent but not particularly notable, or as slick commercial operators. Unqualified admiration is reserved for those who seem to manage to make their own ideas into buildings, and to bend the will of others to their own in order to make it happen. Indeed, this is no mean feat, because the will of the person paying for the building is usually the one that has most power, and so one of the great practical skills that architects need to have is the power to persuade.
Buildings, as I have said, are often very expensive. The person or committee that commissions a building will always want to be assured that its money is being spent wisely, in order to bring about what is intended. If a school commissions a swimming pool then it will be disappointed, and will undoubtedly sue, if the building that results from the commission cannot in fact be used as for swimming. If a plutocrat commissions a frivolous eye-catcher for a hill in his garden, then the architect will have failed if the building is solemnly monumental. How does the architect persuade the client that the design fits the bill? Usually by explaining what it is going to be like, by using illustrations or models, so that the building can be imagined in its setting. At this stage the design can be modified without great expenditure. The main alternative is to build the design, and modify the building if needs be, but to do this is for most of us ruinously extravagant. It is what Ludwig II of Bavaria did at his small and highly ornamental palace, Linderhof, in the foothills of the Alps, but his name has never been a byword for prudence, and his accountants eventually had him certified as insane. Often a building cannot be the way we would like it to be, perhaps because our neighbours will not allow it, or perhaps for some more fundamental reason, such as the limited strength of materials or the intransigent way in which gravity lets us down. In persuading the client that the building is as closely suitable for its purpose as can reasonably be expected, the architect has three main techniques of persuasion.