Unlike a regular “academic” essay, this is littered with first-person pronouns and anecdotes.
The notion that architects do not need language skills is a tricky one to defend: it requires us to have a thorough understanding of the field and the concept of using a language to communicate. But to even understand the latter, we’ll need to know what language is.
Well, then, what is language? There surely must exist a profundity in the concept of a language that despite it still being such an obvious part of our daily life, we’re writing and talking about it, right? What is it, then?
Is language a way to express thought?
Sure, it is. But we’re not quite there yet. I mean, we can express thoughts through pictures too. Maybe primitive emojis, perhaps? Stuff like the hieroglyphs.
If language isn’t a way to express thoughts, then what else is it? That is literally what we’ve been taught, haven’t we?
Well…if we were to draw an abstract notion of language, here’s an idea: Language isn’t an offshoot of thought. Language isn’t a tool to express it, either. Rather, language is thought. It is a very broad sense of language- perhaps one that is too broad that it deviates from the topic of this essay, it might appear. But the moment we understand and are aware of the broader perspective and meaning, we can zoom in and look at specific modes of language.
When we say that language is thought itself, it would mean that language manifests itself in different forms. That includes written language, spoken language, visual languagei, and perhaps more. Some researchers would combine written and spoken language- but I keep them separated because throughout history, the two forms have been distinct, only coming to one since the advent of the internet and its own slang that came with it.
To say that architects do not need language skills would probably be a bit reductionist in nature: I mean, a core part of what architects do is to just convey ideas and thoughts, so language is essential, of course. But let me focus on what architects shouldn’t need: a knowledge of written and spoken language.
As a student of history, I like to peer over architectural books written by the ancient and medieval people from different countries, most of which are thoroughly written, without a single picture to describe what the author is describing. Despite the notion that we are said to be visual learners prevailing today, it did not a few hundred years ago, let alone a few thousand years ago.
I’d like to illustrate why architects do not need to know skills of written language through the example of the Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra, a 11th century book about architecture, written by Bhōjadēva Paramāra, a king from what is now Madhya Pradesh. Like most books about architecture written in medieval India, this book is also full of prose-like poetry, without a single line drawing in sight. Do not get me wrong, the book is brilliantly written, and if you happen to have a working knowledge of medieval Sanskrit (and are interested in the field), it’s certainly a great book to understand the existing styles of temple architecture in India during the time.
Except…an entire book about architecture without a single drawing? The idea seems very weird to me. What is more interesting is this: in the book, the author introduces an entire new kind of architectural style! The author proceeds to tell us how to make a drawing of the style he invented! He goes on and gives us instructions like “Make a circle three feet in diameter. Then, draw a square around it, such that the lines of the square are tangential to the circle. Then, divide the square into four pieces, by connecting the corners. Now, divide the square into sixteen smaller squares,” and so on. These instructions are absolutely excruciating, and if you aren’t patient enough, you might end up tearing up your paper, because a single mistake you make in step 4 is going to affect the outcome of your diagram in step 59. To imagine the patience Bhōjadēva must have had while writing this book and putting literally every line he drew into written text is quite impressive.
It is impressive, yes. But of course, we’re looking into it as someone who is reading the book, perhaps as a historian. How would the author actually build something using these words? For that, let us look at the Bhōjēśvara: it is a temple just on the outskirts of Bhopal, and is designed by Bhōjadēva himself, using the techniques and style he introduces in his book.
The temple is impressive, but because this essay is about communication using language, I shall not pertain to describing the structure itself. One fascinating thing about the Bhōjēśvara that we wouldn’t nd in other temples is drawings.
Yes, drawings!
The Bhōjēśvara temple complex is home to (other than the temple, I mean) several architectural drawings, all of them etched on stone, of the temple itself, all of them done by the construction workers and masons working on the temple in the 11th century CE. There are drawings of the plan of the temple, drawings of how the door would look like, drawings of how the outer façade of the temple would look like, and more. All of them, in scale.
Compare these drawings with the instructions that Bhōja gives in the book: whatever he describes, that is drawn on stone. But look at the clarity that the visual mode gives to an audience who isn’t aware of the architectural eld- they look at the drawing once, and immediately connect the dots: that this drawing is a part of this structure, and so on. The moment Bhōja puts the drawing into words, he makes his work inaccessible to the general public: that is, of course, his intent. His book is meant to be read by architects and students of the eld. By using the drawings on-site, he makes objective statements when necessary: you can distort words, but when a drawing says that a wall is two feet thick, it is two feet thick- nothing to distort there.
Let us, once again, wonder what the point of this essay has been, all along: do architects need language skills?
In the rst section of the essay, we looked at what a language is, and what the different “modes” of language are: written/spoken, and visual.
In the second section of the essay, we looked at how Bhōjadēva used these modes of language to communicate the same idea to different sets of people.
In this section, perhaps I shall conclude the essay by answering the question.
Do Architects need language skills?
The question is a rather broad one: it does not take into account the modes of language, nor the types of audience a language is intended for. If I were to reframe the question, perhaps it would be, “Do architects need to know all types of languages?”, or something along those lines. As we learnt from Bhōja’s book and his drawings, sure, you can convey things without ever needing to talk with a certain kind of audience.
As an architect, I can keep making drawings that convey things without any sort of distortion, perfectly objective representations, as long as I only talk with masons or someone who knows how to read architectural drawings. On the other hand, also as an architect, I can keep describing the interior of a house using lush and rich words, as long as I talk only with clientele who are familiar with the words I use.
So yes, it is possible* for an architect to not need language skills. Possible with an asterisk because there’s just so many conditions to be taken care of to really have no language skills. But no matter what type of language an architect speaks, or with what audience, objectivity in the words they speak must be important.
I’d like to end this essay with a quote that is attributed to the Chinese philosopher, Confucious: If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish.