The ‘essential’ realities of the trade

On March 20, Gov. Ned Lamont issued a critical governmental directive in response to a grave threat: the “Essential Businesses - Executive Order 7H” that defined what activities could remain active, and what businesses had to be shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was one of the rare times when government defines our culture.

Usually our culture determines how we govern ourselves. In the recent revulsion over racial bias, demonstrated human behaviors are creating new laws. What we do defines how we govern ourselves. In this extreme case, our government has defined what our culture reveals to be “essential.”

Besides food, medical attention and life safety, Lamont also declared that construction was “essential.” The order reads, in part:

“9. Construction including:

1 all skilled trades such as electricians, HVAC, and plumbers

1 general construction, both commercial and residential 1 other related construction firms and professionals for essential infrastructure or for emergency repair and safety purposes

1 planning, engineering, design, bridge inspection, and other construction support activities”

As an architect, I may have felt just a twinge of validation. However, as a boss, I left it up to my employees whether they would work in the office with me, or not. All of them decided to work from home these last three months (with a few daily exceptions). So I am often alone in my office, endlessly emailing, texting, photographing drawings and models to send to clients and employees. Like everyone else, Zoom meetings are daily events, with about half of them hosted by me.

Other states, like New York, outlawed activity on construction sites. Not Connecticut, so I donned a mask, kept my distance and inspected, responded and “met” on job sites as needed.

We all balance safety and living our lives. Existential threats of infecting others, whether we know we know it or not, or getting infected, have meant that personal safety overrides any attempt at “non-essential” activities for many of us. But in the depths of quarantine, getting to those site visits, I saw scores on motorcycles zooming by me on the highways. Often without helmets.

Just using a motorcycle (or even traveling at all) makes many nervous — so does the act of building —especially in the unavoidable contact and possibility of transmission in a pandemic. Sheltering from danger is possible without building anything new in this sequestration time. But like riding a motorcycle, construction has risks even without a pandemic. But those risks are worth the benefit of the accommodation of our needs by building what we need as a culture — at least to the state of Connecticut.

And in a tiny way, that means that architects, like me, are “essential.” Forget about aesthetics. Architects connect the dots of code, technology, human performance and job safety — at least the good ones do. In all of these trying ambiguities, it is clear to me that what I do has a meaning that is more than simply functional, it is cultural.

While many architects who work in commercial design or institutional work are facing a very bad year, that depressing reality is not universal. For those architects who work in the smaller world of residential building or for not-for-profits that are at the core of our society, this has been a surprising spring. There are some green shoots of new work, and those who were committed to build have largely stood behind their devotion, despite being in a fearful time.

Not a project in my office was put on hold in these challenging days, and my firm has started half a dozen new projects in a time of threat and uncertainty. Human beings manifest their values in what they build. We value building, manifesting our humanity in the world.

I know that architecture saves few lives, if any. What I do makes life better, safer — but the aesthetics of architecture does not prevent death, that is what my application of the building code does. But I choose to believe that in this disgusting spring, what I do has, in a small way, been realized to be “essential.”