Why Do I Keep a Site Diary?
There are many reasons for keeping a Site Diary. And all these many reasons I know, because I was told the reasons. I was taught the reasons. They are well stored in the reservoir of my mind. Occasionally, I enter this reservoir and utilize the resource. As an architect who has been making architecture through an office environment which is more design-oriented, the keeping of a site diary is a very fragmented experience. You come to site periodically as required by a building contract, e.g. to verify payment claim, to carry out periodic inspections, to respond to a particular site problem, to iron out the discrepancy between the constructional instruction and its realities, and occasionally even to come to site for no obvious reasons but to escape the heaviness of the office environment and all that it stands for. At those odd times, the site is a friendly place…. a rescuer…. it saves your stagnant and dying spirit as you perform your duty day in and day out in the office. I might even say that it imparts some life into your dying spirit. The spirit is dying precisely because of the stagnant office ‘air’ and ignorance of the construction realities. One practices what is being taught through theoretical and intellectual principles and propositions and rightly, they remain faithfully so.
I get a feeling that I have to break through these four walls of theory and intellect that stand so formidably tall and strong. As a result, they also captured me and made me a captive. Don’t misunderstand me. It's not that theory and intellect are two bad things. If I have spent almost all my life trying to learn them, look at them, practice them, work, and sleep with them in the aim to acquire them, they must be an attractive pair, ones that have caused my pursuit thus far in time and space of life. One thing I have learned: theory and intellect are a sea with unreachable shores themselves. One must be prepared to be drowned in it. For the time being, the fear of being drowned has dawned on me. I want to break through the wall. I want to escape. I do not want to escape empty-handed. I want to escape with the beautiful pair, THEORY and INTELLECT. I want to use them outside the wall. You may never know. When I exhaust the pair, I may decide once more to return to the enclosure. But right now, I am outside. I am at the site. This is where I am. Now!
There is something unique about every site. It is the birthplace of a concept. Design is an expression of a concept. Drawings lay out a design as instructions for making and constructing that design until the concept is fulfilled as a physical reality. The site is a ‘labor room’ where realities are born from concepts. Concepts are captured dreams. Dreams can run wild. Concepts channel dreams in a particular way for a specific purpose. Through design, concepts are further shaped into a particular mode of expression. Through construction, we refine that expression until every stone, tile, piece of glass, timber, concrete mix, and paint color are quantified through specifications. Every construction detail and its materials are meticulously considered until they are properly deliberated upon. Construction through quantification and specification is the final act of that long and laborious process where the concept is brought into reality. Could this be what Louis Kahn refers to as “silence to light”? And from silence to light is the journey of that long process.
The site ties everything down to earth, even people. It even ties your thoughts. Everything must relate to the ground and build from it. You can no longer talk broadly and loosely as you could with theory and intellect. The ground gives you reality. It must be responded to with measurements, sizes, directions, angles, and gradients. The layman will understand this, as will the suppliers and manufacturers of materials and products. The bricklayer, the concrete worker, the carpenter, the rebar bender, the glazier, the painter, the tiler, the clerk of works, the site supervisor, even the engineer are concerned with these quantities. But the architect? Where will he stand? What is his role? Is it enough for him just to be concerned with quantity, like everybody else on site? Here arises the question of my role as an architect. And what is the answer?
In the midst of quantifying sizes, measurements, and material specifications, he must link this final act to its source. In the face of sizes and measurements, he must not forget his intellect with geometry, proportions, and symmetry. Measurements are no longer haphazardly pronounced. They have their noble beginning. The architect's role on site is to recognize their nobility and even the need to seek it if such nobility could not be easily recognizable. It could even be lost in a place like a building site. Therefore, the sizing, the measuring, the cutting, the forming, the materializing, and the constructing must subsequently reflect the architect’s intentions.
The site architect is the link between theory and reality, between intellect and the layman, between the silence of time immemorial and the light of contractual time and material time, between the anguish of dwelling in the obscurity of theory and the agony of being exposed by quantity. He is the missing link between the immeasurable and the measurable. After a day on site, witnessing various activities, participating in endless discussions with different people, encountering unforeseen construction problems and earnestly trying to solve them one by one, amidst the noise of machinery, the rhythmic pounding of driving piles, the cutting of materials, the welding of metal, the smell of soil and concrete, the laborers’ sweat, the tactile feel of material finishes, the supervisors’ scolding of workers, the workers’ grumbling, the scorching heat of the sun, and even the hazy atmosphere — all these leave an impression of how the day has just passed.
The time has come. When the activity of the day stops, the sounds subside, the machinery stands still, and even the sun is eager to cross over the threshold of the horizon. When quietness waits at the eve of the day, I shall return to my table to perform my last act of the day… to give a record of those impressions and to reflect. The site diary is my impression and my reflection of the day. It is not just the quantification of the day’s activities. It is also a record of my unheard inner voice, trying at this moment to make its presence felt by pronouncing subjective and objective assessments. And most of all, by writing, it releases my inner emotions and tensions. Like the site which is stilled by the coming of the night, I am calmed by my reflections on the day’s impressions. Reflection, reserved for the very last act, is the most important act of the day, as it recollects for me how this day has passed and how to anticipate the coming of a new day.
The purpose of reflection is to bring my position back to the center of the circle to which the passing day has moved me to other parts within the circle, even to the circumferential border, a step from which I might be lost. The practical work and its effects leave me with many impressions. These impressions will try to tell me their own story—why events have occurred in that way, how they are built, why they look the way they do, and finally, why they are the way they are. Their stories are sincere. They can be substantiated. But are they true? Sincerity is not the same as truth. This is when and where reflection is required. The need to reflect is the need to detect the possibility of untruth in the practiced sincerity.
The making of architecture must be considered as the sincere act of building that genuinely reflects its truthful beginning. Reflection is the journey back from the impression of practice to the theory and intellect of things. It is from this still point of the circle that all the day’s work will be judged, and the coming day’s work planned and hoped for. The purpose of reflection is to return to that still point, or at least to be as near to it as possible. Though my talkative rationales tend to detour, you may understand by now why I need to keep a diary.
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