To the Editors
Architectural Record
2 Penn Plaza
New York, NY 10020

VIA FACSIMILE

Dear Editor;

I am not surprised that the gorgeous spec house on the cul-de-sac designed by Hariri & Hariri has not sold, even at a discounted price. It is a victim of a common misunderstanding regarding the nature of the architectural consumer. (A consumer in America is the determinant of a product's design, exercised through purchase. If you cannot abide the concept of Other consumer you may be qualified for employment at an architecture school.)

There are four types of consumers of housing: the Patron, the Client, the Customer and the Martyr.

Patrons are architectural sophisticates who consciously commission a building as a work of art. They are willing to put up with additional costs, certain discomforts and some brickbats in support of the designers conception. Patrons permeate architectural periodicals as they are the motive force behind most of what is good enough to publish. Patrons are rare, but since they are geographically concentrated near meccas of New York and Los Angeles, it is common to believe that their number is greater than it is. Note how quickly the Patron class drops away by Philadelphia or Boston latitudes.

The second type of consumer is the Client. Clients are not so much sophisticated as savvy. Making themselves available for contact with architects during the design process, they acquire a modicum of instruction. The resulting building can be quite good architecture, sometimes excellent. Clients underwrite most of the decent houses in America. Mr. Faili has been a Client to the Hariris. Sometimes, an individual in government will rise to the level of Client.

The third type is the Customer. The Customer is the most common consumer of housing. They have absolutely no contact with the designer. The customer arrives at a decision to purchase in a state of innocence at best, but more usually having been manipulated during the experience of comparative shopping. Only lightly attuned to the rigors of traditional architecture (never to modernist), a Customer is invariably lured away by stylistic kitsch and gimmicky programs. Since these options are usually provided somewhere in the vicinity, they drive out architecture. This terrible situation is exacerbated because most Osgood architects disparage, shun and remain ignorant of this huge strata of housing, just as they have been taught in architecture schools.

The fourth kind of consumer is the one with no choice. Because of limited income or because of a very tight housing market, these Martyrs are grateful to have any sort of place of their own. They will accept good or bad housing. The absence of choice is one of the reasons that affordable housing, such as Michael Piatok's can be so good, and why Dan Solomon's housing in the supertight market of San Francisco can be austerely elegant. Such housing is not just a matter of talent, but of a consumers that have no choice on the matter. They are forced to accept living in some very good architecture that they will surely grow to appreciate, even if they may not have chosen to do so in the first place.

Unfortunately, despite the high hopes of your report, even if Mr. Faili manages to find a buyer for this house without incurring too great a loss, there is not much to be learned from this noble experiment. Except that it is dangerous to confuse a client with a customer.

I hope that this serves to clarify the range of housing design in this country and to establish a reasonable basis for judgment within each class.

Sincerely,

Andres M. Duany