Consider this statement: All buildings are interesting. There is not a single building that isn't interesting in some way.
To say that something is interesting is not a qualitative statement - it does not imply that all buildings are “good” or “bad,” or that all buildings are Important Architecture® - only that they are interesting.
When I tweeted this idea, several folks responded in the comments with buildings they thought were Not Interesting, yet somehow interesting enough to warrant a web search, image download, and a response to the tweet. Most of these buildings were part of our everyday mundane American landscape: a university building, a ranch house, an Applebee's. However, as the discussion unfurled, it quickly became evident that even the most quotidian buildings are, in fact, interesting.
An Interesting House, c. 1958. Public Domain (via Archive.org)
Botanists bemoan what is called “Tree Blindness”: a phenomenon where, for most people, trees are only a green background for literally whatever else is going on. Tree Blindness keeps people from understanding the world they live in on another level, from having a personal connection to the environment. Knowing the names of the trees on my street makes each of them special and memorable. If one of them were to be lost - like the hemlock, which is being tragically eviscerated by the wooly hemlock adelgid - it would be like losing a friend, something that was a part of my world rather than an another alarming headline, lost in an endless sea of other alarming headlines.
I would say that we also suffer from building blindness, which is ostensibly not as serious as Tree Blindness, as the consequences of building blindness are much less dire. Still, being blind to buildings robs us of a deeper level of understanding and interaction with the world around us.
Unlike plants, buildings aren't meticulously taxonomized. Common systems of analysis such as schools of architectural thought or architectural styles are merely one way of categorizing architecture (and a flawed one, as seen by the wide misuse of the term Brutalism as a synonym for “any concrete building ever”). Unfortunately, these designations are often not applicable to the buildings we see every day.
→ A former Safeway in Sherman, TX. Photo by Charles Hathaway (CC BY NC-SA 2.0)
Those who study “vernacular architecture” (once meaning “folk” or “self-built” architecture, but now referring to common architecture, the architecture of everyday), have developed other systems of analysis such as reading floor plans, which are more useful for studying most American residential architecture, yet even these methods are not standard across the field.
However, even buildings that don't fit into any academically established system of analysis can still be analyzed, and are still interesting. Most of us, regardless of our experience in architecture, have built up an encyclopedia of buildings in our heads - whether by architectural program (e.g. hospitals, shopping centers, single family homes), geographical place (neighborhood, town, city, suburb), or some kind of distinguishing feature (shared architectural elements, color, size, age).
Looking at “boring” buildings
At least one person who commented on my “all buildings are interesting” tweet cited the ranch house as an example of a not interesting building.
→ A ranch house c. 1955. Public Domain (via Archive.org)
Most of us would look at the building above and be able to say it's a typical suburban ranch. When pressed for more, some might guess at how old the house is, placing it in a certain moment in time, or maybe guessing at where it's located. Others might say it's a ranch house with a front porch, or that the plan is L shaped, or remark on the different architectural details, or building materials.
Despite being a house that could be deemed boring, by taking a closer look for more than a few seconds, we've looked at the house close enough to know that it is different from some other ranch houses in our personal architectural database. Compare it to the house below, which is from the same source and the same year.
These two are both ranch houses, but are very different from each other! When asked why they are different, you might say that the first is larger and fancier than the second, or that they use different materials, or that the first has a porch or and the other a front-facing garage.
Yet still, we see these two houses, which look quite different, and can say they are both ranches. Why?
Where did we learn that word “ranch”? Was it from our parents, or from a song, or maybe HGTV? What tells us that these houses are ranches?
Why do we know that these houses are ranches?
There are certain signs that tell us that this is a ranch, and not a Cape Cod, nor a McMansion. Still also, without knowing how expensive either house is, there are certain signs that tell us that the first house is “fancier” than the second house (e.g. the architectural detailing above the porch, the porch itself, the concealed garage).
Above all, what does the ranch house itself mean (or signify) to us?
An American Family Home™? (There's a lot to unpack in that idea alone.) A potential fixer upper? The suffocating isolation of suburbia? American conformity? A bygone era where boys were men etc etc.? Cisheteropatriarchy?
Our own personal architectural encyclopedias
Most of us will say to ourselves, “I'm not an expert on architecture.” Sure, you might not have built a skyscraper or have read Many Important Architecture Books, but the truth is a lot of us have built up a ton of knowledge about buildings that we see or use every day.
One of the questions I get asked all the time is “What is a McMansion?” I've started to trust in others and simply say, “A McMansion is like obscenity: you know it when you see it.” Which is true! If McMansions weren't an architectural (and cultural) phenomenon, nobody would read this blog. You all know what a McMansion is. You all know what a Ranch is. Most of you know what a strip mall looks like.
In Defense of the Kmart Scholars
Throughout my short life, I've been fascinated with the mundane, because, like most of us in the USA, the word mundane describes many of the landscapes we encounter every day. This long fascination has brought me into contact with all kinds of interesting subjects both offline (historic preservationists, books about common houses and office parks, architectural theory) and online (Flickr groups with 20-something thousand photos devoted to Kmart; filmmakers like Dan Bell, who meticulously documents dead malls; a website memorializing Howard Johnson's Restaurants, and Tumblrs like @y2kaestheticinstitute).
Finally, if you look at the buildings themselves for more than one second, you'll start to notice all kinds of interesting architecture.These buildings all do architecture: through composition materials massing scale architectural style modern and postmodern references architectural allusions to the past temporary trends (colors or typefaces).
There exists in the world great architectural theorists and historians. In the same world, there exist McMansion theorists, motel postcard archivists, Sears Home scholars, and countless other historians of the mundane.