Japan: Connecting Old and New
On a recent trip to Japan, where everything I saw was new to me, I was struck by the way old and new forms are used to express similar ideas in very different ways.
Geometry & Generalist
unlike specialized professionals such as structural engineers, mechanical engineers, or geotechnical engineers, an architect is specifically trained to be a generalist, to see both the big picture and oversee the details. There is a saying that an architect knows a little bit about everything, but not much of anything! No other professional on the building project team can talk with about space, light, building codes, history and the strength of concrete with equal ease (and sometimes in the same sentence!).
Tree, Water, Earth and Sky
When starting a new project, facing a blank canvas or a blank computer screen is daunting. Even after analyzing all of the project constraints, where is the starting point to synthesize the information and for create something from nothing? This is where literary devices, such as personification, analogy and metaphor, are useful tools to think about architectural design in the context of another medium such as literature, sculpture or, quite often, music…
Navigating Technological Change in Architectural Practice
Starting somewhere in the 1980’s with 2D CADD software on mini and microcomputers, through the internet, worldwide web, 3D modeling and simulation, BIM, and, more recently, artificial intelligence, fast changing technology has often disoriented architectural practice and potentially threatened it both economically, but even existentially.
Power of Ten Design
Architectural design can be thought in terms of multiple levels or “altitudes.” Up close is the building itself, its walls, roof, doors. Further back is the building’s physical context, and further back still – with the building now out of direct site – might be its symbolic context or the role it plays in the larger society. All of these views are interdependent.
Palm Springs
What is the allure of a 110 degree suburbia? Is it post war exuberance? An act of defiance against climate and logic? Is it a statement of democracy and free will? Sunstroke? Isn’t it a little bit weird?
A Humanist Architect
I am an architect, and I think of myself as a humanist. There are many definitions of humanist (it makes sense that there would be), but among the shortest I have found is “an approach to life based on reason and our common humanity, recognizing that moral values are properly founded on human nature and experience alone.” As a self-defined humanist, I tend to accept people as they see themselves, assume they know more or less what is best for them, and do what little I can to help them along their way.
Architectural Quotes
Architecture is frozen music. Frederic von Schelling: Philosophie der Kunst This is part of a personal collection of what others have said about architecture. Profound, cynical or silly, it is relevant to me; perhaps it will be for you as well. It is in no particular order and I will share from time to time. […]
Joining the AI…ehhhh
Image: Vintage Drafting tools, copyright Adobe Stock/Grigory I am a loyal, frustrated, enthusiastic, passive member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). I watch it commit tactical errors, abandon initiatives, be fleeced by corporate sponsors (full disclosure: I was one such sponsor in a past career), and generally spend too much time looking in the […]
The Building Is Alive!
Mark Twain said of his Connecticut home: “To us, our house was not insentient matter — it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace […]