Category: Architecture

In my favorite podcast, On Taking Pictures (#192) there was a question about getting into “modern art” on otp192 and I thought I’d jump in with my own thoughts since I had an interesting struggle with art a few years ago.Movie Passengers (2016)

Even though I was never really big into art per se as a kid, I went to college majoring in architecture and slipped into a heavy emphasis on the visual arts, but I think a lot of it was just on the joy of making stuff in an an intense studio environment. But I did also enjoy going to the SF-Moma on a semi regular basis.

In grad school (again in architecture) I had some more theory shoved into my brain and I had also become much more cynical seeing the art industrial complex merely as an outgrowth of conspicuous consumption by the rich and powerful. Between this cynicism and the additional theory which put TOO much context in my art viewing experience … I went blank. I completely lost the ability to appreciate art. Pretty much any kind of art. It was total information overload.

The big, big turning point for me was in a video arts class I had with a quirky teacher. We ended up not meshing very well in the end, but early in the class there was a moment for which I will be forever grateful for. During a class discussion I talked about how I had gotten to the point of just not giving a shit about art. I must have mentioned that I like making art, but I find all that BS surrounding high art just uninspiring to the point of boring meaninglessness. And he responded “Ahh, but don’t you realize the viewing art is also creative experience?”

And something clicked. Not that day…but a couple months later. I was in an art museum (primarily to check out the building by Renzo Piano) and started looking at a Rothko (one of the two colors abstracts with brown on top and white below). And I decided “fuck it, I’m going to enjoy looking at this piece…even if I look at it in a way that I think would have made Rothko puke”. so I stared…and at the edge between the two colors, where the brush strokes had a bit of their own definition, I started to see an arctic landscape with an overcast sky and an igloo in the distant horizon.

And I was delighted! It was juicy to revel in such a transgressive pictorialist viewing of the work of such a prominent Ab Ex painter. For years I had looked at art as the outgrowth of various external forces…as case studies for my own current project…as a commentary of society…as a polemic within the critical dialogue of the period…but this time I just enjoyed the art for what it brought out of me. It was the first time in forever I actually just enjoyed art.

All that education was great, it put everything in context, it helped me understand the theoretical value and significance of a lot of these pieces that I had been plopped in front of. But really, this wacky moment was what brought me back into truly appreciating art –realizing that once the artist released the work, they were out of the picture. And with me standing there, I (not the artist, not the zeitgeist, not the art historian) had the right to take this image and take it wherever the fuck it needed to go. The viewing of art is my creative experience and I had the right (responsibility?) to make the most of this moment.

The other day we went to the planning commission public meeting because one of our clients had a variance request. It was a long tedious affair…and yet insanely interesting. I’m not sure its something I would do on any basis other than as required for items that directly affect me or my clients, but its certainly interesting to have a window in the lives of those around us. From adding a liquor section to Walmart, to a guy who got caught building without permits, there were little glimpses everywhere you looked.

One of my earlier tasks with Rogers+Labarthe architects was to go measure a couple two story office buildings that had a decent sized footprint. It was a great introduction to the BOMA measurement standards for office buildings, but it was even more interesting as an exercise intruding into the worlds of all these folks.

Now that I think about it, strangely it seems most of these spaces weren’t occupied at the time I was measuring them, I’m not sure where the tenants went, but it lends a ghostly aura to my memories. Behind every tenant was another manufactured reality. One standout tenant was a Lyndon Larouche warehouse. Another was a Dale Carnegie workshop. One tenant was a contractor that had replaced the doors with a residential entry with garish glass sidelights. Then there was an immigration lawyer with plush leather furniture. And an insurance agent who had his office decorated with animal heads.

While vertical striation might is the most conceptual way of separating yet combining disparate activities, really all you need is a plastic laminate solid core door.

I just woke up to a dream of working in a crazy old style hotel on the seventh floor. It was not only an old victorian hotel, but one that was under renovation, but you still had to go up the stairs, even though that too was under renovation. Each lobby was a bit different, and the office was an odd mix of bedroom and architecture studio. On one landing was a big screen TV with stuff strewn around like you’d see at a frat house. On another landing was a couple “cat-cheetahs” with beautiful hair but a menacing demeanor.

My previous odd dream from a couple months ago had me in something like the brutalist building of Wurster Hall but stretched out to include a 70’s style four or five story office building that had a high atrium. That too had a very disconnected aspect to it, though in that dream the elevator was the primary transportation from world to world, though there were some stairs involved also.

It seems the beauty of stairs for these sorts of mental activities is that vertical separations lend themselves particularly well to such insular worlds. Its kind of strange when you think of it, living life artificially 10 feet above the ground….or at my office at ZCA, 120 feet.

I don’t remember where I read it, but it has stuck in my head. An architect is paid in experience and in money. If you aren’t getting enough in one or the other (or both!) then its time to move on.

It’s easy to forget the client is a crucial team member of a project. Since they provide the cash (one of their primary roles) its easy for them to become the boss. But their active participation is important in that many projects get derailed due to the indecision of the client.

As the cash provider and the one who will be stuck with the project at the end, it is fair and appropriate that they need to make the important decisions. However, when they take too long to decide or go back on their decisions they hold up the flow of the project. If the consultant team tries to forge ahead without final decisions, if there are any changes in the future, the mass of drawings that need change due to an ill-timed decisions creates coordination nightmares.

As an architect, its easy to tell your cash provider to that they are the decider in chief. What’s not as easy is to inform them of their responsibility to decide in a timely manner.

One of my fondest memories in Berkeley was at a party hanging out with a bunch of artists. The building was utterly non-descript, but the crowd was great fun. Maybe because we all knew each other, maybe because they were a bunch of free spirits, almost certainly the autumn weather played a part, but in the middle of the event a group of us coalesced and started dancing around the fire pit, playacting random mundane activities like mowing the lawn, cutting vegetables, etc, etc.

It was a night all about the crowd and the mood. It could have been almost any old apartment complex, but without the fire pit that moment would have never come.

We just sold one of our coffee tables, thus freeing up our other coffee table that had been sitting on the original coffee table. We’ve had it for a while, it used to hide in the bedroom of our old apartment, but now it sits in the bunnies’ living room.

So as soon we let them out, Peppercorn came out to inspect the “new” table. Of course the full process includes a few nips a the new piece of furniture. I feel bad for the table, but what can you do?

Stillness is something that is easily missed in this society. Honestly, I’m not too good at it – I’m so easily distracted I’ve lost interest in devoting an hour and a half to watch even simple action movies.

The shame of quiet architecture of some renown is that they usually attract tourists who don’t have much time to soak in the stillness.

I mean it is supposedly all about sustaining this planet. But I just wonder. I think sustainability is about the feeling that you are doing something to save the earth.

I know that’s why the projects we’re working on have a green certification. I suspect deep down inside the powers that be don’t give a flying bleep about saving the earth. But they do know their future tenants like the idea of living in a place that supposedly was built according to ways that may have helped prevent some harm planet.

So now, its not about doing anything per se, but checking that box.