PROTO-ARCHITECTURE

Recently NCARB published a list of the 13 Must Follow Twitter Accounts for Aspiring Architects which I was happy to find had some of my favorite twitter friends on it including the inimitable storytelling of Bob Borson, and the prolific business insight of Enoch Sears.  That said, aside from this dynamic duo, it’s a pretty vanilla list.  You could throw in quite a few others with that, including Mark R. LePage and Jeff Echols who also write on the business of architecture, or  Marcela Abadi Rhoads who posts excellent content on Barrier Free Design,  Cherise Lakeside, the #CSIKracken engaged in specification and project delivery, Tabitha Ponte who is laser focused on creating a new education paradigm, or even Randy Deutsch dissecting the digital, and the data behind the design.  Call me a maverick, but networking tips from AIAS and updates from NCARB aren’t why I got into architecture.  Inspiration, agitation, disruption…twitter is a chaotic crucible of thought and provocation, a place to connect with one or thousands.  Here’s my version of this list.  I hope that it will get your design blood flowing: Read the rest of this entry →

Architecture in the real world…is the only ‘architecture’.

Period.

With the title of this entry a reader might make the assumption that I’d write on the nuts and bolts aspects of the profession, what an office is like, how the process really works, and maybe even a litany of advice for the emerging professional.  It’s not.  Architecture in the real world, professionally speaking, is more like any other office experience than not.  Now on to something more fun, and probably more controversial.  Strap in.

If it ain’t built, it ain’t architecture.

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I was at the Siggraph conference in August and Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) was all the rage.  While Google has decided to stop making their Google Glass, they are in the minority (although I think we haven’t heard the last on this from the gentle giant) as manufacturers all over are jumping on the bandwagon from the highly publicized Facebook purchase of the Oculus Rift goggles, to the very recent announcement of the Microsoft’s Hololens. Read the rest of this entry →

Bethesda Row

As an architect and urban planner, my focus is always, first and foremost, on creating spaces for people.  That focus is filtered though a myriad of lenses, economics, client direction, etc., but the goal is always the same.  As most are aware, the U.S. experienced an explosion of growth after the second world war, and with the automobile as an affordable mode of transit, the nation’s urban structure burgeoned into what we now call the suburbs.  Zoning models followed this, regulating land use in a way that abandoned traditional walkable communities in favor of automobile-centric circulation.  In the last few decades, however, there has been a growing movement of communities embracing Form Based Codes.  Unlike traditional zoning  “Form Based-Codes (FBCs) seek to restore time tested forms of urbanism.  They give unity, efficient organization, social vitality, and walkability to our cities, towns and neighborhoods.” (via the Form-Based Codes Institute) Read the rest of this entry →

I think there is a turning point for most college students when the clouds part and they fully start to realize how much their education has transformed their way of thinking.

For me, my moment came when I started seeing common threads between different disciplines.  Normally, one would think architecture has very little to do with poetry, or that philosophy has nothing in common with mathematics.  It was when the barriers between these dropped for me that my learning became really fun. Read the rest of this entry →