public furniture as social space

These benches were not only a unique interpretation of the way's in which one uses - or occupies - a bench, they were also a clear study in pushing the limits of the material's capability. And in closely considering the structural conditions of how a bench meets the ground, supports a body, and stays level.

I've been interested ever since in the social space and level of comfort that can be created by various bench configurations, and have been exploring through sketching:

I've continued to increase the frequency - and exploratory content - of my sketches over the past two months. I'll be using that technique to develop a new bench design I'd like to see in the small downtowns we work in so frequently at In. Site: Architecture. The design will be based on these benches and on the goal of creating comfortable, usable social space via public furniture.

true design

I've always believed that true design isn't about reinventing the wheel, but about reconsidering - and improving - on a norm. Novelty has an actual value, in the interest of new things and the unique experiences that stretch our minds or make a place special, but new simply for the sake of different is usually not enough. New really should be "New & Improved!" - it should transform a useful object for the better.

One of our favorite cities in Scotland, Inverness, seems to have captured the essence of this fact. Their Victorian Park

has a broad range of unique footbridges along the paths connecting a series of River Islands to both banks.

But what I found truly compelling was the series of benches scattered throughout the islands. Each was a unique interpretation of a theme, so that they all felt like part of a series, and yet like no bench you'd seen before.

(I had made a commitment to use the Scotland trip to learn the manual settings on my digital SLR camera. Low-light settings are still difficult for me, so while the bridge photographs are mine, the benches are Christopher's)

 

 

These benches were not only a pleasure to sit on, but they were very gratifying - I caught myself stopping to reconsider the simple, obvious "piece of furniture for sitting in a public place," and even anticipating the next iteration. People were using the benches not only to sit, but to lie on, and as an armature for stretching in the midst of a long jog. They served not only as outdoor furniture, but municipal sculpture.

Sketching for Place

Over the summer, I added Urban Sketchers to my feed reader for some inspiration. I've since been working on sketching more frequently, as I believe that's a skill not to be underestimated. For me, one of the most thorough ways to experience a place is to try and document it. Not to mention the fact that as an Architect, communicating through drawing is one of our most effective tools.

So, doing is the only way for me to improve on a skill such as sketching, and I made a point of sketching while on our recent trip to Scotland:

anticipation in the airport

Aberdeen Beach

the original

sketching further down the beach

somehow, I managed to get down to the beach without any of the four notebooks I packed... so this is the back of a book I was reading ;) 

Pennan, possibly my favorite day

Scotland

Two weeks ago, my husband and I traveled to Scotland for the first time.

We flew into Aberdeen, the Granite City;

saw a ruin;

met up with friends to hike our first Munro, the second highest peak in all of Great Britain;

stayed in the Cairngorm National Park to hike another Munro;

visited Inverness, a Victorian City known as the 'capital of the highlands;'

drove the Great Glen, a series of Lochs, Glens and Canals that practically splits Scotland in two;

went to Chris' ancestral home,

and saw some absolutely incredible beaches along the eastern and northern coasts of the Highlands.

We ate the most amazing food and met some real characters. We now have stories we'll tell for the rest of our lives. And of course, this synopsis doesn't begin to do justice to the trip.

I’m very interested in understanding… or at least taking advantage of, whatever that thing is about travel that makes you come back a different person. And while the shine can wear off once you’re back in the routine of working hard and playing hard and feeling the pressure of all that, you’re truly never the same. I have a theory that if I traveled enough – or took those opportunities to read, journal, expose myself to the world and reflect upon it enough – I would become the person, architect, wife, friend, designer, I’d like to be.

This trip felt not only like a fantastically fun and relaxing endeavor, but like a step in the right direction.

What is a Great Architect?

While at GHOST, I filled pages upon pages with notes, with sketches and scribbles.

Much of what I wrote centered about beautiful details, admirable intentions, great materiality… I was so impressed with skill, talent, insight, and approach. I began grappling with the question of what I could learn from these great buildings and these great architects. With how I could be part of the development of a body of work which was that compelling. How can I grow as an architect, and consistently have that joy of actually contributing to something?

In thinking about how to become a great architect, I realized I’d never fully taken on the task of articulating what it means to be great. So, what is a great architect? And I don’t mean to talk just about people whose buildings are renowned. I mean talented designers, whose work gets built, whose work is livable and lovable, and whose work lasts.

A great architect is someone who gets it. Someone who is capable of synergy. Because great architecture is about that incredible moment when everything comes together. It is the material, spatial, structural, and emotional construct which becomes the great space, that the architect has to be able to conceive of.

A great architect is detail oriented – because, the devil is in the details, and because the way that your hand slides down the rail of the stair really is integral to whether or not the building’s great, and so is whether or not it keeps out water, for 20 or 50 or 100 years.

A great architect strives for balance between being creative and pragmatic. Because we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, when what has been done actually works. And because we need to understand, always, that what has been done is not the only option. A great architect sees the potential that others cannot. A great architect’s solutions are different, not just for the sake of difference, but for the joy of novelty and for the incredible appropriateness of the response to the need.

A great architect is incredibly curious. And not only curious, but a life-long learner, someone who seeks knowledge. They know enough about the material the client desires to understand right from the parti sketch, what is possible, probable, desirable, and how far the limits can be pushed. The great architect knows how to incorporate the realities their construction will encounter into their conception, their creative notion of what should be. Without being limited by what has been done before, mind you, the great architect conceives of things which are doable, efficient, logical, constructable, desirable, things that will work better. A great architect is well-read, well-spoken, they know about the impact of color and shape and form, they are a little bit of a psychologist, a sociologist, an anthropologist.

A great architect is attuned and open. They listen to everyone they meet, they soak up the site, they ask questions of the client, they study the masters whose solutions have worked before.

A great architect is, perhaps counterintuitively, highly intentional. They have a mission to achieve, and they pursue it even to the point of being ruthless. Their mission may be for sustainability, afforadability, for art or reflection or the creation of heirlooms. In thinking about this, I’ve realized that it doesn’t even matter what they are passionate about. That only affects who, specifically, will find their work compelling in the end. But to produce great architecture, we have a mission that is embedded in everything we do.

A great architect is highly consistent. The strongest work I have seen in my life’s admiration of architecture has been highly consistent – literally a body of work, a developing theme, a consistent aim. This seems to be a character distinguishing between architects who are great and architects who have done a great building.

A great architect is [what IS the term for a lover of beauty??]. They have an eye for detail, an appreciation for and expectation of beauty. They know about the golden rule, the modulor, about harmonic colors, peaceful rhythms, about prospect and refuge. They are a connoisseur – it does not matter of what, but that their spaces remind us to savor.

A great architect is a great communicator. Because all great architecture is the work of a team, and the architect must be able to convey to everyone what they seek, so thoroughly that they get what they want – or something even better.

A great architect is inspiring – they remind us that THIS is the way things should be. Their work can lift us up because they have such great expectations of the human race, and of individuals.

A great architect is an artist. They can draw, or paint, or write poetry… they can do something which is about that elusive act of creating something from nothing, from everything. About exploring oneself and the world and coming away with meaning, catharsis, value, beauty.

A great architect is not interested in needless complexity, but in simplicity and elegance, in having the least number of moving parts to get the job done. They understand that while novelty has its place, the floor plan must actually work, the flow of traffic must actually be smooth…

The list could go on forever. A great architect has compassion, imagination, sympathy. They are collaborators who can compromise, they are humble. They are self-aware, self-confident and self-critical. They are a study in balancing contradictions. A great architect is just another passionate, hardworking, human being.

Unfortunately, my internet search for ‘consensus’ on what makes an architect great turned up little of value. The ‘greats’ themselves don’t have much to say on it. Sir Norman Foster didn’t include the term ‘great,’ but he did say “you have to be an optimist… you have to be a realist, but you have to be an optimist.” Frank Lloyd Wright thought that it took a “cultivated, enriched heart.”

A great architect is not an expert in all things, but in bringing them all together.

In the end the definition is very personal, because I really don’t mean – or at least, not just – who are the architects getting published today or remembered decades and centuries later. I mean, how can I become skilled at contributing to a comprehensive, complete, elegant structure that moves its inhabitants towards joy and reflection without their even noticing that it significantly improves their lives? How can I become skilled at synergizing my original intention – beauty – with their original demand – shelter – and the hundreds of other factors, such as sustainability, structure, budget, satisfying geometries, code, geographies, technologies, cultural constructs, material limits…

I think for me, the great architects are those whose built projects work and are compelling.

What is the point, in the end? Why does it matter what makes a great architect? Because if I can continue striving towards being a great architect, then perhaps I can make great architecture.

GHOST 13

While in Nova Scotia, I felt that I was in the company of great architects. Many more great architects than I had ever been exposed to in person before. They were great speakers, writers, drawers, they crafted compelling narratives about their work and about their role in catalyzing an architectural team and a client to do something beautiful, meaningful, great.

In trying and failing to write about ghost in a comprehensible way, I very courageously ‘gave myself the summer off.’ While this consisted of not doing much from my to-do list, it also consisted of reflecting on ways to make that to-do list a mile and a half longer!

Distance has helped, but so has the pressure cooker of waiting. Part of why I couldn’t write about GHOST is that I was simply overwhelmed. I couldn’t articulate anything because I had been blown away by how much there was to soak up, and I was saturated. It’s a relief to remember that most of what was presented, and discussed at the dinner table by the rest of us, was a life’s work.

I hoped that by letting it cook, I would be able to convey all the WISDOM. And JOY. And FERVOR, that I was surrounded by at ghost. That I can strive for every day. My questions at the time swirled around what to do with all these convictions?

The speakers brought up a few times a notion they’d been grappling with while planning GHOST – which was to come away with a manifesto of sorts. Perhaps the theme, the desire, the key tenet was, this grappling with how to DO GREAT WORK. How to engage the site, how to engage yourself, materiality, culture. How to create beautiful, compelling spaces, which actually make the world a better place.

Ideas in Things

This past June, I attended the architectural symposium hosted by Brian Mackay-Lyons at his farm in Nova Scotia, entitled GHOST 13: Ideas in Things. Each time I’ve tried to write about it or do something with it, or even tell someone what it was like, I’ve struggled and writhed and decided to take a break.

A major factor in my attendance at GHOST was actually Rick Hauser, partner at In. Site: Architecture, where I’ve enjoyed working for the past nearly 3 years. Here are some great posts on other people’s blogs and articles, shared by Rick, that aim to give a taste:Architectural Record, Ned Forrest Architects and

Design Build Bluff.

A new friend from the conference who returned home to Scotland even mentioned it – “The experience has been pretty much impossible to describe to anyone back here and do it justice!”

Ghost was a study in optimism, and a gathering of like-minded souls pursuing great architecture through a few very specific lenses: Craft, Place, Community. We all flew to Halifax, bounced through the beautiful country-side to Lunenberg and stayed in picturesque B & B's so typical of this harbor town. The next morning, we bounced through the country-side further, to the coast, to Brian’s family farm. We were greeted by mud and rain and farm animals and incredibly beautiful structures floating through the epic landscape like ghosts.

We attended lectures that should have been typical – they were professors, designers, firm principals, sharing slides of built work and sketches and photographs of things their teams had labored over for years, things they had already written about and spoken about before. And we’d all been to architectural lectures throughout our education, and if we’re fortunate or determined, since we’ve been practicing. But something in the air was different. I was hard pressed to find the person who didn’t appear fully involved. Most of the stereotypical fiddling with iphones and sketchbooks was actually an ardent attempt to record every word, every image, every notion. Also, it wasn’t one lecture, one passionate speaker, but more than twenty over the course of days and nights of full-body immersion. We were immersed in the love for quality design and the positive impact it can have on lives, but also in the immeasurable, unspeakable ways that the planet and the people and the structures we try to build are all beautiful and valuable…
[this waxing eloquent and yet saying nothing is specifically why I’ve avoided writing for so long… at least I’ve spared you most of it!]

We were greeted by the giants, people who I never thought I’d do more than read about. And we not only heard Juhanni Pallasmaa and Kenneth Frampton and Glenn Murcutt speak. We spoke to them, after their lectures, in line for coffee and over sketches and questions at lunch. Patricia Patkau and Tom Kundig and Marlon Blackwell didn’t just show slides, they showed great architecture and the deep personal involvement required to participate in its creation.

In the end, I think all we were trying to do was to understand:

-          How to do work that matters,

-          And that we are not alone in doing so,

-          And that it is a lifelong pursuit,

-          But that there are ways to improve your approach, and almost… to perfect it.

-          That we all have taken up the mantle of commitment to ourselves, our clients, the planet, to create passionately and responsibly so that our buildings may be compassionate and compelling.