How to become an architect? As Covid-19 is well past, students and their parents have resumed visiting university campuses. To my delight, students are showing a growing interest in architecture programs.
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Jacques Gubler: what does an elegant solution mean in architecture? During a visit to Basel, Switzerland with a colleague of mine and architecture students, I rekindled my relationship with Jacques Gubler, an esteemed history and theory faculty who taught at the EPFL when I was a student there. It was a wonderful fully-packed afternoon, with visits to key architecture projects, a critique of the new annex designed by Christ & Gantenbein, followed by a tour of the Kunstmuseum Basel (Image 1).
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Prague: a lesson in stairs (Josef Plečnik). There has always been for me delight in discovering in-situ urban places when studying famous, or not so famous, and, even better, relatively unknown architects. I will admit that I favor anonymous architects, as many of them have created stupendous works in silence; away from the unnecessary disturbance surrounding today’s star architects.
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Architectural sketching and how do I sketch. This second blog of the series Architectural sketching is a compendium and illustration of conceptual thoughts offered in the previous blog of a similar title. The examples for this blog are taken from my own sketchbooks that span over several decades. Each example illustrates a particular architectural preoccupation through sketching.
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Architectural sketching and why is it important.?This blog is part one of three on sketching architecture. This one introduces aspects about my own sketching techniques and their origins, and how sketches and architectural drawings were seen as works of art.
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Lower deck lavatory: A340-600. I have been fortunate to travel in many parts of the world since the age of nine. Although trains remains my favorite mode of ground transportation—especially in Europe where I grew up and during a day’s ride you can see the panoramic landscape transform in front of your eyes—taking an airplane is a must when speedy travel overseas is essential, of course, if you have time, a slower voyage across the Atlantic with the Queen Mary 2 is memorable.
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Latvian National Museum of Art: Part 2. In a previous blog I mentioned my desire to return to the museum. Recently I was able to make the journey and conduct additional research on the three previously mentioned stairs designed by Lithuanian architecture firm ProcessOffice.
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Blue Bottle Coffee: Hong Kong. Cafés are quintessential urban places that showcase the autobiographical identities of cities. In a past blog, I wrote about a famous café in Riga, Latvia: “…cafés are places where patrons often act as if the space was their own living room, telling me that these intimate conversations and social behaviors are meant to be seen and overheard.” In this new blog, I wish to reflect on another aspect that defines the cultural identity of cafés, where architecture is part of a larger sense of place.
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Pierre von Meiss: architect and pedagogue. As I reflect on how leadership could envision a roadmap for an academic unit, I am reminiscing on my own education, and how I benefited from an enlightened administrator.
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The Whitney Museum: stair by Marcel Breuer. There are too many magnificent stairs in New York City to fathom visiting them all during one stay or even in a lifetime.
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