Leonardo Ricci. This blog concludes my thoughts on mentors, the three who have made me who I am as an architect and educator. Following blogs on two of my professors, Robert Slutzky at the EPFL and Raimund Abraham during my year at The Cooper Union (Cooper), I want conclude with Leonardo Ricci who I met as a colleague at the University of Kentucky.
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Student critiques in architecture. Reflecting on my life as an educator, I perceive three important phases in the evolution of my teaching methods, and how, retrospectively, they have mirrored significant shifts in how students learn. As an introduction, let’s delve into the three phases.
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Leonardo Ricci: how to project in architecture. Leonardo Ricci: how to project in architecture.I have written many blogs to assist students in furthering their intellectual curiosity. These blogs elucidate content that addresses a number of issues they encounter during regular design studio time.
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Carlo Scarpa, Venice entrance pavilion. Over the years, I have noticed that small, unobtrusive interventions are no longer discussed. Many of the intellectual riddles—especially in academia—now focus on the plethora of new, unexpected, bizarre, and even the fashionably ugly. If this is true, it is sad that what is now understood as architecture often no longer relates to how, in particular, small works of excellence contribute to the built environment.
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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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