“…nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see.”
Italian painter, Giorgio Morandi
In previous blogs, I have written about the necessity of skill building to facilitate students to use techniques as a process to diagram conceptually; work through iterative design processes; move from sketch to drafted sketch; and also to learn to sketch in model form.
Continue reading Sketching on a field trip. Part 2
I believe that there is always the need, a desperate need, for a world inspired by ideas. The Covid-19 pandemic interrupted many of our dreams, and while long overdue attention to pervasive societal inequalities has finally taken center stage, I fear that ideas, modest or radical in their outreach, are desperately missing in our daily discourse.
Continue reading The nature of IDEAS
Inventing versus re-inventing. In past blogs, I stated that my academic and professional interest favors re-invention over invention. Working in the creative field of architecture surrounded by colleagues and students who thrive on furthering their art form, I always find it curious when reviewing student work, how many of them claim to invent a site strategy, to organize domesticity, or state a position in architecture that wants to be new.
“The distinguishing feature of great beauty is that it should surprise to an indifferent degree, which continuing, and then augmenting, is finally changed to wonder and admiration.”
Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Continue reading Inventing versus re-inventing
Issues about sketching, Part 1. As an instructor, I have always enjoyed sketching with students. It is among many rewarding rituals that first and foremost establish a complicity. Learning-by-doing—in this instance to see and experience how others practice a particular skill—seems at times an old-fashioned method, but why not continue a well-versed tradition?
Continue reading Issues about sketching, Part 1
Questions of the moment. During two long years struggling to find meaning while living with the Covid-19 pandemic, so much happened beyond confinement, social distancing, washing one’s hands, and wearing masks. While we lived in a homebound microcosm, we were simultaneously made aware of the very same problem striking across the globe, and of the inequality of our ability to respond to the crisis.
Continue reading Questions of the moment
Both the practice and the teaching of architecture have led me to appreciate the idea of type; type as in building type (e.g. circular temple such as the Pantheon in Rome) or enfilade as space type. However, I will admit that this was not always the case. As a student at the EPF-Lausanne, I abhorred any thought about designing architecture that had anything to do with the idea of type. This was for two reasons.
Continue reading The idea of the enfilade
While rekindling an idea for one of the numerous designs of a courtyard house I am working on, I wanted to use a model sketching technique ( that involves folding paper to rapidly create an object in three dimensions.
Continue reading Why Model Sketching? Part 5
Model sketching, Part 4. After rereading my blog Architectural Education: A question of section. Part 2, I located drawings of that undergraduate project, as well as a collaborative sketch between one of the students and myself created during a desk critique. The three drawings (Image 1, below) show a progression by the student following my suggestion to focus on a detail, which pushed the project forward with more precision and clarity.
Continue reading Why Model Sketching, Part 4
Architecture techniques. As an architect, I have always cherished designing a project. Over the years, I’ve come to understand that making a project is more about projecting a model of life than designing, which comes from the Italian designare, meaning to draw.
Continue reading Architecture techniques
Carlo Scarpa Gavina Showroom in Bologna, Part 2. When I wrote my initial three blogs (1, 2, 3) on the work of Italian architect Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978), in the back of my mind I had planned a sequel to the earlier Gavina Showroom blog which would analyze how its façade was conceived and erected. The topic might seem obvious or redundant since Scarpa’s oeuvre has been studied from so many perspectives.
“The material, detail and structure of a building is an absolute condition. Architecture’s potential is to deliver authentic meanings in what we see, touch and smell; the tectonic is ultimately central to what we feel…”
Steven Holl