Via Treehugger.com

Go back to grad school:

This thought was like a microscopic stroke. The M.Arch was the “go-back” and my PTSD symptoms get more acute whenever I get near institutions of higher learning.

Ride my bike across the country and write about it:

If I had a bike this might be a good one. The great escape. I had it all planned out. My wife and three year-old daughter would also come along. I could tow her in a little trailer. No need for training because we’d get in shape as we went—after all we are riding bikes. The things we’d see! Live off the grid! We could write a book about our adventures on the road, the crazy people we met, the kind citizens who would open their homes and kitchens to us. How our spirits were restored by the long journey. Then there would be the book tour. Film rights. Ewan McGregor would play me. Have to get steel-framed bikes so they could be welded at any roadside gas station. None of those fancy carbon fiber frames, light as they are, because I understand they can snap. The bikes would have to be very expensive and very cool—this is why I never go to bike shops with my credit cards. Maybe we could get a sponsorship deal, ride for some cause. See Architecture for Humanity entry, below.
read more »

Title page from original 1843 Danish edition via Wikipedia

The numbers look good/bad. The economy is recovering/anemic. The markets are up/down. If you follow economic reporting and analysis the economy seems to be a schizo-economy. What this indicates, in this era of battling economic models, is that no one really knows from one day to the next.

When will this end? Nobody knows this either. Even the economists don’t know because we have never been in a recession rooted in such deep complexities and systemic vulnerabilities. In such an environment, the phantoms of group-think become a virus that exacerbates real conditions. Doubt shadows every possible move.

As the Buddha said, life is suffering. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard defined this as either/or. The central issues in his book, Either/Or, hinge upon the individual’s choice and will in the face of life’s difficulties. This is his take on how to end the suffering.

Danish architecture has exerted a powerful influence on the profession. Danish philosophy may also present some insight. Though he wrote in the eighteenth century he is sometimes considered a postmodernist. Now might be the appropriate time to include him in the Thinkers for Architects series. Although his philosophy may not, on the surface, seem relevant to design, it is definitely relevant to business…and to being human.

read more »

Fitz Henry Lane, "A Smart Blow (Rough Sea, Schooners)," 1856 via The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research

I recently paid a visit to the smallest office I have ever set foot in. It was actually a tiny one-bedroom apartment overlooking a pool. Its location, and the maneuvers I had to make to gain access, gave it the ambiance of secrecy. This must be what it feels like to visit a safe house, I thought.

Significant things are going on here. You may learn of them soon enough so, excepting one thing, I will not break the mystery. On one wall, in the very center of the wall, there hangs a small oil painting. The subject: a shipwreck in turbulent seas. It was done in blues with a very purposeful, skilled hand. It is not famous but could have been had it gotten into the right hands. It reminded me of Fitz Henry Lane’s “A Smart Blow (Rough Sea, Schooners),” 1856.

I asked the architect if he had done this. No, he said. He then told me the story of how this painting was the first beautiful thing that had ever transfixed him. When he was five or six, he used to sit and stare at it endlessly. This reminded me of how I used to stare out at the thunderstorms from my grandmother’s window, feeling like I was in the midst of them. As a child, he must have felt transported by this painting the way I was by that surrounding sky.

read more »

Architecture Billing Index, via CalculatedRiskBlog.com

Propaganda, n. The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view. Also: information disseminated in this way; the means or media by which such ideas are disseminated.

– Oxford English Dictionary

This heavy pause in the profession, unsettling as it feels, is just the open mouth of the river, beckoning. As the doctor said, “Du calme, du calme.” You will turn, head up, and pass through the stations ahead. This is affirmation of redefinition is the essence of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The recession is why I am drawn to it.

Given current conditions, must architecture, the discipline and profession, embark on a journey of redefinition itself? Though it may not be on the same level as GM’s restructuring, broader economic forces beyond the profession’s control compel it to thoughtfully consider the course forward. On a private level, this is perhaps the best time to define or redefine yourself as an architect or architect-to-be. This process of self-discovery is how you own it.

read more »