public and private, function and meaning

One of the ways that I approach projects is to try to find meaningful relationships between the different pieces of an architectural program.  This kind of scheme can yield very interesting and sometimes surprising results, but for a single family house, can often be very limiting as well.

For a house there is almost always a simple division between public spaces and private spaces that can be established. Conventionally the bedrooms and bathroom and sometimes office are more or less private and kitchen, living room and dining room are more or less public.  For each client, there will be a different attitude toward the relative public/private aspects of these spaces with some clients drawing little, or no distinction between these categories.  These relationships are also of course influenced by fashion, family structure and the shifting relationship of parents to children, and family to society.  In his Ten Books on Architecture, Alberti spoke of these same relationships and the nature of the public/private distinction.

Of course what begins to make a project particularly interesting is when the client’s notion of this public/private relationship is altered in some way.  I have had clients that consider the family room very private, a sanctuary for only the immediate family.  Other clients consider this a party room for all comers. (After Frank Lloyd Wright’s very public marital scandals, it is probably no coincidence the entries to his houses become increasingly hidden and private).

For as much as different forms of media have possibly broken down and subverted a sense of privateness within a home, the distribution of relationships between rooms still remains a fundamental architectural problem.  That wireless communication has become so dominant only increases the tension of public/private as media devices and computers are no longer confined to a single office or study space.

Increasingly the spaces we design are in private/public flux.  There are many larger rooms that have smaller niches and little window seats where a child can be doing homework online while other siblings are watching a DVD and parents are emailing the office. What is striking is how similar this kind of room reminds me of  the Victorian era parlor where an open rooms contained a piano in one corner, a window seat for reading and a small setee for conversation, all simultaneously occupied.  The mid-century house with a single room dedicated to table or a television seems to be fading in favor of the room whose space is not dedicated to single function.

a window seat/bench as a part of the larger room

The above photo is from a large renovation and addition we did a few years ago and is a bench over storage drawers, project outward to the view of the mountains.

Like sitting in a coffee shop and reading the paper, the house is increasingly becoming a place to be in private while in public.  I almost always try to find opportunities within the structure of  the house and family to find smaller, more intimate spaces that are still open to the larger room.  The best place to study these relationships may be not a house at all, but the design of restaurant booths and banquettes.

Arugula Restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, designed by M. Gerwing Architects with a long, open banquette in the main dining area on the right and smaller, more intimate booth seating closer to the bar on the left.  You might be able to see that the booth tables and booths are also up one step from the rest of the restaurant, making a bit more compression and giving a better view over the other diners.  The booths here project inward from a smaller, more protected edge.

Vassar Drive addition and renovation, Boulder, Colorado

These are photos of a project we recently completed in south Boulder.  The project consisted of a second-story addition and main level renovation, including a completely re-designed kitchen, dining room and entry.

The renovated main level has become a series of open spaces – Living Room, Dining Room, Entry, Kitchen – each delineated by a subtle series of screens, soffits and flooring materials changes.

The new second story addition is a master suite and office and is open, loft-like, to the main level.  The project repositions the relationships of public and private spaces for a family with teenagers about to leave for college and the shifting occupation of the house.

The new kitchen is a stark contrast to the former one and is open both to the kid’s bedroom hall and the Dining Room.  When the house is inhabited by just the soon-to-be empty-nesters, the Kitchen is the end of the continuous space that spans from Master Bedroom to Office down to the main level.

The new stair from the main level to the second story has open risers and steel stringers and rails to accentuate is presence as an encountered object in the space, not a barrier between rooms.

Architecture and interior design by M. Gerwing Architects

Construction by Cottonwood Custom Builders, Jeff Hindman, Owner; Nick Fiore, Project Supervisor.

Cabinetry by Laak Woodworks, steel stair by Quality Metals

modular housing

There are a lot of really quite nice modular housing products designed by architects.  The state of standard residential design and construction is so deplorable and the potential promise in alleviating this through manufactured housing is so great that it is difficult not love these projects.  On a number of projects we have flirted with either complete or partial modular, if not panelized, construction to save time and money.  However, in each case we were proposing the design of a one-off, custom house – a process not suited to the advantages of the factory-built house.  In each case we later decided against modular construction for a number of reasons.

The recent designs by very talented architects are certainly a long way away from the double wide manufactured home, both in design and technical quality.

Pugh + Scarpa Vail Grant House

Marmol Radziner Desert House

And, there are an awful lot of websites and magazine articles fervently debunking the negative stereotypes of manufactured housing. Maybe their time has finally come.

However, I can not find myself jumping on the bandwagon.  Modular construction at its best allows for most of the construction to take place off-site and may be well suited for projects with very short building seasons or environmentally sensitive sites.  However, the high-design modular prototype that is flogged so relentlessly in architecture journals and websites is not generated from these conditions.  Rather it is proposed, en masse, as a solution to America’s dreadful housing stock.  I fail to understand how generically designed buildings, without input from clients or site-specific conditions, is any better than crappy builder plans of Tudors, Victorians and ranches.  I think the notion is that if we only lived in cool, Modern-looking homes then we would all be better off.  This is about the worse kind of ideological architectural language snobbery I can imagine.

So my protest against modular construction is in two forms:

1.  Modular prototypes are merely products, not architecture.  If they are generic and designed for imagined sites then they are no better than any other “model” homes.  This kind of work dumbs down architecture, both as a profession and an art.  It substitutes taste for invention and usually low-paid repetitive work for the skilled labor of carpenters, masons, roofers, etc.

2.  Modular construction of custom houses is an architect’s attempt to be even more of a control-freak over the building process than a set of drawings and specifications enables.  Rarely does the cost of construction, when you include everything including all utilities, foundations, etc. have significant savings over conventional construction.  Cutting the builder out of the process of making buildings again posits the building process as product design, and the proliferation of these designs online and in the design press compounds the notion that architecture is largely a visual medium.

Working with a good builder allows the architect and homeowner to craft the building over the life of the construction.  Changes are made, conditions are modified, serendipitous events become buildings.

Douglas Cutler Connecticut House

Specht Harpman zeroHouse

I certainly know that not everyone, in fact hardly any one can afford to build and live in an architect-designed custom home.  I can’t.  But I think it is ridiculous to think that the dreaded expanses of cookie-cutter suburban homes would be any better if the cookies had a different shape.

I would advocate an architecture that is site-specific, client-specific and instilled with the hands of the people who put the building together.  Later in life LeCorbusier’s pure white villas gave way to brutalist, “messy” buildings like the houses at Jauol.  The project was not a constructed abstraction direct from the architect’s head to the site.  Rather, it was embodied with the work, the opinions and the craft of masons, carpenters, glazers, etc.  Their work was not perfect, it was never intended to be, for a building is not prototyped product, it is a living, expressive entity, beautiful and functional in the least, and in the finest work, transcendent and poetic.

For my part, I will spend my time working on projects with real clients, challenging or not, on real sites, challenging or not, and making real buildings, with all the thrills and disappointments working with dozens of carpenters, painters, electricians, and craftsmen entails.

Air Force Village Competition

I recently participated in the Air Force Village architecture competition.  The task was to design a new multi-faith chapel for the campus of Air Force Village, a large community for retired Air Force officers in San Antonio, Texas.  Although I was not named one of the finalists, I was very happy with our design.  This is the first board of the competition entry, showing the building elevations, an interior rendering and site plan:

The chapel consists of two interlocking parabolic barrel vaults made of standard pre-manufactured metal forms, like those used to make quonset huts.  The main chapel is in the larger vault, the side chapels and auxiliary spaces in the smaller one.  The chapel is connected to the Health Center, and along with the Town Center building, makes an entry court for the community.

This the second board of the submission showing the building sections, aerial and night views and building plan:

The chapel was connected to the Health Center by a low, curving narthex and administrative wing.  One of the design’s most successful portions, in my opinion, was the large, open-air porch that makes the exterior entry to the chapel.  Looking out on the courtyard, the entry porch serves as the public face of the chapel and is meant to complement the other two large existing buildings, the Health Center and Town Center.  The three buildings combined were meant to manifest the community’s commitment to the spiritual, physical and social lives of the inhabitants.

There is a page on the blog with more drawings, some text and bit more detail.

atmosphere

For as much as I am engaged everyday in making ‘new’ spaces, many of the places that most stick in my memory and that I am consistently attracted to are once quite nice or fancy places that have seen better days.  It is not the historical architectural language or details, but rather the sense of time passing and maybe the sense of mortality that these places exhibit.  That these rooms were once so special, the need, desire or expense required to change them or erase them has been suppressed and these “grand” rooms still exist.

(It may also be the recognition and appreciation of the role of significantly more vertically proportioned spaces than we have come to build in the last 40 years or so.)

These spaces have “atmosphere” as I think Peter Zumthor would define it – they invoke an almost immediate reaction.  However, beyond that they also show signs of occupation, over time, by many people, and as such, have a history of human lives, of joy and despair having played out by many people over many years.

In designing new spaces, I think many architects think only of the beauty and function of the rooms and building.  There is not much discussion or conjecture on what is so profoundly out of the control of the architect – the lives that are going to be lived in these rooms.  A kitchen is certainly a place to cook and clean, but it will also be the place that family frets over a child’s school or the cost of next month’s bills.  A living room is a place for entertaining and relaxation, but it may also be where a baby took its first steps, where a boyfriend meets the parents for the first time.

These aged rooms show those signs, those scars, of the events and lives that have passed through them.  They are not simply recorded in photos or journals, but are keenly felt in the air and space of the room.  As an architect, I hope that the spaces that I make can accommodate these events, for they are inevitable and more than mere walls and ceilings and floors, make the real life of a house.

(Photos from the excellent book The Way We Live by Stafford Cliff and Giles de Chabaneix)

changing retail in Boulder

If you have lived in Boulder for only a few years, you must notice that a great number of stores and restaurants downtown are no longer with us.  This is just a partial list and just from around downtown, of places that closed in 2009:

B-Side Lounge, Heidi’s Deli, It’s Your Move, Elena Ciccone, Blink Gallery, Orchid Pavilion, Master Goldsmiths, The Body Shop, Spud Brothers, Kinsley & Co., Sunglass Pros, Sunflower, Bart’s CD Cellar, Scotch Corner Pub, Burnt Toast, The Foundry, Sidney’s Coffee, Atmosphere, Yaki Maki

Along with these closings, there are a number of significant moves:

Alpaca Connection and ArtMart, both moving along Pearl Street

So, while there are some new faces of note (Salt, Happy Noodle, Two Spoons), the overall impression is that the character of the mall is changing.  What is certain, is that the explosive growth of medical marijuana dispensaries has been remarkable.  Some of Boulder’s at least 40 new outlets that are located in approximately the downtown area:

The Bud,  Boulder Wellness Center, Pain Management of Colorado, Boulder Alternative Medicine, Cannabis Healing Arts, THC Ministry of Boulder, Mountain Medicine of Boulder, Greenleaf Farmacy, Vape Therapeutics, Healing House, Boulder MMJ, The Greenest Green, Boulder Kind Care, Boulder Rx, MediPharm, Top Shelf Alternative, Trill Alternative, Indigenous Medicines, Boulder Vital Herbs, …

(as of May 2009 there were 705 registered medical marijuana patients in Boulder – that’s a lot choice)

So, what does this say about Boulder’s retail environment?  I guess I am not sure, but there are an awful lot of landlords that with the closings listed above, would be in a world of pain and luckily medical marijuana is here to ease that chronic pain.

Is there a consistent or even vaguely referential aspect of the design of all of these dispensaries?  Is Boulder on the edge of an emerging weed design aesthetic?  Maybe someone should take a visual study of these outlets and see if there is a stash of great dope designs out there.

artificial landscapes

If the hubris of huge skyscrapers is just not quite enough (see Blair Kamin’s obsessive world’s-tallest-building articles), how about actually playing God or at least millions of years of geology and make artificial landscapes.

artificial mountain range in Dubai:

scheme for artificial mountain in Berlin:

by architect Jakob Tigges, this 1,000 meter tall mountain, called The Berg.

:

architect Roland Castro’s vision of a greener and larger Paris.

and, the inumerable number of buildings that are landscapes themselves:

SERA architects proposed Wyatt Federal Building

Like sci-fi movies that every 20 years of so reflect America and Hollywood’s renewed fear of immigrants (District 9, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), slumps in the economy of architecture leave designers lots of time to dream big.  In the 1960’s these fantastical projects were mega-cities.  (In an interesting parallel to these projects, the techniques of visualization often take huge leaps as well.  The revitalization and invention in architectural drawings in the 1960’s was amazing.  We can only hope that the demands that these artificial landscape projects make on current visualization techniques, usually computer renderings, can also engender a new paradigm of computer-based imaging.)

As an architect in Colorado, with 1,000 meter mountains in our backyard, it is an interesting trend to see play out.  Is there a implicit criticism of urbanism buried within these schemes?  Certainly it is a reflection of the concerns around climate change, enviromentalism and urban sprawl.  Or does this really signal a fundamental loss of confidence in the forms of architecture as derived from normative construction – orthagonal lines, hard and finite materials, etc.)?  Is Bilbao a building or a rocky mountain?

a question of form – Bilbao rendered in red sandstone instead of shiny titanium

What do you think?  Is this a fundamental change in the nature of the making and thinking about architecture or just the apex of a wave of  ”organic” design (artificial landscapes, blog architecture) that replaced the industrial, machine-formed images of an earlier generation of architects (Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, etc.)?

movie architects

After posting last week about the dissatisfaction so many architects have with the profession, I couldn’t help but look up some of the ridiculously romanticized images of architects crafted by Hollywood. Some of these movies actually had something to do with architecture, but most often the architect is a title used as a character prop for a sensitive, but not totally starving artist kind of guy. (There is at least a couple of movies with female architects, but I couldn’t remember them and a search did not easily turn them up. I am not really sure what the female architect role is supposed to represent to the movie world.)

left to right, top to bottom:

an unlikely architect: Woody Harrelson in Indecent Proposal

an architect that actually works a bit in the movie: the great Brian Dennehy as Storly Kracklite in The Belly of an Architect, cuckold architect. Surely an architect never had a better name.

architect as kick-ass vigilante: Charles Bronson in Death Wish. Probably the most unrealistic portrait I can imagine, although his “cleaning of the city” could be a aesthetic statement, a kind of one man urban planning.

architect as the rational, reasonable, humane guy: Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. A courtroom drama, but they needed one guy that isn’t too prejudiced or too emotional, so, enter the architect.

architect as superhero: Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead. If anyone goes to architecture school because of this book or movie, God help us all.

really?: Adam Sandler in Click. I never saw this movie, turns out no one else did either. Evidently, this architect keeps trying to make field changes, at a great cost.

Oh come on now!?: Keanu Reeves in The Lake House as a frustrated architect.

and just a typical day in the office: Kirk Douglas with Kim Novak in Strangers When We Met

Some more:

Liam Neeson in Love Actually, a widowed architect

Luke Wilson in My Super Ex-Girlfriend, I think this casting an architect as a “regular guy” maybe the only instance.

Matthew Broderick in The Cable Guy, dumped-by-girlfriend architect.

Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle, another widowed architect. Unlucky in love, clearly he needs better communication skills and refresher in coordination.

Steve Martin in Housesitter, another dumped-by-girlfriend architect – architect builds dream home for dream girl and gets dumped, another good architect name, Newton Davis.

Paul Newman in Towering Inferno. Still the hero, but the tower deserved the inferno. Go on vacation, and they finish the building without you causing the death of hundreds. And, you end up doing a field inspection in the middle of a party.

Tom Selleck in Three Men and a Baby, yet another dumped architect.

Wesley Snipes in Jungle Fever. Ah, remember when we used to draw by hand and the office was full of drafting tables…

What do we make of it that Hollywood likes to use “architect” as a shortcut for “sensitive guy” ? It’s easy to have a character be an emotive artist type or a cold, calculating business type, but when you need something a bit in the middle, “architect” kind of works. Spouses of architects be warned, there is a pretty good likelihood of you kicking the bucket before the movie even starts. And, I can’t not find a single movie where the architect is the bad guy. Overly sensitive and obsessed maybe, but that is forgivable in cinema eyes. What is most certain is that all of these architects seem to have plenty of time for lovers and intrigue, not so much time spent down at the building department or actually drawing.

Do these portrayals make young folks want to become architects? Maybe so, but compared to doctors and lawyers, there are very few movie architects. Maybe if we convicted some felons or saved a few lives on the operating table – that is the tale of the movie architect – when the story doesn’t really call for too much high drama, cast an architect as the male lead. He’ll be sensitive and most likely lonely and ready for his leading role in a romantic comedy or a mild drama. Then again, Newman saved a bunch a people and Bronson kicked ass. Of course, those guys always do, “architect” or not.

quarry, central Kentucky

I have always been fascinated by this strange, enigmatic image shot just inside the mouth of a limestone quarry in central Kentucky.

the almost surreal doubling of the images in the still water and the two object groups, one in shadow, one in the light, are as close to the everyday oddness of the photos of fellow Kentuckian Ralph Eugene Meatyard.   My earlier posts on this work:

http://mgerwing.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/the-final-rem-post-ralph-eugene-meatyard/

(photo by Mark Gerwing, around 1989)

“trained as an architect”

No photos in the post, just a bit of a rant.

Recently my wife and I had another couple over to our house for dinner.  Like us, they were both architects, but, like my wife, who now practices as a land use attorney, neither of them was currently working in an architecture/design office.  This is frighteningly common.  Maybe other professions have an equal or greater attrition rate, but certainly architecture suffers greatly from a brain drain of talent and ability.

In poll after poll, architects testify to being one of the most unhappy of all professions, with very high rates of divorce, alcoholism and suicide. And, compared to other professionals with equal years of post-secondary school education, they are most consistently underpaid.  My carpenter friends may laugh at this, but none of them are willing to trade paychecks if that includes the monthly student loan payments.

Maybe the fact the vast majority of tasks that go in to making a building have precious little to do with design contributes to the disillusionment experienced by architects.  We can say that all of the associated tasks contribute to the “design”, but I doubt any of us went to architecture school and sweated through the countless hours of studios and humiliations of jury reviews because municipal code review or zoning analysis was just so exciting.

A tough economy makes this brain drain even worse.  So many architects, young and old, are not working in the field, not of their choice. Architecture unemployment is around 20% nationwide.  Underemployment, at least anecdotally, is 100%.  There are no clear statistics that I know of for this attrition, but for 2006, there were 7500 students graduating from accredited architecture schools, but only about 3000 gaining licenses.  More than half either never become registered or drop out.  Many others, like my wife, become licensed but no longer work as architects.

Do architecture schools fail to spell out the truth of the profession to prospective and current students?  Considering that less than 25% of architecture school faculty are licensed architects, you can hardly blame them for not knowing.  (That this low rate of licensed architects teaching architecture exists is another problematic topic)  Does popular media and myth over-hype the perceived romance of being an architect?  Probably so.

I love what I do, even if so much of my time is spent on technical and bureaucratic tasks.  That so many of my colleagues are leaving the profession, or never fully entered it, is profoundly depressing.  The extremely poor quality, both technical and aesthetic, of the built environment, the ugliness of our cities, the wastefulness of our construction industries, is directly related to the deplorable depletion of the ranks of rigorously trained, hard-working architects.  In the United States, the vast majority of buildings are put together by developers.  It is no coincidence that in a landscape where aesthetics are considered so much window-dressing, and a public would rather save a few bucks than have buildings to be proud of, architects find few handholds.

If anyone knows of any reliable statistics on the number of people “trained as architects” that are no longer working in the profession, I would love to see them.  That the AIA, NCARB and schools of architecture have no idea what this number is, well…