2nd draft of application essay

I just finished a revised draft. Thanks to everyone who emailed me or commented on the blog, it was infinitely helpful. For this draft I added a little background and revised some wording, and it should be pretty close to final. The next part of the essay will map out my academic plans and how i hope to formulate the rest of my curriculum based on my desire to communicate more effectively. I may or may not post that stuff tonight, but i will be posting the whole thing after i submit it - in a more blog friendly format (links and pictures!).

The architectural education emphasizes a limited, albeit effective approach to communication. We are formally taught how to express 'architectural' ideas to our potential clients using a handful of architectural tools and graphic expressions. This is adequate if the discipline retains its current, narrowly defined role. But that is not what architecture is, it is not what we learn in our education, and architects do not always act upon this capacity. Between the widespread momentum of the environmental movement, the technological advances and availability in three-dimensional computer software and the staggering unemployment rate, there is a competitive advantage to be more responsive and adaptive to the role an architect plays in a project. Supplementing these factors is a general undercurrent, noticeable in the profession and unavoidable in our particular student body, that design should not be available only for those who can afford it. Architects have an increased incentive and responsibility to change the general public's perception of their roles in the pursuit of a better built (or non-built) environment. Those who are willing to take a more active role in response to these changes are the ones who will shape the way our profession is defined in the years to come. They are using their skills as problem solvers and extending their reach to become problem identifiers. To do this, they need to be experts of communication - not just of traditional 'architectural' communication, but of communication to a vastly diverse and ever changing audience - in order to help make more informed, better educated decisions about the implications of their clients’ actions. 

Again, grammar and style edits are still welcome!

Part 1 - How does the architectural education emphasize communication?

Taken from the application:

"This fellowship derives from an endowment created to provide support for graduate students with financial need who are pursuing studies that emphasize communication, especially writing skills."

So the first question I have to answer is, how does the architectural education emphasize communication (to someone who has never been a part of it), and how can I explain it quickly enough to allow room for my academic plans in the same 1-page essay? Here goes nothing...

The architectural education emphasizes a limited, albeit effective approach to communication. We are formally taught how to express 'architectural' ideas to our potential clients using a handful of architectural tools and graphic expressions. This is fine if the discipline retains the narrowly defined role it has built a reputation around. But architects do not always play this role. Increasingly they have more responsibility and incentive to reevaluate their roles, and more importantly to change the general public's perception of those roles in the pursuit of a better built (or non-built) environment. Architects are taking a more active role in their relationships with clients. They are using their skills as problem solvers and extending their reach to become problem identifiers. To do this, they need to be experts of communication - not just of traditional 'architectural' communication, but of communication to a vastly diverse and ever changing audience - in order to help make more informed, better educated decisions about the implications of their actions. 

Does this even make sense to people who are not currently heavily entrenched in the architectural education? It feels like I am taking the last year and a half of observations about our education and pinning them down to one paragraph. I have no idea if everything else in my head is making this appear successful to me, or if it really does convey the information I want it to (ha! this is a small representation of the most essential skill we are being taught; how to absorb an overflow of information and communicate it effectively to a given audience).

lecture Series - John Peterson and Public Architecture

poster by andi solk, m.arch option III student and head of the lecture series committee

When possible, I try to catch the guest speakers we are privileged to at the University of Oregon. It can be exciting to see people who are fully dedicated to professional practice speak about their work, and most of them know how to keep their audience captivated with interesting stories and sexy pictures. If nothing else, when a guest lecturer visits the school, it provokes students to go out of their way to look at some unfamiliar work. This in turn broadens our education and sometimes I walk away from a presentation having found a major influence and inspiration. Some favorites of mine have included Kengo Kuma, Anna Maria Orru, and James Wines.

It's not always easy to get architecture students and professors to attend these lectures, which is part of what made Friday night such a nice surprise. John Peterson of Public Architecture came to Lawrence Hall 177 and spoke to a rather enthusiastic, comparatively large crowd of students and professors at 5:30 pm - a time when most people in Lawrence are either burned out from a full week of studio and headed to happy hour, or anxious to get home and crash because they've only slept six hours since Wednesday. I think the attendance at John's lecture speaks partially to the caliber of the work his firm has accomplished, and volumes to the common interest in our community revolving around design as a means for social activism. John Peterson is the founder of the 1% pro bono design program, an offshoot of his private firm, Peterson Architects.

John's presentation was a really nice way for me to cap off the last few weeks. His message, his firm's work, and his passions were clear and admirable. But it was his delivery and the intentional, often successful strategies he used to communicate the importance of an idea to the audience that most impressed me. I have spent the last seven or eight months trying to understand the role of architecture today and how I possibly fit into it, or what I am doing with this education. Over the last few weeks I have done my best to narrow my interests in order to articulate them for a fellowship that I am applying for through the University. What excited me about John's lecture was not only that the work he does is making an enormous impact on the way we define and understand architectural practice, but his presentation was so obviously representative of the skills we are trying to learn in the architectural education - whether we know it or not.

Between now and Friday I need to have an essay written to map out my academic plans over the next year and a half. I will be using this blog to help write that essay. Any feedback, critical or not, would be extremely helpful this week - even from my mom, who will undoubtedly tell me how much she likes my work :)

TED Talk - Joshua Prince-Ramus authoring processes over objects, the Wyly Theatre

For a little background, Joshua Prince-Ramus was a founding partner of OMA New York, the American affiliate of Rem Koolhaas' Netherlands based firm, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Shortly after the success of the Seattle Public Library, JPR separated from OMA and renamed the firm REX.

He is part of the TED brain trust, and gives a damn good presentation that speaks to a pretty wide audience. The latest one is about the Wyly Theatre Building in Dallas. His intro is about the schism between creativity and execution, authoring processes versus objects, and the relationship between the architect and the client(s). Chronologically, these are some highlights:

1:00 - "We are for decorative purposes only" - referring to the state of architects and architecture today.

3:47 - both owner and architect alike are empowered to critique architectural manifestations based on positions taken. This leads to 'the lost art of productively losing control'.

5:20 - a diagram showing how agenda should fit into the projects and the clients' constraints (seen below)

9:00 - Diagrams

11:25 - three basic configurations for the theatre, the technologies used and some renderings to show the different uses.

16:36 - time lapse video showing the building change configurations

"If we are so good at our craft, shouldn't we be able to conceive of an architectural manifestation that slides seamlessly through the projects and the clients' constraints?"

-Joshua Prince-Ramus

If you enjoyed this video, check him out in an earlier TED talk while still with OMA:

And finally, here is the timelapse film from Stewart Mayer on Vimeo adding some clarity and music to the film shown in JPR's presentation:

Wyly Theatre Timlapse, Dallas Arts District from Stewart Mayer on Vimeo.

diving right back into it

Well hello my beloved friends and family. For the last few weeks I have been wondering how to jump back into this blog thing. In my head I thought I would write this monumental, all-inclusive post that would serve to summarize the past 5 or 6 months. The longer I searched for the theme or the style of this formidable resurrection post, the harder it was to write.

Part of the hesitation was that I want to change the focus of this blog. I had been using it periodically to show my own work and our life in Eugene, but since last fall I have taken an interest in writing as a medium to express architectural themes and spatial properties. It is an overlooked and undervalued component of our work here, so I would like to start using this blog more frequently as a means to articulate the process of my education (which I had been doing a little) as well as track my own interests and inspirations as they come to me. Every term there are dozens of projects, people and events that inspire me, so I would like to pass them along and figure out what they mean to me by articulating my thoughts to you. With that said, I may disable the email function of this blog, as I do not want to overcrowd your respective inboxes.

So today, instead of trying to catch everyone up at once, I will write this post as if there was no break. Every so often I will do my best to post some work from the fall term, but until then I just want to get started reviving A List of Books.

Here is a project I came across the other day while reading dezeen. It is not my own work and it is only indicative of my education as it happens to be a beautiful project from the mountains of Japan.

The Kuri at Chushinji by Katsuhiro Miyamoto & Associates. A Kuri is built to house the priest and his family, as well as provide a space for intimate community events.

The concrete roof was formed first. It reminds me of the roof at Le Corbusier's Ronchamp. Concrete is one of my favorite materials for its flexibility and strength - both structural and aesthetic. Despite the high carbon emissions produced by its main ingredient (cement), there is room for improvement through the use of byproducts such as fly ash and recycled aggregate. It is also one of the most widely available construction materials around the world, making it applicable to a range of projects.

The roof is meant to play off the traditional temple form. Many of these temples last hundreds of years thanks to impeccable care and sanctity of use. Over time the interior walls and layouts of temples go through modifications and renovations, but the roof form remains constant. This roof was designed with the intention to last 100 to 200 years.

photos courtesy of the dezeen site, taken by Takumi Ota

Traditional Japanese architecture and Buddhist teachings emphasize an awareness of the seasons. This picture shows the blurring of the boundaries between interior and exterior environment. If you look closely you can see the interior wood framing touch the roof without any layers in between. The gaps left over by this process visually and physically connect the occupants with the elements. The visible, single roof element also serves to unify the individual chambers which are partitioned by interior walls and screens.

I love this section drawing. This project exemplifies the type of scale that I would like to work with right now. The further I get in school the harder it is for me to grasp designing large buildings. There is an approach to space on a small scale that I can feel. Perhaps it is something that will change over time as my abilities develop, but if I want to evoke emotion through architecture, I have to be able to put myself inside the building during the design phase.