As an designer I’ve always been a bit of a lost soul. I have my opinions of course, and I enjoy visiting works in person, but I’ve never derived any great pleasure from looking at architecture in books or magazines.
Instead, I’ve gotten my aesthetic kicks from novels, short stories, and comics. Akira and Sandman are my epic lodestars. Calvino and Borges are on my Mount Rushmore.
Or even wider, I’d rather frail on the banjo or toot on the harmonica. And lately I’ve been geeking out on bread. I did have a two year run of playing into architect stereotype and being into photography, but that is countered by my lifelong affair with boardgames.
I doubt such random interests have been good for my career, either professionally or academically, but I hope they have made me a more well rounded person.
When I was in college, I used to assert that everything was worthy of study since everything feeds into architecture. I am no longer so bold to make such an assertion, but I still hold out hope that all the time chasing these random trails do feed back into the work. I’m not so sure how, but one can hope right?