Category: Architecture

Badger got sick this past week, turns out it was a urinary tract infection. But he’s off of pellets for a bit, which means lots and lots of veggies. But since his appetite is down, guess who got to eat most of the veggies!

Which brings me to one of the major conundrums in Peppercorn’s world. She LOVES food but HATES cooking. As such the kitchen has always been a conflicted space for her. And generally she just avoids it. In our previous apartment, it had a tile floor so the material change maybe discouraged her from visiting the kitchen. But now its all tile, but she still avoided the kitchen.

Till this morning. Now that she realized what’s going on, she came flying into the kitchen hoping to get an advance copy of the bok choy.

It is an awkwardly personal experience to work on a remodel.  I’m not often tasked to work with the clients, so I don’t get to know my patrons personally.  But I’ve measured my share of homes.  This is an utterly invasive exercise. We go through their entire house, every room, every closet – there is nothing hidden by the time you leave.

After taking in all this raw data, the draftsman then commences a silent struggle with the original designers and builders. As we draw up the building, the puzzle comes together, teasing out the logic of its forebears,  forcing them to give up their details and secrets. This exercise is an intimate chat with history, made with silent arguments.  By the time we’re done, an understanding has been made with the past and a vision of the present condition has been agreed upon.

Unfortunately, the actual design of the remodel is often the least personal aspect of the project. This remodel will most likely be the most expensive modification of the largest purchase of the client’s life.  So the design is often focused on what the homeowners can recoup when they sell the house. Not very personal. Awkward.  But that’s the cost of living in a market driven world.

I remember my sophomore studio’s final project involved a kit of parts. It was a seemingly pointless exercise. And in many ways it was. The kit of parts was merely structural pieces, nothing of any complexity. However, when working with these non-cutting edge buildings (and I suspect even when you do) it definitely becomes an exercise in arranging a kit of parts.

For example the kitchen has counter space, appliances, cooking zone, connections to the breakfast nook, dining room, etc., etc. Especially, when you’re working in an existing building, its a matter of massaging this kit of parts to fit and to work together. Coming up with a great solution, especially in a remodel job is not easy. But it is a lot of fun.

The hardest part of the task is not settling for merely a “good enough” design but coming up with something that is “truly good”.

Certainly at the way we live our lives, heck most of us are experts at how others should live!

But that doesn’t translate into being experts at arranging the spaces that surround our lives. There’s a lot of architects who aren’t good at that either.

As I do more and more construction administration, its kind of scary how this last part of the process is really a LOT of paperwork. After taking a week and a half off in Vegas, I came back to a pile of 200 or so emails. That doesn’t sound so bad, but still, given our paperwork tracking software and the contractor’s paperwork tracking software, it took me a day and a half to go through all the emails and just put them in the right place. Literally, just moving these individual emails into the correct filing boxes. Ugh.

And I have it easy. The typical construction administration process stipulates that all correspondance with the consultants (MEP engineer, structural engineer, etc.) goes through the architect. With the way my two projects are set up, at least the contractor is able to email the consultants directly — otherwise I’d be a bottleneck and I’d be forced to do this sort of mailbox cleaning every day just to make sure the project is being digested properly.

I’m not sure if there is a better way to do things, but the amount of filing I’ve been doing makes me think there has to be a better way!

One of the most interesting things about remodeling a house is seeing how it was built before you got your grubby hands on it. Having worked on some older houses, I’ve gotten to see servant quarters, back staircases, old sunrooms turned into now-old bathrooms, etc, etc.

A building is an artifact of its time. Not just of the way people lived, but of the way people felt they should live – fashion and market pressures. I was just looking at a floor plan of a house that my coworker is remodeling. I found it quite interesting in that it looked like just an 80’s or tract home, so it wasn’t that old. But still with a separate den, dining, and living rooms it was definitely an artifact of a different time.

I wonder what people will think of our gianormous shared spaces and our almost equally gianormous master bedroom suites when they remodel the houses of today in the future.

Just for fun, I thought I’d push this blog along in a slightly less eclectic/personal bent and push it in a more architectural bent. I’m not sure exactly what it means, but I’m guessing I’ll find out soon enough, maybe after three months, mor maybe its will peter out long before then. In any case, I hope to have a more interesting run than my previous attempt at a weekly friday post. I will try to post on a semi-regular schedule, let’s say at least every other day though I’m thinking maybe even 5 days a week (!).

Since everyone who reads this, mom, dad, sister and gradschool buddy knows who I am, there isn’t much to say in terms of introduction, but I’m gonna do it anyways. I’m a registered architect in Texas. I have a portfolio here that needs a little work. Currently I’m working for Ziegler Cooper Architects, in the multi-family studio. After producing a majority of the construction documents for an 8 story midrise apartment complex in Houston, I am now doing construction administration on that project as well as a similar project near by. My previous experience was in single family residential, additions and remodels, and yes I think I really do enjoy working on residential projects.

As I’ve stated before, I like it when projects run into reality, so I am typically a fan of buildings that manipulates constraints to create something interesting and delightful. But then again I’m a modernist so I do love the occasional iconic building, though not nearly as much as many of my peers. I love my work and I love buildings, but what happens in them is where life happens.

I’ve been reading Randy Hester’s Book Ecological Democracy and its been making me think of my place in the field. Randy Hester is a landscape architect so his perspective is at a larger scale. However, the stuff I like to do are all at the smaller architectural scale (and really at the small architectural scale). I don’t know how I got from thinking about sustainability to this realization, but I do think that we can boil down what we do to manipulating systems, arranging spaces, and doing so in the context of surroundings.

I imagine that in my Berkeley days, I would have put the emphasis in spaces (and how they affect community and human interaction). But after living in Houston, I’ve come to realize that integrating sustainable systems (ones that are automatically more efficient and those that encourage more efficient behaviour) are also an important aspect of any project. And as always, I’ve always thought it was strange that architecture lit loves to put each building as a seperate jewel – a tendency that I always thought was quite ridiculous. A building is a function of a multitude forces, and it is silly to try to understand it as an independent entity floating in a formless landscape.

I dunno where this is going as a theory, but it seems to encapsulate key issues that I deal with as an architect.

I started with three, and then ended up aiming for 12 (to make a calendar), but the last four are kind of weak and I suspect that I’m totally missing some buildings.

Maravillas Gymnasium – absolute volumetric efficiency

Pennzoil Place – Minimalist visual effect, works as a pedestrian and flying on the freeway (pains me to say it since I’m not a Johnson fan)

Berkeley Art Museum – Structural Gymnastics (though it is now breaking apart cause the cantilevers are too much!) The first time I entered the building, it took my breath away.

Chinese American Strip Mall – Raw Kitsch at its finest

some favorite typologies (not surprisingly all to do with food):

the Grungy Diner (solitude),

the French Cafe (community),

the Houston Dive Bar Patio (friends),

the Supermarket (Abundance).

And a last few…

1904 Blake, my old 200 sf apartment in Berkeley (glove to hand, apt to life) and similarly, my Grandfather’s house (999 E. Beacon)

St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church, I’m meh on the exterior, but the stark white interior with the stained glass is gorgeous (and because it’s not a total tourist trap, it is still meditative inside) and Ronchamp also.

Castelvecchio Museum and Brion Cemetery (Scarpa was meticulous in his detailing)

And finally, any garden or park that pulls you through the site – moments that promises more around the corner – collapsing and expanding space – as small as a highly designed chinese garden or as large as the vistas driving through the southwest on the blue highways.

As for buildings I’ve worked on, both Villa Tramonto in Berkeley, as well as a couple big Victorians which were fun because they held the vestiges of a different era and lifestyle.