I would emphasize the idea of process. Be more organized and scheduled. But also work on ways to streamline each piece of the process. Pre-design meetings with the whole team. I’d have to figure out how to integrate modeling as an integral a part of the process (just more practice using them?) Spend more time setting things up office standards, cad blocks, etc. Draw just enough, not too much not too little. Post occupancy review (what went right and wrong, with the client and the contractor). Aesthetic style isn’t particularly important to me but green is. And contextually, I’d love to work close to home.
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How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie, 1948
This is a tour de force in the quintessentially American genre of self help literature. A mix of down home wisdom and stuff pulled from the classics and the bible. Optimistic and upbeat with a pull yourself by the bootstrap message. All of it written in very plain simple English with plenty of takeaway points at the end of each chapter.
And hey there’s a few good ideas in there too!
Well worth the read.
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Ecological Democracy, Randy Hester, 2006
There is a lot of information in this book, but the basic thesis that a city is best designed with the twin principles of democracy and ecology is powerful.
It is not immediately applicable to architects (as opposed to urbanists and landscape architects) but the book is well worth pondering.
Form follows the flow of everyday life. Even the form of a radical future follows the flow of everyday life.
page 299No landscape can be more beautiful than it is just.
page 95 -
Architecture: Systems, Spaces, Surroundings
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.
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Books worth re-reading regularly
I just picked up a copy of Invisible Cities by Calvino and it made me wonder…what books are worth re-reading regularly? I looked over my bookshelf and I have to admit I don’t actually see any other book that fits the bill. Maybe the Sandman series by Gaiman, but beyond that I’m having a hard time thinking of any. Maybe one of my architecture books, but nothing I can think of at the moment….
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Cool! A wee bit loud but it almost makes me wanna buy the CD.
With no link, I can’t remember what it was a decade later since the embed came up blank. Maybe the Asteroids Galaxy Tour? If so, I never did buy the CD.
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13 things to work on.
I have been reading various books dealing with business and issues related to finding work. Along the way a couple years ago, I picked up a little book by Frank Bettger called “How I Raised Myself from a Failure to a Success in Selling” at a local thrift store. I finally read it this past week. And the best part was his last chapter. Inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues Frank Bettger made his own list of 13 key skills for selling. Like Benjamin Franklin, he then advises the reader to make his own list, and then spend a week emphasizing each virtue/skill. At the end of the year, that would mean that you’ll have gone through the list 4 times and he swears that it is a great way to grow and get better at selling/etc.
The super powerful idea behind Frank Bettger’s chapter is that he takes history and makes it useful for his own purposes. I think there is a tendency to say “if a great guy did it, then that’s how it should be done.” However, I think that often leads to inaction since the great person was doing something in the context of their life. Instead one ought to take the example of history and make the most of it in the context of our own lives.
And in that spirit I decided that it couldn’t hurt to try something similar, though I am kind of switching it a little to include fields of study to emphasize in my spare time. We’ll see where it goes, I’ll start it up in a couple weeks which will time me perfectly at the halfway mark of this year.
- Introspection
- Enthusiasm
- Architecture (conventional details and construction)
- Sketching
- Reading People
- Business
- Assertiveness
- Thankfullness
- Networking
- Silence
- Sustainability (details and construction)
- Contemporary art/design/architecture
- Brain rewiring (catch up on old hobbies, ie banjo, novels, photography)
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hmm interesting thought
what I really like to do is problem solving (concerning buildings). Along the way I need to make drawings…something I’m good at and something that I also like to do. But really its about solving problems.
I guess that should go with the other random thought from a couple months ago – I’m really more interested in what happens in a building (and building site), what goes in, goes on, and goes out much more than how the darn thing looks.
job searches certainly make you think….
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Converted into Houses, Charles A. Fracchia, 1977
Exactly what you would expect if you physically pick up the book. A cute, thin book with a short paragraph and a couple pages of images about each house. The decor is very much of its time, but still worth flipping through every once in a while.
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The Empty City, Andrew Looney, 2002
This is a fun silly little book.
It’s nothing special and the writing is just ok. But it is worth a read for people who are into the Icehouse pyramid games.
The story is just about four dudes that play the Icehouse game and the world that happens around and happens to them. The charm is found in its focus on mundane life in all its glorious weirdness.
This novel is an interesting example of how fiction can be a muse to jumpstart a creative endeavor which has now turned into Looney Labs.
