The Illegal Architect

To call it a food truck isn’t fair… it’s Italy on wheels!

Can’t wait to try it

© Matthew Millman

Steedman Competition 2012 | Oblique Interactions

Walking the quadrangle paths of Washington University in St. Louis is an experience both formal and haphazard.  In plan, the courtyard behind Brookings Hall, seems completely formal, a double x providing adequate circulation, and more importantly an orderly image at the University’s front door.  Yet, in experience, this is a place of complete informality.  A place where my path will intersect another, and I will encounter a another person.  Usually this means only a nod, a subtle adjustment in speed, and we both continue on our way.  Why is this?  We are both now on the same path, we have at least that much in common.  It is uncertainty that keeps us apart, the thought that our only common ground is literally this ground.  But move this experience to a building, a building filled with many disciplines and functions, and the common ground grows along with the frequency of these oblique intersections.

The new Sam Fox building is a place of both crossing disciplines and crossing paths.  Rising from a series of angled paths, its first floor is not the edge of the landscape, but a continuation of it.  On the south side of a building this landscape is the ‘courtyard of the everyday’- a place where the Sam Fox School lives in public. Moving north, and into the building, public program including a to-go cafe, community tables, and fabrication shop expose the process of art, architecture and design to all who enter.   Drawn upward by a full height atrium, the visitor is pointed at places they may want to explore, and tempted by oblique walls to peek around the corner.  The stairs are punctuated by Sam Fox Hall, grand dining space, worth coming down the hill for.  It’s best view of Brookings on campus.
This is important because this new building is the foil of Brookings Hall.  A formal flip of massing removes the high and lofty image of academia and allows for an inviting public building full of interaction.

subject OBJECT | The Site

The commercial center of Cherokee is split in two by Cherokee Pass.  Originally cleared for west-moving wagon traffic, the road has been continually widened, causing the adjacent hillside to collapse over and over again, and leaving a bald landscape scar.  The pass is also unique because it provides a moment of rest from the development that blocks it in.  It offers a flashback to the original Cherokee landscape, before souvenirs and Casinos.

subject OBJECT | The Place

The time has finally come to talk more about my thesis, subject OBJECT.  It began with a one of my favorite places, Cherokee North Carolina.  It is a beautiful yet broken place, the home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.  I see it as a sharp representation of what it means to live in the USA, dwelling among a strange combination of exploitation and preservation, both of land and of people.

It is hard to believe that I have arrived at my 100th post.

A few thoughts as I look back…and forward

1 | I like the idea of a blog as a narrative of connected thoughts, a chain of specific ideas about work and architecture.  Recently, I had a good string- Arches>Brick>Kahn>Big Projects>BIG in Paris> Plan Voison>Small.  It is difficult to be so disciplined all the time, but I will keep experimenting with it.

2 | It is impossible to escape the visual preference of TUMBLR, nearly every post is a photo.  This promotes quick browsing, snap judgments, and shallow understanding.  None of these are inherently wrong, but it seems to me that visual preference is so personal that it does not allow for learning.  For example, you like a photo of a cabin with a flat roof, I like one showing an A-frame- do either of us now have a deeper understanding?

3 | Recognizing my audience I will need to search for new ways to add depth to this visual world.  I will continue to provide an explanation for each post rather than assuming that cool images stand alone.  At the same time it should be clear that my explanation need not be yours, I submit it only as a starting point.

Hey architecture friends…read this.

At 27, like a surprising number of architecture graduates, I cut and ran from commercial architecture. A number of my peers disappeared into graphic design, 3D rendering, fashion and retail. I did my time and mused that, “Life’s too short. I’ll start my own practice. I won’t work for another architect again.” What I didn’t know at 27 years old was how unlikely it would be that my practice would survive. (It was more luck than anything else, by far, that it did).

We all imagine working for ourselves. We become the authors of our own work, we get the credit for our work and, most importantly, we gain full control of our working conditions. After ten years I now have what could be described as a good work/life balance. My office is an old shop front on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy. I live upstairs with my eight-year-old son and my partner. At 5.30pm all staff leave the office, including myself. On some nights I will return to the office after my son has gone to sleep to play video games (mostly COD, SWTOR and BF3). On very rare occasions (perhaps six times a year) I work at night, however, this is done under very specific conditions: Firstly, I am inspired and, secondly, I want to work.

Most importantly, through planning, management and the ability to turn away bad projects, I never allow myself to be in a position where I need to work after hours. I have manufactured this situation with great difficulty over the years and outside of the norms of architectural practice. To generate this work/life balance I have opted out of the overly competitive and patriarchal environment that contemporary architectural working culture demands. My practice fills a tiny niche and I recognize that it is not financially viable for the profession as a whole to do as I do.

After all, the entire profession cannot relegate itself to working almost exclusively on renos and extensions as I do. Commercial architectural firms are the biggest employers of architects and their slice of the pie continues to increase as we see mid-size practices morph and compress. The vast majority of architects will continue to be employees rather than employers.

(Source: archdaily.com)

Read more

Man as Nature

We have a strange distinction in our culture between the natural and the man-made.  Where is that line in this photo, and where would it be if this path were made by a deer instead of a train?

We cannot plan for everything and we probably should not try to.  Sometimes the unintentional is the most beautiful.

from beconinriot:

The “Tunnel of Love” in Ukraine

This seems to be the antithesis of the big project, here are its five characteristics: - A deliberate, phased approach to instigating change; - The offering of local solutions for local planning challenges; - Short-term commitment and realistic expectations; - Low-risks, with a possibly a high reward; and - The development of social capital between citizens and the building of organizational capacity between public-private institutions, non-profits, and their constituents.

Plan Voisin for Paris | Le Corbusier

Another big idea for Paris, from 1925

(Source: grupaok)

Europa City | Bjarke Ingels Group

Here is a great example of the type of big project that I would love to be a part of, even while having some reservations about it.  The idea and its depiction are beautiful, but I cannot help but think that the facts of occupying a place without history and diversity (both human and architectural) are troubling.

(Source: big.dk)