Robbing the Void

As an architect, sometimes the membrane separating my “inside” reality from my “outside” reality gets dangerously thin . Especially when talking with other “like minded” architects, or architecture students. When this happens, sometimes my tendency to free-associate runs amok, confusing the hell out of those around me (because, of course, they’re only getting half of the conversation that is taking place in my mind). Why this happens I don’t know - I don’t really care (even though I have to laugh at myself for it).

For this architect, the summer’s been crazy. It began with an actual project, and it will end without one. I can’t say I’m surprised - I had a gut feeling about it. The project (a residential tower) ramped up from zero to full burn in the span of four days and cast it’s intense heat into the universe for eight weeks. Alas the intensity was unsustainable. The owner faltered pulling the plug just last week. It was like a great big hug of hurt , but without the actual fire.

Recently, I said something which lodged an idea in my brain where it’s been stuck. It was half-baked idea at the time (maybe it still is). I was distracted; it was something about doing the same thing over and over, finding different results. Summer may bring skin, firepower, and trips to the Shedd , but it also brings a glut of resumés and portfolios from a fresh crop of architecture graduates seeking employment.

Forever thirsty, I dream (unbearably) of a small and orderly labyrinth at whose center lay a well; my hands can almost touch it, my eyes can see it, but so bewildering and entangled are the turns that I know I’ll die before I reach it.

This is Carlo Scarpa. He is cool, no? Of course he is (er was, because he’s dead now), but the real question’s why was he cool?

“So what do you need, besides a miracle?” “Seeds. Lot’s of seeds.”

Prompted by some great comments from Tuesday’s installment. I thought it’d be fun to linger a bit and showcase fictional architecture. You know. The kind of stuff that exists only in the illustrator’s/architect’s mind vast territory of madness . Illustrations of architecture that could be real, but aren’t; except as depictions of a space, a place, or an object.

Wednesday is day three of Architecture Week. Are you sick of it yet?!? Me neither. Today’s installment of the obscure, infamous, or interesting is Spaceport America in New Mexico. This project is the product of collaboration between Virgin Galactic, Foster+Partners, SMPC Architects, and URS Corporation.

Obscure and marginalized, Lebbeus Woods isn’t so much non-famous as infamous, and interesting. By my experience he’s either detested or loved (depending upon who one asks). While they are certainly brutal, I like his drawings and diagrams; I think they’re freakin’ sweet.

There are soo many fabricated weeks on the calendar and this week just so happens to be architecture week. Yay! In the spirit of fabricated importance I’m going to try and present one interesting and obscure project per day, for the week.

Walking amongst phantoms, feeling their vaporous touch and sensing their ghostly vectors.

I’m sitting in the Argo Tea on Belmont satellite office rehashing old thoughts when I have an epiphany. Time to accept it. Time to step out of the fog of shame and confess. I’m an architect...

I awoke today with a mission. Update the optical media archive housing all of the projects I’ve ever worked on. “It’s been awhile”, I think to myself pondering the stacks of CD’s and DVD’s that’ve been accumulating for the past four years nine months on my desk (owning and operating your own business takes a lot of time, OK)!