Some Recent Thoughts from Georgia

"What the hell is this crazy woman talking about?" (photo by Ron Jones Photography)

Last month, Aaron Davis and I were honored to give the evening keynote at AIA Georgia's annual design conference.  As people were settling into their seats, before our introduction, Aaron and I had a chance to chat with Steve the representative from Georgia Power and AIA GA president Ed Bernard. The look of abject horror on Steve's face seems an unfortunate side effect of listening to me talk about baseball. (In my -- or his -- defense I believe I made that same face while he described the typical Atlanta Braves fan.) What made the evening thoroughly enjoyable was the ease with which this group could casually discuss those things that really aren't casual at all. Devoid of a certain level of stuffiness I've grown used to, the night was fun -- from economic and professional crises to social responsibility in architecture to what really loving baseball will do to and for your life.

I'd like to quickly thank the leadership of AIA Georgia for the invitation to speak, specifically Mark Levine and Ed, as well as Marci Reed for making everything (including the two-hour ride from ATL to Athens) happen more smoothly than imaginable.

Our talk "Grow[ing] Up: Slow[ing] Down" focused on models of architectural practice persisting through an economy counterproductive to the development of buildings and those models emerging as a result of a dearth of building opportunities. We discussed our strange experience as young designers matriculating into a profession in crisis, some of the conclusions drawn from PRE-Office's ever-ongoing Conversations with Architects (CWA) research, and some of the professional and very personal decisions we've been forced to make early on in our careers.

Several times that evening -- in conversations over drinks before the talk and over many more drinks after the talk -- I found myself engaged in discussion over these personal decisions. Since that evening, I've come to two preliminary conclusions. The first is that, if Aaron and I are any indication of an architectural generation, the economy has created specialists of designers by forcing us to dig deep and articulate that one thing in architecture that we just must do. The lack of job opportunities for archi-generalists looking to fulfill their IDP requirements meant that not only did we have to get creative to pay our bills, but we had to do so while creating new career paths. If those paths were going to be personally rewarding, we'd have to identify why it is that we got into this crazy profession in the first place. In an incredibly wide field, we'd have to find the niche in which we'll be happy. Both Aaron and I have very narrowly specialized as a result, and while our scales are different, our approaches are comparable: Aaron designs systems as parts of buildings, and I understand buildings as parts of systems.

The second is one I briefly touched on in the talk and one that's been on my mind since. Several times in our CWA discussions, architects have told us that the recession provides a necessary moment of recalibration for the profession and offers the opportunity for architectural theory to regain the momentum it lost during the building boom. In short, they said that the recession was A Time to Think. I maintain that the broken economy did much more than just provide the luxury of time for reflection. It did architects the favor of explicating our present mandate. It clearly spelled out the issues upon which we should be reflecting. It definitively told us which problems need our attention and threatened us with a future of complete irrelevance if we failed to heed. Development halted while, globally and locally, the spatial description of how people live was changing before our eyes. And while many of the problems were primarily caused by policy (or lack thereof), financialization, and economics, we cannot deny that those issues are also spatial and, thus, architectural. They are of and from and affecting architecture, urbanism, and how we live together.

End-of-Summer Update

Guy Zinn, New York AL, sliding back into first base against Boston at Hilltop Park, New York City, 1912 (click image for source)

As briefly mentioned last month through various online media, I've very happily joined the crew of matte-black-wearing rabble-rousers at Urbanscale. Having hit the ground running, in only the first few weeks, I've had to flex more GIS-related muscles than I've used in a fairly long time while climbing the many learning curves involved in programming, new workflows, software I've never played with, interactions I haven't previously designed for, and mapping a city I haven't mapped before. (On that last one: Big props to the City of Chicago for the pretty incredible amount of data made available.) Suffice it to say for now that the challenges presented are both welcome and exhilarating for two reasons: (1) with this new post I'm offered the opportunity to apply a great deal of my thinking through new (to me) technologies and venues, and (2) if the wardrobe weren't enough, it's always a pleasure to work in an office with the like-minded. Brief updates on my first project are frequently part of Urbanscale's notes as development progresses.

In other news, (while it wrapped up in the first half of the summer, I realize now there was no word on it here) the summer course at NYU's Silver school was a fantastic experience (and getting to spend a week in the Domincan Republic wasn't too bad either). In my first foray into teaching GIS data collection and analysis techniques outside of the design professions, I got a much appreciated peek into and reaffirmation of the real potential of combining spatial and social research.

Next month, Aaron Davis and I are representing PRE-Office in a keynote on the formation of an infrastructure for practice at the annual design conference of the AIA Georgia Chapter. The talk (titled "Grow[ing] Up: Slow[ing] Down") will discuss some of PRE's research into the different modes of architectural practice, calling out some of our conclusions regarding various incarnations of responsibility and sustainability, particularly through turbulent and uncertain economic cycles.

And as the air is signalling that we are well into September, with two and a half weeks left in the regular season, at the time of writing the Yankees are up 2.5 games in the AL East.