Determining One’s Architectural Project

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the craft of architecture. It is the focus that consumes me and is my life’s work. An interesting thing I’ve learned about a few architects I study is their approach to projects.

Architect Renzo Piano evaluates each project as a unique entity with a response determined through collaboration between the designers, client, and builder.

Thom Mayne with Morphosis Architects says that he is still working on the same conceptual project from college. In a sense, he weaves an evolving concept that is very personal to him, into each project. His methods are based upon the response to contextual forces, an analytical strategy taught at USC.

Frank Gehry, similar to Mayne, has a multivalent method where form is faceted from all directions. If thought of conceptually, Gehry’s work is fractured at every angle and cannot be fronted along a single plane. In abstract terms, it could be argued that approaching his work would be similar to that of a sphere where the viewer sees the object from the perspective of a point or surface that is closest to them.

I too have been asking the same question: what is my project? Like Gehry and Mayne, who preceded me at USC School of Architecture, I view my work contextually and urbanistically through various notions of reaction, response, and opportunity.

The project that I am working on now is the canvas where I tested out various methods and responses. Not only was I able to understand contextualism is greater detail, my architecture was presented with new sets of challenges; which can be resolved through the same methods established by my predecessors. The project allowed me to think about how design undertakes various forms of meaning translated personally and through the public realm.

The work unearthed the tension between architecture that is ultimately static and an oppositional contextual response that takes on the appearance of being constantly in motion, but is ultimately static as well.

Moving forward, my work can now intigrate these strategies to create architecture with enhanced dynamism, interest, and effectiveness.