Visceral Connections

As a youngster, I was fortunate to be the favorite grandchild of my Scottish grandparents. Perhaps somewhat unfairly to my younger siblings, I alone was picked to spend my summers with them in what they called the 'River House', overlooking the Manasquan River in New Jersey.

The days were idyllic - swimming in the river, making tents with sheets and blankets under the bamboo-framed table in the summer dining room, learning how to be a 'handyman' alongside my McGiver-like grandpa, mowing the large front lawn, and making model planes when the weather was inclement. On the weekends, my aunt would visit; and she let me tag along, as she and her boyfriend would spend their days on the nearby beach with their friends.

The house was situated on a knoll above the river, in what was probably part of the natural forest many years ago. This circumstance was instrumental to a particularly strong memory. When rain was falling at my bedtime, I would occasionally be given a special treat. Bedclothes would be brought out, for me to spend the night sleeping on the screened porch. Grandma would tuck me in on one of the padded loungers, and kiss me good night.

By the time it was completely dark, I was engulfed by all sorts of sensory treats. At various times through the night and into the morning, owls would hoot, whippoorwills would call, and crickets would chirp. The rain would make that unforgettable sound, as is hit the timber roof over my head and fluttered through the foliage just a few feet away. When the temperature fell, I could feel the chill of the mist condensing on the surfaces of my makeshift bed. The pleasant combination of being exposed to all the sound and effects of nature, while being totally protected against any discomfort was quite special.

What does all this have to do with the typical themes of this blog? In my mind, it has to do with what makes for good architecture. Yes, really.

To this day, those childhood experiences are benchmarks about how to configure and use the buildings and spaces we create. When we do our job well, we absolutely feel with all our senses what we have done. It should be both stimulating and calming. A trite, overused, and typically meaningless phase about the built environment is that it has a 'sense of place'. If such a thing can be true, I would suggest my grandparents' porch might have it. For me, the memory triggers a feeling - so vivid and notable that I could sketch the plan of the house, and its setting.

Now that's visceral.

Do You ...

  

Remember?

• Slide Rules
• Drafting Machines
• Ignition Points
• Maylines
• Full Size Spare Tires
• Pounce
• VHS
• Betamax
• Letraset
• Blueprints
• Floppy Disks
• Zip Drives
• Slide Carousels
• R-11 Insulation
• Platform Shoes (Oh, No.  They came back - this time with heels.)
• Mimeographs
• Polaroid Pictures
• DOS
• Norton Commander
• Wordperfect
• Quattro Pro
• One Button Mice
• Chisel Points
• Rapidographs
• Walkmen
• Roofing Kettles
• Snow Chains
• Automatic Seat Belts
• Fortran
• Punch Cards
• Laser Disks
• Road Map Atlases

Some of these are still being used, of course. Exactly how retro are you?

Quote some Homer. I dare you.

For what seems like years, I have been reporting opinions and surveys of the diminishing value of design professions and similar artistic endeavors. In our related professions, Architects and Graphic Designers have been pushed aside in favor of virtually every kind of Engineer. Through the last recession, staggering unemployment percentages have been cited by many sources.

Now, we have non other than the New York Times reporting on some consequences of this trend. To see their article on the reduced interest in humanities studies, go to http://goo.gl/PskAvi. There you will see comments about such places as Harvard University, which has "... had a 20 percent decline in humanities majors over the last decade."

In my case, I came out of an Architecture School which was considered to be Engineering-oriented - my School of Architecture was part of the "Faculty of Engineering". During my class reunions, it's not uncommon for us to laugh about the group antagonism we had for mandatory "dance" class intended to make us aware of human movement though space. Over the years, however, many of my peers and co-workers have had more diverse and broad-based experience than I. As a consequence, I have developed a great respect for someone who is equally adept at quoting both William Shakespeare and I.M. Pei.

Where will we be as a society if we become dominated by technicians and scientists? The pleasure of the arts, the appreciation for history, the impact of emotions, the value of discourse and contemplation - will these all be lost? I hope not.

My suspicion is that this trend - which is no doubt real - is cyclical, related to the miserable economy we may be coming out of. Perhaps, in thirty years we'll be advocating that our children become philosophers. Now wouldn't that be fun?

I've Fallen ...

and maybe I won't have to get up. In this case down is good and up is bad. However, this is all very much sad irony.

My partner in life and business is a Graphic Designer. The template for this blog, and all things graphic in No Left Turn, are her doing. For a number of years now, we have watched as one business reporter after another slammed Architects for the perceived uselessness of their education and career choices. Through these times fraught with all the negative press we have soldiered on together - pretty much committed to our chosen fields.  It's often been a struggle to maintain the commitment. Now there comes an odd turn of events.

For the first time that I can recall, there comes a news story from Business Insider that her profession is now one of the top ten "Useless". Oddly Architecture is absent from the list. See the story at http://goo.gl/CtWVrQ.

Years ago, we hosted a small dinner party for couples where one was an Architect, and the other was a Graphic Designer. That evening was one of modest self congratulation, where we chatted up the compatibility of the two professions and how we as couples got along.  Now, years later, I hadn't expected that we would be comparing negative perceptions instead of positive ones.

Oh well, the good news is that we still like what we do, and enjoy one another as well. Too bad one of the dinner party couples broke up years ago. But that's an entirely different kind of story.

Shoot Me

In my last posting, I mentioned how much of my work entails writing. In a manner somewhat similar to how I view building construction, I think that sentence structure and composition should follow established rules. I think this curiosity might has started with the 'by the book' teachers I had in elementary school who taught us how to diagram sentences. It was all very structural. Looking at subject and predicate, parts of speech, modifiers and all that stuff was great fun. Yes - now you can see the inner nerd.

Later, there came a growing fascination with how proper punctuation makes more order out of the potential mess of throwing words together. On this subject, there is no better reference than Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the wonderful book by Lynne Truss. Her extended title, The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, is apt.

An interesting aspect of all this analysis is that I eventually came to realize that if you want to write in a manner that is conversational, you have to ignore the rules. Imperfect sentence formation, use of jargon, bad grammar, you name it - they're all part of the game. The old biddies at Old Tappan Elementary School would be aghast. Me - I just stumble along. Okay, please don't shoot me.  

Writer's Block

Much of what I do to put food on the table involves writing. Specifications, reports, newsletters, memos, simple correspondence, and this - my blog.

All the other stuff has a purpose, an agenda if you will. The outline , the format, the intent, and occasionally even the content can be predetermined. Sometimes this all may be a business variation of paint-by-numbers, albeit hopefully with some intelligence and business acumen to make it cogent.

This blog, on the other hand, has no prerequisites. I can write about whatever suits my fancy.  Recently I read another that I like to follow entitled "Nothing Special". It seemed like a drawn-out Tweet or Facebook post - decidedly humdrum. I wondered what prompted it.

I normally want these postings to be germane to my business purpose, but how could this be when nothing truly unique comes to mind? Maybe I should write about why I like two spaces between sentences, but Blogger messes with my formatting when I do that. But, that would be "Nothing Special". Don't lose faith, the next post will have more content.