Occasionally I get the opportunity to do graphics. When that chance presents itself I use techniques similar to my architectural design process. While the disciplines of design are different, the principles are universal. The major difference between the logo and a building is that a logo is a singular composition, supporting itself without context. It has a graphic language instead of a materials language. It has form, both relative to the overarching whole and the disparate components. And perhaps most critical to a successful design composition, the logo can carry a communicative intent. Highland Custom Homes wanted there logo to embody the selling points of there company. The logo should be solid, able to stand on its own. The logo should be easy to relate to, which I translated as being easy to understand. The design should not be too complicated, but should not boring either. And finally, the logo should be adaptable.

Buildings are usually complex wholes made of disparate things – materials, technologies, concepts, knowledge, etc – brought under the auspiciousness of a singular intent. As a cohesive whole, the architecture does not indicate an aesthetic but rather, a regulating intent. To understand a building as an architecture one must undergo some form of analysis. Between the intention of the author (very difficult to find out and frequently irrelevant to the interpretation of the text) and the intention of the interpreter (who simply beats texts into a shape which serves their purpose), there is a third possibility – the intention of the text. This assignment asked students to analyze a building in its present state and to argue whether or not the building itself is effective in achieving its desired meaning.

With a plethora of sprawling buildings in my portfolio, my fourth year professor suggested I design a project for AISC’s Steel Design Open Competition. The program had to be comparable to the non-open competition – an aquatic swimming/diving center. The space submitted had to require long span steel structures and utilize modern steel construction methods. Under these constraints, the building would undoubtedly be a large, cellular building. Drawing from my experience exercising along the Potomac River just south of DC, I proposed an exercise research center, headquarters for Gatorades product analysis department, to replace an existing power plant along my favorite jogging trail. The GSSI, Gatorade’s Sport Science Institute, would allow enthusiasts and beginners alike to take their personal exercise to an all new level, while providing the Gatorade scientists with larger sample sizes for their data analysis.

While the first two years of architecture school introduce students to general concepts of space as the inverse of form, this third year project would begin to ask students to control specific characteristics of space. How fast can space move? How can space alter someone’s mood? Etc. In this project, students were asked to identify the characteristics of space that make people comfortable. While visiting the site students had to articulate what they thought about it and how their design would relate to “the space of human comfort,” and only after having done that would a student be given the full assignment sheet. The building program focused on three sequential spaces: the caldarium, a hot plunge bath; the frigidarium, a community bath in unheated water; and the tepidarium, a warm bath or sauna experience. The bath house facility also had to provide exercise areas, locker rooms, fragrant gardens, and spaces for building staff and administration.

Primarily a drawing exercise, this assignment asked students to create a pavilion using a specific kit of modeling materials that expressed the qualities of light and shadow. Students were asked to use their previously made contour models as the site for the pavilion. Once completed, the models had to be surveyed and drawn at 1:1 scale, and shaded as necessary.

Focused on seeing the world around us, the end of first year studio draws the students to realize their own process of seeing – that seeing is an act that precedes definition, a kind of pre-action controlled through intentionality, interpreted by an internal filter that appropriates meaning. Part of what makes a designer “good” is their ability to dislocate their own subconscious gaze in order to see the problems they are solving through the eyes of those they are designing for. A doghouse does not have to perform like a human house (although sometimes it does), and so on. This project, dubbed “The Lighthouse,” challenged the students to design something architectural that brought others face-to-face with their own inner sight.

In the first years of architectural study students are challenged to develop their ability to perceive the World around them. As an analytical exercise, students were asked to capture movement in a drawing. Whereas traditional architectural graphics represent a still, static thing, the motion drawing is conceived as a multi-relational, disjointed composition. These disjunctions imply what we, the students, were meant to learn: that no singular instance can be understood without looking at the others; each part has a relationship to the rest; and, every construction is off-balance because of the traces of another construction.