With the weather in New York lurching towards a quarantined pandemic winter and the election about to bring forth…something, it feels like the endless year of 2020 is about to enter some heretofore new phase. To prevent/distract me from constantly clicking refresh on every poll tracking site, I’ve instead been thinking back to the last normal day. It’s always difficult to reconstruct in hindsight, because you obviously didn’t know at the time that you were in fact living your last normal day. For most people it’s probably sometime in March when you were hanging out with friends at a bar, going to a movie, eating out at a restaurant or any of the other countless quotidian social interactions that we took for granted. For me, the gap between normal life and pandemic life is filled by the bright, vivid memories of my three weeks in Sierra Leone at the end of February doing architecture – presenting design ideas, sketching charettes, visiting the project site, finding new material suppliers and sustainable supply chains, understanding construction possibilities and finding equitable labor approaches – basically finding solutions to all of these challenges are what I really enjoy about my job. And I was with some amazing people.

The maternal mortality rate in Sierra Leone is the worst in the world. A mother is almost one hundred times more likely to die during childbirth than in the United States. There is no single issue or failure that you can point to as the cause of such an offensive statistic. This is a systemic issue, in part caused by deep political issues brought about by a history of colonialism with its attendant official extractive policies, endemic corruption, a civil war, the ebola outbreak, well meaning but failed NGOs, and a whole host of other issues that would require me as an American to understand much more deeply. However, there is no singular heroic act to solve this, no superhero to punch out maternal mortality, and building one hospital can’t singlehandedly correct for decades of neglect and the lack of an infrastructural support system required to both educate a new generation of doctors and pave the roads to get them to the hospital and a power grid that keeps the equipment running. Yet in the face of all these obstacles there are people devoting their lives to caring for each other and making things a little better for those that have been neglected and poor. It is a movement of people working together, fighting for other people just as you would do for yourself. A new hospital building can significantly aid in that work, but it is simply a part of a vast network of care and another step forward to justice and progress for those that are driving that change day in and day out.

Amongst the daily intensive collaborative design work and nightly dinner discussions, the steady background din of news from home got louder. First the cases in the Pacific Northwest, then evidence of person-to-person transmission in California, some false optimism thrown in for good measure: “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,” then finally the first verified cases in New York state. While it was still over a month before Sierra Leone confirmed its first Covid case, ebola was a recent memory for people there, and hand sanitizing and temperature checks became a standard routine before entering any building, and while meeting at the Health Ministry, no-contact greetings were standard (though I appreciate protocol was broken for a trip highlight bear hug from the Health Minister). Maybe this wasn’t the last time that was necessarily “normal”, and the setting was most definitely different that what I was used to, but it was the last time I felt wholeheartedly positive about the future. I suppose all architecture proposals are inherently utopian in that way. Designing is an optimistic act. When you’re designing something you’re part of a team envisioning and sharing this idea for a project that when built will be a manifestation of that mission to create a better world. The work continues.

The project site (above).

There are a huge number of mining concerns throughout Sierra Leone, including both one of the world’s largest – Koidu Holdings – as well as well as smaller, more independent operations. However, regardless of the corporate structure, this natural resource belonging to the country has historically been extracted to create enormous wealth for the South African mining conglomerates, Lebanese diamond brokers and high-end Belgian auction houses who control the supply and reap the profits before the stones end up in some engagement ring. There is little to no benefit for the poor, surrounding areas and it just becomes a reason to die working in an open pit or a resource to kill for control over. Through a fluke of geological forces – one of the globes richest kimberlite pipes spiked outwards from the earth’s core out to this small county – and an overly permissive central government, the country is pockmarked with these open pits where 500m3 of earth is removed and discarded for every carat of diamond dug out of the ground.

Sustainable forestry initiatives have started to take hold in West Africa, and ideally this project could act as a lighthouse for potential future adoption of timber in the built environment. We visited a timber company producing FSC-certified fast growth, short rotation species of Acacia (shown) and Eucalyptus trees for construction material. These nascent industries promote social and economic development programs within their community, while also providing a more sustainable building material for a fast growing construction market.

The Freetown beaches are some of the most beautiful and active beaches I’ve ever been to. So many people laughing, walking, and playing together as the sun sets.

In the heady days of 2004, I was a green architecture intern fresh out of school, and the first building project I worked on was this – The Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke Virginia. Having the opportunity to design with and learn from Randall Stout on an exciting, high-profile project like this was basically everything I imagined that being an architect could be. This was to be thrown into the emerging world of digital design and geometrical control (hello Rhino V3), close collaborations with players at the forefront of manufacturing complex, building-scale cnc fabrications, and the promise of architecture as a driver of transformative urban change. School couldn’t touch this. In the intervening decade I’ve learned quite a bit more about the behind the scenes maneuvering that morphed an existing regional art collection’s initial, modest desire for a few extra square feet of exhibition space into an ambitious plan to remake a town through a $90 million dollar building. The reality of the inherent impotence of a singular built object to somehow negate or transcend the complex network of entrenched and competing political, cultural, and institutional factors is something that continues to play out in cities all over the world. But those questions were irrelevant to the families I saw enjoying the “weird, but cool” free museum on a Thursday afternoon, the local artist exhibiting hyper-saturated photos of the building at Thelma’s Chicken and Waffles, or the bins of embroidered fabric decorated with the building’s distinctive profile. Basically, it was breathtaking to finally experience the building in all its divisive glory. I wish Randall were here so I could tell him all about it.

These are a few of the images I captured while in town. Presented here to amplify the building’s binary formal references as I had always imagined them in my mind. While there is no true “back” facade, there are two clearly distinct sides to the building: the angular, more constructivist facade facing the railroad tracks and industrial edge of town, and the softer, billowing blue forms facing the city which frame the Blue Ridge Mountains receding into the background.

Images shot by the amazing Amy Barkow
Copyright Amy Barkow | Barkow Photo

In a remarkable piece from New York magazine regarding the liberal world’s MVP, Paul Krugman, the author described the genesis of Krugman’s 2006 book:

When he was writing The Conscience of a Liberal, Krugman found himself searching for a way to describe his own political Eden, his vision of America before the Fall. He knew the moment that he wanted to describe: the fifties and early sixties, when prosperity was not only broad but broadly shared. Wells, looking over a draft, thought his account was too numerical, too cold. She suggested that he describe his own childhood, in the middle-class suburb of Merrick, Long Island. And so Krugman began writing with an almost choking nostalgia, the sort of feeling that he usually despises: “The political and economic environment of my youth stands revealed as a paradise lost, an exceptional moment in our nation’s history …”

Krugman’s own vision of a lost utopia on Long Island, during that bright post-war bloom of middle class prosperity, which must have had seemed so full of limitless potential and opportunity but somehow lurched toward our current state of contraction, pulled apart and forgotten by the twin poles of unimaginable wealth disparity, was at the front of my mind when I had the awesome opportunity to manage this project from David Benjamin and the Living. This was House #7 of nine theoretical projects that comprised part of a one-day only open house installation on the future of suburbia, a what-if, hyper-fictional reality showing design’s potential to provoke and elucidate a hypothetical path forward hosted by Droog and DS&R.

Conceived with the ingenuity of hybrid housing/service industry residences seen in Tijuana and rendered with the graphic intensity of Chinatown, David’s concept called for a home that is both a store and factory for making and selling signs. The factory is an inhabitable sign in and of itself, and the facade of the house is taken over by examples of constructed signs. As more and more Levittown residences convert to self-sustaining home businesses the House of Signs positions itself as an integral piece of future suburban infrastructure. We went from concept sketch to exhibition in less than 10 days.

After perusing a recent discussion post on archinect aptly titled: architects getting f’d on Craigslist (or: truth, bitterness and self-pity together at last), I was reminded of my own unfortunate craigslist encounter. It pains me to say it, but true story, last year, my final grad semester, I was cruising craigslist looking for some freelance architecture work. Now, granted, jobs on craigslist are typically posted by the most bottom-feeding, scum-suckingest of elements that greedily prey on the desperate, naive or unemployed, (at the time I equaled all three) at a frequency that beggars belief. So I knew I was wading into an unregulated seller’s market, but we’ve all been in tough positions before and compromises are made and pride may or may not survive intact. I had managed to wade through the obvious red flags which typically fall into one of two categories: including the clearly insane (“This is your first impression and demonstrates your ability as a designer. Use care in selecting the paper, the font, and the organization of text on the page.”) or the unnecesarily pretentious (“hip and prestigious award-winning design firm now accepting interns…”). So it was not without a healthy dose of skepticism that I reached out to one seemingly innocuous post, “Long Island Resident Looking for Architecture Services.”

Unfortunately it didn’t take many email exchanges before it quickly became obvious that “Long Island Resident” – a dentist – held a depressingly all-too-common view on what the role of an architect should be during difficult economic times and where on the scale of respectability he held the design services sector of the construction process. Basically LIR had a plot of land and wanted someone to design him the house that would sit on it for free. Or rather that familiar old standby, work for free in exchange for “something to put in your portfolio.” This wasn’t one of those situations where you’re just trying help out a friend or family member with a garage, or doing some pro-bono volunteering for those in need, or just being an adjunct. No, not at all, this guy had the means and was looking to browbeat someone into submission. In all fairness LIR thought a full set of documents, about four months of work, shouldn’t be free, but rather could be had for the princely sum of $350. I had no idea where the $350 number came from, possibly it was the number that allowed an apparently well-off dentist to salve his own conscience at demanding such massive concessions from a poor, young architect all in the name of The Greatest Recession Since the Great Depression. But I don’t know. Look, obviously life isn’t fair. People aren’t infallible and when given the opportunity will take advantage of those that can’t or won’t defend themselves. Opportunism is a leach on any creative profession, especially architecture, where self-doubt and masochism run rampant.

As a firm believer in the you-get-what-you-pay-for principle, I took a few hours off from my finals, and sent off the above image to LIR. My counter-offer was that I would design and document a house for free, everything, on the one condition that he in no way interfers with my creative vision (see img above). I argued passionately and apparently in vain that the house I designed for him would be a sustainable marvel, 100% post-consumer recycled materials, it would utilize a unique geothermal process for harnessing energy from deep within the bowels of the earth that would create a custom steam-exhausting microclimate around his residence, and at the very least would be widely published. All for free. I thought he’d bite at it, but here I am some 21 months later, sitting and waiting. But in the meantime, the offer still stands and is extended to any other random, affluent craigslist poster out there looking for a house and doesn’t want the burden of having to pay a designer.

So in parting, keep your eyes open, and if you start to see a number of Massapequa Park Steamers dropping all over a residential neighborhood near you, you can be assured of two things: a) there are some very satisfied architects out there and b) their fee was $0.00.

Last year I had the great opportunity to briefly work with David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang of TheLiving by assisting on this project in Seoul’s Peace Park. Their ideas about new, collaborative avenues for architects to pursue using sensor technologies – amongst others – made their courses some of my favorite at Columbia, and it was an inspiration to see this pavilion come together. When I found myself in Seoul last week, this was on my list of sights and it was a true pleasure to experience the work in person.

Described on their project site, as such:
“Living Light is a permanent outdoor pavilion in the heart of Seoul with a dynamic skin that glows and blinks in response to both data about air quality and public interest in the environment. Citizens can enter the pavilion or view it from nearby streets and buildings, and they can text message the building and it will text them back.”

Images copyright Robert Lemermeyer Photography

I’ve been diligently following the exterior construction progress of the AGA museum in Edmonton via the museum’s dedicated online webcam, and it looks absolutely wonderful, but unfortunately the spectacular interior spaces had been hidden from view until now. In my imagination and the computer and physical models I spent the better part of three years designing in while at RSA, I saw the public entry lobby as an expansive and light filled space that was confirmed by these first images taken from the museum’s facebook page. They were a joy to see and a welcome reminder that the days consumed by getting that projecting finger in the top left to look just right as it slid past the grand stair were all worthwhile.

2_2007

I spent my first year out of school working on this project back when it was a six foot long paper and wood model sitting in the middle of the office, and we were diligently translating it into a rhino model. I’m happy to see it turned out beautifully, Randall and the team did a great job. See more about the project at arcspace, here.

I was the part of the design team for this invited competition project and represented Randall Stout Architects among competitors Zaha Hadid Architects, Morphosis and Coop Himmelb[l]au. The museum, on the Michigan State University campus, will become the new location for the Broad art collection and will mark the northern entry point of the campus as the college’s most iconic building. I worked closely with the principal-in-charge Randall Stout to manifest the design ideas into physical form, and led a group of four designers.

The building design respects the site and campus history by providing a place of solace, a clearing in the woods, in recognition of a campus ground plane surrounded by wilderness. This project sets out to define a new sense of place by giving over the ground plane to gardens, art and community gathering and events spaces. The building touches the ground in a minimal manner and reads as an extension of the sculpture garden. The site becomes a permeable space allowing accessibility through the building for students and visitors as the building forms hover above the tree canopies.

The building forms are influenced by the scientific principles of emergence, which recognizes the ability of individual cells to respond to stimuli and influence the behavior of the whole organism. Here, the relationship between the functional gallery boxes and celebratory public spaces becomes the agent of form, resulting in a new museum language that yields a seamless convergence between domains of art and community. It expresses the needs of artist and curator as fluently as the iconic presence of a cultural arts center for the community.

renderings by the inimitable Piratedesign.