Every Monday morning, team members in the Philadelphia and Princeton offices gather together via video-conference to discuss firm news and upcoming events and projects. Since 2003, founding partner Allan Kehrt, FAIA, has delivered his Monday Morning Musings, weekly slices of personal insight into the design profession, to the firm. To comment on any of his posts, send an email to us. We look forward to hearing from you. |
| December 26, 2005 Education (2) There are myths that have for years accompanied the education of architects and they now seem neither helpful nor relevant. One of the myths is of Tabula Rasa, the belief that there is a clean slate every time we begin to design. There almost never is, and the shunning of context has done extensive damage. Understanding and responding responsibly to your surroundings will almost always make a better place. The second myth is that originality is an obligation. It is not, and the introduction of an idea such as this to the inept, incompetent or simply untalentled is terrifying at best. Many architects would produce infinitely better work if they would simply copy something good. The third is that architecture is autonomous, an art divorced as the mother of all arts from others, equally powerful. This educational concept is elitist, ignorant and egotistical and as such detracts from the potential contributions of others. The fourth is that architecture is for only a small segment of what gets built. Because it is so hard to design and get things built we sometimes all believe this, but the world we inhabit would be infinitely better if we paid attention to the unimportant buildings as well. The fifth is that architecture is generally iconic. There is a place for icons, but most of architecture is a piece of a larger whole, an urban fabric and sometimes only a small port. The myths have been hurting us for a long time; it's time to toss them. |
| December 19, 2005 Education (1) The education of an architect is a long process which has changed significantly since the time of the Beaux Arts; there is a persistent question as to whether we are better off because of it. While the studios of architectural schools across the nation are producing wonderful designs, there are many that question whether we are producing architects capable of dealing better with our built future than have we. The ghost of Howard Roark still walks the studios at night imbuing students with a sense of the heroic only, ignoring the majority of our world, and the academic environment stifles serious discussion about the state of the majority of American's built environment and how it might be fixed. We bemoan statistics reflecting the small percentage of the buildings designed or even influenced by architects, while our architectural educational system seems to continue to ensure our continued diminution. If we were able to restructure what we do so as to influence the greater part of the building that takes place in our country, we would never run out of work and we would live in significantly better surroundings. Until we start to reexamine and redefine what it is we are trying to do in our architectural schools, until we define what kinds of graduates we wish to see, I suspect we will continue to lose influence. |
| December 12, 2005 Urbia There are 82 million Baby Boomers, and there are 78 million Baby Boom children, sometimes called the Echo Boom Generation. Within the next ten years these two groups will come together to become an enormous force for the regeneration of America's cities. As the Boomers move out of their suburban houses and downsize their lives because they no longer need the space, many will look for places that will give to them what suburbia denied them for years: pedestrian access to a public realm, nearby cultural institutions, walkable streets, no lawn. Simultaneously, their children, raised in the suburbs and now leaving the nest, are already abandoning the suburbs and heading for cities all over America looking for a life that gives them the things that they also had been lacking. Two years ago the median price of a new condominium for the first time exceeded that of a new single family house. These are the two groups that are purchasing them, and most are in urban areas. This unprecedented convergence of buyers is just now beginning, but in ten years it will be a massive force for redevelopment, infill and upgrade of cities throughout the country. As architects it will present a remarkable opportunity to rethink and rebuild much of what we have watched deteriorate over the years. |
| December 5, 2005 Lou While I was in graduate school one of the most extraordinary architects of the twentieth century passed away. At the time I didn't know much about him, but I have studied him and he figures prominently in the way I think about buildings. He was someone who believed passionately that buildings have spirits and that this spirit resides in the materials selected, and in the way they are used. He believed there was an intrinsic value to using materials well, and through them showing how a building is made. It seems an attitude of which most architects have grown weary and I believe we suffer because of it. He thought about architecture as a continuum of which we are only a small part, and that architecture is as much a sacred undertaking as a physical one. He left us with only a small collection of his buildings, all crafted around his deepest beliefs, but it is something most of us would feel an extraordinary legacy were they ours. Many of his buildings were heroic and because of the way they were designed and built they will last a long, long time, and then turn into magnificent ruins. |
