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. |
| October 29, 2007 Codex Most likely the first building code was included within The Codex Hammurabi written in 1760 BC. It presents as one of its 282 laws number 229: If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. That's a pretty dire consequence for flaunting the building code. But codes have for the past 3767 years been there to protect the safety of the public, and there are still penalties for those whose work does not comply. Capital punishment thankfully, was dropped somewhere along the line. Building codes must be followed by architects and engineers to protect the public and we have a responsibility to make sure that the buildings we design comply in every way, to both the letter as well as the spirit of the law. But designs generally flourish when tight constraints are placed upon the problem, because those constraints make us work harder for a solution. Building codes almost always impose some sort of limits to what we can do on a project, but we seldom look at them as design opportunities. We need to make better use of these limitations to make our building better. |
| October 15, 2007 Programs Most of the building design work we do starts with a programming phase. It is that time when we sit with the client and talk about the proposed building and attempt to understand and document the use for which they intend to put this building, the various spaces it must contain and what function each of these spaces will serve. We talk about adjacencies; we talk about sizes; we talk about all the things that each space must include and the people and services each must accommodate. We put together a document that reflects all this information and we confer again with the client to make sure it is correct and that it is indeed, what they functionally wish to accomplish. It's generally a pretty dry document. Lists and descriptions and sizes and adjacencies and other miscellaneous information conveyed to us concerning the requirements of the client. But good clients also have hopes and dreams for their buildings, and if we're thoughtful and thorough in our approach we will discuss those things as well. And if we're serious about creating a building that will serve the client, those issues will make it into the document along with all the dry stuff. For in the final analysis it is the fulfillment of hopes and dreams that makes great architecture. |
| October 8, 2007 Bits When we consider the entire environment built by man, the totality of what we can design and build in our lives as architects is pretty puny. As architects we only get to contribute a little bit to the built environment periodically. That's all; a little bit, every now and then. If that is true we need to be sure the tiny bit we do contribute has been carefully considered. We must look at the opportunities presented to us and decide what we think is important, and then we must pursue it with great passion. We might decide that what is important is to make our small contributions big and flashy and controversial and different in an effort to make a big splash. Some architects do exactly that. A few even do it well. But most don't. Unfortunately our environment is littered with big egos and poor design. We might also think of our work as a small piece of a larger whole and consider our work a contribution to the composition that is all that we as humans build. What we do is extraordinarily important work and the decisions around which we base our design direction will ultimately affect the lives of all who come in contact with what we create. We must be very careful. |
