#192: “DANCING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE”

On July 25, 2024, I was interviewed for Josh Cooperman’s podcast, Convo by Design. About his forum, Josh explains, “A podcast dedicated to promoting the ideas of architects, artists, designers, tastemakers and those making a difference in the way we live. Design is personal as is a good conversation.”

At the Los Angeles showroom of Design Hardware, Josh introduced a thesis, “Architecture is an art form that also serves a primary function, that of shelter, workspace, centers for learning, social spaces and gathering places. This is a form of art with a language all its own.

“Long debated is which comes first: form or function? But that’s not quite the right question to be asking these days. A better question might be, for whom does architecture serve, and how can the space serve individual needs, both now and into the future.

“American society has learned to move to a new shelter space in the same way that a hermit crab moves to a new and bigger shell. We’re not hermit crabs, and this model has only served to increase costs and decrease availability of housing. Let’s think differently about how architecture can achieve different results.”

My edited responses to a few of Josh’s questions:

“Hi, my name is Anthony Poon. My architecture and design company is Poon Design Inc. We are awarding-winning architects and designers. We design houses. We design schools, religious projects, commercial, restaurants, bars, hospitality, university projects. We do it all.

“My personal take on design is driven by my background as a musician. I love jazz, and I am a classically-trained pianist. I like bringing musical ideas and philosophies into our work. I like looking at how discipline and improvisation can come together and drive the architectural process.

“There’s the famous Goethe quote, that you probably know. ‘Architecture is frozen music.’

“Or some has said, ‘Music is melting architecture.’

“It’s fascinating to talk about both. Thelonious Monk also said, ‘talking about music is like dancing about architecture.’

I think the overlaps are very clear, with things like rhythm, ornamentation, measure, beat. For example, the beat in music is like gravity in architecture.

“My fascination with jazz is about how jazz is made—improvisationally, impromptu, spontaneous—and whether such ideas can influence the way architecture is made. Architecture is a slower, sometimes tedious process compared to jazz. Architects deal with engineering. We deal with city codes, budgets, client, etc. It can take years, sometimes decades to complete a project.

“What can we learn from jazz? How can we learn from that kind of music—to look at our creative process to find inspiration from one field of study to another?

“In fact, I am the type of artist that doesn’t separate the different fields of studies. I think of it all as one creative force, one endeavor under one artistic umbrella. I like music. I like painting. I like writing. I like architecture. And I don’t separate the four. It is one force moving together at the same time.”