#77: PLEASE STOP ASKING, “RESIDENTIAL OR COMMERCIAL?”

January 26, 2018

When you meet a chef, do you ask, “Do you cook chicken or fish?”

If you did ask such a stupid question, the chef would be thinking how absurd you sound. At the same time, this chef would be thinking of the thousands of things he cooks, in addition to “chicken or fish.”

When someone meets an architect, the first (and only) question is typically, “Do you design residential or commercial?” Please realize that the field of architecture—that the world— is made up of much more than houses and office buildings.

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#76: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING DAVID E. MARTIN

January 5, 2018

How many friends of yours have hung out with First Lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis, as well as President Barack Obama? How many friends of yours have designed for Microsoft’s Bill Gates, as well as Apple’s Steve Jobs? Or renovated a house that sits on 60,000 acres in Austria?

Staying below the radar, David E. Martin, architect and humanitarian, has done the above. And that’s just for starters.

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#75: DESIGN AND DISCOMFORT: SIT AND BE CURIOUS

December 15, 2017

I have written about a number of things that are in essence, big pains in the butts. Recently, I asked two colleagues, Christine Fang and Ji Ahn, who practice mindfulness and meditation: What do you do with the discomforts of life? I requested of them to provide me a peek into their training.

They tossed back some words: adventure, commit and experience—and sit and be curious. But somewhere along this pattern of words, Chris and Ji are aware that discomfort will inevitably rear its ugly head.

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#74: LEARNING FROM FIGURE DRAWING: THE BIG PICTURE

November 24, 2017

So as teenagers in figure drawing class, we all had that moment when the beautiful model dropped her robe to the floor and stood there in all her naked glory, surrounded by students in awe and dropped jaws. Then our teacher said to study the model and draw.

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#73: PETER ZUMTHOR AND ELEMENTAL IDEAS

November 3, 2017

There are the usual suspects: Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, I.M. Pei, and so on. Call them celebrity architects or call them “Starchitects,” but one greater walks amongst these mere mortal rock stars. I speak of one who is called an “architect’s architect.” He is Pritzker-winning, Swiss architect, Peter Zumthor.

Many non-architects may not even know the name of the enigmatic Zumthor, for his Haldenstein-based practice is small and artisanal, perhaps even cultish. But in a short time to come, Los Angeles will know Mr. Zumthor’s work.

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#72: CROSSOVER: FROM ONE TO THE OTHER

October 13, 2017

In 1984, opera legend Kiri Te Kanawa sought success in an unexpected arena. Courageously stepping into the world of Broadway, she recorded her jazzy version of the 1957 Bernstein and Sondheim musical, West Side Story.

One year prior, jazz great Wynton Marsalis waltzed onto the classical stage with trumpet concertos by Mozart and Haydn—setting aside Marsalis’s New Orleans Dixieland roots.

Whether these two artistic efforts were successful or not, the term “crossover” entered the mainstream lexicon. Te Kanawa and Marsalis crossed over to uncharted universes, creating new sounds and challenges.

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