Tag Archives: DEATH BY DESIGN AT ALCATRAZ

#195: THE RHYTHM OF ARCHITECTURE, PART 1 OF 3 | THE MATRIX OF THE EGO

November 1, 2024

Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma (photo by Hudson Hintze on Unsplash)

On August 28, 2024, I participated in a podcast entitled, “The Rhythm of Architecture,” from the series, Doctoring Up Design. With host Josh Cooperman, here are edited excerpts from our episode S4/E36—to be presented over three segments. Please enjoy part one.

Death by Design at Alcatraz, by Anthony Poon, published 2022 by Goff Books (photo by Anthony Poon)

Josh Cooperman: I had the opportunity to catch up with longtime friend and an incredible architect, Anthony Poon of Poon Design Inc.; he happens to be an extraordinary talent. Keep listening and you’ll hear why. You wrote a book.

Anthony Poon: I wrote three books (here, here, and here) and working on the fourth and fifth right now.

Josh: Tell me about the third one.

Anthony: You’re talking about the murder mystery novel?

Josh: That’s the one.

Death by Design, illustrations by Anthony Poon, book interior design by Pablo Mandel (photo by Goff Books)

Anthony: Last year, I came out with my first work of fiction called, Death by Design at Alcatraz. My story assembles a group of architects competing to redesign Alcatraz Island into a museum of art. During the design competition led by a billionaire egomaniacal developer, architects start to die off. It goes into the psyche of architects and what we would do for our ego and arrogance. When people say, “Hey, I would kill for that job,” maybe one literally would! The reviews have been great. And I just recently adapted the book into a screenplay for a feature film called, Death by Architecture. I’m starting to shop it around.

Josh: I love that, and think about how design and architecture are so interwoven in everyday life. And I believe we’re in a golden age. I believe we’re in a renaissance of architecture and design right now, especially in a post pandemic world. Now that everything is clearing out supply chains, people are starting to actually think differently about design and architecture than they had in the past.

I was on a road trip with my son, and I found a book in Kansas City called, The Paris Architect. I don’t know if you’ve ever read it. Phenomenal story about an architect who is a Bauhaus devotee and finds himself in Paris during the occupation of World War II. He’s an unwilling accomplice or participant rather, who finds himself looking for and applying unique ways to hide the Jews from the Nazis. I love how the story of architecture and design is interwoven into real life, because I feel like many people don’t realize this. It’s almost like The Matrix. You don’t realize it’s all around you.

The Matrix Reloaded, 2003

Anthony: Exactly. There’s an old essay I wrote a while back, Everything Is Design. People may not be aware of it and you’re right: There’s a search in the zeitgeist around architecture right now. You have TV shows about house design, you have housewives and homeowners designing their parties, choosing the right tablecloths, right wedding cake frosting, and you have fashion at its highest caliber.

Linda Way, Los Angeles, California, by Poon Design (photo by Hunter Kerhart)

Everything is being designed. Everything is being created. Everything is being curated and tailored. Architecture is no longer the building that we’re standing within. It could be the sounds that we hear, the music that’s being piped through the speakers. Architecture is everything from sustainability to the ideas of resilience. How does a building survive a catastrophe, say a fire, a flood or even a school shooting?

These are topics of architecture that didn’t exist a generation ago. The idea of DEI has become prominent in how we create our artistic teams. Architects are no longer the kind of superheroes of the past generation when Modernism was a singular force moving on a linear path. Today architecture is splintered into many avenues, not just a grid of roadways, but more of a three-dimensional matrix.

Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma (photo by Smntha.Mntsr on Pexels)

Josh: Having recently moved to Tulsa, you can see Modernism had sort of morphed from the Art Deco phase into the Mid-Century Modern architecture after. That’s the way architecture is supposed to be. You talk about it being splintered and fractured. Isn’t that how we grow?

Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, by Frank Lloyd Wright (photos by Anthony Poon)

Anthony: For certain. Back in time, sometimes there were a shortage of ideas and a shortage of construction quality. They were building civic buildings clad only with cheap stucco! I recently visited, for the second time, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park. He was one of the first to not just use cast-in-place concrete, but also left the raw surface exposed. It’s not just beautiful, but a hearty structure. I think we’re in a “renaissance” like you say, because the idea of building to last is not just about 25 or 50 years anymore, but maybe a hundred years or more.

Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, by Frank Lloyd Wright (photos by Anthony Poon)

#155: WHETHER IT’S MUSIC, PAINTING, OR WRITING, ARCHITECT ANTHONY POON HAS A STORY TO TELL

July 15, 2022

“The interdisciplinary architect discusses his first novel, the relationship between architecture and music, and designing for everyone. Anthony Poon has a story to tell. Actually, he has many stories to tell—some in written form, others in the language of architecture, music, or painting.” So writes journalist Brian Libby for a recent article in Metropolis. Below are edited and abridged excerpts.

Death by Design at Alcatraz, by Anthony Poon, published by Goff Books, 2022

Brian Libby: Poon Design Inc. has completed over 300 projects, as chronicled in the 2020 book Live Learn Eat: Architecture by Anthony Poon. Earlier this year he was named to the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows, following national awards for educational, residential and restaurant designs. He’s also a certified Feng Shui practitioner, and recently released his debut mystery novel Death by Design at Alcatraz. Yet books are just one of Poon’s passions. He’s also a mixed-media artist and with a master’s degree in architecture. Poon trained even longer—from the age of six—to be a concert pianist. In 1987, after earning a magna cum laude in architecture and music from the University of California Berkeley, he had to decide between applying to The Julliard School and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, ultimately choosing the latter.”

Live Learn Eat: Architecture by Anthony Poon, edited by Michael Webb, published by ORO Editions, 2020

The question of rigid composition versus improvising relates to being a pianist. Could you talk about that?

Anthony Poon: Growing up, my training was classical music. It’s this process of aiming for perfection, a flawless performance. Playing a piano sonata—there are a hundred thousand notes, and you’ve got to hit them all correctly. If I got one note off, my piano teacher would say, “That whole performance is ruined.” But I got interested in something beyond technical proficiency. You’ve got to be able to add a voice, a story. I eventually learned about jazz. It blew my mind that these pianists would just sit at the keyboard and make things up.

Anthony Poon at Ranchos Palos Verdes, California (photo by Olive Stays)

Brian: Your thesis at Harvard was about how jazz improvisation informs the architecture process. What did you learn?

Anthony: Architecture is very methodical. It takes a long time to produce a building. There are a lot of practical considerations: code, budget, square footage. You can’t just whip out a building the way a jazz musician would whip out music. But in the creative process, I always wonder: Why can’t we just grab colors and make an idea? Why can’t we have this sort of jazz-like conversation bouncing ideas and simply grab at this and that, and make it the basis of an entire building design, whether it’s a library, museum, or house?

Greenman Elementary School, Aurora, Illinois, by Anthony Poon, A4E, and Cordogan, Clark & Associates (photo by Mark Ballogg)

Brian: Let’s go back to this question of architecture and narrative. Could you talk about the importance of storytelling in design?

Anthony: It’s all about communication. Everything that I do––painting, music, writing, architecture––is all a language. In architecture, we look to our clients—who they are and what they are—to craft a story. If it’s a family, we want to know how they celebrate the holidays, if the in-laws stay with them, whether they have dogs. For designing a school, we ask: How do the teachers teach, how do the students learn? With an office: what’s the corporate culture, what’s the mission statement? When we do a religious project, there is an entire set of beliefs that need to be expressed in architecture. What’s exciting about music and architecture, and what makes them different from writing, is that they are abstract. It’s kind of open-ended communication.

Sticks and Stones | Steel and Glass: One Architect’s Journey, published by Unbridled Books, 2017

Brian: In your memoir, Sticks & Stones | Steel & Glass: One Architect’s Journey, you write about designing intimate spaces for people.

Anthony: What we talk about at my firm is that good design belongs to everyone. It could be a restaurant or the design of a bench—corporate headquarters or a public school. It’s about harnessing the talents that my team brings, and then reaching as many people as possible.

Brian: Where do you stand on the introvert-extrovert scale? Because architecture, especially when you get to a certain scale, is teamwork. Painting, which you’re also acclaimed for, is a more solitary activity.

Anthony: I’m probably somewhere in the middle but skewing a little towards the extrovert side. Some of these art forms are solo explorations, but I don’t see the art being complete until it reaches the audience. That’s the completion of the artistic arc. With any kind of artist, both introversion and extroversion are tapped. In architecture, for example, the introverted, introspective, self-examining qualities usually launch the design process, and the extroverted side leads a team, sells the idea to a client, and supports the creative ego.

top: Alleyway, 30” x 42”, 2019; bottom left: Melrose Brown, 23” x 27”, 2021; bottom right: Feeling Orange, 20” x 24”, 2019

Brian: In Sticks & Stones | Steel & Glass, you described how San Francisco’s Portsmouth Square in Chinatown inspired you. The park dates to 1833, but its 1963 redesign was derided at the time for raising the park to fit a parking garage underneath. What made it special to you and the community?

Anthony: Isn’t it incredible that it is a parking structure and an extraordinary park? The plaza acts like a blank canvas, and the community paints their life onto this canvas. It’s just that kind of wonderful, idyllic place that you don’t imagine would be in such a dense area. I look at Portsmouth Square, not as an architect fetishizing its design, but as what it offers to the community: to have a Tai Chi class at 5:00 in the morning, a wedding at noon, and kids running around in all day. That’s the power of architecture.

Portsmouth Square, Chinatown, San Francisco, California (photo by Bert Brautigam)

#135: WHO WOULD YOU KILL TO SATISFY YOUR CREATIVE EGO?

May 21, 2021

Book cover design by Anthony Poon (photo by Anthony Poon)

Here’s the pitch for my debut novel. “San Francisco cloaked in fog and secrets: Architects are being murdered as they compete for a new museum of art at the notorious Alcatraz Island. This mystery of death and intrigue examines ego, arrogance, and redemption within the creative process. Who will win and at what cost?”

Lands End, San Francisco (drawing by Anthony Poon)

Due to the quarantine, there was a slow down at my office. So, I decided to author another book, entitled Death by Design at Alcatraz. For this blog and other outlets, I have written about design, architecture, art, music, and life. I have published two non-fiction books  (Live Learn Eat  and  Sticks and Stones | Steel and Glass), and decided to take a stab at fiction.

My idea was this: an ‘architectural thriller.’ This 330-page novel with illustrations is a mystery of obsession exploring the heights and depths within the world of architecture. An editor once told me that if I were to try my hand at fiction, it would be best to write what I know. Here are the things I know:

 

 

1.  San Francisco
2.  Architects and clients (good apples and bad apples)
3.  Design competitions
4.  Ambition and ego

The book summary: On a fog enshrouded morning, a world-famous architect plunges to his death off a cliff. Yet, Magnar Jones, billionaire developer, does not allow death to interfere with his twisted agenda. He still has five architects competing for his prized commission: the redesign of Alcatraz Island, the notorious federal prison, into the World Museum of Abstract Art. Magnar’s devious plan? To turn his design competition into a spectator sport, where architects soon find themselves prisoners. Who will succeed—and at what cost?

Illustrations by Anthony Poon, book interior design by Pablo Mandel (photo by Goff Books)

The architects in my story are as follows.

–  The Neurotic Entrepreneur: university professor and Post Modernist
–  The Husband-Wife Team: Ivy League-educated
–  The Corporate Jerk: armed with the formulaic resources of a global company
–  The British Dame: pseudo-intellectual arrogance and trust funded
–  The Mid-Century Modern Fanatic: Los Angeles’ flamboyant designer
–  The European Starchitect: dressed in black on black, pretentious master architect

There is also the billionaire Oklahoman Narcissistic Developer Client—vain, egotistical, and talks too much. And of course, his Enigmatic Girlfriend—young “Blondasian” influencer.

Construction scene (drawing by Anthony Poon)

Excerpt, “The setting of Alcatraz is both solemn and beguiling. Surrounding the group sits remnants of old buildings, storied concrete carcasses. Cracks on the island’s tough surface show the arcs of beginnings and ends, both life and death. One fissure hiding under broken glass welcomes a tiny struggling patch of grass, a flourishing survivor in a vast surface of ruined asphalt and compacted dirt. Standing guard, the remnants of the taller buildings peer down upon the visitors and demand that the island is respected. Twisted corroded iron bars protrude from beaten stone walls, as if a child’s cow lick that won’t lay flat regardless of the amount of saliva. The counter balance to this, these disparate elements, is the surrounding icy-cold waters that extend until unseen within a silky veil of fog, which on a luminous enough day, provides a cryptic silhouette of the city docks.”

Published by Goff Books, Death by Design at Alcatraz is available at Amazon. Shana Nys Dambrot, Arts Editor, LA Weekly endorses, The Fountainhead meets Squid Game in this mystery of obsession and murder set in the fancy but cut-throat world of contemporary architecture.

Illustrations by Anthony Poon, book interior design by Pablo Mandel (photo by Goff Books)

Maybe my next project will be a screenplay about Frank Lloyd Wright. True story: An unfortunate 1914, while Wright was working, his servant set fire to Wright’s Wisconsin residence. The servant bolted all the windows and doors shut. Except for one. As the inhabitants exited through the only escape from the blaze, the servant waited at this open window with an axe. Seven people were brutally murdered, including Wright’s mistress.

(image from The Ogden Standard)
© Poon Design Inc.