#205: THE RHYTHM OF ARCHITECTURE, PART 3 OF 3 |

#205: THE RHYTHM OF ARCHITECTURE, PART 3 OF 3 | “BITCHES BREW”

May 2, 2025

Social Justice Headquarters, Los Angeles, California, by Poon Design

Please enjoy part 3, excerpts that conclude my podcast with host Josh Cooperman, “The Rhythm of Architecture.” For the podcast series, Doctoring Up Design, we recorded this episode S4/E36 alongisde Parts 1 and 2.

Josh Cooperman: We’re kind of at this intersection between what is and what is possible. What’s so great about architecture is you can look at something that has been created 75, 100, 500 years ago and find something that is relevant for today. Good ideas transcend time.

Social Justice Headquarters, Los Angeles, California, by Poon Design

Anthony Poon: Correct, if they are elemental ideas, like proportion, light, scale, space, etc. These are label-less in terms of their style. And we have to be careful with what we take from the past. Right now, there is an obsession with Mid-Century Modernism. But for me, It is a just another historic style of architecture, no different than Elizabethan Stick Style or Victorian Revival.

left: Mid-Century Modern House, Palm Springs, California (photo by Peter Thomas on Unsplash); right
Victorian House, San Francisco, California, (photo by David Vives on Unsplash)

There’s a line about jazz in the movie, La La Land. At one point jazz was progressive, but now, “It’s dying on the vine.” Jazz is an old style of music, that is not too different from classical music or Gregorian chants. Meaning, we have to look past these style movements and look at what the essence of things are. I look at jazz for the ideas around improvisation, not for the specific music that is produced.

Josh: Okay, so now I got to back up because I am reminded of one of our previous conversations. I think this is actually how and where it started. Bitches Brew is one of my least favorite albums. I mean, I have a visceral and violent reaction to it.

Bitches Brew, studio album by Miles Davis, 1969

Anthony: And it’s groundbreaking music.

Josh: It’s progressive, and I hate it. I hated it the first time I heard it. But I recognize and respect its value. And that’s the thing, and that’s why I come back to architecture. When you talked about Brutalism and how people will kind of not respect it for what it is, you don’t have to like it, but you have to respect it, how it moved the movement forward and how it moved the art form forward. Bitches Brew changed music for a lot of people…

Wurster Hall, University of California, Berkeley, example of the Brutalist movement (photo by Anthony Poon)

Anthony: … and is still changing music. It’s from a different definition of music. Mozart said that music is intended to be beautiful. But that’s not necessarily what every musician is trying to do. Musicians like Thelonious Monk was trying to be intentionally off kilter, off rhythm, and not necessarily harmonic. Thom Mayne of Morphosis designs projects of which I think he once said something like: Because these are tough times, we need tough architecture. He’s not looking for his work to be beloved or considered beautiful. I think his work is beautiful within a completely different criteria. This is the same way that Bitches Brew is kind of nuts and crazy, but beautiful in the way that the art movement of the Grotesque is.

Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California, by Morphosis (photo by Anthony Poon)

Josh: 5, 7, 10 years ago—clean water, air, noise, pollution were all things of such high importance. And it was the designers, the architects, who affected this, who addressed it for the first time to make it better. And now we get to a point where security and safety in a residential construct, as well as religious institutions, schools, hospitals, businesses, is more important than it ever was before. You go back to what the Romans designed. It was created for safety and security, where you would wall yourself off and live in an interior structure. I don’t think we’re necessarily there yet, but the idea of safety and security in regards to architecture is now something that is more and more important, because we haven’t focused on it.

Herget Middle School, Aurora, Illinois, by Anthony Poon (w/ A4E and Cordogan, Clark & Associates, photo by Mark Ballogg)

Anthony: That goes back to when I mentioned resilience. At Poon Design, we design a lot of schools. To discuss school shootings during design is a very unfortunate topic. As a driver of design, school shootings weren’t even talked about years ago. Back then, we had the luxury of talking about how students would learn, what a fun place school would be, and made sure there’s a lot of natural light, because light has been proven to increase academic excellence.

Now we focus on what happens if there is a school shooter. And security, as you mentioned, is primary. But it also has to be thought of architecturally, because if we’re only designing for security, we would have a concrete box with one door and no windows—and safe rooms within. It would be a military prison, and that is not school architecture. There are no easy answers. You’re not just going to build a concrete classroom without window, because there are school shooters. Design has to be a lot more thoughtful, resourceful and strategic.

Josh: And nuanced.

Anthony: Yes, nuanced. Exactly.

#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.

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.

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