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The Seventh Level

Balboa Press

Contents

Acknowledgements...........................................ixThe Architecture of Human Endeavor.........................1How To Use This Book.......................................9Purpose....................................................13Why Architecture? Why You?.................................17Level One - Room for Ideas.................................31Level Two - Precision has Purpose..........................57Level Three - The Big Hairy Plans..........................69Level Four - Your Foundation...............................95Level Five - The Structural Engineer.......................111Level Six - Systems of Achievement.........................123Level Seven - The Accidental Architect.....................143Ultima Cogitatio...........................................155Appendix of Architects.....................................165

Chapter One

"The great thing about being an architect is you can walk into your dreams." – Harold E. Wagoner

The idea room is where it all begins. Stand in wonder before your first level, the starting point to a life less ordinary. How does it feel to be in the place where visions take shape? For most of your adult life you have wanted to do something, but didn't know how to begin. So start by changing your frame of reference. Since this book is a big fat homage to architecture, let's build something marvelous. In an interview with ArchDaily.com, Eugene Kohn of KPF Architecture spoke about what goes on inside of buildings. "Our goal as architects is to create buildings that inspire people to do whatever it is in that space they need to do. That inspiration comes from within the building as much as from the way it looks from the outside." If you imagine your starting point as a functioning place, you can see it as a base of operations for ideas. This is really what the idea room represents.

The idea room is a place to search for what you need to start your mission, a workshop for your ideas to take shape. Like Tesla's laboratory, it's a place to let the sparks fly. It's a numinous haven with direct access to stored ideas, windows open to every angle, unopened doors and secret desires. It is a place for you to work on your operating systems, your methodology of thought, emotional introspection; a place to find guidance and courage. Within the idea room you can solicit mentors and collaborate with friends.

It's your place now. Own it. Relish it. Believe in it. "A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image." - Joan Didion.

Level One is where you determine your direction, a survey of your talents, resources and aspirations. Architecture is a reflective art form. The architect thinks of design in the aesthetic sense as well as the impact of the particular design. The architecture must respectfully represent and make peace with the physical place while artfully transforming the metaphysical sensations of experience, space and light. Every architectural work, from lofts in Chicago to cityscapes in Nanjing, begins with an idea. In terms of process; the idea is the first working element of architecture.

Architects have a sort of poetic idiom to their language. In his book, "Idea and Phenomena", Steven Holl describes the `getting started' in perfect architect-speak, "In each project we begin with information and disorder, confusion of purpose, program ambiguity, an infinity of materials and forms. All of these elements, like obfuscating smoke, swirl in a nervous atmosphere. Architecture is a result of acting on this indeterminacy.

To open architecture to questions of perception, we must suspend disbelief, disengage the rational half of the mind, and simply play and explore. Reason and skepticism must yield to a horizon of discovery. Doctrines cannot be trusted in this laboratory. Intuition is our muse. The creative spirit must be followed with happy abandon. A time of research precedes synthesis."

From your idea room you will work to accomplish two things: generate a great idea (Levels 1 & 2) and explore ways to make it feasible (Level 3). It will help in your search for an idea to understand the reasons behind them.

You may feel a restlessness, a need to achieve, an irksome sense that something is missing. You might be wrestling with thoughts of inadequate professional enlightenment. We have all felt this sense of hollowness when we start asking Alfie what it's all about, and since nature abhors a vacuum, we consciously and unconsciously seek to fill the void. We get temporary satisfaction from spending money on junk we don't need or partying but they don't satiate us on an abiding level. What's driving you in these random but short-lived surges of activity? By focusing on what may be missing we can build something other than a headstone at the end of our rut.

Architects don't just generate ideas for no reason. There is a client to suit or a competition to win. Certainly they have a bank of potential design images, their `someday' watercolors that appear on cerebral sketchpads, but they have one slight advantage over us on their idea platforms; the client or competition gives them a jumping off point. It may be broad in scope or imprecise, but it's something: a museum, a residence, a gymnasium, an office complex or a town square. They may have nothing more to go on but a phrase or a term of purpose, yet they begin.

Your idea room needs a few jumping off points as well. Your jump-point is your `why'. It's not the same as purpose; we've already discussed that force. Your `why' is this thing you feel you need to do or a specific objective you need to accomplish.

What is aching, missing, unfinished, unresolved or underutilized? Do you simply need money for a new home, a college bill or a swell car? Do you want to leave a legacy? Do you need to change professions, start a non-profit organization, open a business or finally feel fulfilled on a personal level? Your answers to these questions will be your jump-points. It is from those points that you will generate ideas.

The road from your bland existence into the architectural setting is an exploration of the natural curiosity we are endowed with. Color, form, space, light, emotion and texture become pathways to enlightenment. Architects are comfortable in the creative realm in part because it is inherent to their make-up, but also because they are prepared to be there. They learned some creativity skills during their formal education, but developed them out of a need to solve challenges, such as those presented by engineering or when striking a balance between style and utility. They have learned how simple shapes are starting points for complex structures. They have practiced the fundamentals and thus acquired the expertise that gives them the backbone to try new challenges.

Anthony Garetti, an award-winning producer of television commercials, told me he's become more creative because of the time he spends studying other creative people in his field. He has literally watched thousands of hours of films which have helped to build an intricate platform for his own ideas. Ideas in motion are Garetti's business just as buildings are the business of architects. Each profession has jump-points, and you must identify yours, which is the reason that...