Untitled Document

Regarding Design Education

Interior Architecture is a major in which

making things

(the active, engaged, physical process of making drawings, models, statements, objects, spaces)

defines who you are

(as a designing person, having ideas, knowledge, beliefs, desires, points of view)

and

how well you are doing

(as a design student, working to expand your horizons, develop skills, and discover new points of view)

This document is a small collection of some of my thoughts regarding design education, designing activities, and the world of persons, places, and objects.

1
history
all that has gone before us.

the noting, explaining, revealing, of how things were at 'an earlier time'.

history exists at many scales. your personal history is probably not very important to many people, but is very important to you. the history of the nation is important to americans, but perhaps is not very important to you. individuals and groups do not have the same needs, desires, roles to play in society. design has to address both the needs and desires of individuals, and those of groups.

there is something compelling, intriguing, tempting, about seeing ourselves, in a mirror, in a photograph, on television. how many of us can walk past a mirror without taking note of our hair, our clothes, or our 'look'. we see our own history in our reflection.

some people say that you 'work for the future', or that you 'build your future' through hard work. i think this is a peculiar way to view life. through your life you are creating, building, your past. every day you add to what your past consists of. your portfolio does not represent your future, it represents your past. a good life is one that has a rich and meaningful past. no one knows what the future will bring, but we do know what the past has brought, and what the present contains.
we build our past through the things we do each day. our works create our past and the character of our past influences our future.

2
designing

the designed character of our environment changes (for better in some places and for worse in others) as we read these words.
designing is an activity that almost all people engage in sometime, but not all the time. sometimes only in an informal, intuitive, or unconscious way.

the words used to describe the domain of our activities cause us problems: 'interior design' 'architecture' 'design'. these words have become loaded with meaning related to economic and legal consequences. what is important is that we make things. what we make can improve the lives of people who engage with the designed, made, built, world.

i have found the world
to be influential and stimulating.

read, study, and look at
'domus' magazine !!!
(na 350) it can expand your world and change your sensibility

as a designer, and a student of human architectural undertakings, i find these human
qualities
to be invaluable:

investigative, respectful, confident, emotional, forthright, literate, philosophical, materials-istic, optimistic, romantic, repetitive, repetitive, observant, patient, empathetic, sympathetic, ordered, kind.

designing is making decisions. you must make selections, of all sorts of things. the sooner you can make initial selections in your work on a design project, the sooner you will be able to make progress toward creating a proposal. the sooner you produce a proposal that is understandable, appropriate, and coherent, the sooner you will be able to improve your proposal. you must select color, form, material, technologies, and a host of other elements, components, and relationships that make up a built interior space.

design school is a place to learn how to design. the way you learn how to design is through the doing of design projects. projects that must receive your dedicated attention in the form of your active, and honest interpretation of the issues and character of the project. every design project that you will ever do, either in school, or in practice, demands that you make selections, demands that you take a position, and explore that position through drawings and models.

you must take charge of your project, and produce something good! do not let your teacher's requirements or the project statement's incompleteness or vagueness keep you from moving ahead. you always have to fill in many blanks in a design project. no design project statement can ever, ever, be a complete description of what you have to do in the designing of the project. to be a complete description of the project would be to produce a finished project.

do not drag your feet. do not sit there feeling 'frustrated'. commit to a specific material, shape, geometry, relationship between parts.

designing is about you making decisions, and then exploring (through drawings, models, sketches, photographs, collages, and whatever other media and forms of expression you find useful for exploring your ideas, thoughts, questions)

3
imaginative perception

a person who designs things, any things, large or small, products, such as lighting fixtures and pens, or spaces, such as offices and dining rooms, or complete buildings, has to be able to envision new and improved versions of those things that already exist.

this does not mean that designers are wizards, or that they have supernatural abilities to see into the future. what it means is that a designer has to be able to see the world around us and imaginatively transform the substance and meaning of what is there into new works.

perception of this character can be developed through practice and training. the training required to develop the ability to see what is really there is called education. the practice required is the course work you will be given through your design school curriculum.

4
influences

a variety of designers and their work have influenced my thinking, and my life. some of the most influential on me have been

Carlo Scarpa, a poet, a sculptor of space, a maker of beautiful experiences and beautiful objects. you must see his drawings and sketches on yellow tracing paper!

Le Corbusier, a powerful thinker and an engine of activity. he was a painter, a writer, a city planner, an architect, and a maker of fascinating volumes, forms, and surfaces.

Frank Lloyd Wright. the reason he is such a household name is because his work is truly sublime. i enjoy his interiors even more than his exteriors! they are rich, human, illuminated spaces of varying proportions and varying palettes of colors and materials.

Louis Kahn, another poet, maker of eloquent statements and elegant spaces. stunning clarity of material and scale.

Charles and Ray Eames. vibrant, energetic designing came from them.

Paul Klee and the magical world of color and symbols that he produced. his paintings are stunning works of balance, intrigue, color, and suggestion.

Henri Matisse and the fantastic use of color in his paintings.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the french photographer who captured moments and through them made statements about the human condition.

Bruce Davidson, an american photographer, who photographed the verrazzano narrows bridge in new york city and produced six foot tall black and white photographs that absolutely blow you out of the water with their power, brilliance, and perspective.

others who have startled me, inspired me, fascinated me include:

Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van de Rohe, Fumihiko Maki, Charles Rennie Macintosh, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, Richard Meier, Frank Gehry, Fay Jones, James Stirling, Arata Isozaki, Gae Aulenti, Pier Luigi Nervi, Santiago Calatrava, Eero and his dad, Eliel Saarinen, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Georg Jensen
Josef Albers, Joan Miro, Leonard Baskin, Paul Gaugin, Paul Cezanne, Eugene Delacroix, Auguste Rodin, Alexander Calder, Thomas Eakins, Wassily Kandinsky, Odillon Redon, Eduouard Vuillard, Gustave Courbet, Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, Ansel Adams, Alfred Steiglitz,
Rudolf Arnheim, Karl Popper, Bertrand Russell, John Rawls, David Purpel, Jerzy Soltan, Olivio Ferrari

look up one of these people in the library when you need inspiration and understanding.

5
roles
people take on roles
establish a domain, become experts. some people must be able to look across the dividers to be able to see the connections that link us all.
who is willing to do this? we must!

users
of interior spaces are in a position to attend to the designed (which is to say, the rational and conscious selections) character and qualities of a place as it 'is', and how it affects their lives.

builders
are in a position to attend to how the designed (which is to say, the rational and conscious selections) character and qualities of a place are transformed, from images that are of varying levels of abstraction or completeness, to finished constructions

designers
are in a position to attend to what the designed (which is to say, the rational and conscious selections) character and qualities of a place should be, needs to be, or can be.

design educators
are in a position to attend to how and what the designed (which is to say, the rational and conscious selections) character and qualities of a place may 'become', as well as what they are, and how they may affect the lives of all those who may be engaged with the place, the work of design.

critics
are in a position to attend to what the designed (which is to say, the rational and conscious selections) character and qualities of a place might have been, should be, and could become.
designing is rational and conscious activity.

who will look across the dividers that conceal the connections that link us?
we all must do this. you must.
i challenge myself to do this.

6
concealing vs. revealing

i believe it is better to reveal than to conceal in the designing of objects and environments. reveal everything?
well, everything could be elegant, stimulating, and beautiful, but there are difficulties with this approach. if what is to be revealed is awful, then something must be changed. the awful must be made un-awful. the revealing must be rewarding, enriching, informing, and not disgusting. rusted nails and rotted sub-floor will not do.
the structure, the workings, the essential aspects of the object. hiding these confuses, deludes, and cheapens what we do, what we think. concealing allows us to make, to build, poorly, sloppily.
concealing encourages us to create surface impression rather than substance.

i look for meaning in the built environment through
revelation.
the revelation of things
revealed through characteristics, qualities, and attributes. in design revelation comes with the conscious, thoughtful application of principles and materials and substantial
effort
in achieving a synthesis. designing is hard work. to become good at it takes dedication. it will happen, if you commit yourself to it.

taste, is a perfectly good word for us to use.
it does not mean elitism though it is often used that way. it does mean defining, recognizing, developing, and nurturing a position. taste may mean 'unconscious reasoning'. it may also mean conscious selection, orientation, and limitation of your own position concerning how you want to build, structure, create, inhabit, your own environment, your own life, your own sensibility.

through acts of designing, we work at identifying and making good use of our individual sensibilities, our taste, our individual views of what the built world should be like. our individual sensibilities have to span a range of concerns.

we must have
public concerns.
the poor, the defenseless, the sick, the aging, the children. these are people we can help by making good use of our individual sensibilities, our knowledge, our energy, and our skills.

we have
private concerns.
our secret joys, pursuits, and indulgences. a gleaming piece of metal, a beautifully turned wooden chair leg. we are fortunate to have the opportunity to give time and energy to the pursuit of small but beautiful things that intrigue us.
designing is always a matter of 'personal' thoughts, references, and meaning.
'personal' and 'private' are not the same. the work of designers is always 'personal', but is only rarely 'private'.
your work is to be shared with the world. present your work to the world in an effort to influence, sway, mesmerize, enchant.

8
'beauty'
is a much maligned, much abused word.

beauty is a function of the

mind
retinal, olfactory, tactile, and auditory stimulation gives your brain something to do, something to think about.
Scientists have come to believe that seeing is a form of thinking, so this may add to our understanding of beauty.

'this is a beautiful object'. what does that mean? does it mean you like it? does it mean a lot of people like it? does it mean that it does something well? does it mean that it is powerful? stimulating? informative? timeless? simple? complex? expensive? inexpensive?

if something may be described as being
'inherently beautiful', then i am inclined to think that there is a genetic imperative directing us to have that response. like a bee to flowers, there is no choice involved, it is programmed into the creature. if this is the case with us, then i would say those objects are not beautiful, they are simply a part of our evolutionary program and scheme.

what is beautiful? it is a human construction. the bee does not think the flower is beautiful (at least as far as we can tell). why do we think a flower is beautiful? human beings think things are beautiful. it appears that animals do not.

when we say something is 'beautiful' we mean something by that statement. try to find out what is meant by this. it is much larger than 'i like it'.

to see beauty requires knowledge and effort. beauty is largely an intellectual event. sensory delight is a matter of 'enjoyment'. aesthetic appreciation is a matter of understanding.
developing an understanding of the meaning of 'beautiful' will broaden your horizon.

9
design education

we may be consciously, and explicitly drawing upon principles, ideas, and issues that are a central part of designing activities, (like order, form, pattern, texture, color, light, material qualities, repetition), associations, (such as 'my mother had a flower like that'), or recognition of a time or historical significance in an object and then bring an understanding of these to the object that we gaze upon.

we may be doing some or all of this unconsciously, in an informal, intuitive way.
attempts to make these actions explicit, conscious, and repeatable, upon demand. that is why clients pay us to do our designing activities. we cannot wait for a lightning bolt of inspiration to strike us. we can count on a good amount of perspiration to save us! it is hard work, but it is exciting to take part in the genesis of an object, a space, a place, an environment.

inventions bring things forward, into our
consciousness,
or they bring together things which may have been in our consciousness, but only as separate, unrelated, unacquainted parts.
often, parts meet each other for the first time in an invention, which is why many inventions look so funny.

a thomas edison phonograph is more about the ideas, and the making of the sound reproducing machine, than about the consuming, the purchasing, the shopping for a sound reproducing machine.

mr. edison could not go shopping for a new stereo. there were no stereo shops for him to go to. he had to invent, rather than shop. he had to make, rather than consume.

there is great virtue to be found through making things. knowledge is acquired and developed in making. skills are acquired and developed in making. relationships between parts and the whole are discovered, and made understandable through making. making things is often difficult, challenging, frustrating, but enlightening!
mere consuming offers very little of this.

we need to re-discover
our 'making nature', as a species, as a people, as individuals. all children make things. making things gives us an identity, a purpose, and a sense of accomplishment. we must make things, and we must celebrate our making of things.

think about the verbs that describe how you spend your time, your life: does 'bought', 'got', 'watched', 'shopped', 'drove' describe your life?
does 'make', 'created', 'produced', 'experienced', 'discovered', 'learned' describe your life?
be active, participate in events.
make things!
i believe the people of this country would be better off if they participated in educational activities, sports activities, musical activities, making activities more than they spectate.

11
kodak instamatic 100
one of the first, and one of the most popular
'point and shoot' cameras. this little aluminum, steel, and plastic box brought a new dimension to photography. this camera made it easier than ever to take
'no brainer' pictures. it is a good example of the ability of technology to remove human decisions from the production of an object.

taking a photograph can be a laborious process, when dealing with a view camera, long exposure times, decisions concerning aperture size, film transport and storage, developing chemistries, printing techniques and chemistries, and presentation of the finished photograph.

the 'instamatic' reduced all of this to one simple push of a button, and a mailing envelope.
voila!
pictures of the family pet!
i do not like this as an object, or as a camera, because it tells me that i am not important. i want to be important in the genesis of a photograph. otherwise, is it my photograph, or is it the machine's photograph?

appreciation.
it does not come immediately. often 'liking' or 'not liking' can be a preemptive act, that severely limits the richness of your experience with a work of design.

i find is often more fulfilling to wait, not to 'like' or 'not like' right away. let it reveal itself as you use it, interact with it, live with it.

appreciation is developed, over time, with regular study, or interaction, ith something or someone. you come to 'appreciate' your swiss army pocketknife as it surprises you with its ability to meet the varied demands you present to it. you come to appreciate domus magazine because of its ability to inspire you.

13
clocks and watches

show us the
'passage of time'.

the great claim of expensive watches used to be their accuracy and their dependability. blam!! technology has voided the claims, and even the appeal of a rolex watch. why should i pay $ 3,000 for a watch, when a
$15 casio indicates the passage of time just as 'accurately'?
the physical presence of this indicator, this time displayer, still has an appeal for designers. watch design, specifically, engraving of watch cases, was
charles-edouard jeanneret's
(born october 6, 1887, in la chaux-de-fonds, switzerland)

first calling. his father and his grandfather were watch engravers.

le corbusier gave up on watches, (and gave up his given name) and went on to become one of the 20th century's greatest architects.

14
mr.charles and ms. ray eames.
are at the top of my list of design heroes. they built successful careers around a range of marvelous design activities. furniture, film making, toy design, graphic design, product design, building design. they were one of the most successful, and best known husband and wife design teams of this century.

they developed and stuck to a philosophy
of designing and of life
that produced a great amount of work filled with richness, beauty, and fun.

this chair is an american classic. supremely comfortable, refined

technology. expressive
of structure in the form. the parts work well, and they are each celebrated for what they do. they look like what they do, and they do what they look like.

albert einstein
said "a problem cannot be solved by the same consciousness that created it"

imagination, creativity, and persistence must be developed, and used in the pursuit of new things.

do 'time saving' devices really save us time?
i find that they decrease the time required to do particular tasks. they should be called 'time shortening' devices. the result of decreasing the amount of time needed to do a task is that we now do more tasks within a set amount of time. the result of doing more tasks within an amount of time is that we have less time to reflect upon the task we are
doing.

the result of less time for reflection is that we live our

lives in a
staccato rhythm, hurrying from one quickly done task to the next.

we are we going in such a hurry?

how could we live without vacuum cleaners?

this is such a wonderful product, except that it is loud, heavy, attached to the wall by a thin wire that becomes disconnected at the slightest tug, and it blows hot smelly air around the room as a part of its operation.

even so, we have not been able to improve upon this electrolux in almost
eighty years!

this is a design that does what it does well. that is, as long as we do not
change our
existing concept

of what it should do. as long as our 'consciousness', our concept, of what we are trying to do with this machine remains the same, the design of a new product is not possible.

18

bicycles: a fantastic example of an object that has been
re-conceived, re-born, and exploded out into new forms, materials, and functions, is
the bicycle.

this raleigh bicycle of 1905 remained virtually unchanged for almost one hundred years. it was a well designed machine. it provided a good transfer of human energy to the wheels, and it provided an exhilarating sense of speed, travel, and freedom.

the concept of bicycles as vehicles to be ridden off-road brought an entirely new direction to the long running familiar form of a bicycle.

have you ever gone 40 miles per hour on a bicycle? how about 50 miles per hour? if you have not, let me assure you that is an experience of

'speed'!

the experience has an immediacy, a sense of very possible
peril

you get a very clear understanding of the material and texture of the pavement just inches below your feet.

19
a fountain pen.

employing gravity, capillary action, surface tension.

liquid

ink flows
from a reservoir through a conduit to a nib, onto the surface, and then

is absorbed
into the body of the paper.

this writing implement demands that we attend to it. we cannot take it for granted. it requires regular, sometimes frequent maintenance. the fountain pen provides
us with an opportunity to
engage in

a small ritual.

filling the pen with ink, and cleaning the pen with warm water. rituals enrich our lives. through rituals we create rhythm and meaning in our lives.

if we do not celebrate what we do, who else will

the ball point pen
has its place

to be sure, but it is not alongside a fountain pen.

regardless of the form of the mechanism, the material of the case, and the shape of the object, the essence of this writing implement is a greasy,

slimy, viscous gunk
that is at best a distant relative of real ink.

for a designer, a person engaged in drawing activities, a ball point pen must be used sparingly.

it is very difficult to make a good line with a ball point pen.
it is too easy to be lazy, to settle for just any implement when we are drawing.

do not do it!
designers have to be selective about the implements they use. let your implements have as much meaning for you as possible. do not settle for 'generic' qualities.

if we do not celebrate what we do,
who else will?

i have been
transformed

by the activities and accompanying philosophies that i have engaged during my life.
i have discovered that with a total, unswerving, commitment to an activity comes

revelation

revelation is an experience that makes the world understandable. it relieves anxiety, fear, arrogance, and cosmic doubt.
revelation makes possible confidence, enjoyment, productivity, humility, and

respect
you can only truly respect someone when you understand what it is that they do, and how hard it is to do what they do.

my first twelve years in the world of designing were dedicated to

design practice

my last ten years in the world of designing have been dedicated to

design education
i have been transformed from a design practitioner into a design educator. there is a big difference between the two.
both domains offer rich, life enchancing experiences. both domains are very real. both domains demand a commitment, a level of energy, self motivation, imagination, a concept of quality, a knowledge base, a range of skills, and a
desire to celebrate everything we encounter through the transformational process of designing activities.

if we do not celebrate what we do, who else will?

22
never make anything that is 'fake'.

making something that is fake devalues what we do. instead of making a fake thing, investigate what it is that you are trying to do, and make something that is real, that is what it does, that looks like, and expresses what it does, in an elegant, vibrant, exciting, and good way. ornament, and yes even decoration, can be wonderful, if it is clear that it is what it appears to be. a 'fake' column, a 'fake' door, a 'fake' metal shelf each degrade the possibility of finding meaning and value in a work of design.

when you explore an idea, a thought, a possible form for something you are working on, part of what you are doing is 'de-mystifying' the existence of this thing. if you draw it in multiple ways, such as in plan, in section, in elevation, in axonometric, and in perspective you can then see, really, how it could work, what it needs to be able to work, and what makes it good and interesting, or not so good, and uninteresting.

try this! really; no, not later, do it right now! do it and you will discover things you did not know!

the process of doing these multiple drawings is how you come to fully understand the things you 'think' are good designing ideas. only after you have really explored the existence of your thought can you know that it is, or is not, a good proposal for this thing to become a physical reality.
in design practice, the actual building of an object, a room, a building, a city, is very expensive, time consuming, and complicated. because of this there tend to be many reviews of the possible reality of a work of design before the commitment is made to go ahead with actual physical construction. you must do much the same in testing, exploring, discovering, what your ideas really are; what their physical existence would really be, if....
your thoughts, and your ideas, in the world of designing, are much like dreams. dreams never look, in the light of day, the way they did in the darkness of night, "in the wee hours, before time begins".

your designing, (which is your sketching, drawing, model making, doodling, mulling, writing, reflecting, looking at domus, going to antique shops, exploring a leaf, a pine cone, a shell, exploring the world) becomes real only when you make something tangible such as a drawing or a model.

i discovered designing in blacksburg, virginia, when i was 23 years old. i spent four intense years working to find the meaning and the system of it all. that discovery changed my life because it validated many things that i had intuitively believed to be important and interesting. it was a turning point in my life, and it came about because of the intense commitment that i made to the undertaking, to designing, to the field of architecture. i was a maniac, a zealot, and a true believer. i threw myself into it without concern for my mental balance because i believed in it.

i have had several similar, but less life dominating, passions during my life, and with each of them it has been the intensity of my commitment that made the pursuit and eventual attainment of competence, of understanding, of revelation, possible. for me these have been (in my life's chronological order); tennis, (the salvation of my teenage years and a really fine activity) architecture, (the dynamo in my life) cycling, (a realm in which to discover dignity and nobility that you never knew existed) squash (a truly wonderful game that contains subtleties that are indescribable to a lay person) and recently, the guitar (a complex, mysterious, difficult, but beautiful thing).

each of these activities is a passageway into an entire world that is unknown to those who have not explored it. these activities have presented themselves to me like oysters that keep a secret pearl. the initial struggle to achieve minimal competence yields no pearls at all.
during the initial stages of exploration people say things like 'tennis is no exercise', 'the guitar hurts my fingers too much', 'bike riding is boring for me'. these are the remarks of someone who has not seen. what there is to see is fantastic, but invisible until you rid yourself of the handicaps of being silly, petty, ignorant, unskilled, and insensitive.

slowly, slowly, if you proceed with a fierce dedication that ignores frustration, discomfort, and the bothersome sense that you are not any good at this stuff, at a moment when you least expect it, out of the rough hewn chunks of clumsy effort, a pearl is revealed; clear, concise, elevating. a tiny apotheosis.

suddenly things make sense, suddenly you understand, suddenly you feel like you know something that other people do not know.

this feeling will not last long, so enjoy it, savor it, and then be prepared to go back to slogging along in pursuit of the next pearl. you will, however, be slogging along at a slightly higher level than you were before your discovery, before the pearl was offered to you. complex, difficult activities do not reveal their secrets easily; they only offer their pearls to those who make an unreasonably strong commitment.

to become really good at a complex activity takes an unreasonable amount of effort, but once you are really, truly good at it, (so good that most people do not understand what you are doing or how you do it) no one can take it away from you. once you are this good at something you can also offer it to others, and you can watch them move through the same process that you went through.
you can then be a good teacher.

over time these experiences can be counted upon. you never do know when they are coming, but if you dedicate yourself to the activity, a pearl will be revealed. to become very good at an activity, you need to accumulate several, if not many, pearls.

celebrate
what we do!

think, act, change!
make things!
discover how exciting you can be simply by being real.
you can make the world a better place.

keep in touch.
write, e-mail, call
when you feel the desire to do so.

i enjoy my work here.
i look forward to new experiences.