Tropic of Charlie
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- Christopher Alexander
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Working Bibliography
Working Bibliography
It’s not that I feel my bibliography is anything particularly special, rather for me this is the vice-like memory I don’t have upstairs. Listening to Ezra Koening’s two part appearance on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton has me absolutely convinced that a home for the little pieces of subject matter that might become precedents for future work, blog content, etc. needs to make its way to a list where it can accumulate, cross-fertilize, and maybe reach out and inspire you too. It’s the digital and public version of dog earing a page, underlining a special quote, plundered endnotes-a trail left in broken binding and narrow margins-for that moment of frustration when you hear something truly profound and it’s just you and your ear buds...
“We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong"
“A book is not supposed to be a mirror. It's supposed to be a door."
Ezra Koening’s two part appearance on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton | A beautiful articulation of the creative process in word with well placed soundbytes.
Bjark Ingel’s two part appearance on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton | In addition to Rick Rubin’s finesse as an interviewer, this chronicle of Bjark’s career reveals much about how architects work , that is rarely so bluntly articulated by architects. Highlights include his comments about the creative process and comparison to Bjork’s discography with how architects work.
Frank O. Gehry’s lecture at SCI-Arc on November 7, 1979 from the SCI-Arc Media Archive | Little has changed in the nearly fifty years since Frank Gehry gave this lecture at SCI-Arc, and it is no less prescient as we look into the future of architecture. Gehry discusses his work at the time as well as his thoughts on an encounter he had with three of “the rats” (the Rationalists), Leon Krier, Rob Krier, and Massimo Scolari. Some of my favorite quotes include:
“The problem with building a lot of buildings is you make a lot of mistakes.”
“Good people are interested in ideas.”
Patrik Schumacher’s appearance on the Theory of Architecture Podcast | Schumacher really has a profound grasp on the state of the discipline and the trajectory of architectural design. I think after the Artificial Intelligence dust settles it will become clear that the conversation around “parametricism” will prove far more prescient than any practitioner in the discipline would like to believe. Why? Parametricism contains the computational infrastructure needed to establish a better process for architectural design.
Steven Holl’s Recent lecture at SCI-Arc from the SCI-Arc Media Archive | Steven Holl has been all over the place. Whether rubbing shoulders with Thom Mayne and the Southern California architects around SCI-Arc, or his work in Seaside with the Rationalists (including the Seaside Pavilion), he’s managed to produce an impressive, and impressively broad portfolio. But I think I was particularly convicted by what he has to say about process, its ritualization in the form of things like his daily watercolor drawings, and how process informs practice.
Talk Design Podcast titled Tom Kundig: The Art of Architecture & Speed | There is a common thread through the Steven Holl Lecture above where Thom Mayne and Steven Holl’s interest in hot-rods is discussed, and it comes up again here in this brilliant interview by Adrian Ramsey of Tom Kundig. Rather than getting into the minutiae of firm management, Adrian helps unravel Kundig’s creative process by asking about everything else that Kundig is passionate about - climbing, skiing, hot rods, and ultimately and most importantly, Kundig’s fascination with people, which ultimately serves as the creative catalyst for his work. This podcast reveals just how much of architecture is thinking, drawing, and building connections through working with extraordinary people.
“Only common things happen when common sense prevails.” - A noteworthy piece of Olson Kundig vernacular of unknown origin
Harvard Thinks Big 4 talk by Roberto Mangabeira Unger |“No one should have to do work that can be done by a machine,” argues precisely the title. I stumbled across this early sophomore year of my undergraduate as a Pre-Engineering student where it sent me spiraling down a road that ultimately led to my becoming an architect. On the one hand Unger’s message is simple, politically bent, and likely appears to most of the workforce as naive and too high-minded. Perhaps it is. But, it is also probably the best question for a, “can my job be replaced by AI?” litmus test, forcing us to articulate where the value we bring to the table truly lies. Reflecting on this over a decade later, little has changed. The discipline of architecture still has an aversion to delineating between work that can and should be done by a machine and work that truly requires a person - a person’s thought, troubleshooting, and problem solving. How can we as architects better delegate the tasks that we should delegate to a machine, and prioritize those that require our particular set of skills?
Elizabeth Danze’s appearance on Gary Wang's podcast Designing Austin | Provides a rare glimpse into a flawlessly executed career of one who has maintained one foot in teaching and another in practice and unsurprisingly she drops some excellent wisdom in both the academic sphere as well as the life arena with a solid hypothesis springing from the latter:
"You can do it all, just not necessarily at the same time."
In the back half of the podcast Danze and Wang really dive deep into some specifics on teaching studios and how this process has evolved over the last three decades. Some parallels with other School of architecture directors emerge.
Joe Day’s 2009 Foreword to Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies titled “After Ecologies” | In this foreword, Joe Day elucidates much about the way architecture has been practiced in Los Angeles, but even more fascinating he identifies a dichotomy in how architects work between those who work in two dimensions and those who work in three. See quote from the above idenitifying the Recombinant and the Recursive:
“American design culture has been split since the mid-1990s between the continued development of the collage based approaches that Rowe and Banham’s gneration pioneered, and the rise of the strictly digital methods, driven by three dimensional modeling and animation software. Recombinant designers crop and reassemble parts, fragments, or overlays to generate design solutions, whether at the scale of the drawing, the building, or the urban plan. Recursive designers build up complexity through the modulation of “primitive,” self-similar parts through techniques of cyclical iteration. At its extremes, this opposition pits compositional artistry against computational rigor in contemporary vanguard architecture.”
Hernán Díaz Alonso’s appearance on Ecology, Architecture, Technology (EAT) with Dan Mabie and Ade Ayoade | They discuss Hernán’s time as SCI-Arc Director. What are things a good director of an architecture school attempts to do? How do we navigate technology and engage with different waves of innovation? How do we see ourselves in the broader environment of design and life, and how do we market ourselves as architects or designers accordingly?