The Wonderful World of Architectural Writing

So I've been kind of lax in posting my other writings on the blog here.

I assure you it is not from lack of work but neither am I going to complain with my least favorite excuse: "I'm so busy". The answer is that I now share a wall with my infant niece and the lack of sleep that produces has made me all kinds of scatter-brained. But nevermind that, without further ado -





Madness and Method at St. Elizabeths
Washington D.C.’s next major addition is a department headquarters that challenges the city’s views on temporality, functionality and even irony. The site is a place of madness, method and the schemes in between; one the government both embraces and fears.
Published by 'Failed Architecture' April 2014 See the full article HERE



Next Time, Send Flowers
In this short essay, misappropriated art theory and fame are discussed in the scope of a recent tabloid obsession. A Hollywood superstar's plagerism, some bizarre skywriting and a gallery show are all clues, but who is the culprit in this crime of art theft?
Published by 'Resonance' the Architectural Association History and Critical Thinking Research Platform, March 2014 See Full Article HERE


Changing Times, Changing Designs: Council Offices Then and Now
What does the design of local government say about surrender, duty and the perceptions of power? Camden’s replacement of their Brutalist Council Office Building with a new one, gives a clue.
Published by 'Failed Architecture' January 2014 See the full article HERE






The Nothing That Consumes: How Battleship Grey Changed Design
In 1909 the Royal Navy began painting everything within grasp a vague, nothing kind of colour, one that was intended to be useful, not beautiful. Yet over 100 years later “Battleship Gray” has become the inescapable basis of almost all design and subsequently, most of the physical world. More than a post-war standard-issue metaphor for bureaucratic oppression, or a dogmatic footnote in architectural academia, it is the colour of purgatory and boredom, the promise of a future while the soul is mortgaged: doing far more for and to design that it has ever been credited for. Further, the only way to break the bonds of its oppression is to acknowledge it as fact.
Published by 'Saturated Space' Nov 2013 Read the full article HERE

There is also talk of my work being published in a book. I won't say anything more about it than I am excited and dubious.

Now if I could only devise a way to get babies to sleep through the night. 

The Architect in Fiction: Best Movie Ever

So I just finished reading “The Women” (T.C. Boyle) and re-reading “Loving Frank” (Nancy Horan) which prompts me to ask: is anybody else a little tired of biographies about Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal life involving his many, many affairs? I mean I think it’s one of those topics that everyone is interested in, but to a point.

Don’t get me wrong, I love FLW drama as much as the next person but can we cover any one of his other humanizing and interesting flaws, like the terrible business deals or the paranoia? In that light I bring you what I think would work much better.

Frank Lloyd Wright is a cowboy-samurai who kills his master (Played by Louis Sullivan) after they have a battle to prove his strength, he then beats up sides of beef in a meat in a meat locker, after which he takes on the Empire (Skidmore Owens and Merrill) in his mid-western arts and crafts style centennial falcon. The New Emporer (Phillip Johnson) sends his mute German assassin/bounty-hunter/rival (Mies Van De Rohe), they play a game of cat and also cat until a mysterious figure shoots the assassin in the back. It’s his master (an even angrier Louis Sullivan) they have a moment of dearest hate and confusing love before he walks away into the fog.

None of that really happened, but I think that would be a better story than hearing the same story over and over again from the perspective of the significantly less interesting figures in his life.