Architectural Engineering and Existing Buildings

Earlier this month I gave a talk called “Architectural Engineering and Existing Buildings” at the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI) 2021 Conference. Here’s a teaser from Twitter:

The talk begins from the premise that future AE graduates will enter a world of professional practice where renovations of existing buildings will be increasingly important, and that we are likely not preparing them adequately for investigative and design problems regarding existing buildings and systems. It also clarifies that this is a different subject from Historic Preservation.

Then, it reviews some of the topics and resources that are available for anyone who wants to consider adding more content about adaptive reuse to an AE class or curriculum. I briefly discuss concepts such as Building Pathology, and Stewart Brand’s “Shearing Layers.”

The full talk (18:40) can be seen here:

Please comment if you have additional ideas!

Design tips for students: “Play Notre Dame”

In journalism, the maxim “Play Notre Dame” means to find the strongest counter-arguments to your position, and argue against them directly and forcefully. (In college football, back in the day, Notre Dame was the most challenging team you could add to your schedule. The best teams wanted to play Notre Dame.) So the negative corollary is: don’t play weak teams to gain an easy victory. Or for journalists, don’t play to the weak counter-arguments; don’t simply ask yourself the easy questions.

In a similar fashion, when students are evaluating their own design work in process I encourage them to ask the hardest questions and answer them in writing. For example: A student has a schematic design for a dormitory. He or she should ask what makes this different from and better than a prison? and then answer that question in a few sentences. Writing it down is important, because writing clarifies thinking.

For most buildings, the ultimate hard question is: would this project be a gift or a burden to its users and its community?

Design tips for students: “Write drunk“

I remember vividly, years ago, a radio interview with the poet Miller Williams about the process of writing and revising. He said (as I recall) that the first draft of a poem usually comes to him all-at-once. When he’s inspired, he said, the ideas come so quickly that he can’t write fast enough to keep up. In this state of furious activity he is practically delirious, never pausing to reflect or evaluate—just creation. Then, after some time and distance, he revises the poem, over and over, with an editor’s detachment. This takes months. He said: “Write drunk and revise sober.”

( I found it! here, at about 3:30. My recollection was pretty good, although he says it better.)

I like to share this story with students in architecture studios. I endorse ‘writing drunk’—creating very freely, quickly, intuitively at first. But afterwards it is critical to stand back from your own work and evaluate it, and ‘revise sober’. To achieve distance is really hard, especially for young people, because of ego and ownership. And that’s why we have pin-ups and open critiques, to help students be detached from their drunken creative works, so they can revise sober.

If the drunk/sober analogy is insensitive, Stephen King said it this way: “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft)

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Also written for students:
Architectural Forms
The Master's Thesis Playbook
Using an Art Museum

Best of 2020

In a difficult and unusual year, I considered skipping my annual “Best of,” which always highlights architecture I visited during the year. But here it is in glorious misery—maybe somebody inexplicably looks forward to it.

Gratitude
I was able to remain healthy, and I was able to work from home when needed and work (alone) in my office when possible. I’m privileged.

The Kimbell
I traveled just once in 2020, in February, to the University of Texas-Arlington. I enjoyed meeting with Architectural Engineering students there, and reviewing their work.
I only had a short bit of spare time, and I raced to visit Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum. It’s a building I knew very well; here’s a short talk I made sometime ago for sophomore structural engineering students. It’s an amazing building: present, muscular, calm, and of course brilliantly-detailed. And above all, it’s a wonderful environment for art. Here are some of the usual photos:

In case my interior world is of interest
During the most stressful and isolated periods of the year, I occasionally found myself in a deep, pleasurable reverie. Most commonly, I would be strolling the streets of Siena (with the aroma of wild boar ragu, the irregular footfalls on brick streets), along the Paris canals (bread and butter, motorcycle noise), in Hampstead, London (ale, elm trees), and at Rievaulx Abbey (fog, firewood smoke). Again, I’m privileged.

My Hometown
Do you know the Bruce Springsteen lyric about a boy and his father?

I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick
And steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say ‘Son, take a good look around
This is your hometown.’

My hometown is South Minneapolis; I was raised a few miles from the site where George Floyd was killed in May and where everyone watched the protests and (separately) destructive actions that followed. About my hometown, I said on Twitter at the time: “while it wasn't utopia it was diverse and tolerant. I'm angry and sad tonight.”
I don’t know what the future holds for my hometown. True progress will involve police reform, better jobs, and a different distribution of capital. In particular, it seems to me that the fundamental problem (here and elsewhere) is the disparity between wages and property values. African-Americans in South Minneapolis need to be able to own their homes and small businesses.
You can donate to the Lake Street Council here.

credit: https://flic.kr/p/2jtNS4U

Race and Architecture
The killing of George Floyd and subsequent events certainly sharpened the focus on race, for me and others in the world of architecture. The book Race and Modern Architecture was a best seller; I look forward to getting deeper into it. I reoriented my Architectural History survey class to better address white supremacy. I began with the issue of confederate monuments, and I incorporated new material on, for example, Seneca Village, Mecca Flats, and Henry Wilcots. More improvements to come.

The Year in Architecture
Best new project? I’d say: The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia, by Höweler + Yoon Architecture (H+Y) and Mabel O. Wilson. More here. As a bit of instant analysis, it seems to me that Maya Lin’s legacy on monument and landscape design is extraordinary.
What else happened in architecture this year? (Not much?) I don’t think Trump’s executive order is worth fretting about or theorizing. As Aaron Sorkin wrote: They’re trying to get us to swing at a pitch in the dirt.

Rest in Peace
It was shocking and saddening when Michael Sorkin passed away in March. He was both important to the world of architecture and to me personally. Among his many, many important contributions, he described contemporary urbanism, almost thirty years ago, as “Variations on a Theme Park.” I think its worth reflecting on whether that’s still true (yes) and what it means.

Thanks for Visiting
solarhousehistory.com had 19,900 pageviews in 2020. That's about 55 per day.
The most popular blog topics were:
Le Corbusier and the Sun (2,000 pageviews)
Zeilenbau orientation and Heliotropic housing (1,060)
Edison’s Famous Quote (1,020)
Surface Reading (800)
Tools: The Shading Protractor (710)
Nixon’s Energy Policy (700)
Art Nouveau and Modernisme (600)

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Best of 2019
Best of 2018
Best of 2017
Best of 2016
Best of 2015
The Solar House: 2013 Year in Review

AIA Gold Medal: Edward Mazria

A short note to say congratulations to Edward Mazria, winner of the 2021 AIA Gold Medal, announced this week. He’s an important figure in the history of solar architecture, principally for his authorship of The Passive Solar Energy Book (Rodale, 1979). In fact he’s probably the most “green” architect to win the AIA Gold Medal, so maybe this award signals a positive turn in that direction.

As I mentioned in my book The Solar House, there was great demand for information about passive solar heating in the late 1970s, and sales of Mazria’s book totaled about 500,000. This remains a rather astonishing number. Although our knowledge and tools have evolved, the book remains a fundamental resource and a historical record of that important period.

More information, and some images of Mazria’s early passive solar architecture, at Architecture Magazine.