ARCHITECTURE.....It's All In Your Mind!

What is true is not fear of the required job but the confidence seen in the response.

The only thing I want running the country is plenty of energy. -DN

"Eventually the mist lifts and what is left is the work." -DN

"History is the frame around the mirror in which we see ourselves."-Duncan Nicholson

The field of Architecture embodies so much ugliness that it must be on purpose. Is the word beauty ever uttered in schools of architecture anymore? Or are the design schools more interested in Hegel and Foucoult? The french philosophies of Post Modermism and Deconstructivism were nothing more to Architectural theory than another thing to rip off and splice into the lecture sermon. And how many times has a second year Grad student with the goatee, tat, shaved head and the three hundred dollar sunglasses said: "Yeah, but what is Beauty, man?"

-A thought for the day- Architectural excellence comes from being continually willing to improve upon your shortcomings. -DN

-This is a sculpture I designed and then had welded up and mounted to my office front door. It's a bunch of carpenters "speed-squares," One fine day I saw them hanging up for sale at HomeDepot and I had an IDEA. I laid them out on the floor, "borrowed a tape measure from near by, (also for sale) and confirmed that I could fit them vertically within the door frame. Then off to the check out stand, sans tape measure!

A flower in a field at Santa Monica Airport, once upon a time, called Clover field. So beautiful. Will man ever understand natures complexity in order to create such simple beauty?

Architecture: foundation, cantilevering shaft and a sunlit yellow canopy.

I Stopped by the Millard House (FLW 1932, Pasadena) on the way back from the Structural Engineer's office today so that one of my Project Architects could see it. It is for sale and no one was home. We took our time taking it in and taking some photographs. God......What magnificence!

An Architect's job can be a lonely one and always best done sober.

Since Bohemianism has become institutionalized, paradoxically I am radical by being behaviorily traditional. I am a Neodistablishmentarian.

MAGNASPLENDENT!

L'Etate , c'est moi.

Fate Follows Fantasy.

The new BAR. Two opposing offset wedges with the left (unexposed cantilever) for bar stool seating and the right end for belly up, foot on the concrete rail, standing and drinking. Form Follows Function. Can't wait to see the whole.....Might be beautiful.

DESIGN FORGE not DESIGN FORGERY.

I ignite the flame of the forge in the mind and gather the necessary ingredients for casting a brand new idea. Dimensions, materials, strength of materials, color, structure, everything. All the while concentrating, searching, visualizing, imagining, negating then back to concentrating and on and on it goes. Only until a NEW one is conceived, is the hand allowed to draw or fingers to enter a command.

And any lies, the forgeries of others are not included. No copycatting. Only the unknown is exciting. At least half a dozen designs for bar stools have been imagined and committed to paper but none are worthy. Close but not the real deal. But I am self assured and get strength from knowing that my mind will forge a new idea with more concentration, more hard work. This all may sound big, as my wife says but You can't do the talk without doing the walk.

All GLADITORIAL events have been cancelled today due to snow.

And it must be snowing inside the Pantheon!

Another rainy day in Santa Monica which there aren't many of......but being in Architecture always makes me feel sunny!

Bernie and me. Bernie retired last Thursday, January 7th 2010. I worked with him for twenty years and it choked me up when he gave me the news.

I learned a lot working with him. I learned a lot about carpentry and making things and thinking about what I was designing that would eventually be built, often by him. You have to throw away a lot of junk before you get to goods. And after you get to the reality there is more work to make it a little more beautiful and then a hell of lot more work to get it built and built right.

If I may paraphrase my hero, Louis H. Sullivan....I have to say that in design: "Fact follows fiction." Bernie helped me to see reality more clearly. He helped me to lose the bullshit. He helped me get to the truth more expeditiously. I will miss him a lot.