No Mundane Design Allowed!

I just posted on Facebook that I am aware that I will never design a building in my career that will be dependent upon fossil fuels as its main source of energy. It is a fact that any building I draw will have a design life-time that will outlive fossil fuel on this planet. I am amazed by this consideration, and I am wondering how all the old buildings, whose design life-time has not been fully utilized, will be adapted. Surely we cannot continue to discard the resources that have gone into all those existing buildings designed before this awareness arrived (???).

Having read recently that the Sears Tower in Chicago is being retrofitted to meet "new building" energy standards, I am aware that there is a lot of work to be done. Imagine how one might redesign such a monolithic structure so that natural ventilation (convection) and day-lighting are even possible (???). Or consider that it might need to be covered on its South-most facades with active solar photovoltaic panels to acquire enough solar electric to power the building. This is truly a mammoth undertaking.

I have considered that, in five or ten years, the profession of Architecture will not be as we know it today. I am aware that the considerations which will be foremost in our minds will no longer be so focused upon what the building looks like. Blade Runner, one of my movie favorites, was made in 1982 (Ridley Scott, Director) and set in 2016 (just seven years from now). The architecture looks nothing like what we see being built around us in downtown San Diego. I wonder how much things will change; and how prescient Ridley Scott's notion of this nearby future will turn out to be (???).

I had a midterm jury review for my fire station (see Abstract Concepts and Mundane Buildings, below). My presentation was well received. I was praised for my process, and my graphic presentation. I was happy with the critique; and even expected the comment that this building looks a little like an '80's Schoolhouse (read as mundane). I was, however unclear where to go from there.

I took a day off to ponder (actually I took a day off to recover, as the preparations for the jury took more than I anticipated -my first "all-nighter") and came back to my project with a renewed perspective. I am convinced that the creative process comes "from nothing" and that inspiration and innovation are the result of providing the creative mind room to work, with limited distraction. It was as if a new vista had formed over the day I spent catching up on sleep, laundry, housekeeping, grocery shopping and the like.

I sat down to review the comments made by the jurors and was inspired to revise, completely, my design concept. In the process, I have created a new building that does not suffer in the realm 0f the mundane. If anything, it is architecture in a new light. It is like nothing I have ever seen before, and like nothing I could have preconceived. I am jazzed by the new ideas, the new forms and the reinterpretation of function, if not necessarily in that order.

And I have the challenge of learning how to make this building, and every one I design, from here on out, to be as independent as possible when it comes to resources; particularly energy. I have heard that there is a new Dean, Jennifer Wolch, at UC Berkeley in the College of Environmental Design. Her expertise is in the area of Sustainability. I am excited to think that this is one place where the expectations of the future in architecture are being considered, now. I am looking forward to an opportunity to tap into that environment. And I look forward to bringing that same standard of inquiry to my work at NewSchool of Architecture & Design in the meantime.