A Chaotic Adventure

Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence.

Ostensibly involved in “shaping” the world,

For their thought to be mobilized architects depend on the provocations of the others

—clients, individual, or institutional.

Therefore, incoherence, or more precisely, randomness,

Is the underlying structure of all architect’ careers:

They are confronted with an arbitrary sequence of demands,

With parameters they did not establish,

In countries they hardly know,

About issues they are only dimly aware of,

Expected to deal with problems that have proved intractable to brains vastly superior to their own.

Architecture is by definition a chaotic adventure.

by Rem Koolhaas

Concrete

I tend to think of concrete as being very hard and sharp.

I like the sharp edges and planes that can be made with concrete.

When they come into contact with nature they are like a powerful foil.

The precise order in contrast to nature can make both elements more dynamic.

However, over the years of using this material,

I have come to see different qualities of concrete.

Depending on the space I am trying to construct,

I may see it as just the opposite: softer and less severe.

I began as a craftsman and a builder working with my hands.

I still miss that now.

Working with your hands and muscles is important.

It is very important,

Very important to understand scale and weight and the voice of materials.

I don’t want to design impractical things that a human being cannot build.

Working with your hands teaches you very basic concept of beauty.

For example, I like concrete because it is handmade compared to some other types of modern building methods.

by Tadao Ando

There Are No Real Rules

I am a slow architect;

I take a long time to create,

So the thought that my building ideas are just tossed in the air and land is the furthest thing from the truth.

For me it is a free association,

But it grows out of a sense of responsibility,

Sense of values—human values.

The importance of relating to the community, and all of those things...

And the client’s budget, their pocketbook, the client’s wishes.

But even within that there is a range of creativity possible,

And I think it behooves us to explore that envelope and push at it.

It comes out of intuition,

Or a learned intuition, I guess.

You study a long time ‘til you can do it.

But it is from looking around you,

It is from understanding what is happening in the culture,

What is happening in the world.

It is a really big picture.

Because there are no real rules.

I think that the architecture comes out of a lot of exploration.

When you’re young and you’re starting out,

You need to build things and try things.

You need to learn to build.

And it is hard...

A lot of people don’t bother to learn that.

They go right into theorizing their design before knowing how to build.

Building is its own discipline.

The building industry has its own mechanisms,

And you have to learn it in order to manipulate it

Because you are making a three-dimensional object.

The chain link for me was about denial.

There was so much chain link being absorbed by the culture,

And there was so much denial about it.

I could not believe it.

That is the populism in my work,

As opposed to the art.

What is wrong with chain link?

I hate it, too,

But can we make it beautiful?

I said, “Maybe, if you make it beautiful—if you are going to use it in huge quantities—you can make it beautiful.”

Whatever I did the first go-around could not be quantified,

Could not be talked about.

I could not say, “This is what I was trying to do, and this is what I did.”

I started out to do something,

And then I followed the end of my nose.

You were never sure what was intentional and what was not.

It looked in-process.

You were not sure whether I meant if or not,

There was something magical about the house.

And I knew that the thing a lot of people hated or laughed at was the magic.

by Frank Gehry

Influence

My father said,

“In life, most of us are going to do ordinary things.

The most important thing about doing ordinary things is to do them extraordinarily well

and be able to go to the beach and have nobody know who you are.”

That was very powerful to me: Ego is not central.

by Glenn Murcutt

Being A Female Architect

"If you are tough, they tell you you are too tough. If you are not tough, you are too soft. and if you are not that you are a pushy. Every pejorative description on earth is pasted on you... Architecture is a great profession. It is also immensely demanding. But i do think it should be possible for women to survive in it without it finishing them.

"I never thought of myself as a role model... Because it is shocking how in this modern time, it is still very difficult to be a female working in architecture... In all the times I have taught, some of my best students were women. But outside of their schools, it is very difficult for women... A lot of women are part of a team, and even if the woman is the lead person, they are always seen as the second fiddle, no matter how good they are."

Zaha Hadid