The Space in the Box Years ago, there was a study to see which kinds of toys held kids' attention the longest. It was not a complex experiment. They gave kids a bunch of different toys and timed how long they played with each of them. They were hoping to learn whether children preferred planes to cars or stuffed bunnies to stuffed bears. But the only correlation they found was that the more moving parts and noises and automation a toy had, the quicker it got boring. This was vindication for grandparents everywhere who enjoyed bragging about childhoods spent playing with corn cobs. But it was lousy news for toy companies, who were busy at the time stuffing circuit boards into everything. To designers and artists, there's no surprise or mystery to kids preferring the cardboard box to the dancing robot dog that came in it. The robot dog doesn't need you. It operates on its own, relegating you to observer instead of participant. And in seconds, you've seen everything it does, your questions have all been answered, and the whole experience is over. That empty box, though, can't do a thing without you. It requires and demands engagement. It does this by sitting very still and whispering questions. What do you see? What can you do? What can you make out of this? What does this remind you of? And the answers can only come from you. If the box is to move, you have to move it. If the flaps are to raise and become wings, you have to think that up and you have to act it out. The box requires your imagination. The robot dog has seven tricks and it'll do them, in order, whether you're there or not. But the tricks of the box are yours. They're new and unpredictable and endless and, most importantly, unknown. Because that condition of anticipation, of not knowing what's next -- in a toy or a book or a movie or a building - is the thing we show up for, the thing that creates engagement and gives us a sense of wonder. Because 'to wonder' is simply to not know. Questions are interesting. Answers are boring. Answers end wonder. To hold someone's attention requires withholding information. When you're creating something, it's very difficult to be patient and to keep your secrets when you're so excited to reveal them. But to create wonder, you have to withhold the answers and linger on the questions. You have to place your audience or your reader or your visitor in the excitement of the unknown. Imagine how dull The Godfather would be if Michael decided in Act I that, hell yeah, he was going to take over the family business. Or if you knew, at the beginning of Citizen Kane, who Rosebud was. And wouldn't the Pantheon lose a lot of its drama if you weren't forced past the dull exterior of the drum and through the dark portico before stepping into that shaft of light streaming through the impossibly high oculus? The excitement isn't in the knowing, it's in the breathless sense of discovery, a feeling that isn't created by what's there, but by what's missing. For a work to engage you, there has to be room in it for you participate, to speculate, to imagine and to wonder. You need to be able to step into the hole in the plot, the unexplained occurrence, the unlit entryway, the thing left unsaid, the space in the box.
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A few days ago, I was a guest on The Peeky Podcast, hosted by the lovely and fascinating Ann Mahoney. Like me, she has multiple careers, including actor, writer, producer, and kids' clothing designer. Ann could extract an interesting conversation from a turtle, so we quickly fell into a great discussion about how architecture and screenwriting are the exact same job, how constraints feed creativity, and how a curious and rigorous creative process allows you to make almost anything. It was a genuine joy to do and I'm still thinking about some of what we hit upon. You can check it out, plus her other episodes at:
tinyurl.com/peekypodcast Or listen below, assuming I've uploaded this correctly. I'd give it a fifty/fifty chance. Who's in Charge Here?
Every idea, no matter how huge and amazing it may seem, is just another fleeting thought until you take the tools to it. Tools realize possibilities and impose limits. Tools make things real. And this means tools have a lot to say -- maybe more than we realize -- about what we ultimately make out of our ideas. Above are two recent design projects. One is an addition (done for the wonderful Feldmeier Galyean) to a traditional Bayou St. John house. The other is new house I designed for a friend around the same time. The projects are in different neighborhoods with different clients, of course, but they are both still houses, both in New Orleans, both in the same phase of design, and both on restrictive sites. They use the same materials, are in the same climate, in the same price range, and they were developed by some of the same hands. And yet they turned out to be very, very different. Why? Here's one possibility: the more traditional design was created and drawn in the traditional way, with lines. The less traditional one wasn't drawn at all, but designed and built entirely within a 3D model, in a Building Information Management program called Revit. As I work, the different tools show me things from different perspectives, they force me to make design decisions in a different order, and they allow me to see materials and forms, quite literally, in a different light. This has to have a huge impact on the resulting product. I have to wonder what would have happened if I had swapped the tools used to realize these little projects. And to wonder if a sameness sneaks into our work sometimes because we're reluctant to pick up a new tool. A building is more than a shelter from the elements and more than some Architect's sculptural expression. A building, at its best, is an experience. Like a great book, it reveals itself slowly and methodically, with twists and expectations, with comforts and challenges and surprises and little moments of delight. It has structure, theme and detail, all arranged in a way that you intuitively understand, even if you don't realize that you are fluent in its language. A thoughtfully made building -- whether it's church, a park, an office tower, a bus station, or a house -- communicates with you, informing your days and helping write, and tell, your story. Chapter 1 - A Stranger It all begins, as it should, with a gate, the sentry in the fence that separates the community inside from the 8 billion strangers, dividing the world into two parts -- in here and out there. Right up front, there are some numbers that announce the official, legal, one-of-a-kind designation of this little chunk of Earth so one can make sure one is in the right place. If so, a step through the gate changes everything. The sidewalk usually reacts first, breaking apart into colored stones. No longer subscribing to the hard grey municipal right angles, it twists in gentle curves that suggest that you slow the pace a bit. A little garden helps soften the transition. It's nature, but not natural. Yes, there are plants that grow naturally, but they're arranged in an unnatural way. In the wild, plants don't congregate by height or align themselves in rows. This isn't some wilderness, the garden insists, it's a Front Yard, where someone clearly exerts control over everything, even the plants. The garden even whispers some hints about what kind of place, exactly, one is getting into on this side of the fence. A box hedge could suggest a desire for order, where a loose collection of colorful flowers and stalks could reveal a little playfulness. A sand garden might signal that someone has a more spiritual sensibility. Or hopes to. But these are all just greetings, an open invitation. Almost anyone's allowed in the Front Yard. A kid chasing a ball, the meter reader, someone offering a pamphlet. But the invitation is limited. This is not a public park. Even if there is a bench next to that bird feeder, it's understood to be strictly decorative. You've entered someone else's world and you're either going right back out, or you're venturing further in. There's no hanging around. Chapter 2 - The Man at the Door If someone continues through the Front Yard, the path will deposit them at a small set of steps at the edge of the Porch. The Porch is raised, if it's a good one, and not just to avoid a flood. A Porch, like a stage or a temple, elevates the occupants just a little bit above the plane of the ordinary. A guy who steps up here is brought to a new level - floor level. This means that, having risen to your level, he has business to conduct, in person, with you. So, the Porch greets him with shelter and shade, welcoming him with a single warm light and a mat set out to make sure he knows where to stand. But The Porch won't take care of him. It offers no heat or air conditioning, no protection from the wind. So he takes his place on the mat and faces the Front Door. The Front Door is always the heaviest, widest and most decorative door in the whole place. And it's full of mixed messages. Half solid wood (stay out!), but half clear glass (look in here!). There's a friendly little decorative plaque (welcome!), but also a lock, a deadbolt, and a chain (I said stay out!). A scowling surveillance camera is perched above, while, below, a cheery door chime waits to be rung. It's a complicated situation because a complicated thing happens on The Porch - the sorting. Sure, the pizza guy will climb the porch because he does, indeed, have business with you. But it's not personal business. The Porch will let you and the pizza guy carry out your transaction in full view of the whole world and then send him on his way. Having remained outside, he is still, by definition, an outsider. But if he makes it past The Porch and through the skeptical Front Door, he'll be something else entirely. Chapter 3 - Purgatory Entering the Foyer, he becomes a new thing -- specific. No longer just the pizza guy, The Foyer dubs him That Pizza Guy. That Pizza Guy who came inside that time. Unlike all previous pizza guys, you'll remember him. You'd recognize him in the grocery, but you wouldn't talk to him. You don't even know him. And you won't get to know him here. The Foyer isn't a room where you get to know someone, it's a transition, a place between places, strictly for comings and goings. To spur you on, the car keys wait eagerly on the hooks, umbrellas and coats stand at the ready, and the mirror says you look fine, please continue. The whole room is applying pressure, telling you to keep moving. It's too small to hang around in. There isn't even a place to sit. And now That Pizza Guy is standing here and the room seems to be getting even smaller, insisting that you judge this person. Now. Forced so close together, in the nice light reflected by the mirror, you can really see That Pizza Guy's eyes. And there's no fence nor door nor threshold between the two of you. Suddenly he's a person and you are forced to form an opinion of him. Luckily, he's quick and just manages to flash a crooked smile and say one funny thing before his Foyer time expires. And in that awkward instant, as the Foyer demands, you make the call. This time, you gesture him further inside. Chapter 4 - Relationship Adjacent The Living Room insists on decorum. You quickly introduce yourself because you know full well that people in Living Rooms are always at least acquaintances and acquaintances always know each other's names. That Pizza Guy is now Charles. And in order to welcome Charles as an acquaintance, the Living Room begins to acquaint him. It shows him some photos, giving him a brief history of your life to date, letting him know a little something about your siblings and your parents and your love of the outdoors. It might be fibbing just a little to make a good impression. The art and furniture, though, tend to tell the truth about you, or at least how you see yourself. And since becoming acquainted takes time, the Living Room provides lots of comfortable places to sit. Even the table is low to the ground, encouraging you and Charles to have a seat. And so you do. But the Living Room won't let you get too personal. Not yet. Like a cautious parent, it creates a little distance. It re-directs you, focusing your attention away from each other and toward some big interesting thing at the periphery, a TV or a fireplace. Even the furniture pitches in, keeping you at right angles to one another, not quite face to face. The low table, the one that offered you a seat, is comfortable with you sharing a drink (it is, after all, called a Coffee Table), but it will make things awkward for a meal. So, you and Charles do as you're told, sharing a drink and a fire and some conversation, sitting comfortably upright, ninety degrees to one another, at a reasonable distance. And, thanks to the Living Room's array of conversation starters, you have discovered a shared interest in snow skiing and kitsch. But now Charles has to know where he stands. So he stands. This is a test. If he's to remain an acquaintance, he will be directed back to the foyer, which will return his keys and coat and send him on his way. But, if he's to become something more, it'll require heading, with your permission, deeper inside. Chapter 5 - Face to Face Unlike the chaperoning Living Room, the Dining Room insists on intimacy, gathering your attention from the edges and focusing it all inward. There's a central spotlight over a central table in the dead center of the room. The chairs crowd around this focal point and plant you right across from each other, forcing you face to face at last. The windows have moved from the front yard to the side yard, offering a little more privacy. The table, long and high, is up for more than coffee. It suggests a meal, knowing that as food is shared, so is time and laughter. And stories. In the flattering candelabra light, gazes are held, and guards are dropped. Charles would never lean back in the Living Room chairs, but he leans back, fully relaxed, in the Dining Room chairs. The makers of chairs anticipate this and build dining chairs accordingly. Through the long ritual of the meal, the Dining Room has transformed Charles into Charlie, forever changing him from acquaintance to friend. But not a close friend. Not yet. He's not in your gang. Hell, your boss has been in the Dining Room and while it definitely made him friendlier, that's as far as that's ever going to go. No, if Charlie's going to become one of your close friends, he'll have to spend some time where close friends gather. Chapter 6 - Password, Please The Kitchen is a clubhouse. Disdainful of formality, it yanks the table from between you and turns up the lights. The artwork here has left the hands of the artists and landed in the hands of the occupants, leaping from frames to hang at odd angles all over the fridge. Even the food has stopped putting on airs. Unconcerned with fancy plates, it lays about in pots and piles of ingredients, an unapologetic mess. This is where Charlie passes or fails the entrance into your inner circle, whose occupants gather here to judge him. No longer hosts and guests, you both behave in ways you would never consider in the Dining Room. You eat out of jars, stick your fingers into each other’s food, offer bites on outstretched forks and sips from bottles. In here, even your germs are pals. And at some point, Chibbles, which is what you call him now based on some new inside joke, hops up and sits right on the counter. It's like he's planting a flag. Who but one of your very closest friends would put his butt right on the counter where you prepare your food?! Yes, the initiation is complete and old Chibbie is in! He now has a lifetime invitation to all previously visited rooms. In fact, he can now bypass those rooms entirely and enter via the secret clubhouse door around back. He'll step right in and make himself at home. But! It isn't his home. There are deeper layers of the house, places he still isn't privy to. Chapter 7 - Not so Fast, Buddy There are often doors between the Porch, the Foyer, the Dining Room, and the Kitchen. But there’s an entire corridor separating that world from the very heart of the house, a DMZ between the public and private realms. Nothing even happens in the Hallway. It's just a buffer, a long narrow gap of windowless, unfurnished space, often decorated with pictures of people who are no longer alive. In the Hallway, we're all just passing through. That's why it's shaped like a road or a tunnel. It's not there to link your public and private worlds, it's there to separate them. The longer, the better. Even Chibbie doesn't belong in the hallway unaccompanied. It's so intentionally awkward, the Hallway actually requires permission or, at least acknowledgement, upon entry. “I’m just going to get my coat!” Mr Chibs might shout. Or, “I’ll be right back.” Or, if he's looking for someone, “Is Eileen back there?” No other room requires an excuse to enter. But the Hallway is the conduit into one of the most intimate places in the world. And The Chibblette isn't there yet. In fairness, almost no one is. Chapter 8 - A World for Two In adulthood, many of your closest friends have never even seen your Bedroom. And you've never seen theirs. Tucked deep into the house, you don't just happen by the Bedroom on the way to some other room. It's hidden behind the last door, down at the dead end of the Hallway, a private destination with a maximum occupancy of two. There's closet space for two and a bed that's large enough for two. Even the windows have been carefully placed, and their sill heights adjusted, to allow room for exactly two dressers. If The Chibbster ever makes it in here, you'll call him something even worse, a secret name, something silly and embarrassing. "Sweetheart", maybe. Or even Charles. Because you can say anything in here. You can even scream. For all of its comforts, this room is a fortress. It isolates and protects you your love when you are most vulnerable – naked, asleep, crying, making love. There's a lock on the door. Thick curtains block out light and the fluffy bedclothes and extra pillows muffle sound. Your secrets are told here. Your fights happen here. Your marriage is broken here and repaired here. In this room, your indiscretions remain discreet. It’s so private that if your very best friend is in your bedroom, it’s likely they are helping you dress for something special or that someone has died. There is only one place more intimate. Chapter 9 - Ablution In the Bath, you're hidden from everyone, even your beloved Charles. Here, you are as far as you can be from the public world, protected by a labyrinth of rooms and walls and doors, alone with your biology. The window is high and small. It lets in light, but not view. The surfaces are hard and easy to clean because the Bath knows things are gonna get messy. Complex, hidden systems move water and air to whisk the unpleasantness away. The Bath locks the door, trains bright lights on you, and offers you mirrors so you can examine yourself with brutal, clinical scrutiny. Tucked behind one of the mirrors is a shallow cabinet where you can hide the medicines nobody knows you take. Not even your ego accompanies you here as you drop your illusions and become your unadorned self - noisy and hairy and plain. And only here, after being reduced to your most elemental form, can you begin the transition back into the world, exiting the warm water, preparing your hair and skin and teeth to go back through the layers, changing again from individual, to partner, to family, to friend, to acquaintance, to neighbor. Then, beyond the gate, to stranger. So Many Buildings, So Little Design Architects only design about 65% of commercial buildings and 2% of houses in the U.S. The 65% includes all the building types -- hospitals, museums, universities -- that require Architects, both by law and by their complexity. The 2% of houses just contain all the rich people. All the rest of the world's buildings are designed by builders, owners, or engineers. Nothing against them, but you shouldn't ask an engineer or a carpenter to design a building any more than you should hire an Architect to size steel beams or hang a door. Why Don't Architects Design More of Our Buildings? The easy answer is that Architects are too snotty. And there's a lot of truth to that. My own website once featured a reel of my work lovingly set to cello music. What's snottier than Bach for cello? But the real answer is money. I Can't Afford To Take That Job Design services are structured for large, complex buildings. Our standard AIA agreement is for the production of dozens of sheets of drawings, hundreds of pages of specifications, and a contract that will choke a lawyer. Consequently, it takes a lot of time to produce all this stuff, which means a lot of money invested. Throw liability insurance and consulting fees on top and the margins in Architecture, even on a good project, are lousy. I will typically spend two years designing and overseeing the construction of a building, employing ten years of training, fifteen of experience, and I will assume unlimited legal liability for the thing for rest of my life. Then realtor the will step in, spend a few weeks selling it and walk away with roughly the same amount of money I did. So smaller jobs with few economies of scale simply don't pay enough for Architects to want to take on. And yet, the need is everywhere. Good Design is Not Commonplace The result of all of this is that expensive and/or specialized buildings get quality design and commonplace buildings don't. And, as the word makes plain, commonplace buildings are the most common places. So, we have the least design where we spend the most time. Places like our homes and offices and restaurants and stores are often poorly designed and punish us in ways large and small. I saw this in action last week. A House with No Rooms I happened to be in the truck with a contractor buddy when he stopped at a small residential renovation he was doing. This house, from a purely functional standpoint, was a hot mess. Doors everywhere, rooms that are impossible to furnish. Everything was a hallway. The whole thing gave me the yips. But at issue this day was the kitchen, or the place in the house they called "the kitchen". It contained no wall cabinets and had weirdly shallow countertops, leaving the front halves of the appliances out in the floor area and providing no place to put anything down. There was an island, but it was too close to the stove, leaving nowhere to stand. Above the island was the area’s lone upper cabinet, a ceiling-mounted unit open on both sides. It was empty, they said, because when you put things in one side, you invariably shoved something out the other side. This whole situation caused no small amount of daily frustration and, I gathered, some degree of disagreement. I had only been there ten minutes and my eye was starting to twitch. As they tried to sort it out, I listened and watched and squirmed until I just couldn’t take it. "You don't know where to put things in your kitchen," I blurted out, "because you don’t have a kitchen." It was true. And they didn’t have a kitchen simply because they didn’t have a wall. I begged them to let me do some sketches. I went back to my office and drew up the least special, least design-y, least expensive kitchen ever committed to paper. The ‘drawing set’ consisted of two little cartoony hand sketches on trace paper. I spent a total of four hours on it, including the time spent measuring the room with my shoes because we didn’t have a tape measure. This is not AIA approved behavior. The drawings were actually a little embarrassing to show, being cartoons. But they worked. One week later, for the price of four linear feet of interior wall and some very nice used cabinets, they have a kitchen. They’re thrilled.
The Road Less Snotty Architects are taught that success is measured in exquisite-ness. Exquisite details, exquisite materials, exquisite taste. But that, as sure as anything, takes a huge percentage of the world's buildings out of our hands. Many days I want to shove my license and my 3D modeling software and my consultants aside and abandon all interest in fancy commercial buildings and modernist residential gems. I love that stuff, but I want also to get my hands on all the developer houses and warehouses and strip-malls and office buildings that people suffer in every day, not knowing exactly why things don’t work, why rooms can’t be furnished, why the place seems so small, why there's no light, why spaces aren't enjoyable, why people are uncomfortable, and why they struggle to get things done. There are often simple fixes that can make a place drastically more comfortable, more efficient, more valuable, and often, just more wonderful. That ought to be more commonplace. |
Chris PochéChris Poché is an Architect and Filmmaker based in New Orleans. |