I wrote a book...

For years I’ve been writing a simple equation for my clients:

Architect + Action = Result

After seeing so many people’s eye’s light up with the idea this conveyed so simply, I copyrighted it and started working on a book. Now available here.

As well as on:

Apple Books | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Thalia | Vivlio | The site paying authors less so Jeff B. can be shot into space (a.k.a. the big kahuna)

Book in Field.png

The Idea of Communication...

My friend and editor recently passed a Yale Daily News article to me written by her niece, Talia Morison-Allen: Break Down Barriers, Moore says at lecture. She knew I was especially interested in a specific line: 

"Asked how his work has affected how he teaches at Columbia and how he hopes to influence future architects, Moore stressed the importance of communication and breaking down barriers. 
“A big part of [doing] that … is about communicating with the public, finding ways to translate spatial ideas to things that the public can understand and give input,” he said. 

On the same day as receiving this, I opened a newsletter from Architexx - We Ask How Not Y and read a blog by Julia Gamolina: Communication, Independence, and Timing: Elaine Molinar on Her Years with SNØHETTA. Within, I found the passage:

What are some of the lessons you’ve learned?
I’ve learned that good ideas only matter if they are communicated effectively, and the architect’s role in this is not emphasized enough in school today. Often times we are in a situation where we’re submitting a design proposal and we’re not there to explain or frame it. You also don’t know who your audience is, or what their level of understanding of architecture and two-dimensional drawings is, so curating the information you present is very important. 

Anyone who knows me understands I'm fairly obsessed with the idea of connecting people, images and words in architecture. The words of both of these architects serves as manna to my ears: let's break down barriers and find new ways to communicate our ideas effectively.

As a trained writer and architect, I've benefited from the lack of training the profession receives in communication, whether presenting their ideas or writing about them, with the concept of 'audience' equally neglected. In fact in architecture, by virtue of the academic studio, we are most frequently taught to communicate with an audience made up entirely of architects. Articles on the architectural communications focus either on the technical systems of rendering, BIM, virtual reality and 3-D fly-throughs or on proposal writing and client communications. While these are essential and functional aspects of communicating design, the heart of the matter lies in an individual's, or a group's, ability to connect with an audience of one or many. Any audience. Want to make architecture more relevant to the larger world? Let's learn how to talk about the process and the result beyond the realm of our peers and the generally sophisticated clients with the wherewithal to select an architect. Let's understand how to make everyone and anyone care about the process and the result. In Morison-Allen's article, Moore provides testimony on the importance of expanding public awareness on design, and de facto on our ability to speak to any audience:

But while Moore’s multiple careers paint an optimistic picture of what is possible in the public design industry, he was quick to point out issues and faults in the system. To that effect, he [introduced] the audience to Denote Williams, Cody Mayes and Tevin Wilson, three Louisiana men who were hit by a truck and then charged with obstructing a public passage for walking in a street at night without wearing reflective vests. The road had no sidewalk. 

Think of all the individuals involved in this case who had no idea that design could have solved this problem long before the men were struck. Moore's approach, primarily through his family owned nonprofit Urban Patch in Indianapolis is to be one with the community:

In his lecture, he jokingly referred to the organization as “grassroots” and “scrappy,” describing the system of social media, crowdfunding and even house parties with which he and his family both support the organization and involve the neighborhood. 

In my masters program at UNC Charlotte's School of Architecture, I was fortunate to get involved in two opportunities to engage directly with a community, through a design-build studio, and with an academic outside architecture, by documenting a historic structure for a professor in UNCC's History Department. Today, my alma mater offers, along with other programs around the country, expanded opportunities for community focused design. However, in architectural academia, working and communicating directly with non-architects is not required. An architecture student can navigate to a degree without leaving the architecture program and, often, the program's building. Having negotiated this terrain, I know there is very little time in the carefully established and monitored requirements of architectural education for anything not, well, architectural. And Molinar is right: within that realm, communication just isn't emphasized enough. 

In practice, as the pressures of deadlines bear down on studio populations, most industry leaders find it difficult to insert training outside traditional 'essential' skills. If an architect does find time for anything beyond a personal life outside work, it's often to engage back with academia through teaching, lecturing and juries. 

It all reminds me a bit too much of the infinity loop. So, how to insert skills on 'communicating design' into the profession? It's a work in progress. The first step is awareness, which the two articles dropped in my lap this morning indicate is happening.

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Finding Meaning Over Negativity

I find it interesting that issues that are subjective—let's be honest, while we can say we think we know what good design is, we don't really know if it's good for its clients or users without experiencing it or for that matter asking them—still, some persist in passing judgments on their fellow ​practitioners in terms of what constitutes 'good design.'

Today we live in a world where it's far too ​easy to cast negativity about in just about every arena out there, from politics and religion to intellectual pursuits and the definition of what has value and what doesn't have value. The tendency to be judgmental has always always bothered me. Perhaps one could even say that I am judgmental about those who judge. Still, it seems we are trapped in a society, and for architects in a profession, that is closing in on itself, narrowing its boundaries and hyper-defining its limits. It's far easier to be negative than not to, to say what is wrong than to discover what is right, to criticize than to remedy.

What would be the consequences if, instead of letting loose with 'I object to' or 'I dislike,' we asked, 'what does this mean to its users?' or 'what about this works?' What would happen if we challenged ourselves to be more open and more interested in perspectives, work or whatever that is different from our own? I think we'd learn. In fact, I know it. And I can guarantee that this inquiry would not lower our standards of what constitutes good design, but actually would elevate it.

Preposition at the End of a Sentence? Stop asking!

Thank you, as always, Chicago Manual of Style for answering this question from your December 2018 Q+A so succinctly:

Q. What’s your current recommendation on ending a sentence with a preposition? Current example: “[Nurses bound the] wounds of the men they were taking care of.”

A. Our current recommendation has been current since 1906: there is no rule against ending a sentence with a preposition. Please see CMOS 5.180: “The traditional caveat of yesteryear against ending sentences or clauses with prepositions is an unnecessary and pedantic restriction. And it is wrong.”

The power of narrative

"Our storytelling ability, a uniquely human trait, has been with us nearly as long as we’ve been able to speak. Whether it evolved for a particular purpose or was simply an outgrowth of our explosion in cognitive development, story is an inextricable part of our DNA. Across time and across cultures, stories have proved their worth not just as works of art or entertaining asides, but as agents of personal transformation."

For more on this topic from Elizabeth Svoboda, see http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/once-upon-a-time-how-stories-change-hearts-and-brains/

 

 

Made up grammar...

Chi Luu hits home with the article, "Dear Pedants: Your Fave Grammar Rule is Probably Fake" on JStor Daily:

"It seems pretty crazy but the popular grammar rules familiar to most of us may in fact be completely fake and have no basis in linguistic reality. The English language didn’t change to make those rules obsolete, they were simply fictional from the start."

Now I can split infinitives in peace.

http://daily.jstor.org

The Chicago Manual of Style says it all:

“There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice. Charles Allen Lloyd’s words from 1938 fairly sum up the situation as it stands even today:

Next to the groundless notion that it is incorrect to end an English sentence with a preposition, perhaps the most widespread of the many false beliefs about the use of our language is the equally groundless notion that it is incorrect to begin one with “but” or “and.” As in the case of the superstition about the prepositional ending, no textbook supports it, but apparently about half of our teachers of English go out of their way to handicap their pupils by inculcating it. One cannot help wondering whether those who teach such a monstrous doctrine ever read any English themselves.7

Still, but as an adversative conjunction can occasionally be unclear at the beginning of a sentence. Evaluate the contrasting force of the but in question, and see whether the needed word is really and; if and can be substituted, then but is almost certainly the wrong word. Consider this example: He went to school this morning. But he left his lunch box on the kitchen table. Between those sentences is an elliptical idea, since the two actions are in no way contradictory. What is implied is something like this: He went to school, intending to have lunch there, but he left his lunch behind. Because andwould have made sense in the passage as originally stated, but is not the right word—the idea for the contrastive but should be explicit. To sum up, then, but is a perfectly proper way to open a sentence, but only if the idea it introduces truly contrasts with what precedes. For that matter, but is often an effective way of introducing a paragraph that develops an idea contrary to the one preceding it.

7. Charles Allen Lloyd, We Who Speak English: And Our Ignorance of Our Mother Tongue(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1938), 19.

What me? Hierarchy.

Hierarchy is essential to architectural design, but it seems that many in the profession find it difficult to translate the idea of hierarchy into other forms such as writing and communication. Understanding the value and importance of information you are attempting to communicate is only the beginning of the process. Much like an architectural program, the program of communication must be addressed in its parts or components. Then, their arrangement is critical to allowing the audience to grasp and, better yet, embrace information.​ This is the narrative.

Every communication has the potential to become a narrative that transforms the viewer, reader and audience from one state—perhaps the introduction of an idea--to another--the complete understanding and acceptance of that idea.​ Narrative and the appreciation of hierarchy in communicating information will accomplish this. 

Want to tell folks you aren't up on technology? Double space between sentences.

It's like a bad dream that keeps coming back. I see it everywhere, from professionals across the country and the world, that little extra gap between sentences that tells me the writer is unaware. It's haunting and painful to see, to contemplate, particularly because so much of my work is for individuals in a technical field. So everywhere I can, I spread the word. Every six months or so, for years now. But never here. My bad, as they say. 

I don't need to write anything new on this topic. It has plenty of ranters around the web, along with holdouts who best I can tell fear both change and technology. Slate says it best in the article, "Space Invaders." An excerpt: 

When I pointed out that they were doing it wrong—that, in fact, the correct way to end a sentence is with a period followed by a single, proud, beautiful space—[they] balked. "Who says two spaces is wrong?" they wanted to know.

Typographers, that's who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. That convention was not arrived at casually... 

Consider breaking old habits. Try new things. Get up on technology. Cheers.

In Order to...

I was going to rant about the overuse of “in order to…” This phrase is always two words too long. No arguments accepted. Then I came across a passage from Isaac Babel’s "Guy de Maupassant" that soothed my nerves. Sometimes new insight is more powerful that old grudges:

I go over each sentence, time and again. I start by cutting all the words it can do without. You have to keep your eye on the job because words are very sly, the rubbishy ones go into hiding and you have to dig them out… (Quote pulled from Debra Sparks's Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing)

So, let me make things simple: “in order” is rubbish in the phrase "in order to." Done. Architects love it though. And too many other professionals. Rubbish. 

I can’t help but share the next bit of Sparks’s excerpt:

Oh, I forgot—before I take out the rubbish, I break up the text into short sentences. The more full stops the better. I’d like to have that passed as law. No more than one idea or image to one sentence… I take out the participles and adverbs… Only a genius can afford two adjectives to a noun.

Geniuses indeed. Based on those words, I know a lot of geniuses.