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.