i think we take architecture for granted. I think it's easy to. we are born and we grow up around the built environment, and it is so.integral to our lives that we eventually just accept it as a constant with that acceptance there comes an easy incuriosity so I think this is all a process of undoing that, in a way but also i understand where a lot of our skepticism comes from i get it at community college we had those feelings too that feeling that you have no time for anything else but school that feeling that you're barely getting everything done, if at all, in time i suppose thats just universal in most american schools of architecture a frustration or just doubt it seems what we do is vague like we'd be sorely mistaken if we based off of what we do in our studios to imagine what an architect actually does because the field is just so big and expansive and, importantly to that point, multidisciplinary stuck between worlds and professions, overlapping everything hell this gets into the point that dr. gin is trying to make with that one assignment thinking about the ways pop culture skews our impression of what architecture is about ... we think of the impressive works... both classical and contemporary (starchitecture)

even though it was community college and we didn't have as many resources, we did have guest jurors. one of them emphasized how you should genuinely just try anything and everything you want to try in architecture school because in his words, once money gets involved real design gets more controlled I've thought about that a lot it's almost like an opportunity for indulgence we get here thousands of students given the chance to indulge in design not yet founded upon the very real constraints of budget not yet founded upon having to deal with clients on one hand we can do whatever we want which is good for this ambiguous journey of discovering how you design, what you're interested in but also i say this as someone whose studio 3 and 4 projects at a different school got super conceptual and heady and abstract and thinky i worry, what if you indulge too much? what if you lose grip of the constraints that you will eventually have to grapple? i mean, we all would love to but we are not all goijg to be hyperwealthy architects. the rich get to build, it'd seem, the most grandiose buildings. the biggest ones. the greediest ones. the most resource-intensive ones! and we all try, how american and individualistic of us, but not everyone is bound to succeed in that way the universe may steer people elsewhere so, again, what if you indulge too hard? i guess to be more specific and less alarmist I find it scary to indulge too much in something too conceptual, too experimental and not technically founded enough a case of perhaps breaking the rules too early when you're already struggling to grapple the basics if graphic design is founded upon the assumedly two-dimensional principles and elements of design, then it's no wonder that architecture is so difficult to grasp, as it is the three-dimensional extrusion of such principles and elements

architecture has challenge which I understand is why we have all these design challenges we may deal with i dont know what limitations you guys had to design around in first year (cause I wasn't here) but yk right now having to fabricate our tower with limited material is certainly one example but I always think of gravity the concept of gravity at the broadest surface level scale is simple it just holds us down but that means so much when it comes to architecture there's reason behind why we tend to say "arts and architecture" hell we are in the College of Arts and Architecture the simple fact of buildings being bound by gravity removes or at the very least reduces a lot of artistic possibilities compared to the mediums we recognize as being art paintings have to be hung on a frame and painted on a canvas, sure, but within that canvas you can do whatever same for a graphic design on a t shirt or a logo or a flyer there's less constraints of reality in those fields but in architecture it is much more obvious

and thus buildings generally hsve to be static yknow, like we saw in materials all forces must balance out, they must equal to zero because what do we think of when we think of a building moving? we think earthquakes, we think destruction, we think millions of dollars of damage, we think structural failure, ultimately we can think of death death by building ... huh one superficial hypothesis for a disinterest in architecture based on this is simply that there are many other cool things (mediums) in this world that can freely move and architecture is not really one of them kinetic architecture, as far as my young understanding is aware, has only come in the few recent decades to make buildings come alive and it's still pretty rare ... when was the last time you saw a kinetic building with a dynamic facade or something? not online, i mean in real life. to my next point:

the internet helps us view all these images of all these great works we may never see. sure, study abroad will let you see the Parthenon etc. if you pursue that, but there's limits that mismatch with our post-technological globalization. it's interesting: how educated of global architecture was the pre-internet, working architect? i mean, of course they definitely went to Rome too or something like that but there's a change there with the internet's democratization of information. anyhow my point is simply that there are endless buildings, and this isn't about how you'll never get to see them all, but rather about how being able to see them through print&digital may skew how we think about architecture, how we think about this field. again, I think the most untrained eye is attracted to the big buildings. on the way back from campus one of the routes we take passes by the charlotte national bank building, driving right by it I always look out the window and upwards towards those huge columns. scale is everything in these cases. or more examples: the UNC Charlotte DuBois Center building near that bank building. or even more prominently, all the skyscrapers populating downtown! those examples of architecture make themselves literally prominent, they aggrandize themselves with their grandiose designs, with the money that was able to finance such designs, with the labor that made such designs tangible. but somewhere — actually if you look anywhere else — you find the strip mall, you find the smaller downtown buildings, you find endless old houses draped in masonry, you find etc etc. all of that is also architecture, yes? it's just our eyes gravitate towards the "better stuff". I think another form of this is an interest in... forms. interesting unconventional forms, the kind of shapes you have no idea how theyd be built in real life. so of course, when we do see real examples of built unconventional buildings, we can be attracted to them. i

definitely feel this way. again, my past projects have gotten pretty conceptual and abstract and as part of that I was specifically really getting into the works of eisenman and libeskind. I used to have a book on Deconstruction. and you just observe these works that are just as real as the local strip mall yet much more interestingly built, to the point maybe someone else you show it to may not like how complicated, messy, etc. it is. but again, not all buildings are these unicorns. those who can travel to them do so for a reason: they're pretty uncommon. not every state, city, etc. is blessed to have some mind-bending project in it. so while yes it is nice to escape and observe the great marvels, whether classical monuments or contemporary experiments, i worry that this is another case of indulgence that may not reflect what you'll do in the field. yes, I'd love to design something nearly as interesting as House III, or The Crystal, etc etc but also I accept if my future career as a designer and eventual architect does not cross those paths like confronting your own mortality I'm just confronting my own limits life is so unpredictable especially studying this profession where it feels like you only know 10% of 10% of the knowledge it demands like what would happen if any bachelors degree class of architecture students had a pop quiz on the ARE ? that'd just be cooked for us

i do think that this is a thing that happens that the field is just so hard to slither into or maybe so hard to teach i mean think about it how do you teach the field where you predesign something, then develop it with a team of engineers, then you have back and forths with your client/s, then all the financial questions come into play affecting your design like wouldn't you agree? we see all these examples in history of decoration inside a building all these smaller things that aren't the building itself but rather subcomponents of it maybe that just comes back around to the point of "a building is actually a million things in one, hence why they're so hard to analyze and there's a million ways you could go about it" but then what if our education was oriented more around basics? basics in a different sense we wouldn't sacrifice design basics but we would integrate the basic things that actually happen at firms yknow someone would have to roleplay as a client someone would have to play the part of an engineer we'd have to simulate the construction process and the time it takes and itss challenges we'd have to simulate budget and how it can go over or under simulating how the land you build on isn't cheap, having to borrow from a hard money lender other questions and aspects of a distorted impression of what architecture is churches, too, are architecture. I think churches are an instance of somewhat big forms that are usually impressive and easy to access. even more easy to access than skyscrapers; you don't even have to go to downtown to find a church because you probably live close to one, and so you live close to a building that has all these interesting qualities, a building with usually pretty impressive scale (but of course we know and have seen midsize or small churches, more humble designs). but i think my point is still: we shouldn't expect to build churches in the future.

but then what if our education was oriented more around basics? basics in a different sense we wouldn't sacrifice design basics but we would integrate the basic things that actually happen at firms yknow someone would have to roleplay as a client someone would have to play the part of an engineer we'd have to simulate the construction process and the time it takes and itss challenges we'd have to simulate budget and how it can go over or under simulating how the land you build on isn't cheap, having to borrow from a hard money lender

churches, too, are architecture. I think churches are an instance of somewhat big forms that are usually impressive and easy to access. even more easy to access than skyscrapers; you don't even have to go to downtown to find a church because you probably live close to one, and so you live close to a building that has all these interesting qualities, a building with usually pretty impressive scale (but of course we know and have seen midsize or small churches, more humble designs). but i think my point is still: we shouldn't expect to build churches in the future. [8:44 PM] that's not even acknowledging the gap between how presumably secular a lot of future architects will be, coming from generation z. it's just that churches are old in general. religion continues, sure, but when was the last time you saw a new church get built near you? that's practically part of their identity, too: we think of churches as being old