Wonderland Magazine Part 1

Issue # 1: Getting started

First I want to make sure that I thank AnArchitecture from Vienna Austria for having shared the original post. I found his post helpful as I delve deeper into my own pursuit of Individual practive, and you can view his comments under people I follow.

This article is most applicable for people who are professionals more than those that are interested in knowing a few things about architecture in general. So I am going to spin the discussion of this post in a constructive direction, and I will do this as often as possible.

As my "mission statement" states, I am trying to help those of us that are choosing not to explore Architecture as a profession and open up your eyes to the potential that Architecture brings to our daily lives; healthier living, simpler life-stylers, more complicated life-styles, etc. The first issue out of this magazine states that "little is learnt about the road to building" and "countless questions remain unanswered."

Many questions I get from my friends and family are "What do you do as an Architect" or "Why was this (place anything building or space related here) done this way?" That is never a simple question to answer, and typically a response that few want to sit down and have an in depth philisophical debate over. To put it plainly, Architects must understand ideas and create tangible solutions that anticipate long-term user decisions.

Ideas can be any number of things. Take for instance (for simplicity sake), you have an idea one day that you want to open up a new Chocolate shop. Where would you locate the shop; suburban, urban, new-urban (I will discuss this topic in another post), public/private transportation? What kind of image will you present to the public and what kinds of amenities will you offer; chocolate bar, candy shelves, size of storage, chocolate made in shop visible to customers? How big will your place need to be in order to effectively serve the people you are trying to attract; number of seats, tables, couches, etc.?

From that tiny example we, you and I, can evaluate a variety of questions and task from a micro to macro scale. The Architect is responsible for asking the right questions and listening to the way you respond to these questions. Some Architects may argue my next point, but... we are Agents working passionately on creating the reality of what you see in your head combined with the experience we have gathered over the years. You can call some of us "visionary" or "entrepeneurs" of a craft that we love and want to share with the world, but most importantly the only limit of what an Architect can provide is the limit that one places on themselves.

I will not ramble on much longer, but I am trying to help us both process the enigma behind what an Architect is. Architects label themselves, as most of us do to create a very efficient and marketable niche that calls people to us, in a variety of manners; Green Architect, Healthcare Architect, Residential Architect, etc. However, these do not help our clients to understand what we can and do provide, nor do these terms apply appropriately to what each individual has learned and experienced until asked. At the end of the day we, architects and people, are each individuals who are passionate about our own individual set of goals, and must learn to be more inquisitive of eachother and who we are. We might start to find a new style of design through communication that we only dreamed were possible.

I will have another blog in a week to discuss the Part 2 of Wonderland Magazine under the title "Finding your profile". Feel free to ask any questions or leave any comments, or post interesting ideas. I want this to be an open forum for Architectural debate and questions about what Architecture is.