Reflections on 2022
A year of growth
It’s time once more to put a sort of stamp on a revolution around the sun in the search for a larger understanding of what it might amount to, and where to go next.
It was a somewhat somber year for me, and a year of contemplation. Perhaps this is best represented in the music of Hania Rani, whose music carries great skill and depth. A Polish native, she was trained classically on the piano and has recently expanded (with great effect) into more digital and synth music making.
2022 began my first full year of teaching 3rd year undergraduate studio at ASU’s The Design School in Tempe, AZ. In the spring, a library project, and the fall — multifamily housing. I learn so much from the act of teaching it’s difficult to summate in brief, but I have the wonderful opportunity to find out what (and in what ways) I know a subject or method. There’s nothing quite like the back and forth between students projects and seeing their creative process flourish, and the conversation generated.
For myself, rest became paramount this year in creating not just a healthy lifestyle, but in connecting to my creative process. Time spent listening to music with the cats was regenerative, and incredibly important to mental well being. I’ve been thinking about the importance of rest as related to the field of architecture, even as a program (see the nap ministry… ‘rest is resistance’).
Off hours gave me the chance to form a collage practice using both found and created works including drawing, sculpture, and photography.
A new tattoo themed around measurement took me quite a while to finalize the design of, but eventually it settled into an abstract spline weaving together the metric and imperial systems of measurement. I credit my older brother with the idea to make it utilitarian, and kudos to my tattoo artist Honest Bob — a man of great skill.
Sound healing with professor Wil Heywood was an experience akin to a mental reset. I learned about the personality and note of each handmade sound bowl, and its abilities to induce and encourage healing in a variety of ways.
The Spring ’22 semester re-investigated the branch library as a program. The students refined their understanding of architectural practice and understanding of crucial public spaces. Their thinking proved far ranging and deeply considered.
I also purchased an electric typewriter circa the late 70’s from Phoenix Typewriter, a shop in north Phoenix run by an expert in all things that go clickitty clackitty. As a result I tried my hand at poetry with mixed results, but it is proving to be a useful tool for its permanence, feedback, and rhythm.
Martin Huberman of NORMAL Arquitectos, an old friend from when I lived in Buenos Aires in 2009, visited Arizona to give a lecture at ASU. His process and work exist at the intersection of art, installation, architecture, and design. The next day we visited the Desert Botanical Gardens and happened upon a set of BFK chairs near the butterfly exhibit. Given the history of the misnamed ‘butterfly chair’ it seemed only appropriate to bring a chair into the butterfly space and take a few photos, which the staff graciously allowed once we explained Martin’s recently designed Coccoon exhibit for Coachella. Learn more about it here.
Professor Ron Rael of UC Berkeley visited AZ this year for the AIA state conference as a key speaker. His enigmatic design and research operation “Emerging Objects” works at the intersection of design, sustainable technologies, and material research. His installation at the ASU Art Museum focused on the realities faced at the border, with a 10,000lb sculpture made of leftover border steel.
My favorite haunt, FilmBar unfortunately closed its doors this year and will be missed terribly. I made many friends there on philosophical evenings of wide ranging discussion, film, art, and music.
In the summer I had the opportunity to visit California again for a couple weeks, and traveled to Berkeley to meet a friend for dinner. The trip was entirely pleasurable and very much another walk down memory lane. Changes in the east bay are considerable from my memory, but the character of place is still very much intact in contrast to more ‘culturally sterile’ cities.
A walk through Muir Woods proved cathartic and grounding, an incredibly magical place. I also had the opportunity to see some friends in Oakland.
Returning to Arizona, my friend Danny Upshaw (Unheard Harmony) put on a gallery opening of his photographic work in downtown Phoenix at a new incubator space called CahokiaPHX.
My purchase of an AxiDraw pen plotter proved to be a great learning experience as well as ‘creative distraction’. I’ve used it as a means of investigating parametric art and drawing using different methods integrating rhino and grasshopper with mapped geometries and form finding.
ASU’s Air Apparent space by James Turrell hosted once more the annual Student Mixer event, which made me quite nostalgic for my years in school. Later in the fall, two friends from Berkeley and I began meeting to discuss sketching and creativity with some regularity.
The end of the Fall 2022 semester at ASU was greatly enhanced by the feedback of a host of young colleagues and reviewers from Orcutt Winslow where I work, local design build office 180 Degrees, and Rick Joy Architects.
Altogether 2022 was steady hard work mixed with calm contemplation as I learn the challenges of teaching and practicing as a designer in my field. The overlapping realities of the need for publicly programmed space, while teaching a studio about libraries, and the challenges faced by my and younger generations around the lack of affordable housing while teaching a housing studio, created an acute understanding of the need for an even greater awareness of Architecture and the Arts. The effect of the built environment cannot be understated, but also exists as a set of cultural norms, perhaps a strength that travel gives us to see new ways of living and connecting not afforded by our own culture.
