Monday Visual Inspiration: Hidden Places

I took my digital camera along on a walk Saturday morning, and I realized how many opportunities there are in urban neighborhoods for hiding. Places and spaces are not readily seen if one is simply casting an eye about--it takes stopping and looking a little closer at what's around us. I find the notion of tucking spaces away and hiding little oases of privacy such an interesting one in these busy and closely-packed neighborhoods of central Denver. Here are a few of the hidden places and spaces I found on one walk.

This rather majestic/gothic-y house in Capitol Hill is set up on a small hill above the street, but elevating it wasn't enough--the original builders hid it behind a large wall and some rather dense trees.

Another grand turn-of-the-century house not content to hide with elevation alone. This one is ensconced behind a brick wall topped with a chain-link fence and a dense layer of trees and shrubs about 8-10 feet deep.

One house turned its garage/carriage house into another small home and even gave it its own little side yard behind a wrought iron fence with yet another layer of black mesh behind the fence. I took this through the black mesh, which is the shading around the edges of the image. It wasn't until I got back to the house that I realized there was a wire of some sort looping over the fence and into the view of the camera.

Some things hide in plain view. This old-school steakhouse in Cherry Creek North nearly disappears with its dark wood paneling and recessed facade beneath the ultra-modern metal paneling of the adjacent stores and loft-inspired condos above. I just happened to stop to check my cell phone, looked up, and realized it was there.

One of the constant bugbears of urban construction is what to do with the space on the side of your building where it comes up to the property line. Do I build right up to it? Or do I leave some space for occupation? What often happens is what you see here--both occupants leave just enough room to pass between the buildings on their side of the property line. What's interesting though is that the new mixed-use building on the left used that leftover/tucked away space to provide for little balconies for the condos above. The unintentional side effect is that passersby who care to turn their heads and look up will see galvanized roof/floor decking and drain pipes. But no matter--the only people who look up at ceilings are prostitutes and architects.

Sometimes the private space we seek out in urban areas has less to do with actual private space (like a backyard) and is simply more about separating ourselves from the public realm. Beyond these gates is the interior courtyard for about eight or ten brick townhomes, which back onto the access alleys to their respective garages. All this courtyard does is a) give them something nice to look at instead of the street, and b) give them an extra layer of protection from the madding crowd below.

I just love this. A very nice house pushed a bit off the neighborhood street, it uses a semi-circular drive to access the front door and garage. The front door is visible, but by simply layering elevation, materials, foliage, and space, the homeowners claim their space without putting up fences and gates. And it's glorious to look at in the fall.

Another li'l courtyard to about five or six small townhomes which riffs on the theme used above. There are some stucco and stone posts at the entry walkway to this courtyard, but no gate or fence--just something to say, "here's where you enter, but you really need to have some business here before you step over the threshold."

A few houses down, there's a wood fence by a duplex, and this hold is about two feet off the ground. Kneeling down and peeking through it, you can see a garden with a seated Buddha statue in it. Even cooler is that you see him from the side, not the front--you know he's facing in another direction where he's meant to be "seen", but he's also kinda meant to be peeped in on from here. If you bother to kneel down and look through the hole.

Another house had a nice yard with a stucco and iron fence around it, nicely manicured and well-kept...and then this wee statue of St. Francis under a tree almost in the side yard. Elsewhere in the yard, large dog toys were strewn about with children's toys, a happy mixture proclaiming the joy inside the home's walls. And just without the walls but within the property, a little reminder of the protection invoked onto those who dwell here stands quietly, asking those who pass by to take a second look at the yard and maybe to look out for all creatures great and small, two-footed and four-footed.

What inspires you?

I hinted at this in my last post, but I'm more fully realizing that living in the built world leaves me inspired at every turn. An artfully-arranged Lanvin dress, a sparkly logo on a business card on Etsy, a strange and haunting photo from an abandoned psychiatric facility...it all moves me and makes me think, makes me write a story in my head or riff on their idea or whatever.

This weekend, I'll be taking some digital snapshots of things I find interesting or inspiring and post them next week. In the meantime, what inspires you to create or think differently?

Architects and alcoholics: only one is acceptable to confess being at a party

Many of Guy's (my husband, for WAD newbies) and my friends are architects. Guy and I are both architects. Guy's brother in law is an architect. His brother is a project manager for a flooring installation company (a subcontractor, in our field). My dad was an irrigation specialist.subcontractor, and my mom was a form carpenter. We're surrounded by our profession when it comes to our social circles. It gets really easy to talk shop 24/7 when everyone around you is familiar with the lingo, the problems, and the situations that come up when you work in architecture and construction.

I've often said that architects are like alcoholics--you're still one even if you're not a practicing one. Being an architect is like seeing The Matrix: you have to see it for yourself, no one can explain it to you; and once you've seen it, you can never go back to just saying 'oh, that's pretty.' There is no such thing as a "pretty" or even an "ugly" building--knowing how it's built and about when it was built and what it does and how it sits on the site and faces the street (or ignores the public domain) and what that material is and if it's real stone or not and what those things are on the west side (they're vertical sunshades, you see them in a lot of buildings done between 1960-1980) and so on and so forth...that knowledge makes it nigh on impossible to simply toss a blanket statement out about a building.

And we can't stop. Or at least I can't, anyway. Our friends, who suffer from the same illness, laugh when we describe how we pick over buildings when we visit Las Vegas and how we punchlisted the Wynn on our first anniversary trip. Just as bulimics and overeaters cannot avoid food, the source of their addiction, we architects cannot avoid the built world. Parking lots and fences, retaining walls and walkways, mullion spacing on storefront windows and drip edges on metal flashing, bricks and CMUs and gutters and downspouts and glass and doors and everything--it whacks us in the face wherever we go. As we walk into any building, we think gawd they're gonna get water in that, they must spend a fortune sealing and cleaning this terrazzo, bet they didn't realize that this stainless steel gets fingerprints like a mofo, this atrium must be third-ring-of-hell hot in the summer.

And it bleeds into any design, really. Architects are notorious for thinking that because they design buildings, they can design anydamnthing. Frank Gehry designs jewelry for Tiffany (and it kills me to admit how lovely it is), Michael Graves designs products for Target and for the disabled (a byproduct of his recent confinement to a wheelchair, though it would seem difficult to confine Graves to anything), Frank Lloyd Wright designed furniture and objects (teapots, dishes, etc.), and Zaha Hadid designed a stage set for one of the Pet Shop Boys' tours. Hell, Oscar Niemeyer and Louis Kahn designed entire campuses and town centers. Every year here in Denver, Pret A Porter gives teams of architects and interior designers an actual product or material to turn into a wearable piece of fashion. As if designing buildings gives us the right to design clothing too.

I once asked Guy what he would be if he weren't an architect. His response: baseball pitcher or fashion designer. "Really?" I asked. "Yeah, if I wasn't color blind," he replied. When I get an article of clothing from my mom, he inspects the seams and the matching of patterns. "This seam looks a little rough," he once said. "Do we need to get her a new sewing machine?" (I know, he cares! It's so cute.)

For me, going for a walk is like sitting down with a full bottle of riesling. It's a guilty pleasure to look at buildings, at details, at spaces, at everything. I think about the parts and the whole on buildings. I inspect home improvement projects in progress, I pause and think about strange constructions and spaces and think about what it is or was or why someone built what they did. It gives me a strange sense of inspiration. Of course, to fully illustrate this, I may just have to take some pictures and show you what I mean. Pencils and cameras are to architects what bottles of MD 20/20 are to hardcore alkies--they enable us to indulge in our addiction.

Be careful what you wish for

Me and my big mouth.

I was kvetching about how quiet work had suddenly become. Then I remembered that I really haven't had that many Friday afternoons off this year because my project(s) had actually required 40 hours a week, and I got excited about taking Friday afternoon off and hitting the grocery store, then cleaning the house a little, snuggling with Maddy (who had a rough few days where all she wanted to do was curl up in the bathroom, but she's acting more herself again), and doodling around...

...and about 11am on Friday, just as I was doing a little light filing, here comes Ephraim, one of the project managers in our office. Ephraim looks like a character on a children's show and has the sweet and beguiling personality to match, but evidently back in the day he was a super bad-ass in the Navy or Marines, like a sniper or special forces or something. It's kinda flattering when Ephraim, a short, round version of Beaker from the Muppet Show, talks to you. "Pixie, I hear you're available...?" he inquired.

"I am indeed, for a couple of weeks. What's up?" I responded.

Ephraim went from gently assuming to gleeful and amped. "Aw! Man! We could so use your help for the next four days..." He went on to explain that the rather large-scale multifamily apartment building/multiuse building that his team was working on had CDs due on Tuesday, and they really needed someone to do some roof details. He then said that the partner in charge of the project had approved up to 16 hours of overtime for me to do the work. It took me a second to realize that when he said they needed me for the next four days, he didn't mean Friday-Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday, he meant Saturday-Sunday-Monday-Tuesday.

So I ended up working a full Friday plus ten hours this weekend on the roof details, and I'll be working the first part of this week on the project too. Funny, though, I actually felt bad for only working ten hours of overtime on the project. As Guy and I walked to one of our neighborhood watering holes after I arrived home at 7pm Sunday night, I asked him if that was lame of me. Guy, of course, scoffed. "No. Don't feel guilty. You did your part," he said.

He went on: "They asked you this on Friday. What if you'd had stuff that you had to do this weekend? It's their fault for not getting you on board sooner. And look, ten hours--I can't get the people that work on my project full time to do ten hours on the weekend, much less someone I roped in at the last second. So, no...don't even worry about it."

There's a reason I lurrve my Guy so much.

So anyway, the house is still kinda grody and my nails are left undone, but maybe I'll take Wednesday off or something. Or save it for a full day next Friday. Whatever. As I age, I'm finding that I prefer time off to overtime money.

Are my ears ringing or is it just quiet?

It occurred to me this afternoon that I haven't been really unbusy for a long time, for most of 2009 in fact. This is a good thing, really. For the vast majority of the year, I've been either just busy enough, decently busy, or almost crazy busy. And suddenly, I find myself barely busy enough. And it feels weird.

Last week I wrapped up two deadlines in the same week: TCMC and FCH. On TCMC, we finished the DD drawings, so we're not working on the project at all until the contractor has priced the drawings and Avanta Health has approved of the design, all of which should be completed by early November. The day after the TCMC deadline, Intern Kimmy and I wrapped up the partial DDs and handed them off to Contigo Architects, who will be the architect of record on FCH. They'll complete the DDs and CDs and then oversee construction of the project. Hence, we won't be working on that project at all after last week. The deadlines, as you may recall, came at a great time, as the day after FCH went out the door, my sister flew into town and I was able to take off two full weekdays with her--epic squee! But after the quiet few days I've had, I'm wishing I'd taken three days with her--I ran out of stuff to do today.

Architecture, as I've commented many times here on WAD, is a cyclical bidnazz. Sometimes we're crazy busy, other times we're mostly or partially idle. I was able to help Prudence, the head of interiors, with a small project that needed to go out the door--a two-page permit set to move a door in a clinic--but that ran out this afternoon, and I suddenly realized that the volume of work that had allowed me to bill between 36 and 40 hours for nine months was suddenly gone. What this also means is that the cash flow problem that has been plaguing many of my colleagues has not been a problem for me until now. I know, I've been pretty lucky.

I always get a little freaked out when I'm idle, but I'm sure it won't last. Sven will eventually have something for me, Prudence will need a little help over here, and TCMC will come back and need finishing. Meanwhile, I just have to take a deep breath and be patient. Which is not my strong suit.

Architect pay, professional pay...same difference

A reader recently emailed me to ask if the pay for architects is truly as abysmal as it sounds. The succinct answer is yes, it sucks for the first few years, but getting licensed and/or changing firms can help increase your income. However, everyone getting out of college for the past several years—regardless of their major—is getting paid crap compared to the cost of living. It just hurts architects more because of a) the professional costs of continuing education and professional dues and testing and so on and b) the business costs of all the special software we have to buy and insurance we have to have in order to practice. I have two previous commentaries on what architects make here and here.

Another question I received recently regarded how much it’s worth slogging through architecture if the pay is crap and you have behemothesque student loans. First, let me say that again, like everyone else, your student loans are out of scale with your out-of-school income. Again, it’s the whole cost-of-living thing. Second, and more importantly, how much it’s worth it depends on what you put into it. There is indeed some luck involved in how well you do in your profession; for example, if you get out of school and join a firm that lays you off after six months and you spend the next fifteen months on unemployment (which happened here in Denver a great deal), then you suddenly find yourself behind in the game with regard to getting experience so you can get licensed faster. But that’s if you even come back to the profession at all—this economy is going to make architecture lose some pretty good people. But if we set aside luck and the nature of the economy, you really only get out of architecture what you put into it. I’ve seen interns and architects thrive and do well in nearly the same environment as other interns and architects who are barely hanging on and self-medicating every night at home out of misery and disappointment.

So, the short and simple (but not easy) answer about architecture as a job, a career, and a profession is: it depends. Which is probably true of a lot of professions. Is it true of yours?

Squee!

I know, I know, I haven't posted lately. Bu my sister is here until eeeeaarrrllyyy Wednesday morning, and we're making the most of the long weekend. My deadlines on TCMC and FCH last week left me in a good place to take Friday and Monday off, and so I am. We've spent the weekend shopping, reading a plethora of cheezy-poof magazines she brought from Georgia, telling obscene jokes, and just goofing off in general. Very good times.