Integrative Themes
A collection of ruminations about University, Life, and Work
Curriculum: Horizontal
ARC2031 (Arch history before 1400) and HIS1010 (World History before 1500)
This example of “nibbled stone”, a form of Incan building practices, was studied in both classes due to it’s precision as well as the fact that similar practices emerged in early cultures throughout the world.
While taken in different years, these two classes still resonated with each other and with me. The complimentary nature of two classes is obvious in how they are looking predominantly at the same time frame and set of cultures, but analyzing different aspects. World history is a fairly standard class in most universities, though I would say that Professor Bisson did a great job at making history interesting and digestible while also exploring less obvious corners of history. She analyzed women and their roles in these predominantly patriarchal societies and how they both were influenced by their culture and in some cases influenced it in return. Professor Bisson also would note artifacts of interest, including architectural achievements for us to study. This complemented Professor Watson’s Architecture History course well as it often gave us a better understanding of the culture, circumstances, and events that shaped the architecture we studied. Architecture History 1 is a foundational class to understanding architecture at all. How and why did the first builders make shelter and when did that become elevated to architecture and not just an ornamented shed? Questions like this were asked and answered in Professor Watson’s class, but my understanding and the quality of my answers was greatly improved thanks to Professor Bisson’s History course.
The first three actual Studio classes (not counting Foundation Studio) were an important part of my development as an architecture student. While my time before Belmont consisted of a decade working as a draftsman, that time didn’t teach me how to think like a designer. So, it was in these Studios that I got the first tastes of actual design work and then began to improve my own sensibilities and style. Each Studio was a step forward in this path. While some years were just a small step, others were giant leaps in my understanding of how to think like a designer. The nature of these Studios are such that they successively build on one another. Each Studio makes use of the knowledge learned and skills developed in the one before. Without this interweaving and successive nature, I don’t feel that I would have learned as much nor would I have done so as quickly.
That all being said, my time as a drafter definitely aided me in these Studios. Leveraging my drawing and digital skills I was able to focus more on design and iterating, having to spend less time drawing over and over to get the final result I wanted from my work. The downside of this that I was warned against by my mentor was to not become too reliant on these drafter skills. He noted that if I didn’t push myself each semester to improve, I would quickly fall behind. It is this advice that has stuck with me through my time so far. I strive to improve my skills and design sensibility each and every Studio I take.
Curriculum: Vertical
Studio 1, 2, and 3
(ARC 2031, 2032, 3031)
This Section Perspective was developed after three Studios worth of instruction, each providing me with the skills and knowhow needed to create an image like this.
Ecological Responsibility
An image by Hope Buckner (2017) is of one of the many green roof systems on Belmont University's campus. More information can be found by clicking on the image above.
What is it to be Green? In architecture it is much more involved as we have to plan for not only how a new structure will impact the world around it while it’s being built, but also how it will impact the world for generations to come. It is definitively a professional responsibility to be stewards of our environment. When we’re asked to design something, the client might not care about the environmental impact. Thus it is our job to care and do our best to get them to care (or at least make the design as green as it can be). Integrating our designs into the natural world to reduce our future impact is one of the biggest things we can do to fight climate change. How we change the built environment to be more green is another. If we as professionals can make these incremental changes, they’ll all add up to a greater change. Construction can be one of the biggest sources of waste and pollution in a local area, so why not do our best to make it green. Not just for the future, but even for the people working on the site for us.
My time at Belmont has been inspiring in how much the curriculum speaks to the need for equity in our work. Does this not only meet ADA, but make it such an integrated part of design that it feels natural, and not just like it was tacked on to meet code? Can we make our designs affordable so that it isn’t just the rich that can build their dreams? Are we making ourselves available to more than just the clients that look like us? Can we do better each day to help promote equity in our profession, in our clientele, and in our designs? I have found that each of my classes has pushed these questions and shown us how each can be answered with an emphatic “YES!”. I can only do my best in Chrisitan service to embody these ideals of equity and inclusion to make sure I can be part of that “YES!”.
Equity Work
Life-Long + Life-Wide Learning
The Adult Degree Program, which I am a part of, is a great example of how a school like Belmont fosters Life-long and Life-wide learning.
Belmont has always felt like a welcoming place to me. Even from the days I was visiting my then fiancée (now wife) while she got her degree to now when I’m seeking my own. It is easy to stop any student in the Architecture program and ask for help. Most will either help you right then, or they will know someone who can help you better than them. Likewise, the faculty, even if they aren’t your professor at the time, usually can find a moment now or schedule time later to give you assistance in whatever you need. This welcoming attitude in general as well as the spirit of freely given aid and assistance makes it one of the best campuses I’ve ever been on. It is the type of place that I feel at home at, thus a place I freely offer to help those around me. I offer my knowledge, experience, and skills to any student that needs it and have even organized an unofficial Revit class to teach the students how to use the software that most of the architectural world relies on.
Behavior like that fostered at Belmont provides for a solid basis to be an architect. The architectural community shouldn’t be one of aggressive competition (though friendly competition is fun!), but should be one of companionship and assistance. We learn best from one another; from building on those hard won skills so that we might all become better students of design. I feel it is this mindset that will take me further in my goal to become an architect.
In a similar vein, it is the way classes tend to weave together that we find learning isn’t limited to one subject. Understanding culture and context, like they teach us in history classes, helps us better understand our clients. Art classes help us provide our clients with more coherent and clear drawings. Each class we take here, not just the architecture ones, buoys us up to be better designers. In this way it is imperative that we always try to learn and grow lest we lose those core aspects of education that push us to be the better people we know we can be.
Professor Lowing in my first year described a vocation as more than just a job your good at, it’s something you’re called to do, that you love to do, and that invigorates you when you’re part of it. To me, that is a good way to think about what it means to seek a vocation. There are many jobs you can be or get good at. There are many jobs you may enjoy for the most part. But it is really only a vocation if it is one you love to do, can do well, and feel called to do. To me, this is the core of it.
I spent a good bit of my childhood building things in life (LEGO, Erector Sets, etc.) and in games (the Sims, SimCity, etc.). The longest job I’ve held, my current job, is as an architectural drafter. I love design. I love drawing. The idea of being able to create something beautiful and meaningful for a person or group that they would inhabit and love to be in or part of is the greatest thing to me. I feel like Architecture is my vocation.
Vocational Discernment
Inside the Carrefour - Obsequies of the Invisible project
Storytelling has been a fairly significant theme throughout my Studios at Belmont, as well as many of the other classes in the B.Arch program. Without storytelling, our jobs are harder. Much like an illustrated storybook, we use both well crafted words and images to impart a story to our clients. This story could be about them and how this building was inspired by them. It could be a story about how people might use and live and work and play in the space we’ve crafted. It could be just about anything, but that story is how we let our audience know the why, how, and what of our project.
Way back at the beginning of History of Architecture in the U.S., we viewed a program of Native American/Canadian architects speaking on the indigenous process of design that they were trying to bring into the mainstream. They spoke about how storytelling was an integral part of the design process for them, wherein they told stories about what they wanted from the project and stories about how the past and future generations would impact or be impacted by the design. Closer to now though, we got to experience another take on this idea with Avigail Sachs.
Professor Sachs’ lectures on the TVA was a meditation on how the land and buildings tell the story of the TVA that complimented the Wolff readings we had for the chapter. How the land and buildings and events tell the story of how the lives of people in the Tennessee Valley were changed by these dams, towns, technology, and society that were brought in with the TVA. To Prof. Sachs and Jane Wolff these dams and the crafted landscape around them was “both its medium and its message.” It is storytelling.
The story told by the TVA is one of civilizing the last pioneer areas, the last frontiers of America, but in such a way that it was making the people who lived there part of the story. The story was in raising these people up, but also removing them from ancestral homes. Its stories like these that make me think about how there’s more than perspective to any story. We can’t just think about the “Manifest Destiny” angle of the TVA as Prof. Sachs put it, but also about the people who were displaced. We have to try to understand the stories of all these angles and see how it effects the greater story of our designs. Are we honoring these people? Or just the “victors” in this historical narrative?
Studio-History Reflection
The Garden in the Machine, a book by Avigail Sachs about the TVA and it's impact.
In a similar vein our Studio project, Obsequies of the Invisible, was about telling stories for those who often don’t get to tell a story like many of those displaced farmers in the Tennessee Valley. Each of my classmates had unique and sometimes truly beautiful takes on this program, but I’ve decided to use Emily’s monolithic cantilever as an example of how storytelling is important to the process. With Emily’s project, the emphasis she provided was in how the deaths of the unhoused provides a story we should all understand. Emily’s cantilever columbarium is a magnificent statement piece about the weight these deaths should have on all of us. It is story about how the unhoused can’t tell their story in life, so she’s providing a place where they may speak their truth in death.
Telling stories is an important part of the human experience. It connects us to one another; allows us to have moments of empathy and understanding. So as architects it behooves us to be good storytellers. If we can tell a good story we can bring people around to our concept and ideas. If we are storytellers then we can help elaborate on the stories told to us. Good stories make for good design. Good design makes for good architects.
Without even a moment to breath, Studio 4 started with startlingly different project. Reading a poem, “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” by Tupac Shakur, the class was tasked to devise three Concepts based on poem. These Concepts eventually were Existence, Perseverance, and Defiance. With those set in stone, we were asked to elaborate them into Form Drivers, architectural action words that we could use to create masses. The Form Drivers I chose from the Concepts were Growth, Repetition, and Shift (respectively). Each of these would help me create the plaster sculpture I would submit at the end of this project.
What did I learn from all this though? Each step described above was interesting in that it provided a step-by-step way to take something as simple as a poem and turn it into the foundations of an entire project. In our Architecture History classes we look at how vernacular architecture is driven by need and necessity. We examine how professionally designed buildings respond to the programmatic needs of the client, the site, and the community it will be in. In this simple plaster project, we were able to do similar types of design in a microcosm. It was enlightening and brought to the forefront of my mind how this process works on any scale.
The hardest part of this was making the connections from the poem. As a class we collectively came up with the Concepts. Getting one’s opinion represented adequately in a group effort of any kind is always a challenge, but something as quick and limited in source as this project meant it was especially difficult. From this, finding form drivers that were appropriately action oriented while being applicable to something like a small plaster sculpture was another tier of difficulty. Each tier of difficulty was worth it as it as an education in design philosophy.
The Rose That Grew From Concrete
The plaster sculpture submitted at the end of the project.
Beyond the design thinking aspect, this project was also an education in modeling and making. Having not worked with plaster or the casting process before, I was in new waters. I had read before about different casting techniques though and decided to dive into the deep end. While my classmates worked with foam forms that they hand carved, I opted to build my model in Rhino and export it to be 3D printed. Then I created a box, placed the model in, and filled it with silicone rubber. Once that set I was able to remove the 3D print and pour my plaster. It came out quite nicely!
All in all, this was a great starting project. It taught us much about both the mental, physical, and meta aspects of design. The process showed us how all these aspects are integrated into one another. Simply, it was one of my favorite projects in class.
Obsequies of the Invisible
The Courtyard of the Obsequies facility.
The process for this project was unlike what I’d been exposed to before. The lead up to the concept review was a giant writer’s block for me. I kept running across design choices that were on the nose. Or, in two cases, designs that could be considered to be pandering or offensive to the unhoused community when viewed from a certain angle. The whole effort made it difficult to be prepared for critique when I felt like nothing was correct for such a heavy, complex, and important topic such as this. When I finally came upon a good and functional concept, I was behind. Each class from then on felt like I was constantly playing catch up, but I was also learning at a pace I hadn’t experienced before.
Each successive stage of the project was another challenge to overcome or another question to answer. The crucible that was this semester has made me a better designer for the effort even if it felt as though it was a close thing at each critique that I made it to. If I were to take away anything from this experience, it is to make sure that each idea in my iteration matrix is fully explored and that I work to make sure that the ideas have had a chance to go through review and correction.
All that being said, the culmination of the project was good, but not to the standard that I had wanted. I pride myself on a certain, minimum level of finish and certain level of completeness for anything I work on. While what I turned in looked good and was wrapped up, it could’ve been better. But isn’t that the way of most projects? There’s always just one more thing to do and that one thing you had hoped to complete. So, I guess this is just another case of that.
To think about those who are often ignored and provide a place of final rest for them was the purpose of the second project in Studio 4. The unhoused are often ignored, considered to be invisible because society doesn’t want to think about their plight and people in power don’t want to deal with the problems that cause the unhoused crisis to happen. While in part this project would like to be a place to encourage change, it is at the very least a place to help close the Dignity Gap for the unhoused in death.
The Dignity Gap is the idea that the unhoused aren’t given the simple human decency and dignity that any other person should receive. This is doubly true when dealing with death as they often don’t have the luxury of pre planning their arrangements or the relationships with other people to help them afterwards. It was in this concept that I sought to try and illuminate these individuals by providing a place where they might be memorialized in their words and images. Getting to this point was the most difficult part though.
The final project of Studio 4 was an exercise in model work. This was slightly daunting at first considering the fact that many of my previous Studios had lacked an emphasis on model making. At the time, I was thrilled as model making was not my forte, but as my time at Belmont has gone on, it has become a noticeable deficit in my skill sets. So, in retrospect, this model only project was a good thing for me to participate in.
While no drawings were allowed at the critiques, as your model would have to do all the talking a full set of drawings normally would, we still drew at first. The initial sketch work was pretty limited though. Mostly form and figure work to figure out how I was going to establish my design in precedent and program analysis. The somewhat simple topic of this project would normally mean there wasn’t much research to do, but I wanted to take a page from the first project and establish a strong design basis.
Looking at the nests of local birds for inspiration as to form and to the existing Shelby Bottoms Nature Center for design choices, I started to assemble a form. The most difficult part of this exercise from this point was all the model building. I went through multiple small scratch models, playing with assemblies and forms. Eventually, I created my first concept model which was nearly a complete but unrefined attempt at my design. My lack of modeling skills was very apparent.
The next model went much better. I began thinking about materials and connections. I also started using jigs and templates to make the modeling more accurate and quicker to assemble. The jigs and templates were truly a game changer for me as the consistency through the project became readily apparent. With this rigor applied I was well on my way to a strong finish. From the comments I got during our mid project critique, I was able to refine my design with some solid updates.
Shelby Bottoms Bird Watching Tower
One of the two photos we were allowed to submit alongside our model, I used perspective to give the viewer a general feeling of what my building would look like while approaching it from the greenway at Shelby Bottoms.
It was an interesting project overall that did wonders for my model making skills. Besides maybe doing some more prep work to establish a stronger model making skill base, I’m not sure there’s much else I would have done differently. The previous projects, especially the plaster cast project at the beginning of the semester, helped ready me for this modeling. Overall, I’m happy with the product I turned in at the end and with the comments I received for the final critique.