"It's MDF" and other questions answered...

We had about a thousand people come through the Juliet House last weekend oohing and ahhing in mostly all the right places. It was great to be able to share our work with so many enthusiastic people...along with the handful of skeptical ones as well. Even those who might have been put off by the non-traditional exterior expression of the house were generally won over once they got inside and experienced the expansive and light-filled spaces. At that point most people generally got it. And if they could get beyond the idea of carrying groceries up the stairs (!), the advantages of having the main living spaces up on the second level became obvious. While our conversations with visitors were all quite varied, a couple questions seemed to pop up repeatedly -- the number one being: What is this floor? Generally followed up by: so...what do the neighbors think? We joked afterwards about having t-shirts made next time that said "MDF" on the front, and "some of them like it, and some of them don't" on the back. Most were content with a brief explanation of particle board used as a finish material, and a little peroration on how we feel the neighborhoods need to allow for change and innovation, and not be treated as precious dioramas from the nineteenth century. Most of the folks who were interested in looking at our house in the first place understood this and sympathized.

The other question that we heard repeatedly was whether we considered the house to be sustainable. Obviously something that's on many peoples' minds, and rightly so. Unfortunately it's a word that's very quickly been commodified and rendered almost meaningless by its appropriation by everyone for virtually everything that could be remotely construed as such. What does it even mean anymore? Michael Pollen defines it nicely in a recent article in the New York Times Magazine:

To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or process can’t go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very conditions on which it depends. (emphasis mine)

What I like about this definition is that it takes us back to the notion that sustainability is not about things or products but rather about a practice or process -- i.e. behavior rather than stuff. Sustainability is thus not so much about the stuff you surround yourself with but rather about a way of life. As such we believe that a "sustainable" house is therefore one that helps to make possible a certain way of life. You can incorporate all the latest trends in energy efficient devices and systems you want, but if you insist on living LARGE and taking up more than your fair share of space on this crowded planet then it doesn't matter how many Priuses you've got in your sprawling garage. And we generally take up way too much space and consume way too many resources already. A typical westerner uses something like 200 times the energy as a typical hunter/gatherer - which is what we all were until some 10,000 years ago. So each of us, as animals, consumes and produces the waste equivalent of an entire prehistoric village. That is clearly unsustainable. Especially given that the rest of the world aspires to and is very quickly catching us with our "western" standard of living. As such sustainability is fundamentally a question of reduction - and most likely rather extreme reduction - in how much we consume. So before we even get into specifics of systems and materials, we need to understand that most of sustainability is common sense: building just enough, with simple durable materials, in a place that requires as little travel as possible. It's not just consuming differently, but consuming less -- much less. That raises questions such as: what is a reasonably sized house for a family of 4? 2000 square feet? Perhaps 3000? By world standards a house this size is already a palatial. Clearly then anything much beyond that is extravagant and wasteful, and regardless of solar panels, a gray water retrieval system, and a couple hybrids in the garage, could not seriously be considered "sustainable." (to say nothing of this travesty!) A serious consideration of sustainability is going to require a complete re-evaluation of how we live, and how our entire economy and way of life is dependent upon incessant consumption. It will not be easy or painless, and the resulting world will look nothing like our current world - with solar panels on top.

So are we "sustainable" architects? We would like to think that helping people create dwellings that allow them to live more sustainably is not something separable from just being a good architect. And we're always trying to become better architects -- that never stops.

Moving Efficiently for Love

Parkour. Defined as an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls — and can be practiced in both rural and urban areas. Parkour practitioners are referred to as traceurs. Vive La France.



Come see us this weekend - April 26th and 27th at the 2008 Minneapolis Saint Paul Home Tour and try your luck at parkour in and around a bonafide RoehrSchmitt original. Visit us between 10 and 5 on Saturday and 1 and 5 on Sunday for tours, conversations and modernism in action at Juliet House in St Paul. See you then.

The Best Laid Plans

More fun with buildings. Why this causes the maniacal laughter I'm not sure. I'm guessing the guys who were in charge of the demolition aren't the ones laughing. Whoooo!

I just had a customer service experience with a national retailer (their name rhymes with tears) that was less than inspiring. I won't bore you with the tedious details - I started but found them tedious to write, let alone read. Okay just a few. It involved 8 separate 1-800 numbers to call, each with an ever more baffling, opaque lack of meaningful information except, you guessed it, a new 1-800 number. One of the numbers they gave me was disconnected and I swear the individual who gave it to me, who shall remain nameless, was eating chips and reading the National Enquirer while she doled out her precious nugget. Like I said I was less than inspired.


The good news is that I did accomplish my goal. The question is why did it have to be so difficult? What about that organizations culture created a public presence that's so confounding? It started with their website which, although it contained all of the relevant information, was really difficult to use. I understand they have a lot of information to manage but most of us have seen other web sites with decent user interfaces - Ebay, Amazon, etc. The most frustrating part of the whole experience was that the transaction where they separated me from my money went smooth as silk, but finding the right person to answer a simple question was amazingly difficult. So simple was the question that it should have been answered by the first person I spoke with. Instead I was treated to a female phonebot with a curious nature who by the end of the whole thing I was messing with just to stay alert - she'd ask me to, "say repair center", very enthusiastically and I would reply, "bouillabaisse" - infantile I know but effective. She and I, we built a powerful relationship during the eight or ten times we spoke. She said "I'm sorry" often, and it was good that she was being honest with herself.

So what is it? Is it conscious? Is there some benefit to the companies bottom line in providing a confusing public face that I can't fathom because I'm either not smart enough or wily enough? Does an organization know when it's being confusing? How do they fix the problem? How do you provide clarity? How do you provide great customer service that doesn't cause the reputation of your organization to tip negative? They seem to be questions worthy of study.

Professionals who provide clear, relevant and quality information will do well. It's what clients want. If the information or execution of the delivery of that information is unclear, unrelated to your situation or poor, it will do nothing but frustrate your clients. Personally I like to reward those people and organizations that do provide great service. But for whatever reason I seem to always buy my new appliances at that tears place. I think I must really enjoy chatting to the phonebot.

Check out this link to Wired Magazine to see why they think Customer Service like I experienced and many other things really suck (my mom used to hate that word but it's Wired's word).

If you want great customer service where clarity, value and quality are always on our minds, call RoehrSchmitt. We don't have a phonebot yet but maybe someday.

Play Ball

As it's opening day for the 2008 baseball season I thought I would pay homage. I was reading an article in a recent New Yorker about former Philadelphia Phillies baseball player, Lenny Dykstra - Nails Never Fails, from the March 24th, 2008 issue and I was struck. Dykstra was a weird favorite of mine as a kid - gritty work horse; not a show horse - and I liked the article because it nicely combined a fascination with the mega rich and their foibles and the continued emergence of hyper targeted marketing. Dykstra is attempting to start a lifestyle magazine that will provide financial and life advice for professional athletes in hopes that those gifted enough to make several million dollars a year because they can do something only a tiny fraction of the human population can do, won't spend it all on rims and grillz.

From the article, "“You’ve got the ten per cent who are going to find their way no matter what,” Dykstra said of the athlete population. “And you get the ten per cent that are (radio edit)heads no matter what—we’ll paste an ‘L’ to ’em.” The rest need guidance....."

Who knew? Good Luck Lenny.

The Elephant in the Room

An intersection between architecture, digital media and absurdity. Nice tramp.

On Travel, Development and Sustainability

Just returned from a trip to Costa Rica and although we had an amazing time and found the country to be full of friendly people and an awesome diversity of nature, I am left in part with a sense that the tourism industry may ultimately be the end of what attracted my family and others to the country in the first place. A common thread throughout the world, it certainly gives one pause. The irony of wanting to travel to and see these beautiful places first hand and understanding the impact of those actions seems parallel with the irony of participating in the building economy while trying to meet the definition of sustainability. Is it possible?

Undoubtedly there is tremendous economic advantage to the people of Costa Rica in having billions of dollars in foreign investment and trade pouring into their country every year. That being said the development is happening quickly and without significant planning or design. There is an emphasis on catering to wealthy (middle class?) Americans, Canadians and Europeans with mega luxury resorts that makes one think of Robin Leach. It's a country renowned for it's high literacy rate, commitment to democracy and conservation of its natural treasures and yet McHaciendas abound and multiply. Do Americans really all want to go on vacation and feel like we walked into an issue of Robb Report? Somewhere there seems to be a perception that's out of whack.

Check out this article regarding a new development by Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, in Northwestern Costa Rica. This isn't far from where we visited and falls on the heels of another large scale and controversial development in Costa Rica, the Peninsula Papagayo.

It's an amazing place. One hopes that the things that make it so special aren't lost in an effort to please the tastes of the world. Pura Vida.

Thinking of Changing my Last Name

We can't list levitation as a service quite yet but this is certainly how we would like our clients to feel about our work. Do you believe? People use buildings in the strangest ways.

Museum Plaza by OMA

This is a competition video by OMA for the Museum Plaza in Louisville Kentucky. Opinions vary about the design but the presentation is amazing. Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus, who led the design team at OMA, a firm founded by Rem Koolhaas, said he expected a wide range of opinions on the building’s design.

“We are not surprised. We are very happy to see a lot of reactions,” he said. “To each his own opinion.”

Clarity Machine Two

Making

A continued effort to unlock the jargon of the architectural world; establishing a more closely related plane of reference. Nearly.

Chapter Two

How is design defined? Some assume they know what the word means and how to achieve it. But how do we know what it is? Is it an action or a thing? Is it a time or a style? Is it a person or an organization? And why do we design?

The following is a series of definitions referred to and found on the Internet for the term “design”. Identified here for purposes of illustration. The wide spectrum of definitions is notable.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design
Design Usually considered in the context of applied arts, engineering, architecture, and other creative endeavors, is used both as a noun and a verb. As a verb, "to design" refers to the process of originating and developing a plan for a product, structure, system, or component. As a noun, "a design" is used for either the final (solution) plan (e.g. proposal, drawing, model, description) or the result of implementing that plan (e.g. object produced, result of the process).

More recently, processes (in general) have also been treated as products of design, giving new meaning to the term "process design".

Designing normally requires a designer to consider the aesthetic, functional, and other aspects of an object or a process, which usually requires considerable research, thought, modeling, interactive adjustment, and re-design.

Design is:

A decorative or artistic work

A deliberate ordering of components

The creation of something in the mind

A plan, organization, or arrangement of elements in a work of art

To plan and fashion the form and structure of an object or work of art

A process to find and describe a way to implement the system's requirements

Both the process and the result of structuring the elements of visual form; composition

A set of experimental runs, which allows you to fit a particular model, and estimate your desired effects

Qualitative analysis to identify categories of error reported during a randomized controlled trial of computer and paper reporting methods

A framework or scheme of construction on which artists base the nature of their total work. In a broader sense, design may be considered synonymous with the term "form"

An activity during which decisions are made about the geographic placement of and interaction between natural resources (e.g., topography, vegetation) and built elements (e.g., buildings, roads) in a specific area

A set of fields for problem-solving that uses user-centric approaches to understand user needs (as well as business, economic, environmental, social, and other requirements) to create successful solutions that solve real problems

Quotes:

"Design is in everything we make, but it’s also between those things. It's a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy."
Erik Adigard

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
Henry David Thoreau

"Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it."
Miguel de Cervantes

"Good design, at least part of the time, includes the criterion of being direct in relation to the problem at hand - not obscure, trendy, or stylish. A new language, visual or verbal, must be couched in a language that is already understood."
Ivan Chermayeff

"Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute."
Gil Stern

"To whom does design address itself: to the greatest number, to the specialist of an enlightened matter, to a privileged social class? Design addresses itself to the need."
Charles Eames

Clarity Machine

Process Logic

How do we define collaboration? An often-used term to describe how teams work; it is typically used in vague and self-referential ways. What does it really mean? What are the best ways to collaborate? How do we put the word into action?

The following is a series of definitions referred to and found on the Internet for the term “collaboration”. None are intended to provide any prescribed answer. Definition gives us a place to start. The wide spectrum of ideas is notable.

Collaboration is:

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration - _note-2
a structured, recursive process where two or more people work together toward a common goal—typically an intellectual endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Collaboration does not require leadership and can even bring better results through decentralization and egalitarianism. In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources.

Something done with cooperation

Shared control over decision making

Work that is done jointly to improve the efforts of all

Cooperation between citizens of a country and its occupiers

A series of business transaction activities between two roles

The process of working together in pursuit of common objectives

A social skill involving working together with two or more persons

Something of a gray area, and a common source of misunderstanding

The process by which people and organizations work together to accomplish a common mission

The process people with different ways of seeing the world interact to learn from each other in order to get better at what ever they are trying to do

Any cooperative effort between and among governmental entities and private partners through which the partners work together to achieve common goals

Intra-enterprise business process integration. The intra-enterprise information flows are managed by business process logic that is shared by two or more organizations

Permitting governments, industry, and other stakeholders to create, grow and reform communities of interested parties that can leverage strengths, solve common problems, innovate and build upon existing efforts

A dynamic relationship that exists between objects. Additionally, a Classifier Role should be associated to the collaboration to illustrate the role an element plays in that collaboration

A process where groups that disagree, often significantly, come together to identify common interests, define common problems, and seek solutions that reach beyond what any one of them could accomplish on their own

The idea of employees working together in a joint intellectual effort. This is usually achieved by using tools that allow employees to share information dynamically between one another to boost performance and productivity


Extensive academic definition: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=129418

More from Answers.com: http://www.answers.com/topic/collaboration-1

Tools: http://news.hsl.virginia.edu/?p=42

Collaboration and Libraries: http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/03/collaboration-20.html

Post on best practices and link to American Society for Training & Development, an association dedicated to workplace learning and performance professionals: http://community.astd.org/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9301062/m/27010053

Blog on online extranets – article about online collaborative tools and sites and best practices for their use: http://blog.novedge.com/2007/09/an-interview-wi.html

Quotes:
"As teams develop objectives around communication, and they create structure, that's where collaboration begins."

Last project in the ground this season...

We've been extremely busy all summer, working on a variety of projects and proposals and one big hairy contract, trying to get our website finalized (Keith?) and live so we could finally "officially" announce our arrival as a firm, and have an excuse to throw a big coming out party (as if we need one...)

We expect all this to happen posthaste, and once the website is a happening thing, we'll be in here blogging regularly about what we're doing and what we aspire to do; what's keeping us up at night and what gets us up in the morning. Maybe I can even get Chris to write about his thing with shoes...

In the meantime, here's a glimpse of something we've been working on lately:

The Langworthy Addition in St Paul is the expansion and reorganization of an existing house for a fabric artist, her 2 children, and her mother who will shortly be joining them there. The living and dining rooms of the house will be converted into an accessible bedroom suite, while the kitchen has been reoriented and incorporated into an expanded living and dining studio. The addition cracks open the back of the nondescript four-square, opening north to an outdoor living area surrounded by extensive gardens. The design was informed by the sensibility of the owner's quilting work and layered fabric constructions, along with her informal lifestyle and handcrafted aesthetic. The character and scale of the addition are meant to form a transitional space between the house and several outbuildings on the site that begin to suggest a compound or urban farmstead. They'll be breaking ground on this soon, and should be in by early next year.