Welcome and thank you for visiting The Bridge.
This past year has been the first time my life actually made sense to me. Goals have been coupled with dreams, where once before the two have seemed completely independent of themselves. I've started a quest to become an architect. The realization alone is something sublime. And it is to this aspect of my life that this blog is partially dedicated to.
While The Bridge is about my adventures in architecture, it seeks to bridge the role of architecture and design to the many other things that are important to me. These things include Sustainability, Professional Practice, Social Justice, all things Detroit (because 1. it's an amazing city, 2. it needs our help, 3.it's reinvention is going to be unlike anything you've ever seen before), and most importantly I hope to bring all the people from my experiences in life together.
I am constantly reminded at how ridiculously diverse my circles of friends are. I have friends who are doctors, lawyers, business-men and entrepreneurs, consultants, hedge fund managers, private equity workers, musicians, architects, designers, teachers, politicians, people-in-high-places, people who want to be in high places, people definitely do not care about being in high places, husbands, wives, students, single people, evil people, good people, conservatives, liberals, dreamers, deadbeats, and the list goes on.
I've always wondered what it would be like to have everyone I know get together. Sometimes I worry if it's a good idea to mix groups, but one thing I've learned in my year and a half of Architecture School is that the best ideas actually are generated through conflict. I'm currently taking a class on Sustainability and constantly find the class to be insufficient due to the fact that everyone in the class shares similar values. It's like one treehugger talking to another treehugger about how much we like to hug trees. And we delude ourselves that everything we say is good and right, until we come across someone with different values and all of a sudden we sound completely ridiculous. Conflict answers the difficult questions for us. We need more of it. Or at least....I do, I think. :)
The Bridge should not be tamed. I invite all responses no matter how contentious. You should feel free to be anonymous. Make up a name. That's what's great about the blogs.
From here on I will be posting on various topics, as mentioned above. I can't wait to see how my architect friends will respond differently to things than my doctor friends, or my lawyer friends when asked about health care. Or if we need to impose restrictions on having more than one children for the sake of saving the planet from over-population...because I kinda think we should. Or if we think the break up of Oasis is a good or bad thing. Or if we think Boston City Hall is actually a cool building. I know you guys...and know you all have different opinions, so you better speak up!
The Bridge is now open. Free free to cross.
Michael Maltzan’s Inner-City Arts Campus is another example of design put to good use. The Inner City Arts Project inherited an abandoned body shop in the middle of Skid Row, and turned it into center where, as Maltzan describes, "every space is a teachable moment." The campus was built as an open air village, in which each building has its own function, with a central courtyard for student functions and meetings. In the eyes of the designers, this design functions to promote a sense of role and responsibility to the community. Students are engaged not only with those of like minds and interests, but with the rest of the student community.
