Children's Eyes
As Nova Scotian architect Brain MacKay-Lyon say, “Vernacular is what you do when you can’t afford to get it wrongs.”
—--Native Places, drawing as a way to see by Frank Harmon
I was fortunate to attend a zoom lecture by Frank Harmon when studying in Charleston.
It has been a while, but it left me a deep impression of what architecture should look like via the eye of an experienced architect. (The following are paraphrasing from my memories with the help of slideshows and the Native Places)
He talked about barns, he said that one can tell a lot about a particular place from the barn they build.
“ A barn in its setting can tell you what grows there, what type of soil it stands on, where the good winds come from, how cold it gets, where the rain flows, and what materials are cheap and available nearby.” ------ Native Places
Just like us, he was once passionate with his architectural ambition right out of school. He wanted to build buildings like Corbu’s Villa Savoye, using reinforced concrete, but the only problem was at that time in North Carolina no one knew how to build with reinforce concrete, it was like being hit with reality, so naturally he had to learn how to design with local materials and traditional building methods to achieve the what he envisioned.
He went on sharing some of his projects that he has done over the years, but right at the end, during the Q&A section, he shared that when he was teaching the first year grad school studio, he always had the same studio project. He encouraged his students to search their memory bank and try to become a child again. Try to think of what was their favorite spot when they were growing up, it might be a creek, a hill, an alleyway etc…and try to represent that in some forms of drawing and models.
When he was communicating with us, I think he was already over 80 years old. What struck me over and over again is that he has never grown too old to lose a child like curiosity in observing and discovering the world. And I think that has definitely carried into the way he thinks and designs.
To never lose a fresh pair of eyes when looking at things is what I learned and wanted to share.
It's great you were able to attend a lecture by him. He seems to have a good understanding of reality which you highlighted and it shows up in his designs. The last bit where you started talking about looking at something through the eyes of a child reminded me of a quote from Picasso, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." Seems to fall in similarly to Frank Harmon's experience: right out of school wanting to design like Corb and realizing the impracticalities of it, then switching to the ideas of something much looser. On a similar, mostly unrelated note, it's probably why sketching is much easier to design with than doing models on the computer. One is much more rigid and finalized and the other allows for the imperfections of its creation to thrive on the page and gives it a unique quality.
ReplyDeleteZach, I really like what you said. We have to always be curious and looking at the world in new ways. Good lesson.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great reminder for us especially as we are about to leave school and enter the professional world. I think that at our age and while in a creative studio environment it's easier to remain open to new ways of thinking. I don't think that anybody intends on getting stuck in their ways, but just somehow end up there. It's going to take effort to maintain our curiosity so thank you for the reminder to be conscious of that.
ReplyDeleteLove this mindset. There is no better way to see the world than through the eyes of a child. And to be fair, children probably use the world like its meant to be used better than adults do. This especially relates to me as I design a child development center for studio and I will definitely use this advice in the next few weeks when thinking about how I should design it.
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