Blog #3

By Randy Thoms

            This week, or rather two weeks since my last post deadline, has quickly rolled on by like glacier moving down a slope.  Yes, quickly rolled and glacier moving seem to be as intrinsically bi-polar as hot and cold.  But is that not how life and times move…fast followed by slow? As they in the construction business, “Hurry up and wait.” So much time is spent framing and forming, only to wait for sheetrock mud and concrete to dry.

Nonetheless, life is moving fast and uncompromisingly forward, which reminds me of another saying, this time from the truck driving industry, “Always forward never straight.” As in life, like driving, you want to move forward with a goal or a path, not just straight.  If one goes straight in life, as the saying goes, “On the straight and narrow,” much can be missed. Your focus can be limited and not get the bigger picture. But by moving forward, one can experience life by taking twist and turns while progressing, forward, in one’s ideas and thoughts. 

So here I am, again sitting in studio writing this and not working on studio stuff – don’t tell McDonald or Trunipseed – and trying to figure out what next to do.  After a week of something due every day, as related to my past two posts, we all moved into a week of nothing due, save a studio site model, an adventure in itself…but more on that subject another time. 

And now a week of finalizing master plans, personal buildings, thesis writing and research keeps us rolling right along…like a glacier, moving uncompromisingly forward down the slope in a valley, scraping the sides, adding to it’s mass, then grinding, mixing it all together only to be deposited at the foot of the glacier in lateral moraines.  

Much like the process of architecture, a mixing of ideas and experiences that are suppose to coagulate into a cohesive form and or function. We do this, I think so, by scraping up ideas from our peers, idols and mentors.  Then as we travel and experience life and the world at large, we begin to form a thesis in our own minds of what appeals and excites our passion.  Concurrently, by way of grinding and mixing of case studies and research, we hopefully add to our body of knowledge, therefore, in turn, depositing a design that hopefully works and is pleasing and appealing at the same time.

All of this blends together to form, shape and mold a student into an architect, well, at least a graduate from a Masters program in Architecture. But then again I could be wrong about everything, I am coming off a cold, a few days of little sleep and drugs, cold medicine that is, not the recreational stuff….whatever that is…..