Reflections, Part X
Let this slack for a few days after a long weekend of moving. It’s weird to go back to Ames these days. I love seeing the people there, all my old friends who have yet to graduate. Spent some time with some really great people. Yet I still noted the absence. I had spent many summers in Ames and know how empty it gets, but with so many gone for good, I can feel the disconnecting beginning. Even my old apartment seems to have had all of the memories of the place scrubbed out of it, leaving a clean shell for someone new to occupy it. Nostalgia his me hard over the weekend, and I was forced to walk through my own mind’s landscape of memories, reliving moment after moment in my head. It seems like only the other day my friends and I were waking up in Friley on a Saturday afternoon to play some video games before I had to head to studio. But all that is past, and my memory is rose tinted.
But then, that’s really too somber of a note for me to end on, don’t you think? If I’m going to close out this series, I’ll do it right.
After all this reflecting on my past six years of life, I’m actually super excited about the world again. While I still have to fight for a permanent position somewhere, I feel like I have something to fight for. I have a perspective on the world of design, and I mean to pursue it. My mind and hands are hungry for another challenge.
Architecture as a profession is almost ripe for a change. As the baby boomer generation slowly moves its way out of the market, my generation can start pushing the profession forward again. I deeply respect most of the work that the previous generation has put into the field of architecture, but the world is changing and so must the profession if it hopes to survive. I remember when I started my education, there was a sense of “the profession is dying, and if you don’t do right, you’ll kill it.” I have seen how the architectural field has slowly begun to erode away, our work either becoming undervalued or passed off to other professions.
In a similar way, there is also a negative mood towards my generation in general. We are considered dumber, weaker, less motivated, addicted, and addled. They say we’re addicted to bad tv and music, that our interests are vapid and shallow. Our attention spans are so short that they made up diseases to explain it. We are the generation of ADD and ADHD, of Mountain Dew and Surge, of South Park and Family Guy. We are the sons and daughters of the Internet. We cannot hold conversations without a computer or mobile device. We talk too much, and think too little.
But, they don’t see us for what we are. They see only what popular media shows us as, and it really is a small percentage. This new generation is technologically adept, we think quicker and are more resourceful. We can see the world as a whole and understand the actions of one affects the whole. We don’t believe in barriers, we believe in open space. We believe in the clean and crisp, but understand the dirty and grungy. We see the society of the world for all its wonders and horrors. We are environmentally aware, and won’t need checklists and points to tell us how to improve things. And we will improve things. Just you wait and watch.
And it will start with architecture. I truly believe that if we, as a profession, take a stance in our communities and begin to set real standards for design beyond the safety of the code, an overall shift in the perspective of architecture in society could do a lot to reinvigorate a shallow nation. If you pay attention, you can already start to see the change. Our move towards information models and information driven design is the first step towards a future where the aesthetic of the qualitative is reinforced by the science of the quantitative. Architectural design is going to begin moving into a fascinating, fast paced era that will go hard for a while, but in the end, I have hope that once we are all done with this growing pain we are gonna be on one of the biggest and best rides ever, and we’re gonna be in the driver’s seat.
Maybe that’s too philosophical and hopeful now. Maybe I should add some cynicism. But it’s late and I’m tired. Guess I’ll just be hopeful. So ends the reflection.
