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Architecture

Residence

Architecture

With large overhangs and low roof line, this Frank Lloyd Wright inspired home deftly arranges 3800 square feet of modern family living. Life in the home centers around the family room, or great room, which is set along a 45 degree axis to the corner lot. The double-door entry foyer shares this orientation. The remainder of the first floor aligns to the east/west and north-south roads that bound the property to the north and east.

The kitchen is found ajoined to the family room which speaks to the role the kitchen plays in the life of the residence. It features a large granite slab at its center, built for entertaining and small family dinners. Anyone in the kitchen can easily feel apart of what takes place in the great room and vice versa.

Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders’ spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.
– Frank Lloyd Wright

The spatious master suite converts the great room geomtry along the longitudinal axis and thereby creates a private space away from the great room. The french doors to the suite are also found at the end of a short hall, aiding privacy. Inside the master closet, a washer and dryer create an ease-of-use feature, as the main laundry room is found on the second floor—accomodating the multiple bedrooms up there.

The first floor has 10-foot ceilings and the second floor ceilings are 9 feet. This departure from FLW (favoring lower ceiling spaces) impacts the outer elevations which must also express the height. This prevents the home from truly captureing the FLW spirit. However, the ingenious use of space and views outward toward nature leap from FLW's considerable influence on the design. The exterior lines run horizontal and the first floor roof wraps the entire house to minimize the appearance of its height. The "Prairie Style" windows owe their proportion and positioning to FLW.

No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other. – FLW

Upstairs, a second great room takes the place a basement would have occupied if water tables had not pushed the design to the second floor. In addition to the aforemntioned laundry room, up to four bedroom—two of them with private baths—round out the upstairs living.

TCM - Interaction

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TCM - Interaction

Interaction

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Interaction

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Teaching

Teaching Practice

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Philosophy of Education

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Our students do not come to us as empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge that exists prior to them and without their participation. Rather, our students come to us as whole persons, with personal histories of triumphs and pains, knowledge earned, and lively capacities—intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. It is upon this basic understanding that my teaching philosophy is composed. Learning, therefore, is not a practice of opening students’ heads and depositing “knowledge” only to withdraw it with some instrument—what Paulo Freire called “the Banking Method” ¹ and William Badgley called essentialist ideology “where teachers represent the guardians of knowledge.” ² Rather my philosophy calls for engagement with each student meeting her where she is, not where I want her to be. In her book, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks describes a similar notion:

“[for] those of us who teach who also believe that there is an aspect of our vocation that is sacred; who believe that our work is not to merely share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.” ³

Teach Students, Not Content
It may sound odd at first to say I don’t teach content, yet instead, I teach students. The difference is profound. It means that my primary job in the studio or classroom is to learn my students. I’m required to learn their intelligences, histories, anxieties, and where they experience success. The reasoning here is three-fold. First, this promotes that I meet students where they are and embrace them there. Second, I (or the class collaboratively) can draw upon their previous knowledge to build new knowledge that endures. Lastly, I don’t use content to teach students, I ‘use’ students to teach content. It is through collaborative engagement that students “cover,” with me as their co-learner, that content for which we are all responsible.

Shaping the Learning Environment
So I find myself working to design and foster an environment wherein students might find themselves…learning. Learning can never be forced upon a learner from the outside; we are all autodidacts, wherein anything we learn, we teach ourselves. So then what is the role of the teacher? I think it is to design, from room architecture, to project architecture (offering a meaningful challenge through scope and timing), all the way through to assessment architecture. Each contribute to the learning environment in measure. However, the most critical aspect is growing an environment of trust between students and teachers as well as among students. A trust that makes room for failure, the greatest asset of the educational moment. To preserve the opportunity to fail in the “safe” environment of the academy allows exploration and risk-making which fuels student growth.

I Set Parameters, Students Set Agenda
It is my role as an educator to construct the framework of a course by determining when we will meet, for how long, and with what regularity. Furthermore I determine the structure of our conduct, such as the use of Protocols (journaling) or in a seminar we might stand to speak. Additionally, as the educator, I determine the required course material sources. Beyond these armatures, students must determine what it is we work on each day (in relationship to the project schedule). Remember that students teach content; and the content we engage comes from their critical reflection upon course meetings, course materials, the work of their colleagues, and often additional research with which they are involved. All of these rich contributions shape the studio/class work. Instead of content being extolled to them by an authority, it is being built by them in an active way.

Overcoming Passivity
Perhaps the largest threat to learning, becoming, and citizenship is passivity. Much of our consumer culture thrives on promoting passivity by its very forms, let alone its content. I find that the training for such passivity takes place in school—primary, secondary, and even undergrad.

I am interested in class activities intended to overcome passivity; such that each student is invited to voice, not by parroting the knowledge of others but engaging in a process that becomes their own. In contrast to essentialism, I most align with the educational ideology of progressivism; the student-centered, experiential approach to teaching. Progressive educators view students as contributing members of society (or in this case, contributing members of a classroom). From this vantage point, students have something to contribute to the curriculum allowing teachers to take on the role of facilitators.

“every experience is a moving force”—John Dewey
It was John Dewey’s book, Experience and Education, which increased awareness about the progressive educational movement (1938). In it, he wrote, “every experience is a moving force.” ⁴ Therefore, my role as a facilitator is to capture the momentum of this force and direct it down a path where students can make connections between their experiences and content born of the interplay between students and their teacher.

Precisely, I value students as thinking beings that bring experience and preference to the classroom. I am receptive to the idea that students can teach me and expound my understanding, even though they are typically younger. I think students will value more that which they are a part of defining, shaping, and creating. I resonate with Clifford Geertz when he argued that “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” ⁵

The idea here is that when I ask a question of my students, I don’t ask it so that the answer I am looking for will show up; rather I am asking so as to listen to my students’ reply; because “students bring to classrooms a store of informal knowledge, which is the personal context [they] use to get started making sense of new ideas.” ⁶ The problems with answers that pre-exist our contextualized thinking is that they get memorized for a test, get crammed, and then get ejected. I am interested in students building knowledge that they have for a lifetime.

I Value Contribution over Competition
When it comes to the dynamics of my courses, I am working to develop a learning community wherein each participant is committed to the development of every other participant in the community. I reject the prevailing notion that art education is built on competition. Rather, my teaching philosophy and career is based on the idea that collaboration makes us stronger. I endeavor to model this for my students by working collaboratively across disciplines to create a strong network of understanding that informs and energizes my practice.

It is not just that the professor cares if each student learns, but that each student cares that each student learns. What that means is that students do not do their work in isolation and competition with each other; but rather that they freely share their ideas in an environment where they will be respected. My role as an educator is to create the supportive learning environment wherein we are not looking for answers, but looking for better questions. This practice of critical inquiry will sustain intellectual activity that sharpens all the members of the community. My classroom then becomes an investment in the development of each other.

1 Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York. Herder and Herder, 1970.

2 Wesley J Null. A Discipline Progressive Educator, The Life and Career of William Chandler Bagley. New York: Lang. 2003.

3 bell hooks. Teaching to Transgress : Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York. Routledge, 1994.

4 John Dewey. Experience and Education. West Lafayette, IN. Kappa Delta Phi. 1938.

5 Clifford Geertz. The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, New York, New York. 1973.

6 A. D. Williams. “Curriculum: Philosophy, History, and Politics: What Should Students Learn?” in Teaching to Change the World edited by Martin Lipton & Jeannie Oakes, 104-150. McGraw-Hill Companies. 2003.

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Professional Practice

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Designer's Statement

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ON BEING A DESIGNER, AND NOT DOING DESIGN

I design by listening. That claim suggests the posture I hold while working on a design task. I take a listening posture, a looking posture. This posture is critical in describing how I work at design. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous exclamation “Look, don’t think!” resonates with me. ¹ I do not aim to think about the design task; but rather practice design thinking. The language of “to think about” suggests a separation between me as an object and the design task as an object. I think it more helpful to see neither as objects, but both as processes. Both are dynamic then, and not static.

For me, design thinking, with its premium on processes, is the hallmark of a successful designer; wherein successful design thinking embodies listening, looking, paying attention, and responding. Conversely, when I am focused on the design task as though I’m separate from it, I lose the ability to flow ² in design thinking.

An advantage this posture offers is that I do not seek to impose my will over the design constituencies. Rather I aim to negotiate with context, demographics, parameters, technology, and budgets to arrive at solutions. This localizes my work per each context. Of course, I always hold some agenda. However, my agenda is best described as shifting, evolving, and revealing. It is not abstracted and then applied to any context. Instead the agenda is born from the union of a particular context and the process I am.

I find design to be a process of discovery. As Albert Szent-Györgyi von Nagyrapol said, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” ³ I under-stand the quote to suggest that all the solutions are always before us. It is our task to pay atten-tion. And what does it mean to pay attention other than to listen? Thereby design thinking involves more receiving and responding than prescribing and acting upon a task.

In this construct, design is a process of revealing knowledge. The object that results of the process is the record which aims to prevent forgetting the discovery. Objects are residue of process. Though leftover of the process, I've come to realize that objects serve to connect the process that is me to the process that is you—ergo communication.

Therefore, I work at falling into design, into solutions. This falling is not a haphazard stumbling (although stumbling isn’t all together bad, if that happens we name it serendipity). Instead it is a deliberate pursuit of falling. I’ve learned to pursue falling by releasing my grip on forcing a result and allowing myself to be gripped by the process of discovery.

More concretely, I get into action. One rarely falls by standing still, so to push the metaphor, I start walking, searching for the moment to fall. Activities such as playing, researching, making, and thinking with my hands have each proven to be conduits for falling. However, they cannot be understood to cause it. It can happen, but you can’t do it.

Design is an iterative process: discover, reflect, apply, discover, reflect, apply, and so on. The order is not critical; and the distinction between the elements of the process is often difficult to determine. Many cycles of this process occur throughout the development of a project and are rarely linear.

In metaphor, the process is more like the growth of a tree than the stacking of stones in a cathedral. Development occurs as conditions permit not at the prescriptive will of a designer.

If the above is accurate, then doing design is an impossibility. Doing design is more along the lines of gripping the process rather than being gripped by it. I can only, we can only, be designers. Design is not what we do, rather it is what happens when we pay attention, when we listen, when we look without thinking about, and when we fall into design. When we “be” designers, solutions emerge from a process of discovery. Good design, then, emerges from the process of being, rather than doing. In the end, good design is good living.

1 Ludwig Wittgenstien. Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, with a Revised English Translation 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition. Wiley, 2001.

2 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York. HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996.

3 Irving John Good. The Scientist Speculates: An Anthology Of Partly-Baked Ideas. Heinemann, 1962.

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Shape Grades

Why bother to assign grades?

The Genesis of Shape Grades

Grades are just the worst, wouldn’t you agree? In the realm of design education, it seems to me that grades are generally a poor instrument for providing feedback to the student, or testifying as a record of the learning experience for the transcript. Perhaps the whole enterprise is suspect, although this piece will not address such a critique. Rather, in the institutions I have been fortunate to teach, grades are a requirement. As such, “why” questions are swept aside…because: Why grade? Answer: We must. Therefore, the remaining questions to be raised are “how” to go about grading, such as:

How does one participate in the grading regime in a way that is meaningful and useful to the student?
How might grading be shaped into a means of promoting understanding of one’s progress toward readiness for professional practice?
How might the process draw upon the professional expertise of the facilitator to render a grade value?
How might grading become a more efficient and even enjoyable process for the person assigning the grades?

There are other questions to examine as well, but for the sake of being concise, these questions most clearly impacted the objectives for developing the Shape Grade system.

Some assumptions that propelled said development include:

I can’t tell the difference between an 89 and a 90, but I can tell the difference between an “A” and a “B” or a “C.” Likewise I cannot tell the difference between an “A-“ and an “A” and so on. Therefore, pluses and minuses are meaningless for project evaluation.
I can only draw from the area of knowledge for which I am responsible, in my case Visual Communication Design (IxD, UX, UI, Graphic Design, Environmental Design, etc.)
SPECIAL NOTE: I believe the resulting grading scheme could be meaningful, helpful, efficient, and enjoyable beyond my discipline, but the work to make it so will have to be carried out by experts in those areas of knowledge for which it is to be employed.
In my understanding of “failure” in education, the only way to do so is neglect. For instance, for one to be absent¹, or for one’s work to be absent.
The institutions I have taught at use a 4-point scale for determining GPA based on the letter grades of A, B, C, D, and F from 4 to 0 respectively.
There is no such thing as “the real world” as in one day a student will reach it…wouldn’t that mean the one a student is living is not real? Still, there is a difference between Professional Practice and Student Practice. Namely, in student practice we preserve the opportunity to fail.²
The faculty administering a project is a representative of the profession and therefore the judgement they render should be related in terms of professional practice as ostensibly it is the student’s overall objective to join the profession as a practicioner.

How it came to be...

Shape Grades

Product Related Evaluation

Shape Grades

Projects in my design courses are evaluated throughout development, by critique presentation and discussion, and a formal response from me as facilitator. Each project is evaluated based on the entire process, not on “final” objects alone. This method of evaluation is consistent with both professional practice and successful schools of design education. Focusing evaluation upon the entire process also promotes “Design Thinking” as the chief aim of programs of the various types of design (Graphic Design, Visual Communication Design, User Experience Design, Interaction Design, etc.). Products and process each bare equal importance in such a scheme. The grading matrix codifies the activity of performing balanced evaluation on both product an process.

The design process itself offers a framework by which to make evaluation. While particular schools of thought may have more or fewer phases, and present them in various iterative orders; however, generally speaking, the design process is understood to have four phases. They are conceptual development, formal development, execution-production, and presentation-rationale-evaluation. Of course, design developments are often non-linear, so the phases are often quite integrated. However, these phases serve as distinctions giving greater clarity to the type of work being done throughout a project’s development. In professional practice, these phases often translate into billing categories. The categories of conceptual development, formal development, execution-production, and presentation-rationale-evaluation. have associated products by which each phase is evidenced and evaluated. Therefore, these phases can be understood as Product Related Evaluation of the product/process dichotomy. The following descriptions clarify the distinctions between each phase.

Conceptual Development • The products that give evidence to conceptual development for the purpose of evaluation (and billing in professional practice) are items such as cited sources (written and visual), reflective writings, thumbnails, and mapping-modeling-schematic diagrams. These items might often be executed in a student’s journal/notebook. They are made to give objective form to one’s research and concepting. Toward the end of the phase, objectives which guide the remaining development of the project may get articulated. One such product would be a S.O.C.O or Single Overriding Communication Objective.

Formal Development • This phase is evidenced by items such as roughs, mockettes, full scale detailing, scale models, semi-comprehensives and functional prototypes. While the previous phase of conceptual development does not cease as this phase begins, there is a distinction here as the project begins to take form appropriate to specifications (the range of conceptual thinking need not be policed by concerns for appropriateness). Whereas products made in conceptual development aim to hold an idea about the final product, the products of formal development aim to be prototypes of the final product itself.

Execution-Production • The waning of Formal Development in favor of Execution-Production is often heralded by obtaining “design approval” to proceed with producing the deliverable item or items. There remains some formal development and even refinement of concept as technical issues of making-building-printing-coding the final product are resolved. Some items which evidence this phase are high-fidelity comprehensives/prototypes or final-comprehensives, and production pieces themselves (when created—in student practice, final products are often not produced due to time and expense. Yet when they are produced, they most clearly testify to this phase of the four.)

Evaluation-Rationale-Presentation • Some products related to this phase are presentation boards, oral rationale and discussion, and written rationale & evaluation. While rationale and evaluation of the concept and formal qualities are produced throughout the development of the project, there comes a distinct moment when rationale must be articulated to colleagues and/or clients. It is important for students to realize that rationale is developed iteratively throughout the project. Often rationale does not precede a design move. One does not always know why one carries out a design act before taking the action. Where then would intuition, a strong participant in the process, come into play? Yet, rationale is critical to understanding intuited moves after the fact and communicating those to project constituents. Furthermore, evaluation is a critical skill in the development of rationale and thusly the effectiveness of presentation.

Each of the products resulting from the phases of Product Related Evaluation have connected Process Related Evaluation elements. Those elements are the intangibles of the design process that give rise to the associated products. They also name what is particularly to be examined in each of those products. It is therefore by those products that the process is elucidated, understood, and examined. Those elements are method, innovation, craft, and appropriateness. The primary concerns of each phase are list below and described in detail in the Process Related Evaluation item on the teaching panel.

Conceptual Development—method + innovation
Formal Development—innovation + appropriateness
Execution-Production—method + craft
Evaluation-Rationale-Presentation—craft + appropriateness.

Shape Grades

Process Related Evaluation

Shape Grades

The Process Related Evaluation elements stand as the terms by which the product related phases are evaluated. As processes they are the intangibles of design development that give rise to the associated products of Conceptual Development, Formal Development, Execution-Production, and Evaluation-Rationale-Presentation. For purposes of design project evaluation, the process related elements are named method, innovation, craft, and appropriateness. The following descriptions aim to shed light on the meaning and significance of the process elements, but do not attempt to exhaustively define them.

Method • This is the way in which one approaches and carries out the work. While the way one works is critical throughout the process and various phases, it is most critically present in both the Conceptual Development and Execution-Production phases. The quality of how these two phases unfold is crucial to the overall success of the project. Of course, the way one presents one’s work, or the way one builds rationale, or the way one develops formal qualities of the piece, is also crucial. However, each of those other phases have process elements that appear foremost within them, whereas method appears foremost in Conceptual Development and Execution-Production.

Innovation • Herein lies the element most often associated with “creativity.” However, creativity considered only as novelty limits the power of “being Creative.” Wendell Berry in his essay Healing writes, “To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one’s part in it anew. The most creative works are all strategies of this health.” Yet there is that call upon designers to innovate, which is to invent a new approach, or present a new perspective, previously unconsidered by others before or contemporaneously. This process component is foremost in the Conceptual Development and Formal Development phases.

Craft • It can be considered a moral issue. Craft examines how well a thing is made or comes to be, particularly when it comes to the details of production for products of the associated phases. It is a moral issue as consideration is made for stewardship of resources and tools; as care, attention, and commitment are invested in the thing being made; as the character of both object and object maker are made evident in making. Whereas Method is concerned with a way of doing, Craft is concerned with a way of being. The idea of “integrity of making” may be helpful in trying to understand craft. This is a parallel idea to the “integrity of materials” commonly understood in relation to industrial products. For example, a Formica® countertop that looks like wood could be said to have poor integrity, where as a tile backsplash that looks like, well…tile, is congruent in form and appearance. “Integrity of making” aims to articulate those same ideas considered in an object within the making of that object. Craft appears foremost in Execution-Production and Evaluation-Rationale-Presentation phases.

Appropriateness • This one might be the most difficult on which to get a handle. There are times when it appears that appropriateness can be quantified, for example in eliciting a certain behavior or response in a viewer-reader-user. Yet other times, appropriateness seems to float on a breeze of taste and style. Appropriateness can, however, always be determined in relation to the project brief. Appropriateness ties the solution of a design challenge to stated goals and objectives. Whereas innovation may sometimes be a force pulling away from goals and objectives, appropriateness is a balancing force drawing towards them. Appropriateness may also be considered in relationship to the “audience” for a piece. How well (or clearly, perhaps) does the piece speak to the intended audience? It may also be considered in terms of budget for a project. Is the project within budget? A project over budget may be inappropriate in that fact alone. Other examples abound. Appropriateness manifests foremost in Formal Development and Evaluation-Rationale-Presentation phases.