SKETCHES-PORTRAITS-LECTURE HALLS
University of Michigan 2006-2008
SOMEONE ELSES STORIES- LET ME JOT THAT DOWN - IS IT OVER YET?
You can hear a lecture at the park, on a cell phone, in a classroom, in the hallway, in an auditorium, in a movie, on third floors of buildings, on Wednesday’s at lunchtime, formally or informally, they are everywhere, all the time, anytime. Architecture institutions all over the world spend a lot of money persuading lecturers to lecture on their home turf and not only that but they seemingly spend even more time making the posters declaring who is coming for the season.
But what is so important that you have to write down? To be honest, sometimes nothing, just key phrases that might trigger a direction in whatever project I may be working on. Sometimes it is something simple and elegant. At a Penny Stamps lecture, Chip Kidd suggested to “Learn how to write. Design with words. Put them in the right combinations and you can give someone a message.” Quite often at the best lectures I have little or no time to draw the person because I am quickly scribing genius thoughts with the hopes it will rub off one day. But very often I want to remember a key characteristic like glasses or an outfit or a color and that inspires me to give it a shot.
Something that happens quite often at lectures ist that theres a podium the speaker stands behind. And often there is a light on that podium. The way each lecturer oriented the light was never the same. That light was the only reason I had any desire to attend Professional Practice seminar. This professor had the ability to tweak the light just right every class to give the effect he had a twenty foot long arm stretching across the whiteboard. It was spectacular and it became an obsession for me to capture it.
