Architecture is a rich endeavor bringing together the many disciplines of history, philosophy, society, geometry, structure, art, craft, function, shelter, and having an enduring presence over time. As a functional art it appeals to both our logical and intuitive natures. We all share the desire to determine our own environment, as well as possess some ability to design or imagine it. My role as a residential architect is to articulate those aspirations and create a vision for inhabiting a certain place.
Architecture is a manifestation of order and structure that arise from cultural and/or personal ideas about living and about place. The cultural aspect is most evident in vernacular architecture that evolves over centuries and is particular to a region, such as indigenous homes. The aspect of order can be experienced in a constructed project, and understood through the reading of plans and renderings. How to describe this order? Goethe said it well, ‘Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.’ Each begins with a feeling, is transcribed through sound, light, matter and structure, that again creates a feeling that an audience or dweller experiences. In the same way that a musical score can be read and the sounds imagined, so too can architectural plans be read and the spaces imagined. A musical score is a blueprint for a performance, and a blueprint is a score for the experience of architecture. Each have various genres and styles, but order and structure– proportion, scale, interval, harmony, counterpoint, texture, repetition, symmetry, melody or narrative, dynamics, cultural context and a conceptual framework are common to both.