Architecture & Music

Ever since we got rid of our cable television service and switched to dish, I've been a huge fan of Classic VH1. So I just finished watching (for the third time) an episode of Classic Albums that featured Def Leppard and the Hysteria album. A fantastic album if you don't know it, but it's the connection to architecture that I'm interested in right now.

Our firm has been frantically working on submissions to the AIA design awards over the last few days. We've been putting in some long hours in an effort to make a good showing in the competition and to be sure that the underlying ideas in our architecture are clearly communicated to the jury. I really think we have some good projects to present, but we are anxious to see what our peers think of our work.

In watching the members of Def Leppard talk about the creative process making the Hysteria album, I'm struck by the similarities to our practice. The band members talk about the collaborative process and how they don't think of the band as having a "front man." Instead, they have five front men, each contributing their own unique talents to the collective whole. The show presents band members in the studio sharing raw music tracks that were folded together to make the most significant and influential tracks on the record. In many cases, you get to hear separated tracks, with band members pointing out the specific contributions of each of the other band members. But when you hear the end product, the music weaves together with such fluidity that the ownership of specific contributions is blurred in favor of the whole. This is the way we work. Our motivation is the prize of the end product. The built space. Each of us contributing our own talents and experience to the project in an effort to make the end result the best it can be.

In my opinion, (and I'm sure others will disagree with me) the greatest band that ever lived is Kansas. Their music and lyrics challenged the listener to think about what music (or more specifically, rock music) should be. The band's musical talents were fantastic, the lyrics were thought-provoking and intellectual, and the end result was a layering of instruments, vocals, rhythm and transcendent expression. The music was art, not commodity. And the art was collaborative. The liner notes of most Kansas albums, especially the early ones, would always end with "We are Kansas. Kansas is a band." Plain and simple.

Architecture is a bit different that pure art, I suppose, because it has to solve problems. It is not willful expression, but rather a response to problems that need to be solved. But the need for collaboration in order to make the best solutions is similar. The creative process of layering, critiquing, pushing, pulling, challenging and working together to make it the best it can be is the same. (Remind me sometime and I'll share my comparisons to George Lucas' work on the Star Wars films.)

We've recently added another person to our studio. That brings our total staff to seven, not counting the three part-time interns that are currently helping us with some model building duties. Our design team is incredibly talented. We are admittedly young, but older than Def Leppard when they recorded Hysteria. We continue to pursue excellence in our work and consistently discuss what would make our work even better. That's why we've been working so hard lately.

We are DWa. DWa is a practice.