The Emory, Morris Adjmi Architects,
​Ladies Mile, New York.

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Francesco Borromini,
​Rome, Italy.

Hugh Ferriss Rendering, 1930.

Autodesk Headquarters, USA. 

The times when I feel most present, is not when I'm doing work. Nor when I am "partying", or on vacation.
​​Those things, in the grand scheme, don't really much contribute to my core "memories" or "knowledge". 

The times I feel most present is in all of those in-between moments, when I am passing through a space, a city, a place. When your mind wanders a site and a landscape. When you are all at once disconnected from everything else, but feeling the joy of being present in a scene -- the scene of "life". And everything feels ​real.

This is riding the tram in Hong Kong, or strolling through the wide avenues of the Chicago Loop, or resting under a leafy Boston park. This is the grand "commute", in a world before Covid, where you shuffle from place-to-place, when you feel "connected" to the city, going to-and-fro. This is the urban experience.

This is the breathtaking wideness of a Tennessee lake, or the majestic White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the infinite length of the Hudson River when you look North from Manhattan. This is the panoramic rolling hills of Ithaca, looking from the top of Libe Slope, where possibilities and potential feel endless in your early 20's. This is the majestic landscape. 

These are the pure interactions with space and society, which happen, not when you singularly focus on them, but in moments of passing, which builds one after another, in a daily cycle of passing time, in changing light, with people close to you and apart.

When Covid hit, and the world entered lockdown --- I felt like I lost all of this. And space, my once and forever refuge, was wrapped and warped by fear. So I explored virtual space -- hence all of my previous posts about software engineering...

But my first love will always be this experience of spatial atmosphere -- this idea of distilling it to its very essence, of noticing all those little details, of observing the environment and then finding ways to manifest it again with drawing and buildings and apps.

I used to think that my architectural obsession came from the shock of transitioning from a dense city to living in the suburbs. That was definitely a huge influence, but it goes back to something deeper. It was just about noticing the details. 

To me architecture, was never really about creating something "new" from my own head. No, I am not that smart and creative to do that. Architecture was always about extracting from the site, from the time, and reflecting those essences back into the project. It is really all about observing a site, a program, or a phenomenon closely, and then really refining those insights into tangible forms, thoughtfully and with as much grace as possible.

It is not about the materials, although it is important.
It is not about the data, although that helps.
It is not about the visual spectacle, b/c that is only fashion.
​It is not about composition, b/c that is all about personal taste and limiting. 

It is how it relates to what is already there, and how it feels as an idea.​​
​And then, how you execute it. 

Where architecture loses me is when you can sense that it wasn't crafted well, or that it imposes itself to you. That it reads only at a certain level of resolution, rather than "lossless". That it doesn't know what it wants to be and tries to be everything at once. When you can sense that during the early design stages, the designers themselves couldn't really imagine or reconcile it in reality, but they built it anyways, because "who cares". 

Where software loses me is when it has too many opinions -- when it lets you know "I know best, you are wrong", and at some level it disregards the user reality. When it forgets what is important, and prioritizes a series of minor details instead of the big picture. It is a tool to organize information, clearly and effectively. Period.

Embrace the reality of the situation, place, and prompt, and the design will take care of itself. 

Not many places feel like home, to me. And home itself a strange concept -- is it the place you grew up, or where you are currently living? Is it where your family is? Home is what you make of it. I am most comfortable exploring the streets of Hong Kong, or hanging out in Revere Beach. But living in New York, or even driving around suburban Missouri? Not so much. For those other places, I always feel like there's a timestamp, a yearly contract that I have to renew consistently, otherwise it expires. Somehow, they feel alienating, unless you are "fully assimilated" to their unique lifestyles.  

Boston is a very contradictory place. It is a famous major American city, yet it feels like a small Northeastern college town, more culturally and regionally aligned with Burlington, VT or Portland, ME. There is this constant feeling that, because of its historic and educational influence, it has this very outsized global footprint, for such a small and usually lowkey population. It's not physically where the "center of global action" is, but you can't help but think that some of the people who live and work there RUN the global action. Somehow, I learned to both like and dislike the town, which can't seem to decide whether it wants to be "big" or "small".

I started to think, maybe the reason I like the place so much is because I have a sense of spatial community there. I have:

• a favorite bar (Downeast Cider Brewery)
• a favorite lowkey restaurant (Glenville Stops)
• a favorite donut shop (Union Square)
• a favorite fancy restaurant (Tasting Counter)
• a favorite dance community (Dance Complex)
• a favorite Chinatown takeout spot (Dumpling Cafe)

Maybe, I have my neighborhood spots because I used to have a reason to explore neighborhoods (when I was in a relationship). I had tried to do something similar in New York, but it never quite worked out. The city was just so LARGE that everything worked based on "tiers of income". Fancy bars come and go, and distinctly divided by class and social group (K-town? Chelsea? What do they really mean? Does it really matter, and are places really that unique there?). Fancy restaurants from "restaurant week" felt like I was just eating in a Disneyland, being "judged" by the servers and waitstaff, and how "good" a meal is was completely based on the price of food. I didn't like Dough, or Doughnut Factory donuts quite as much (and donuts USED to be important to me, before those places turned me off to them). I didn't find a dance studio that I liked, because it was either too high-end, catering to professionals, or I didn't find a good connection to the instructor. And, for Asian food, I mostly just gravitated towards Pho and Ramen places, because well, the regular Chinese places were either always packed with tourists, or it was a very serious "sit down" affair. 

Maybe a sense of "neighborhood" I found in Boston comes from its small size ~ there just AREN'T that many choices, so you will automatically find the best places. Or, maybe I didn't spend enough time in New York to find similar hangout spots, or I didn't find a community to share those places with. And, so I wonder if one's sense of belonging to a community is directly tied to how many places in the city you feel comfortable at, outside of your home and place of work. Because the places you go forms your day-to-day universe. 

In New York, I had:

• A favorite running trail (Hudson River Parkway)
• A favorite pasta spot (Underground Mall at Columbus Circle)
• A favorite kayaking Boathouse (MCBH)
• A favorite taco place (Los Mariscos)
• A favorite ice cream place (Milk Bar​)

I had many conversations over the past two weeks, and I need some time alone to take in all the information I received. As quarantine comes to a close, and life goes back to normal, I have to find a proper direction. Where is architecture going? What is my place in it? And how can I best influence how design is built, created, and experienced? These are the questions I've been wrestling with since Cornell, and I've never really let go of my search for an authentic, creative voice. As I look deeper into all these potential avenues of exploration, it always comes back to my preferences -- what do I want to do? Where do I think I can grow as a person?

Architecture as an End
When I first began my journey, back in 2009 at MFAA, I saw architecture as an end of itself - the highest form of visual and sculptural art, where you, as a creator, can create immersive spatial experiences, an "art" which you can encounter day-to-day, and which becomes a backdrop to the theater of life. From this point of view, and through school, design was really a solo, creative, and encompassing act, in which our end goal was to define and learn a creative process, and where design is less about individual tastes, and more about defining the outcome of a analytical and intuitive design exploration. In the same confines of school, we can isolate architecture as a distinct field, and study it fully like a scientist researching a specimen. My classmates and I went on a dizzying global tour, sampling all the strange histories and phenomena of different cultures, and how they relate to the built environment. This world of "play", in the safe confines of campus, meant that Renaissance architecture in Italy can be discussed in the same breath as postwar metabolism in Japan, and sustainable buildings can find common ground with postindustrial cities and robotic technology. By the time I entered my last year of B.Arch, I felt all at once more knowledgeable about the subject as an academic field, and simultaneously 100% less sure of what and where to go next, and how in the world a building actually gets built. I knew that my thoughts tend to run ahead of my actions (if you can't tell by now), and the best thing to do is to get professional experience. 

Architecture as a Means
In practice, the "turning point" for young designers come, when they realize that architecture works in service of all other sectors and professions of society, and architecture is essentially a service industry dedicated to project management. For clients, the questions are, and will always remain -- how does this building help fulfill my financial, social, and personal goals, and can you get it built? From concept design to construction administration, the job of the architect is to shepherd the project vision from scratch notes and excel sheets into a fully realized building; the goal is to maintain aesthetic intent. The scope of responsibilities for a project team can be immense, from site visits to client meetings, bid selections to punch-listing, consultant coordination to city approval processes. On a day-to-day basis, an architect works with a whole host of characters, from structural engineers to GCs, running notes from one stakeholder group to another, just trying to make sure that ever teammate is informed of the project progress. In the reality of the AEC field, architectural design, while important, may only take up 5-10% of the entire project's attention, while the meat of the job is to communicate the vague reality of a building to owners and stakeholders, through renderings, measured drawings, 3D models, and project specifications. Practically speaking, architecture is used to service the client's specific goals and agenda (usually about money or status), and not one's own (or society's). The expertise, mastery, and beauty of the field comes, when you can do this, while still executing something of aesthetic value (i.e. you should really enjoy drafting).

Beyond Architecture
Here is where we take a slight detour -- understanding that the field is a team sport, which position do you play? And, moreover, as time and technology continually changes the rules of the game, how do you stay relevant in the sport? Do you still want to play this game, or do you want to play another? These are questions that school and work cannot answer for you. You have to go out and find it for yourself, which is frightening and exhilarating all at once. You may decide that your true talents lie in project management, and you want to extricate yourself of all drafting responsibilities (which it seems, universally and strangely, nobody really ever, ever, ever, ever wants to do, and would rather outsource immediately, and this seems completely hypocritical to me). Or, you are sick and tired of not being in control of the design vision and prompt, and so you become a property developer, or a city planner. Perhaps you find the whole game a bit ancient and in need of digital transformation, so you go headlong into design technology, and perfecting BIM workflows and processes. Or, you leave all together, taking that design and management knowledge you learned to another adjacent field, like building the next Alexa for Amazon, or designing the next great running shoe, crafting the perfect UI for workplace management software, or coming up with the next great consumer startup. You can do anything, when architecture is no longer an end or a means --- except that you are definitely, 100%, no longer making buildings. 

What Architecture is For
I went into this field because I liked to draw, and I liked to communicate through my drawings. I liked the idea of creating spaces and experiences. I liked the idea that my services could make someone happy, and make an impact on a place. I liked the idea of working with both numbers and texts, explaining my design process with geometry, figures, code, and prose. I liked that architecture gave me a connection back to metropolitan Hong Kong, my hometown, when my family immigrated to suburban Missouri so many years ago. I liked that I could make sense of the world through this lens, and mediate between the needs of the owner and the needs of the community, or the global development economy and the local, street-level politics of cities. I liked researching strange quirky ideas, like poche and boat trusses, and study history endlessly. The question now is, am I suitable for the nature of the job still, or can I find all these things and more, in software design? 

There is no one "right" way to live your life. The biggest lie that we seem to tell ourselves, is that we prefer, or believe in, one ideology over another --- the value of money, the value of recognition, the value of service, or the value of institutions. These are just the varieties of things that we can choose to prioritize over others. It does not mean one is right or wrong. Likewise it does not make you better or worse than others. As Joe Biden's mother used to tell him, "No one is better than you, and you are no better than anyone else." That is a very profound and insightful statement, because it cuts both ways: you must both be humble about your success, but confident enough to stand on your own two feet. 

Some folks I meet, they work well within the realm of groups and institutions. They understand the levers of power, and they know who to talk to, and how to follow the rules and ultimately, super-cede and subsume their self-interests with the interests of the group. For doing so, they are greatly rewarded by the "systems" they subscribe to. These are my friends who find safety and comfort in the halls of government, or in the branches of the military, or in professional organizations and corporations. Specifically, it is not that they are more collaborative than normal people, or that ​they are proven leaders. No, it simply shows that they like working within clear rules and guidelines, with clear incentives and goals. They are just as creative, or just as fun-loving, as anyone else. I believe that deep down, this type of character believes the world is unstable and chaotic, and that in institutions they can find a semblance of order. When they pay their dues, these institutions ultimately reward and allow them to amplify their own goals and agendas. They learn that institutions use them, but they also use the institutions back. And so, in these environments they thrive. They are essential to functioning of our societies and communities.

I have also come across a second group of people, who I call "entrepreneurial salespeople". These are the folks who build things, who thrive from turning nothing into something​. Some of these are the great "builders and innovators" that our current society idolizes, like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk (or Bjarke Ingels), but others are also the risk-takers and small-time hustlers that you never hear about. These individuals eschew tradition -- rules and institutions are stepping stones, which only slow them down -- for they are all about person-to-person interactions, and making the sale, or making something thought to be impossible actually happen. They thrive on ambiguity and uncharted territory, and I liken them to gold prospectors or jungle explorers. Yes, for them as well, the world is a dangerous place, but it is also exciting and full of opportunities. The greatest power that they have is their own relentless drive and spirit, and they "go big or go home". They have their own full confidence to build new worlds and make new connections, and they build the visions that people want to follow. Yes ~ if they fail, they usually fail really hard. But then they climb right back. These brave folks are what drives a dynamic economy -- the best and most positive aspects of capitalism. They connect and spearhead the institutions of the first group. 

The third group of people are the craftspeople, who sincerely believe in the value of their own mastery and their passion. These are the folks who meditate, who pour years and decades of energy into a goal or a passion, whether it is music, athletics, carpentry, religion, or even software programming. Life is all about the dedicated energy you have towards a craft, and they value constant self-improvement and perfection. For these folks, there is often a strict separation between external and internal life. Likewise, they think: the outside world is a dangerous and chaotic place, so therefore I must cultivate a mastery, an inner garden of joy and intensity to find meaning and stand on my own. Folks in this third group are not necessarily bad at collaboration and teamwork - they just tend to compartmentalize those efforts towards their "external" side, and keep their genuine identity to their "inner" self. As much as these folks tend to be "silent", or just "minding their own business", they can be fiercely independent, and without them society will not have beautiful things or technology advancements. You respect them, as Bill Forsythe said, for their quality of attention. 

I duly recognize that these group distinctions are also not clear -- oftentimes, you may fall into one "mindset" during some time in your life, only to move towards another during another time. You may live in all three mindsets in the course of a single day -- 1) supporting your institution on your job (team harmony), 2) making pottery after work (craft and mastery), and 3) selling your pottery as a side business at night (entrepreneurial spirit). But I want to opine that, for some people, certain mindsets take priority over others. And observing which mindset you tend to fall under can be essential to understanding yourself, and what makes you happy.