Derek Leith Kaplan - Architecture/Design/Visual Arts
Personal History Time/Geography
“The Poverty of the Stimulus”
B.A. Philosophy
Edmonton, AB
Centralia, WA
Amsterdam Utrecht
Vancouver, BC Seattle, WA
Rocky Harbor, NF Montreal, QC Loring, ME Minneapolis, MN Owatonna, MN
Halifax, NS
Toronto, ON New York, NY
Burning Man, NV
St. Louis, MO
San Francisco, CA Central AR
Los Angeles, CA Phoenix, AZ
New Orleans, LA
= Places lived in or visited
Paris
2 weeks 3 weeks Group Instructor - UCA Honors Program
Teaching English
Painting Dipl.
Masters of Architecture
Peter Cardew Architects
3 weeks Bing Thom Architects
3 months
1 week U of A GEC Architecture
Vienna
Volos Patmos
Rasht Lemba, Republic of Cyprus
Nagano Tehran Hiroshima
Esfahan
Yazd
Kyoto/ Osaka
Tokyo Nagoya
Shiraz Tokashiki Is.
Naha, Okinawa
Š NASA visibleearth.nasa.gov
Personal History
Derek Leith Kaplan
dereklkaplan@yahoo.com
Education
Design/Competition/Research Awards
2001 – 2004 Masters of Architecture: Uni of British Columbia; Vancouver, Canada Chris MacDonald, Patricia Patkau, Martin Lewis, Oliver Neumann
2011-2012
2000 – 2001
Diploma, Painting: Cyprus College of Art; Lemba, Republic of Cyprus
1992 - 1997
Bachelor of Arts (hons), Philosophy: Uni of Central Arkansas; Conway, USA
Stass Paraskos
Dr. Norbert Schedler, Dr. Rick Scott, Dr. Charles Harvey
Work Experience
Jan 2012 - Present
GEC Architecture
Sept 2011 - Inactive
Sessional, University of Alberta
Jan 2008 - July 2011
Bing Thom Architects; Vancouver, Canada
Feb 2005 - Dec 2007
Peter Cardew Architects; Vancouver, Canada
Sept 2006 - Dec 2007 Part-time Instructor, Royal Oak College of Design; Vancouver, Canada (Small private design school that has since closed)
Fall 2004
Graduate Assistant: Urban Structure and Form, UBC School of Architecture
Summer 2004
Student Intern: MacDonald + Palmer Studio; Vancouver, Canada
2003 - 2004
Graduate Assistant: Design Media I & II, UBC School of Architecture
1999 - 2000
Lance Berelowitz
Chris MacDonald
John Bass, Oliver Neumann
English Instructor: Aeon Corp; Nagoya, Japan
Research/design concept commission Arts Channel, Greenest City Conversations Project @ UBC Project Lead, John Robinson
Mar 2012 Commission Exhibition: A Point Subtracted from the World, CIRS Building @ UBC http://apointsubtracted.blogspot.com/ Wntr 2007 Just Jerusalem Competition Submission - Just Jerusalem 2050 Project web.mit.edu/cis/jerusalem2050/competition.html Spr 2006 2006 Steedman Fellowship International Design Competition Honorable Mention www.steedmancompetition.org/2006_Winners/ Art Awards/Exhibitions Sum 1997
Graphics Prize; 32nd Annual Central South Art Exhibition; Tennessee Arts League, Nashville, TN. 10 state show; estimated 800 entries, accepted 75
Group exhibition; Apocalypse Gallery, Nicosia, Republic of Cyprus
Apr 2001
Academic Dec 1997 Graduated with Distinction and minor in Honors Interdisciplinary Studies UCA Honors College. Dec 1997 Summa Cum Laude; honors thesis sumbitted to UCA Honors College; 10th awarded in its (then) eighteen-year history.
Fall 1996
Group presentation; National Collegiate Honors Conference; San Francisco
Publication
Career Distribution
Winter 2011 Safavid Surfaces and Parametricism Special Feature on Archinect.com http://archinect.com/features/article/29553480/safavid-surfaces-and-parametricism
Concept Design 30% Schematic Design 25% Design Development 25% Contruction Documentation 20% Contract Administration 0%
Apr 2012
Safavid Surfaces and Parametricism (translated to Farsi) April edition of Memari Hamshahri (a prominent Iranian architecture publication)
Winter 2010 Photographer/producer, www.archinect.com feature http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=100791_0_23_0_M Fall 2009
Invited Guest Editor: www.archinect.com Invited Op/Ed Contributor: www.architect.com
Apr 1997
“Das Unterhaar,� prose poem in Discourse, Volume 3, April 1997 published by the University of San Francisco
Online http://apointsubtracted.blogspot.com/ http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/longest-gh-definition-to http://archinect.com/people/cover/13473220/derek-kaplan http://www.steedmancompetition.com/2006_Winners/ http://envisioningpeace.org/visions/hostage-host
Software Rhino fluent Grasshopper3D advanced Revit rusty, but was advanced 3DSmax (Mental Ray) advanced (rendering only) Sketchup fluent Maxwell Render advanced Sculptris intermediate Autocad advanced Vectorworks rusty, but was fluent Formz rusty, but was fluent InDesign advanced Illustrator advanced Photoshop fluent
Note that all graphics/drawings shown on the following pages were produced by me unless otherwise noted. Design role is as indicated.
Professional Work Arena Stage Theater - Washington DC Bing Thom Architects Complex project involving renovation of two existing theaters, addition of a third experimental theater, redevelopment of the site to accomodate support spaces, all wrapped with a glass facade and housed under an iconic roof. My involvment ranged from 3D modeling, diagramming, presentation renderings, generating design development options, and geometrically complex details.
Epcor Performing Arts Center Bing Thom Architects The concept for this project involved demolition, renovation, and new construction resulting in 8 performing arts venues in one city block. My involvement included concept development, diagramming, and visualizations for final deliverables.
Professional Work SAIT Parkade Bing Thom Architects Phase 1 of a masterplan to re-invent the SAIT campus, this parkade inserted below the main quad includes an atrium that links the parking levels to grade with a gestural skylight. This provides a bright exit to orient circulation from within the parkade, while also providing a grand entry to campus. In addition to general DD and CD, my involvement included presentation drawings, analytical diagrams, design development alternatives and options, problem solving, and construction documentation of the geometrically complex features of the design.
Professional Work
Shijiazhuang Performing Arts Center Bing Thom Architects Renderings for a competition in China for a three theatre performing arts complex, which BTA ultimately won.
Surrey City Hall and Performing Arts Complex Bing Thom Architects Responsible for design visualization, from 3D modeling to rendering, with minimal input into the design itself.
Professional Work Surrey Central Library Bing Thom Architects I was intimately involved with this project from earliest concept explorations and programming through schematic design; after which I was involved intermittently through DD and CD, primarily to help the production team with the geometry of the project and Revit.
Sample Drawings for a report detailing my work exploring alternative strategies for how to reconcile the geometry of the west facade of the building with the facets of the glazing system.
Professional Work Perched Residence Peter Cardew Architects The client lived in an early Arthur Erikson house that had been modified through successive renovations, the sum total remaining inadequate. The objective was a complete restart, capitalizing on untapped potential of the highly topographical waterfront site, the house perched 100’ above the shoreline. The client ephasized his desire for the house to make an impression when viewed from the water. In addition to all project documentation and modeling, during code review I re-interpreted a clause in the municipal Building Code reguarding building height that allowed us to project 1/3rd of front building face out over the cliff edge (later grudgingly confirmed by the city), as shown below.
westmap.westvancouver.ca/westmapviewer
Design option I proposed to weave structure, massing, and landscaping into a unified gesture.
Hybrid Digital/Hand Fabricated Model Peter Cardew Architects I oversaw the production of this model from beginning to end. The first step was translating design drawings into a digital model, which was then dissected into the pieces that would be needed for the physical model. Comprehensive digital documentation was then prepared for a local model shop that would produce the individual pieces, mostly by laser cutting. Once I had received all the pieces, they were assembled, fitted, tuned, and finished by hand. Only the brasswork was handed off to a coworker.
Professional Work Small House Peter Cardew Architects Sample pages from a comprehensive set of construction drawings for a small single family house on a very difficult site-- steeply sloped and with restricted access from street level. I was solely responsible for the contents of the set, while supervised by Peter Cardew. I produced every drawing, as well as detailing assemblies and connections, problem solving, sourcing hardware, budgeting, meetings with engineers, contractors, etc.
Campus Administration Building Entry Redesign GEC Architecture As part of a building masterplan for the administration building of a Canadian university, the entry was identified as inadequate for the purposes of a primary campus entry point frequently used by university VIP’s. I was asked to develop an alternate design of the entry that would address a host of shortcomings of its current state.
Current state of the entry
Proposed - Main approach
Proposed - Aerial
Professional Work Invited University Residence Competition GEC Architecture GEC was shortlisted (1 of 3) for a unique, high-profile university residence competition. I was one of the lead designers on the project, designing the residential blocks, the residential units, and the dining hall, with input on a range of other aspects. GEC won the competition.
Rendering by third party
Each residential unit contains a window seat / reading nook that in aggregate effectively are the facade of the residential blocks facing away from the courtyard, as shown in the section above. The building uses a single-loaded corridor facing into the courtyard as a means of activating the courtyard beyond the exterior ground plane and reinforcing the connectivity of the residential community.
Professional Work South East to West LRT GEC Architecture GEC was responsible for the design of various architectural elements of Edmonton’s Southeast-to-West LRT line during the Preliminary Engineering phase of the project. I was one of the lead architectural designers on the $250m Operations and Maintenance Facility (OMF) for the SEtoW line. Due to the intensely technical nature of the project, the design process involved consultations with a range of engineering disciplines. After the PE phase of the work was complete, and the City made the decision to pursue a Public-Private Partnership (P3), I was one of GEC’s leads on the scope of work tasked with translating our PE design work into a format compatible with the Design-Build-Operate-Maintain-Finance P3 contract intended for this project..
Early design concept for the OMF, capitalizing on recent developments in on-site digitally controlled roll-forming of standing-seam metal cladding, allowing for the taper and/or curvature of a standing-seam extrusion to be customized to follow a digital model of the surface.
Corian Feature Stair Sketch GEC Architecture As part of the interior renovation of a campus building, I explored a feature stair design intended to utilize developing techniques of thermo-forming Corian to digitally fabricated molds as a means of producing treads mounted to a custom steel frame. A different path was taken before the frame and rail were developed.
Exploratory Work A Point Subtracted from the World Design Concept Project Commission
Greenest City Conversations Project, Art Channel University of British Columbia Project Lead, John Robinson Primary Researcher, David Maggs
A Proposal for Contemporary Rock-Cut Architecture
http://apointsubtracted.blogspot.ca/ This is an ongoing project that began from an $10,000 project commission to explore ways that a single work of architecture could contribute to the long-term goals of sustainability. The project was completely open-ended, by design avoiding constraints on the four commissioned works.
Don McKay – poetry – Don is a member of the Order of Canada for his contribution to Literary Arts, winner of the Griffin Prize for Poetry and the Governor General’s Award, and is widely considered one of Canada’s premiere literary talents.
The “Greenest Cities Conversations Project” is a research initiative based at the University of British Columbia, and led by Dr. John Robinson. The GCCP is divided into channels; one of these channels is the arts channel which commissioned 4 works as part of its research exploring possible relationships between environmentalism and the arts that avoid the standard approach of enlisting art as a vehicle for environmental messaging. My work constituted the “visual arts” commission, the other 3 were:
Kevin Kerr – theatre – Kevin is a Governor General’s Award winning playwright and artistic director of The Electric Company Theatre, an internationally acclaimed group specializing in devised theatre, and incorporating high-tech media into live performance. Giorgio Magnanensi – music composition – Giorgio is Director of Vancouver New Music and acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic. The VSO is one of Canada’s premiere professional music ensembles.
The Commissioning Document of the four art commissions set the playing field for the works. The issues to be explored, as authored by primary researcher David Maggs, are set out in a wide-ranging theoretical exploration of our specific historical moment -- a moment in which, for the first time, human civilization has identified self-generated threats to its own future, combined with a recognition that there may be enough lead time to make possible changing course through self-intervention in our own patterns. Within this context of increasing awareness of these threats and the formative stages of our response, the focus here is specifically on art: if there is a role to be played by it, and if so what it is.
In relation to time, the momentum of contemporary architecture is toward compressing it: Faster production, of increasingly temporary constructions, responding to ever more fleeting conditions within an urban kaleidoscope. The assumed goal of architectural production is to keep up with a perceived acceleration of cultural transformation -- respond to, accommodate, and facilitate the quickening cycles of dissipation and emergence of the culture around it. Implicitly or explicitly, this is the contemporary modus operandi – with responses ranging from design that favors timely decoration, or kinetic facades, programmable LED’s, digital projection and large screens, to simply grounding the design process in planned obsolescence. The consequence of this direction is not simply a practical matter of shorter building life cycles – it inverts what historically has been a constant core virtue of what architectural production offers: longevity – of all that humans make, architecture set in place the farthest extension into the future.
The current proposal is oriented in the opposite direction: toward extreme longevity, and the questions about our relationship to the future that it entails. The medium for doing so is through a current day re-visiting of a long dormant form of architecture: rock-cut architecture. Few offerings from the history of architecture could be more self-evidently irrelevant to contemporary architectural practice than rock-cut architecture. This irrelevance is not simply the result of production logistics that make it impractical – it is that the modern lifeworld as currently configured simply has nothing to be expressed through this form of architecture: a raw material left in situ tediously sculpted into something that will last almost forever. Rock-cut architecture is fundamentally antithetical to the pathological shortsightedness of the day. This is precisely what makes it so essentially relevant. Its fundamental otherness within our myopic period of history is its virtue. Speaking purely in logistical terms, rock-cut architecture presents unique test cases for a variety of state-of-theart technologies. The process, as outlined in the HOW: Production Concept, is one-to-one scale subtractive digital fabrication, in which the raw material used is an in-situ stone mass. The concept in summary: a small army of mobile CNC robots with stonecutting capability, coordinated through a high-accuracy local positioning system, collectively carving an in situ stone mass according to a highly articulated parametric digital model. Aside from the R&D required with the technologies just described, there is a more fundamental epistemological puzzle: how much can we know about an in situ rock mass through non-destructive means? This is a key piece of the research that extends to the limits of current geological engineering, only explored at a cursory level so far, as described in the IF/WHEN: Structural Analysis section. There will inevitably be limits to the accuracy possible for the data gathered about the stone mass, consequently the model will need to be parametrically robust to adapt to the changing conditions as information increases about the stone mass through controlled subtraction. As a friend of mine put it: CNC a mountain.
Exploratory Work The Violence of Mistaken Silence (abbreviated) 2006 Steedman Fellowship International Design Competition
Mirror Panels
Honorable Mention www.steedmancompetition.com/index.lasso?pgID=16 Competition Brief: Design an urban space that would induce a meaningful encounter with nature. They define this as facilitating a dialog with nature; I recast it as facilitating listening to the silence of nature. Vancouver
Street-level Entry
After decending through the ramps, eyes adjusted to dim lighting, ears adjusted to a quiet interior, one exits the city to a silent space outside -- a silence accentuated by the juxtaposition of the tree with the crackles and pops of the burning wood in the fire pit. And this moment of encounter, in this space, repeats itself over the horizon.
One tree, “Golden Spruce� decendent
Unfolded Section: Entry Sequence as Preparation for Silence 1: Entry 2: Walkway becomes covered, but open on one side. 4: Walkway fully enclosed on all sides.
3: Walkway starts becoming enclosed on two sides. 5: Ceiling height begins compressing.
Diminishing natural light and fading sounds of the city Beyong this point, the quiet and the darkness become pronounced
The interior of the space forms a very slightly tapered four-sided kaliedoscope. The reflections in this rendering are not faked -- this is actually the array of repetitions that would occur in the space. This is an unconventional rendering in that there are no volumes or shading. It is effectively a drawing composed of tonally shaded two dimensional surfaces positioned in 3D space, with light rendering used only to model the reflections. Final touches in Photoshop.
Key points to imaginatively reconstruct: The movement of clouds across the sky above the chamber, repeated to infinity in the kaliedoscopic reflections. The flickering light cast on the tree by the fire pit, seen from all angles through the repetitions, extending to the horizon.
Exploratory Work Hearing Aid Atrium Installation / Furniture This design began as an entry for a digital fabrication competition (Tex-Fab). The brief called for a digitally fabricated installation for the atrium of one of Tex-Fab’s exhibition spaces. This set maximum dimensions, however the materials and fabrication process were left open. It is conceived as a sculptural piece of furniture that is entered, offering a more secluded pocket for conversations within the larger openness of the atrium. Seating perches around the entry allows for waiting, and the occassional chance rendezvous. The budget was fixed at $10,000 USD for the competition winner to proceed with fabrication and installation. Through consulations it became clear the difficulty of estimating the project cost required by my fabrication concept, specifically an estimate of the milling time. This project and others have highlighted for me the difficulty of projecting the expense of digital fabrication, which I have seen firsthand become a hinderance to adoption within a professional context. Accurate costing is a major hurdle that needs to be addressed if digital fabrication is to become integrated into the profession. Due to concerns over the feasibility of the concept within the fixed project budget, I never submitted the design to the competition.
Hearing Aid Fabrication Concept Below is an indicative section of the fabrication concept of the installation, showing the vertically-aligned mechanical fastening points between different members through staggered overlaps. The ribs are intended to be CNC cut. The inside faces are simple extrusion cuts, whereas the outer face is contoured, requiring either a complex multi-stage tool path, or at 5-axis machine. The mechanical fastening points are offset such that building from the bottom up would be a simple process, where the connection points of lower coursings do not conflict with the working layer. Layers were intended to be laminated with adhesive, with the mechanical fastening used to control positioning. One of the tests of this fabrication sample was how much offset would be required for the inside face, due to the significant sloping of the design face. As indicated, the amount of offset in this sample is insufficient.
Mechanical fastening tab
Inside face insufficiently offset
Contoured face
Exploratory Work Optical Studies of Reflection as Surface Articulation Rendering engines such as Maxwell Render have crossed a threshold where they longer model the effects of light -- they simulate the physical behavior of light. This opens new lines of design inquiry that capitalize on the complex interactions of light. As an extreme example: kaliedoscopic interior reflections. Presupposing the possibility of using telescope-grade active optics for the reflective surfaces, these explorations look at various spatial configurations, floor and roof articulations, and surface geometries -- simply to play around with the range of possible effects for an interior space.
Just Jerusalem Competition Entry envisioningpeace.org/visions/hostage-host The competition was a broad invitation for ideas of intervention (architecture, infrastructure, social, etc) that could contribute in some way to peace between Israel and the Palestinian territories. My proposal involved a hypothetical large-scale reconfiguration of water infrastructure that would necessitate that each side accomodate the other, and obviate the option of violence from either side, by using critical vulnerability as a balancing mechanism of the power dynamic between the two. The project will be published in Onsite Review, forthcoming issue.
FEEDBACK SPACE T1
T2
T3, T4, etc.
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equilibrium
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POSITIVE FEEDBACK T1
T2
T3 equilibrium
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T1
T2
T3 +
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equilibrium
NEGATIVE FEEDBACK
equilibrium
www.btselem.org
Interventions of balancing mechanism T1
T2
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T3
T4
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Exploratory Work Parametric Design Sample This Grasshopper3D definition was produced as part of a collaboration. It defines the profile geometry of a solar collector as expressed in a patent from 1977. The reason the geometry described in the patent makes a great GH puzzle is that the foundation that the rest of the geometry depends on is variable. The patent doesn’t define a specific geometry so much as a set of (clever) geometric relationships. The result is a candidate for the “longest Grasshopper definition to define a single line.” In brief summary, each reflector side has two parts: A) the lowest portion of the trough which is a section of a circle involute (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involute); and B) the upper portion which is defined by a “shadow line” of variable angle. This angle is a choice made by the maker, which determines the geometry of section B of the reflector. The curvature is defined such that using this angle as the angle of incidence, the angle of reflection is always a tangent of the circular collector. This defines the limiting angle of incoming light, so that any light arriving by a steeper angle either hits the body of the collector or is captured by the reflector and returned to the collector by some number of reflections, depending on the angle. The transition point between the two, depends on the angle of the shadow line. http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/longest-gh-definition-to
Safavid Surfaces and Parametricism This essay was the result of research I did while visiting the Sheik Lotfallah Mosque in Esfahan, Iran. All the content, both graphics and text, were produced by me. It was originally published as a Special Feature on Archinect.com: archinect.com/features/article/29553480/ safavid-surfaces-and-parametricism It was subsequently translated into Farsi and published in a leading Iranian architecture magazine, Memari Hamshahri. A sample spread from that publication is shown to the right.
Exploratory Work Visual Composition - Painting/Drawing
An Arbitrarily Chosen Moment During an Inquiry into Unabridged Detail, #3
An Arbitrarily Chosen Moment During an Inquiry into Unabridged Detail, #4
evaporated ink, 1998
0.3mm mech. pencil, 1998
A Cubist Fluid, 0.3mm mech. pencil, 1999
An Elusive Opening, oil, 2001
Suit Descending a Staircase, oil/ink, 2005
Exploratory Work Visual Composition - Painting/Drawing
Cartesian Da Vinci Stain, original scan laser print transfer/pen/gesso, 2006
Cartesian Da Vinci Stain, scan/Vectorworks/Photoshop, 2006
Unfinished, spackle & vine charcoal, 2008
Exploratory Work Visual Composition - Painting/Drawing
Grid Seduced by Turbulence, FormZ/Vectorworks/Photoshop, 2005
The Categories of Being Blended, Tempera 2013
The Categories of Being Blended, detail under a blacklight
Exploratory Work
In Dialogue with Media Introduction
Photoshop collage: drawings by M.C. Escher and Howard Bartner
This inquiry begins not with the creative process itself, but with our conceptualization of it. Historically, this conceptualization has had three constituent parts: 1) the intention, here conceived minimally as the aspect of the creative process that would not exist without the mind of the creator, 2) the medium itself, and by extension the properties, characteristics, and tendencies of these media, physical or digital, 3) to borrow the Greek term, the various techné, or means and methods of production, that unite 1 and 2 in a temporal process. If we accept these three components as a starting point, the focus becomes: how have we understood the relationships between them -- is one foundational and the others dependent; are they hierarchical, sequential, reciprocal, recursive, etc?
matter for the creator’s medium. The artist is conceived as having a fully-formed intention rendered in their imagination, which they then impart to an imperfect medium in a process of minimizing the inevitable compromises. Due to the specific properties of any given medium, an artist’s efforts to export their will into the medium will always and forever be frustrated by the deviations and imperfections introduced along the way by the medium itself. The measure of an artist’s ability, the sophistication of their techné, is measured by their capacity to circumvent the intrusions of the medium into their efforts to record the pure state of their intentions. It is a one-directional process, from the artist to the medium, with techné effectively being a means of minimzing the damage done during delivery as intention is transfered to medium.
Our unspoken model of these relationships within the creative process is shaped by latent historical meta-narratives, traceable to at least ancient Greece. Though Aristotelean theory of causation is largely modeled on the creative process, we have to go one step further back, to Plato’s theory of forms (eidos) and matter (ousia) to find the theoretical root of our current concept of the creative process. For Plato, the essence of every object is contained in a metaphysical, ideal form, completely independent of the material world. For every type of object, there is an idealized form that is the essence of that type. The objects that populate our world are degenerate copies of these forms— degenerate due to the limits and deficiencies of matter itself. Matter is the primordial goo that acquires order and sense through its subordinate relation to these ideal forms, however, the properties of matter always introduce deviations and imperfections, falling far short of a pure expression of the form.
Here we find one of the key dichotomies with which we will be concerning ourselves: the inside and outside (of consciousness), interiority and exteriority. First is intention, which can only be located in consciousness; then the material medium, which can only be located in the external, physical world. There is an assumed safety in stating that, subtracting the intention, the medium would never have sense; but that subtracting the medium, the intention would remain intact. The first step here will be to threaten that safety.
By quite direct analogy, this theory expresses our concept of the relationship of the creator and their media: if we replace the metaphysical realm of forms for the creator’s imagination, and
“I think my best skill as an architect is the achievement of hand-to-eye coordination; I am able to transfer a sketch into a model into the building”. -Frank O. Gehry The Platonic model of artistic creation just discussed creates the contextual backdrop for the very possibility of Gehry’s comment representing a virtue: The sketch is assumed as the most accurate approximation of the artistic intention, by staying closest to this initial sketch, the building more closely represents the pure intention; contrasted against the normal process of design development,
involving ever greater increments of deviation from the concept contained in the initial sketch, and therefore greater pervertion of the initial intention. We can see how this depiction of the creative process plays itself out in the adjascent pairs of sketches and photos from Renzo Piano and Frank Gehry. The honesty of how these sketches are presented can’t be assumed — it is possible they were not produced at the beginning of the design process, but later on with intent for public consumption (as may have, in a few isolated cases, occured in some firms). If this were to be the case, the fact of their production at all would in and of itself suggest the pressure exerted by the popularly held Platonic model of creativity -- to such an extent that displaying for the public the architect-genius’ adherence to this model becomes one of the key methods of accumulating symbolic capital within a profession that likes to present creativity as the yardstick of its meritocracy. If, on the other hand, the presentation is honest, then we take them at face value: presented as originary sketches, as snapshots hinting at the fully formed design held in the imagination of the designer. There is hardly a discarded mark on them; they are clean, without a history, without changes in course during their production -- the opposite of examples like the exploratory sketches of Leonardo da Vinci, with stray and discarded lines throughout the sketch. These sketches present an intention born in clarity, out of the phantasia -- with such force that the hand can’t keep up with the
mind, and thus the partial expression. Nonetheless, we are left to safely assume that the idea, so incompletely captured in the sketch, is worked out orders of magnitude beyond what has been shown to us by such a limited tool as a pen. Implicitly, the relationship between these design sketches and finished buildings embodies the Platonic model of the creative process. The visual medium is merely an imperfect holder for the fully articulated design intention held in the head of the architect. What follows will attempt to destabilize our conditioned intuitive acceptance of this depiction of creativity. Firstly, at what point in history did the spontaneous rush of the individual creator become the trophy-winner? If the geneology were tracable to romanticisim and the exaltation of the individual, are there not other models, other possible processes of creativity of equal credibility, equal payoff, that are marginalized by the dominance of the “platonic genius” model? Would now not be a good time to pull them toward the center? One example alternative could be based on the improvisational musician: the inter-relationships between the three components of creativity as mutually interdependent, reciprocally evolving feedback loops each channeled into the other, each shaping the other in real-time through the sustained interplay between them, temporally extruded over the production of a single work, the life of a single artist, as well as the aggregate historical trajectory of traditions of artists. This last point alludes to the most important revision, the inclusion of the fourth component of creativity: other people.