“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.”
                                                    –Daniel Burnham, 1910 London Town Planning Conference

Architecture is a design within which we move through space. We move in it, through it, stand in its shadow, gaze through its windows, climb its stairs, hear sounds echo off its marble floors, see light bounce off its polished metal fixtures. We work, manufacture, play, learn, worship, sleep, eat, meet colleagues, friends and family, gather as various communities – be it as performers and an audience for a season at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York or in more transient groups as travelers at airports.

Jazz Room Signage, photograph courtesy of Stephen Boatright, Salt Lake City International Airport, July 15, 2014

Interaction with design and space on such a grand scale is remarkable! Architecture, like other forms of design, is a portal into both the specific time and place in which it was realized and the universal. What does architecture reveal about the specific? Weather looking at an individual design like the Lipstick Building or comparing buildings like Saint Bartholomew’s, and the Louvre, the following questions can be explored to reveal nuances of time and place: Why was the structure designed? Who uses it? How is it used? Who organized the resources to execute the structure? Why? When was it used? In addition to examining specific architecture to reveal the shared experience, technology and craft serves as an insightful lens to understanding the significance of architecture.

Finally, architecture takes up a larger footprint than many other designs and is comprised of a multitude of design. Considerable resources are used to create and maintain architecture. When it falls out of use it can become, at best, nothing more than a monument to a previous time. Instead of being a blighted structure, architecture can be repurposed. Architecture that is living and is used – either because it is well cared for or because it has been repurposed for a new use – is interesting. What is the cradle to cradle of architecture?

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