What is a building for?  That’s what I always ask myself, what is the purpose in putting up a building?  Originally buildings were to keep us dry and warm and safe from animals, and then we added on social functions, like having a place where the leader of the village would be located, which turned into the king’s palace or the presidential mansion, so that building acquired a political function.  And there was a special building to think about religion and perform rituals, and so we ended up with churches and mosques and cathedrals, and added a spiritual function to buildings.  There are so many things a building is for now, to express power, to show wealth, to indicate social consciousness.  We’re a long way from keeping us warm and dry and safe from animals, but I’ve never forgotten that the original function of a building has to do with individual human beings, and always when I’m working, I try to remember that.  Don’t forget the human dimension.  Ideally, every building should be a comfortable place to be, it should be easy to move around in, it should meet human needs, and it should be a beautiful place that people enjoy, that adds something to our lives just from being in it.  That actually could be possible, but the world is full of bad architects and cheap, unimaginative builders.

One of the things they don’t teach you in college, and maybe they shouldn’t teach this, is that life is hard and things aren’t right, and that you’ll be forced to compromise and give in and change until your own ideals hardly seem to exist any more.  Take me for example, what kind of buildings do I actually build now?  I’ve been with Krall Aquitaine Architects for eight years, and sometimes I think we could rename ourselves Van Der Rohe Updated.  The people I work with are mostly decent people, especially Calvin, who asks me the most honestly how I’m doing.  Decent people, but Krall Aquitaine does large projects for large clients, and in too many cases it seems like the philosophy behind our buildings concentrates on power, wealth, corporate image, until the human dimension is lost.  That’s how it seems to me, and so I go to work and look at the drawings, sit in the meetings, listen to the discussions, and again and again I think, “We could do better than this.”  One example was when we did the main building for a company that was moving headquarters to Philadelphia.  It was an important client, and we really wanted to satisfy them.  For this particular place, they wanted an impressive looking entranceway, which makes sense, and there’s a number of ways to achieve such a look.  As it happened in this case, an area of the building that was going to be used as an employee break area was on the other side of a wall from that entranceway.  In the original plan that I drew up the break room wasn’t luxurious, but it was large enough to allow several people to be in there comfortably.  For the sake of the impressive entrance to the building, though, the break room got cut down in size in order to make the entrance even larger.  So an expression of power was made at the expense of the employees who were actually going to work in the building.  But then again, isn’t an expression of power always made at the expense of someone, I guess you could say that.  Part of what aggravated me so much in that case was that we could have used more imagination, there are other things you can do to create the look and feel we wanted in the entranceway.  Maybe my opinion is stupidly oversimplified, but sometimes I really do wonder if my male colleagues don’t associate size with power just because they have penises.  A little more imagination would be nice.

Without Jenny’s support I might not have continued to work at Krall Aquitaine so long.  In fact without Jenny I might have just moved on, but when you’re in a stable relationship, you can’t change jobs as easily, move off to another city, no matter how much you want to.  And it’s with Jenny’s support that I’m trying to start my own business now, something I probably should have done years ago, but I guess I needed more experience, and partly I was afraid.  I’m still afraid, but Jenny makes me braver, and I look at her example of starting her own store, which has turned out well.  I’m also thinking that if I’m going to do this, I should get it off the ground before our daughter is in college.  I know Jenny worries a lot about Lavra, which is actually her birth daughter, but I think Lavra will be OK.  I had a period in high school myself where I was bored with school, I just wanted to draw, and eventually I found architecture.  Someday I think Lavra will go to college, and when she does, which could be only four years from now, I don’t want to be struggling with getting a new business going.  I’ve already talked to the bank about a loan, but I really would like to do this with a partner, so I’ve been thinking of who I know that I might do this with.  The main person I think about is Rustic Jones, an old college friend who is here in Philly.  And doesn’t he have an interesting name?  What a wonderful business we could start, to concentrate on smaller jobs, like remodeling people’s houses or smaller businesses.  With that kind of clientele, we could concentrate on creating a pleasant human space, the kind of thing Rustic and I are good at.  Rustic and I have similar ideas on architecture, and I’d love to work with him, but his wife is pregnant, and I wonder if that would stop him from being willing to take on the financial risk of going into a new business.  So it’s complicated, isn’t it, and I spend a lot of time myself worrying about whether I can make this work, wondering sometimes if I should just go ahead without Rustic.  And I really do want to leave Krall Aquitaine, I’m not happy there now.

I take some of my stress home with me, too, which isn’t good or fair to Jenny and Lavra.  I’ve gotten a little snappy lately, but I try to relax when I get home by sitting down at the piano, sometimes even when I first come in, before I have a drink.  I’ll sit down and close my eyes and start playing.  Often I’ll play one of Bach’s two-part inventions.  They’re hard to play, but they’re some of my favorite pieces and they relax me.  If Jenny is home, which she usually is by then, she’ll come sit in the room and listen.  I like that too, I like playing for her.  Another way I get rid of stress, or used to anyway, is by cooking.  I love to cook, to put the textures and colors and flavors together.  It’s almost like architecture to me, I sort of see it as building in another medium, but lately I have to say that cooking isn’t as relaxing as it used to be.  Nowadays it seems like all I’m doing is fixing a meal because we need to eat.  I don’t like to eat badly, though, so I still go to a lot of trouble.  I’m just worrying too much these days, I guess.  I don’t like my job, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to get this new business going, I’m afraid Rustic will say no, and at the same time I’m afraid everything will work out like I want it to and then it will be “put up or shut up” and I’ll finally have to step out and take that risk.  There are too many thoughts in my head sometimes.

And

he

overlaid

the

boards

with

gold,

and

made

their

rings

of

gold

to

be

places

for

the

bars,

and

overlaid

the

bars

with

gold.