Architects bring facts and ideas together to direct the production of buildings.

First are the facts. The facts of specific needs, of a particular site and location, and the facts of finite budgets—in both money and time. And the facts of physics—gravity, stability, energy.

There are other facts as well—the desires of the owners, of the users, of the community. These realities set the context architects work within. But they do not make architecture.

Ideas are the other necessity. Organizing principles, conceptual frameworks, patterns, theories, and the lessons of experience. Ideas both old and new—drawn from the immense reservoir of what has been done before and, often, those developed this moment. Ideas let us imagine situations that might reconcile the factual imperatives and create possibilities.

Since at least Chaucer’s day the expression ‘Making a virtue of necessity’ has been in use. It is about finding the seeds of solutions embedded in problems. It is this meeting of demands while growing a satisfying result that lies at the root of architect’s task.

Architects bring facts and ideas together in an activity they call design. Design is a kind of speeded-up evolution, a continuous process in which better alternatives are selected and less promising ones discarded. The process repeats itself over and over again as it addresses the essential issues—such as function, form, construction, economy, and character. Design evolution, like nature’s own, is shaped by its inheritance, its environment, and the capacity to exploit the particular opportunities open to it. Perhaps this latter in a person is what we call talent.

Architecture is about making, in so many senses of the word. Of course there is the most common meaning—bringing into existence by shaping, changing, or combining . . . producing, putting together, fabricating. Making things. Architects making drawings and models and decisions that lead to making buildings and places and cities.

But in the process architects are also making do, making over, making haste, making time, making peace, making sense, and making sure. As they speculate they are making up, making believe, making moves. And when success arrives, architects are making good and perhaps even making a mark.

CLIENTS + PATRONS

It is said that ‘Clients get professional services, patrons get architecture.’ The patron is engaged in the entire process of designing and building—intellectually, even emotionally—as well as being involved financially. The patron does not suspend his or her critical faculties, quite the opposite.

Being a patron is not about bringing a lot of money to an architectural venture. Some of the best patrons have very reduced budgets. What they do bring is curiosity, imagination, participation, and support­—a partnership in the process, an extended dialogue about possibilities and limits. Patrons receive a great deal in return . . . both quality and value.