Stop doing what is comfortable.
Contrast is good.
When broad, go narrow. When tall, go low.
When wide, go tight. When bright, go dark.
When certain, get lost. When obscure, go clear.
Too much of a good thing is not a good thing.
Always look at the work on your desk from varying distances.
Every distance tells you something different.
Contrast is to architecture as dance is to a dervish.
Always honour the context.
Go first with camouflage.
Then illusion.
Then interpretation.
Always listen.
Go south. Go east. Go west. Go north.
Just get the hell out of Dodge.
We are about reclaiming America.
About helping America finding her way back to excellence,
instead of ruining most everything she touches.
Go in-between the obvious.
Find threads of ideas and keep working them. Think Bach fugue.
A project must have beginnings and endings with syncopation all along the way.
Initiate the threads.
Choreograph the threads.
Pull the threads all the way through.
Beware the lawnmower approach.
Grass can be consistent.
Architecture will only be boring.
True subversion is when they don’t know it happened.
Never go too long with the same thing,
unless it is repetition.
A column does more than hold things up.
Math is best when it’s geometric.
Architecture is not a formal inquiry.
It is an expansion of life.
Beginning occurs at frequent intervals and repeatedly throughout the course of a project.
Procrastination is the cancer of design.
Quality is directly proportional to quantity.
Every site is a unique microcosm.
Architecture must come to the site and rediscover this fact.
To really design with light, it is best to start with total darkness.
Variation on a theme is a wonderful construct.
It is to play with rules.
There must be rules.
Play is the verb.
There architecture can happen.
First you must have a theme.
Breakthroughs are a way of life.
You cannot will them, they come only via utmost rigour.
Architecture is a thing well played.
At some point your work will dictate the next steps.
If this doesn’t happen, you are working blind.
Make every decision yield tenfold.
In order for a project to be full, it must contain seeds for the next 50 years.
Backing up leads to finding more.
Activate the exponential.
The process of architecture is a case of many avenues moving in different directions at varying speeds . . . . simultaneously.
That is the nature of the process.
If such can be relished, we are doing architecture.
Finding architecture is a paradoxical opposite to any kind of linear process.
We fear exaggeration. Therefore do it.
Parts. Spaces. Elements. Avenues. Expectations. Temporal sequences. Perceived norms.
Throw them all through the window of exaggeration.
The Third World is the future of our planet.
The First World must decrease.
Not disappear, just shrink, get poorer, invert, release.
Tomorrow's world is not about making things equal.
Security is not a matter of maintaining peace or achieving economic affluence.
It is a direct product of justice and hope.
BUILD PUCCINI. BUILD PUCCINI. BUILD PUCCINI.
