Blog
Here is a collection of ideas from recent Fisher ARCHitecture essays and endeavors. Writing is an important part of our process because ideas are the foundation of our architectural practice. We feel the need to write about what we do because words and form inform one another. Writing makes concepts real just as drawings do.
Every post here contains a different investigation. Architectural models, travel, parametric design, personal history, healthy buildings, European architecture, building smaller/building better: No subject is off limits.
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Our ideas result from the elements of a project’s context: At Fisher ARCHitecture, form follows not only function but experience. For us, context is the well that is the source of these experiences. This is not just about place. Context can be physical, it can be cultural, or it can be intellectual. It includes not only demands placed upon the project by the client, the site, the budget, zoning constraints, politics, weather, but also a thousand other factors.
While the context of every project is different, architects’ solutions to different problems often resemble one another. One Strip District condo resembles another just down the street. Architects often get into ruts and soon enough they lose their spark. Writing is a great way to stay fresh. Architecture and words are like two steel balls that swing back and forth on a long cable endlessly hitting one another, jostling one another out of position, and switching positions. Words and sentences can be thought of as patterned and ordered like buildings. In turn, buildings can be thought of as texts containing information that can be read in many different levels.
A true understanding of context must come not just from analysis but from deep intuitive poetic understanding of the full historical circumstances of a site that results from exceedingly careful study. That history is not simply the cold, static history of objective fact. Rather it is a mobile, constantly developing phenomenon. Writing helps uncover hidden truths.
