On Teaching

HO: Do you frequently learn from your students?

TF: Directly no, but I learn from teaching. I have learnt to think very rapidly and see different points of view, which is valuable when you are in the office; it makes me receptive to different ideas. Students of architecture are young, they are learning architecture. My duty is to educate them. Occasionally I see work by a student that I like very much, and even more occasionally something that is brilliant. The last brilliant idea that I witnessed was, by the way, from a Portuguese student in Delft. Generally you like it because it’s made by your students. In order to teach you have to have sympathy for your students.

Interview: Tony Fretton, by Hugo Oliveira

Bear Hill Update

Common Boston

Come let us watch the sun go down / and walk in twilight through the orchard's green... / wandering under these harvest-laden trees... / seeking new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys...

We spent our weekend laboring for the good of a nearby neighborhood — participating in the annual design/build for Common Boston. Our team of 7 conceived of and executed a fence, bench and canopy which defined an unused clearing in the "urban wilds" of Mission Hill as a quiet space for reflection and appreciation of the surrounding views. Excerpts from the poem "The Apple Orchard" were painted across the individual boards, drawing the viewer into the captivating outdoor space.

Looking Up

Ceilings and skies of Paris, Florence, around Tuscany and Venice.

Bear Hill Update

Gingertecture 2010

We won for best construction!

My Husband, The Architect

The worlds of graphic design and architecture have so many delightful tangents that make my relationship with *boy's career — and his with mine — infinitely interesting. We speak the same language but work on completely different scales and schedules, allowing each of us a unique perspective on the other's work. Usually this dialogue consists of process issues as we each navigate the waters of making design manifest. However, this past week has been full of completions.

My projects begin, live, and end in the span of half a breath compared to *boy's work. As I assembled my portfolio last week and surveyed my completed projects from the last 2 years — over a dozen — the one project *boy has been working on since before we even met was finally drawing close to the finish line. In a way I feel like I've been on this years-long journey with him, remembering looking over his shoulder at a sketch-up model, a design in the making...

The first completed photos from the Hershey Cancer Center at Penn State:

Dream Job

I spent a good part of my childhood obsessed with elephants and remember specifically drawing an elephant house on at least one occasion. This design is not so different than mine. I remember my design had 2 domes, a large dome that was the elephants house and a second smaller dome called the peanut storage warehouse. How could they forget the peanut storage. I'm sure it was just so full they couldn't get any pictures of it.

The new Elephant House at Copenhagen Zoo

designed by architects Foster + Partners

More here

Balance & Order

Just over a year apart these photos show the transformation of the Bear Hill house. Work happens in short stints of a few weeks at a time but it seems like they can finish a tremendous amount of work in not a lot of time. We have stuck to the original plan and over the last few weeks work on the more public face of the house began. The bedroom dormers are done, the roof is finished and they are quickly putting up the bump out.

4 days into the orginal demo

A year later and all new windows

The windows are more about what they do to the interior

Almost unrecognizable from the original photographs, the house now has a strong presence and feels grounded and balanced. exaggerating the trim on the eaves of the roof of a small house helps give it a weightier feel and can look almost cartoonish in drawings but the effect is hard not to notice. What was a house with no character now asserts itself, not to mention all the windows opening up to a nice bucolic view. It is just a shell now but the interior should slowly take shape as funding permits. *girl and I will check out kitchens this weekend while we are IKEA getting little things for our apartment.