EvidenceAmanda PeterssonMay 2nd, 2011

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Architecture Degree, Auburn University.

Acknowledgements

I owe the work on these pages:

To my Mother, for fighting for me when I couldn’t.To my Pappa, for dreaming only the biggest dreams for me.To my sister Alex, for being my hero.

I am grateful every day for the potential that you have given me, but most of all for helping me believe that I am worth it.

To Tad, a man of few words, but they were the right ones.To Stefan, for being you.

To Magdalena Garmaz, for your patience.To Behzad Nakhjavan , for laughing at me.To Justin Miller, for not laughing at me.

The first thing ever said to me by an Architecture professor:

“That’s a piece of shit. You know why don’t ya? Gimme that pencil.”

- the venerable Professor Faust

During my thesis review one of the critics said that what they look for in a thesis is “evidence of a struggle.” While struggle is certainly evident in my thesis, “evidence” is a much more profound thread in my work: there is not just evidence of a struggle, evidence is the struggle. Up to this point school has always provided me with a wonderful set of constraints to design within. Even with this crutch, I find that my design decisions have been little more than insights made poetic through hindsight. What I found myself using my thesis to look for was evidence that design decisions are in fact more deliberate. I believe that the gesture, the poetry, and the idea all hold a wonderful power in the making of architecture, but I also believe that there is something underneath them. Something that can be measured, analyzed, and compared. Something uncovered by words, drawings, units, and ratios.

While this book is still a chronology of the work I completed over this year, when examined as a search for evidence, my struggle becomes much more directed. I first discov-ered evidence in words in the written works of Louis Kahn. Then I began to search my own work, using charts and graphs to map and quantify an idea about healthcare, using computer programs as proof of the capture of daylight, using drawn perspective as the evidence of the manipulation of experience. Tools invented not for pleasure, not to make meaning, but to measure it.

On Evidence

Introduction

Initial Makings Light and Lightness in a Cube Information and Lamination Lamination Collage

Thesis Writings On Dialectical Contradiction in Architecture The Problem of the Philosopher-Architect On the Nature of Good and Bad

Medical Investigations Statement of Intent Information Graphics

Evidence of a Human Agreement Isolating an Experience

60 Commerce Street Existing Circulation Diagram Proposed Circulation Intervention Daylight Conditions

Designing an Experience Tilting the Wall Data and Decisions Wall Meets Moss

Program and Process Circulation Another Program

Plans

Daylight and Data Again

Conclusion

Contents

I wish I could say that this essay is a declaration of my wholly original point of view and my di-rect intentions in regards to my thesis. I think instead it is only an admission of my being daily less sure of what it is I want to say or how it is I should go about finding my voice. It is a funny phenomenon that one becomes less, instead of more, confident in the idea of establishing a point of view with each layer of knowledge and complexity added by the passing years. That being said, I have an endless list of personal fascinations that could be the subject of a thesis or maybe the catalyst for a thought that will become my thesis.

My most nagging interest is in the study of design and architecture for persons with disability. It is remarkable to me that when design is so intrinsically tied to ideas about the human body and the human experience there appears to be little accommodation for the variety of bodies and experiences.

While the above is probably my most current fascination there are other questions that always lie at the back of my brain. The tectonic qualities of textiles and their application for making architecture, light-weight structures and their ability to have an effect on the human scale of buildings, the relationship between words and their role in making meaning and the making and experiencing of architecture.

While the things that currently hold my interest have their merits, a big part of me believes that none of them will be my chosen topic of exploration. I hope to find some as yet undiscov-ered (by me, at least) aspect of architecture to explore. I am excited and I am ready and I am open to any and all new ideas and opportunities for learning.

Introduction

For this introduction I am using an excerpt from a statement of intent I turned in to Professor Garmaz during the first week of thesis studio. For better or worse, little has changed:

Light and Lighness in a Cube

Our first Assignment as thesis students was to construct a 5” x 5” cube with only one impetus: light. I took the assignment and twisted it somewhat. All architecture is about light. This cube is also about lightness. I wanted to construct the cube in such a way that its shape could be articulated and light could be captured using very little material. I achieved this by scoring two identical pieces of museum board in such a way that they could be folded to make a cube. The resistance formed from the scored edges and reinforced by a single length of twine mean that the cube holds its form by always remaining in tension. No side of this cube forms a square. Our eye infers the form by interpreting the composition of shapes and the space between them.

templates for the leaves of the cube

viws of the cube

Information and Lamination

Our next assignment was to construct a shadow box and a collage that exemplified an understand-ing of some part of Montgomery. Lamination was a marked departure from lightness for me. It was making something with dimension out of something flat. It was the act of growing something one small gesture at a time. During a conversation with Professor Garmaz the use of white paper instead of patterned or texted paper was brought up. Magdalena wanted to know why I was ignoring the potential meaning of embedded information in the piece. My only answer was that information is meant to be understood, I did not believe in using text as a texture. While I still believe that my instincts were correct at the time, I wonder if information losses its values if it can no longer be understood. Information is imbedded in everything that we touch. The story of how it came to be may not be written on the surface, but it lives within the object, architecture, or place. The reason lamination can be such a powerful gesture lies in the knowledge that each piece was touched by a hand with the intent of making. A gesture that would not have been lost by using textured or texted paper.

laminated shaddowbox

light on the laminated surface

light behind the laminated surface

how to make a corner

Lamination Collage

During my very first investigations of Montgomery, an area of interest for me was the resulting blocks where the city’s two grids meet. What stuck out most was the high concentra-tion of parking decks along these blocks. This is extreme to the point that on one block three parking decks border a public park. A whole space is scaled by buildings that weren’t made for people. In this exercise I cut slits along the streets of the broken grid and wove thin strips of tracing paper through. This was not a representational act, but an exploration of the patterns and movement happening through these blocks.

collage details

a word mapping made while reading

Thesis Writings

Writing is perhaps my favorite tool for ensuring that the work that I do remains in dialogue with the growth of my ideas. To write and write and rewrite is an act that keeps the pace of working to a consistent rhythm and rigor. What follows are writings completed, revised and revised again, in Thesis Research class.

The word mappings that accompany the writings are an exercise that I often engage in. It is a way for me to track the use of words in a written work. The map of the meaning of words becomes a kind of evidence, a way of visually revealing the writer’s argument. The act of mapping the work ensures that I am not only reading the poetry and allowing it to appeal to my emotions. Word maps reveal the evidence in language hiding behind the poetry, the proof that meaning has been made and upheld.

a word mapping made while reading

German Idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrick Hegel defines and discusses two ideas he sets as opposites: Dialectic and Understanding. This duality provides an enlight-ening lens through which to view the making of Architecture Understanding is the manner by which we measure what we see and distill it into axioms, the way we generalize complexity and make sense of the world. Dialectic is how we challenge and transform axioms, the way we acknowledge the complexity and contradiction in the world.

Understanding is language of exclusion. Dialectic is a language of inclusion. Under-standing is either or. Dialectic is both. When thought of as a means by which to make architecture the method of Under-standing is a means of making a building that is an example of a truth. The building and its truth are its end. On the other hand, when architecture is made using Dialectic the process and discovery of ideas and possibilities are its end. The building itself is not an end but a means for discovery of complexity and contradictions in humanity. In a small building made by Understanding, what it is to be small is carried through each detail. A small building made by Dialectic, is small physically but expresses that small is only small as it is relative to large. A small building made by Understanding can only ever be small. It will not matter how his neighbors change or how small has been redefined by time.

A small building made by Dialectic is small and large at once. It will vibrate forever in the its expression of complexity, made and remade again through the tension in the expression of contradiction.

Assignment 1On Dialectical Contradiction in Architecture

In Richard Sennett’s writing, The Architecture of Obsession, his example of philoso-pher Ludwig Wittegnstein’s struggles with perfection in designing a house for his sister are a very real example of the struggle of the Philosopher-Architect. The philosopher desires to organize the world into truths. It is easy to read the plain and precise language of a philoso-pher and believe that the art of making should also be governed by a neat series of truths. It seems that this was what trapped Wittgenstein, evident in his statement: “I am not interested in erecting a building, but presenting to myself the foundations of all possible buildings.” Wittgenstein hoped to use a building to express truths about all buildings, a very philosophical desire. However, the philosopher-architect is not always plagued by the immobilizing, steril-izing trap of perfection the way that Wittgenstein was. I am reminded of architects like Louis Kahn, who wrote extensively on buildings and yet managed to maintain a consistent, prolific resume of built works that were not plagued by the “sickness” of perfectionism. Kahn did not speak of making buildings in the fluid way that Sennett does, that the design process is a careful balance that you must “surrender yourself ” to. Kahn speaks in truths the way a phi-losopher would. He states that buildings should always be made in homage to the institutions that represent man’s in-common-ness, his defining and use of words like “belief ” and “desire” are precise and consistent. How did he treat buildings as examples of truths but not become burdened by living up to the task he set for him self? Kahn gives us a hint in his essay Form and Design when he writes about a crane on the site of one of his buildings during construction: “I resented the garishly painted crane, this monster which humiliated my building… [I calculated] how many more days this “thing” was do dominate the site and building before a flattering photograph of the building could be made. Now I am glad of this experience because it made me aware of the meaning of the crane in design… now I began to think of members 100 tons in weight lifted by bigger cranes… Now the crane was a friend and the stimulus in the realization of a new form.” (p. 72) For Khan, a perceived imperfection is a part of the continuous process of understand-ing. Had Kahn allowed himself to be immobilized the idea of the existence of a crane on his site and preoccupied by how to get around the problem he would never have discovered the opportunity it provided. It seems that Kahn treats his writings as the place for the absolute truths he has learned from his buildings. No one wakes up knowing what truth is, it moves and changes, it is discovered and rediscovered, even for the likes of Louis Kahn. If a problem, an imperfection, presents itself in a building the only thing it means is that you are not finished.

The Problem of the Philosopher-ArchitectAssignment 11

A reflection on Louis Kahn’s essay, The Nature of Nature

The Character of man is that which makes him different from other men. The Nature of man is that which he has in common with other men. The Institution man builds and belongs to is a simultaneous recognition of the in- common-ness that belongs to the nature of man and the differences that give every man his character.

For Louis Kahn the nature of man, his in-common-ness, does not only live in his good principles, but in the bad in him as well. Khan does not stop with acknowledging the bad and asserts, “we must account for it.” “Don’t say you don’t want any bad. You will have it whether you want it or not.”

As architects, given Kahn’s task of expressing institutions of man, the disarming of the burden of good and bad becomes a powerful tool. Does your building require bars on its windows? This is not good or bad. It is only an opportunity.

But we know constraints to be the friend of the architect. Rules give us a boundary to compose within, physically and poetically. The triumph of a design in the face of restriction is a highly satisfying achievement, but more of a puzzle than a true challenge. The discovery of good in bad is a fundamental human search and indeed part of Kahn’s desire to express man’s in-common-ness. That secret “bad” we hide, when discovered in another is what makes us feel like a member of one humanity. So locked up in our most basic desire, bad is easy once dis-armed.

I would suggest that the more difficult task would be to define the good. As we learned from Sennett, it is when we confine ourselves to the task of generalizing that the task of making becomes impossible. This is where we so often fail when we chase good. We seek to define it by exclusion, to distil all understanding into one truth that applies to all of man. We believe good to be what all men share. However, if bad is where we find our in-common-ness, then we must search for good in our variety. If bad is what we discover in all of us then good is what sets us apart. Instead of seeking one transcending good truth, we should chase many specific and exemplary varieties of good.

There is no such thing as good or bad. There is only good and bad. As humans we are both. Our institutions belong to both. As architects we must express both, find and define in a language of contradiction that which makes us one and how we are all one. All of this at once!

Assignment 111On the Nature of Good and Bad

How to Heal People

How to Heal the City

Wellness Center:A wellness center for downtown Montgomery would include offi ces for a wide variety of types of doctors and healers. Internal Medicine, Medical Specialists, Nutrition Consulting, Physical Therapy, Psychology, and Acupuncture.

Pharmacy:The pharmacy would be the portion of themedical center that touches the city. A retail type space, it would bring a new scale to downtown and be an important resource for residents.

Snowfl ake: every patient is considered in rela-tionship with their unique circumstance, patients are individuals not their diagnosis.Variety in Treatments: healing is not a one-stop solution, but a variety of approaches to treatment working together to achieve the restoration of total body health.Steps for Preventative Care: health is not limited to treating illnesses but is also focused on main-taining and enhancing a patient’s well being for the long term.

Attention to Individual Care

Free Clinic:Would provide medical services for the uninsured residents of Montgomery. Services would include general care as well as educational and preventa-tive medical programs while sharing resources such as diagnostic imaging and pathology labs with the Wellness Center.

Mobile Units: These mobile medical units would have perma-nent residence in the building at large but travel to areas of the city where people need medical atten-tion, bringing supplies and qualifi ed professionals.

Getting Care to Those in Need

Triage: limited supplies and unusual settings mean being fl exible and resourceful in circum-stances that are less than ideal.Doing more with Less: assessing need and reach-ing the greatest number of people means effi cien-cy is the greatest virtue.Awareness: reaching all these people means more than just treating their illnesses but being a vehicle for education on more eff ective health practices.

a diagram on understanding program

As health issues continue to make headlines in this country, it becomes necessary to ask how architecture can take a position. Whether discussing new health care legislation or emerging trends in conditions affecting Americans, the focus is at a large scale. We are faced with the need to reduce health care costs while increasing the quality of care, and most im-portantly to bring this care to the people who need it. However, the individual’s experience of healthcare reflects anything but an economic juggling act. Being a patient is arguably the most vulnerable role individuals experience in their lives. When their body breaks down a patient can feel betrayed and no longer in control, acutely alone.

Architecture is left to straddle a problem with two scales. The health care building must employ a rigorous economy of means in order to be effective economically, and it must create an experience that consoles us at our most vulnerable. This building does not have a choice as to whether to be effective or poetic, it needs both with a rigor that other buildings do not demand.

The question becomes: How does architecture use this tension to craft a building that promotes healing at both the scale of the individual and the collective? How does architecture use the details of patient experience to inform the act of healing large groups of people? How does the fact that health is a human right change the experience of a building for each patient?

Medical Investigations

What follows was my first attempt at a thesis introduction. While my explorations eventually took me away from healthcare architecture, they were an important step in understanding what it is I was chasing.

User Groups/ Programming and Frequency

4% persons undergoing procedures

30% persons receiving general care

10% physicians, nurses, and staff

40% persons managing their wellness

16% persons with chronic conditions

Wellness Center

persons fi lling prescriptions 66%

persons buying a sandwich 30%

persons visiting the city 2%

pharmacists and staff 2%

Pharmacy

medical/dental unit 40%

diagnostic units 5%

educational / emergency units 15%

blood units 40%

Mobile Units

40% persons seeking general care

10% volunteers

25% support / educational groups meeting

25% large health awareness events

Free Clinic

rarely

annually

bi/tri-annually

monthly

bi-monthly

weekly

bi/tri-weekly

daily

Use Frequency Key

Percentages describe persons per use

Health Care Information Graphics At the outset of my research into contemporary heath care architecture, the informa-tion was overwhelming to say the least. I began to make diagrams to try to understand both the state and scope of health care today and to discover what Montgomery might need. These exercises are an attempt to find evidence that architecture has a role to play in healthcare to-day. They are an attempt to visualize complexity without simplifying and find meaning within it.

a digram studying user groups in the proposed program

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I may not know what a thesis is... but I’m pretty sure this isn’t it.

It was four weeks into the spring semester when it became painfully obvious that my thesis vehicle of heath care was not going to take me where I needed to go. It is only in hindsight that I can give reasons as to why I abandoned healing as an idea for Montgomery. It was a thesis being cooked in reverse, instead of discovering a condition in Montgomery to be explored I was trying to solve a general problem and apply it to Montgomery. Wittegnstein’s struggle had become my own. I was seeking to Understand through generalization instead of engaging a Dialectic. I returned instead to examine Montgomery, not as an example but in its specific places, where the city lives and dies. The obvious peculiarity of the number and scale of park-ing structures in Montgomery stuck to me and refused to let go. Everything that we are taught about what makes great cities, the parking decks of Montgomery break every rule. Some take up entire blocks. Some are located on major street corners. The car has left the street and invaded the built environment.

Armed with a dangerous new condition to explore and a host of opinions about it, I paused. I paused and it was the most important pause in my architectural education. Kahn’s voice nagged me from the back of my mind: “there is good and bad in everything”. The parking decks could not be all bad. I had to look at them objectively, as nothing more than evidence of a human agreement made in Montgomery.

Humans in Montgomery had agreed that they would live outside of the city and drive to their jobs in office towers. For them the city is nothing more than where they work, they need nothing more than a place to park and a way to get to their desk. And thus parking decks were built, not to be a part of the city, but to serve the people working in the offices. Nothing more, nothing less than evidence of a human agreement.

Evidence of a Human Agreement

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...these structures are for cars not people

Our cities are indelibly marked by the car. Interstates, wide streets, parking lots, park-ing structures. We get home, to school, to work in our cars. This is nothing more or less than a fact of contemporary life. It is neither right nor wrong. As architects, we look to cities to find spatial conditions that people experience in their day-to-day lives. Why not the moment of transition from car to workplace?

In Montgomery, the majority of people working in offices downtown commute from the suburbs. Most of the office towers have their own parking decks and it is not unusual for a person to be able to drive from their home, park in a deck and walk into their office without ever going outdoors. Their experience of the city takes place only in their car as they drive from the interstate to their parking space. My thesis project has evolved to examine this condition as it occurs in the office tower at 60 Commerce Street.

An intervention between the people and their cars A filter for light, air, and people. A perspective on the role of the car in our cities.

Isolating an Experience

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60 Commerce Street

The complex of buildings at 60 Commerce Street in downtown Montgomery includes the six-teen story office tower, a four story parking deck, and a corridor running from the deck along the side of the tower. There is also a small sliver of land owned by the property that faces Bibb Street between the parking deck and two infill buildings. This lot is where I saw and opportu-nity for intervention.

Existing Circulation DiagramCurrently those working at 60 Commerce Street drive their car into the deck, walk to the elevator at the rear of the site, walk down a corridor running along the tower, then enter the tower and circulate up to their office. They never go outside and never have a view of the city.

From I-65

Proposed Circulation InterventionAfter analysis a new way of circulating the buildings emerged. A Structure could be built on an empty portion of the lot in which to circulate down to the street level. The circulation in the structure would exit on to a public ally space at the back of which then office worker could enter the corridor leading to the tower.

From I-65

Site Daylight Condition

Upon further analysis, it was discovered that in addition to being a thin and deep my site suffers from other daylight obstacles. The office tower, being to the southwest of the lot, casts a shadow over the site before noon in the summer and throughout the winter. Another tall building to the northwest of the site means that afternoon sun is blocked as well. The solar shading diagrams to the right illustrate this in theory, but an Ecotect analysis offers further proof. A daylight factor analysis of the street level of the block proves that the chosen site does in fact receive significantly less daylight than the surrounding blocks.

the darkest spot on all the blocks

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a drawing made under Kelly Wilson to describe the experience of the tilted wall

Tilting the Wall

With the mounting evidence that my structure was doomed to darkness, I made the decision to avoid light instead of seek it. Here in the southern states we are no strangers of shadow. Shade is a refuge, a way of life. With the mass of my building forming adjacent to the parking deck I had the opportunity to create a unique sort of public space between my intervention and the existing infill building. But narrow and vertical, the form of the space was living up to little more than an ally. I needed a move to transform the space.

And so the wall was tilted. Throwing my ally into shadow Turning the sky into a ceiling. Defining a room for the city.

a sketch showing the intial understanding of the tilted wall

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A Vertical Wall

The Proposed Wall

An Exagerated Wall

Data and Decisions

New technologies emerging daily allow us, as never before, to analyze the performance of our buildings before their construction. We can become scientists instead of philosophers, designing experiments for hypothetical building systems. With the performative characteris-tics of a building easily manipulated during the design process, the act of making design deci-sions no longer relies on experience or theory. As of late, I have wondered about the dialogue forming between these two catalysts for the design decision: the illicit poetry of the idea and the tempting security of evidence. What follows is data I was able to begin to collect about an idea I had that the gesture of tilt-ing of a wall could provide rich experience and heightened performance in my intervention at the 60 Commerce Street complex.

The diagrams to the left describe the testing of three conditions of the space between the 60 Commerce Street parking deck and the existing building. The diagrams show the analysis grids of the variation in daylight factor, in plan and in perspective, at the street level as they are affected by wall tilting at different angles. The first diagram shows the condition if a vertical wall were built, the second the proposed tilt were built, and the third if a more ex-tremely tilted wall were built. The aim of building such a wall would be to add to the shading of the space during Alabama’s long summer season. Daylight factor is the ratio of illumination levels indoors to outdoors on an overcast day. It is intended to be used to examine the effectiveness of day light-ing strategies in indoor spaces, with spaces having greater than 5% daylight factor needing no artificial lighting. In this case it allows us to demonstrate the gradation in light level from the street to the most often shaded areas in the space. While the angle of tilt of the wall was pro-posed based on nothing more than intuition and composition, it seems to allow for a reason-able gradation in light from the sidewalk to the deepest part of the space.

above: moss growing on the surface of wire mesh

right: moss growing through the back of the wire mesh

As a member of the bryophyte family of plant life, moss does not have a vascular system to carry water and nu-trients through the plant. Instead, the moss plant is made up of a network of fibers on which tiny leaves grow. Water and nutrients are absorbed through the leaves, which also create food through photosynthesis.

Moss thrives in low light environments, and will not survive more than two hours of direct sunlight per day unless heavily watered. The greatest threat to moss is drying out, al-though even in the event of drying out most mosses can be re-hydrated and come alive again. Moss does not need soil and can grow on any course surface, but does best on those that can retain moisture.

Wall Meets MossDisclaimer: As a rule, I do not agree with “green” walls. I have yet to see evidence to convince me that plants belong to buildings. I include my own thesis in this evidence.

I think it all began with my decision to hide from light and was compounded by my decision to construct a tilted wall that would function primarily experientially Moss just seemed to be my answer. It allowed me to make this spatial move with softness. To articulate flatness with texture.

Program and Process

The decision to use my intervention as part a new means of circulation from the parking deck to the office tower was in its gesture from the beginning. The tilted wall and its moss application now had a new experience: what it would be like to circulate along them. The articulation of this experience was made through a design process that took into account reasons including: the ramp of the parking deck, the typical circulation of a person from their parking space to the existing circulation, and the slope of the moss wall. In the end a series of stairs and ramps were configured in such a way as to create a dynamic circulation narrative and experience of the moss wall.

calculations and sketches of the circulation experience

sketches of the circulation experience

the punctures in the moss wall made by the circulation

a section showing where the circulation takes place

Circulation

The final articulation of the circulation was to occur at the front of the site and twice it punctures the moss wall allowing for both an intimate experience of the moss and another perspective on the public room.

model with diagram of progression from the parking deck to the ally

the punctures in the moss wall made for the conditioned spaces

a section showing the conditioned spaces

Another Program

While I did create a program for the spaces in my intervention to be conditioned, how the spaces were occupied was less important than their relationship to the moss wall. After creating openings in the moss wall for circulation it became necessary for the moss wall to react to the other spaces behind it. The prismatic openings that were created allow persons occupying the conditioned spaces to see the moss growing while also emphasizing the tilt in the wall to people in the ally.

model with deiagram of conditioned space

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1_ Locker Rooms2_ Climbing Wall3_ Wall Overlook4_ Leasable Space5_ Yoga Studio6_ Fitness Room

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Daylight and Data Again

It was important to return to the Ecotect analysis of the moss wall to determine the amount of direct light it receives throughout the year. The analysis of average daily direct sun-light hours across the surface allowed me to ensure that the surface would support the growth of moss.

It also gave me an opportunity to consider again the relationship between data and experience. The captures at the left show the shade level of the moss wall throughout the day and allow me to interpret an average amount of direct light exposure on the wall. The Ecotect analysis not only shows us this information in one image, but can offer us precise and quantita-tive data. However it is important to remember that both diagrams were made using a com-puter. Before these tools were available the quantitative aspects of light had to be calculated by hand and often took many hours.

While in this instance I am only using the analysis data to judge the validity of a design decision in hindsight, had they been employed early on in the design process I wonder if I would have reached the same conclusions. Would I have been overwhelmed by the choices available to test? Could I have discovered the gestures that make the wall seem like a thought-ful experience? When there are infinite amounts of data instantly available to us through our computers, the rigor with which we use our reason to interpret such data must sharpen.

Conclusion

My struggle with evidence on these pages, through this year, has revealed a lot to me. Mostly that my desire for proof comes from a deep need to make sure that I move forward with the tools not only to make meaning but to measure it. While I may not have proved anything with my thesis, I have proved to myself that evidence can be found. I believe that if I sharpen these tools, writings and drawings and data, I can make architecture that can stand on its own, make more than poetry, have meaning it can defend.