Process, Form and Function

AIA Honor Awards

2010-11-09T10:20:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Graham Baba Architects for their AIA commendation for Building 115 and the Kolstrand Building. And to Olson Kundig for their citations for the Art Stable hinge and T Baily Offices!

Published . . .

2010-11-05T08:39:00.000-07:00

Wing Luke Asian Museum Main Stairway

Rick Sundberg was the lead designer for several projects that have been published lately:

First, the Wing Luke Asian Museum was published in Transformer by Sandu Publishing. This book highlights projects that "transform old abandoned objects and buildings into new space." The book looks at a variety of projects ranging from work place and residential environments to museums and schools. There is a minimum amount of text about each project, the editors focused instead on images of the buildings; showcasing the multitude of approaches architects take when a building transforms from one use to another.

Belltown Aerie, Seattle WA

The Belltown Aerie was published in the fall 2010 issue Luxe magazine. The article, written by Jorge S Arango, focuses on the process of remodeling a penthouse duplex to fit the aesthetic and lifestyle of the client.

Roxbury Estates, Seattle WA

And the Roxbury Estates was published in the book The Power of Pro Bono by Metropolis Books. The Roxbury Estates was a project completed in 2003 for Habitat for Humanity. The book focuses on a variety of successful pro bono projects completed by firms from around the United States and tells the story of how these projects were conceived, designed and built.

Graham Baba Architects in the Hollywood Tabloids

2010-09-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

Our friends in Suite C here on 12th Ave recently found themselves in the Hollywood tabloids, well not really. Since the Plum is upstairs, we have eaten here several times and its pretty damn good. We hope the new LA Bistro gets started soon.

http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2010/08/30/tidbits1.html?b=1283140800^3866471&s=industry&i=travel

New postcard

2010-09-01T14:59:00.001-07:00

We finally finished and printed the new mailer. . . . now if we could just get all 250 of them mailed.

2010-07-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

"You can't do enough sketches. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh."
- John Singer Sargent

Hand Drawings and Technology by Rick Sundberg

2010-05-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

In the last sixty years, Seattle has incubated several of the commercial and industrial giants of our time; along the way shifting the country’s perspective from a national view to a global one. Our best known businesses- Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon.com and Starbucks- have made possible today’s clichés of global mobility: The jet setting business person, portable office stowed in a laptop bag, the uncanny ability to complete holiday shopping from a far away hotel room, and the trademark recycled cardboard cup that is ubiquitously carried though out the world’s airports and business districts.

As one of the alleged birthplaces of tomorrow’s way of life, Seattle is an ideal incubator for a question that eludes easy answers: Can the tradition of design as a creative act involving hand and mind, pen and paper, continue to have relevance in the 21^st Century? Should it? Are hand drawn designs and hand made crafts the hallmarks of some ancient civilization that must, like the Phoenician Carthage, be remade in a new Roman image? Will this paradox vanish as those of us who live in this time disappear?

Maybe so or maybe not. Maybe technology is already filling a design vacuum as the old ways pass into memory. But if a change is coming, it is going to take more than a mere century to unmake the tradition of thought that’s as intrinsic to creation as the urge to build. The apparent dawn of a new age- even as the sun has yet to set on the old one- that is what makes this paradox so compelling.

Susan Lambert of the Victoria & Albert Museum says, “Drawing is the most basic skill of both the artist and the designer . . . the creative idea made visible in the preliminary sketch.”

The act of manually drawing is as much a mental act as it is a physical one. From the Beaux- Arts tradition to the present, the physicality of drawing- using pencil or something like it on paper- has been the fascination of countless artists, architects and critics alike. Drawing is a thinking process bent toward art- whether that is painting, sculpture or design. The drawn line conveys basic mysteries depending on how it varies in weight, value and emotion. A line can be created using countless mediums: lead, ink, charcoal, or even a pixilated sequence on a screen (which seeks to imitate drawing but lacks the tactile quality of pen on paper).

Where is it that this pixilated sequence leads us to? Efficiency, clarity, complexity? Perhaps. However, there is no satisfying on-screen metaphorical equivalent for the early tentative ideas, the maturation of ideas into concepts, the emergence of a design from the deep recesses of the brain. Digital likenesses lack the instantaneous rush of inspiration and, paradoxically, the weeks and even months of life it takes to refine an idea into something that can be communicated and built.

And of course, the digital world can be anywhere- it is without texture, without emotion, and in a sense, without location. As I write this from an office in Seattle, a city that has helped create and foster a global perspective, I cannot help but wonder how our sense of place has changed in the pixilated world. Can a design created solely by computer vectors imbue a building with the individuality and complexity of a hand drawn line?

It is clear that I am not technically inclined, but that does not mean that I am not intrigued by technology or see the possibilities that it has provided. It can invite new spirits into a work that otherwise might never pass from the subconscious to the page. While designing the Wing Luke Museum, a museum devoted to the uniqueness of the location and the story of the people it represents, we used computer-aided imagery to accentuate the new design, ghosting figures of the building’s past into the vision for the future. The images mingle together, past and present; a good example of how technology and physicality can collaborate to create a kind of engagement. Used to complement the tactile- rather than to replace it- technology holds the key to expanding the realm of possibility.

Sometimes, it seems to me that the digital and the physical are naturally at odds. While the former is one of software, wires and silicon chips; the latter is tactile and dependent on human vagaries. The more digital technology and globalization open up new communication channels and methods of creation, the greater the need for the same old tools: mind and hand, pen and paper. Actually, I think this is rather exciting. It is the uniqueness of this that allows me to be in this tug of war.

Richard Sundberg- the residential mailer

2010-05-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

2010-05-05T16:23:00.000-07:00

sketching in France . . . .

2010-05-02T14:44:00.001-07:00

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

-Hippocrates