Events

Night School: Architecture and Time

Jeff Sandler announces the upcoming installment of Night School, where we will discuss the relationship between architecture and time. Join us on April 6th at Ada's Technical Books at 6:00 PM. Night School is a departure from our daily work at Board & Vellum to debate, discuss, and analyze broader topics that impact what we do.

For this installment of Night School, we will look at issues surrounding Architecture and Time. From Seattle’s obsession with weathered steel, to the instantly-dated look of Michael Graves’ Portland Public Services Building, to the human ability for spatial memory, our experience of architecture is inexplicably tied to time.

We will mix things up with a couple activities to start off the night, asking participants to discuss their earliest memories of space with one another. You may have a distinct recollection of the quaint wooden door at the entry to your grandmother’s country home. You may recall a dramatic concrete stair in a museum downtown. Or perhaps, you have an early memory of the ceiling above your crib (hey, it could happen!). It has been proven that our capacity to store memories is made stronger in reference to space. More pointedly, our brains are hardwired to organize not just objects, but also ideas, in space. Probing early spatial memories allows us to compare our early understanding with our current understanding, effectively studying our relationship to architecture over time.

In a similar vein, our collective appreciation of certain spatial relationships, materials, and other elements of architecture changes with time. A midcentury-modern house is uniquely midcentury. Factors such as mass production, global political atmospheres, war, and scientific discovery all contribute to trends in our built environment, and beyond. Deep down, on an instinctual level, our interest in aged materials – such as the ever-present weathered steel of Northwest architecture – allows us to ponder our own mortality, as the breakdown of materials provides a datum to track the passage of time. This material degradation, coupled with the lifespan of trends, makes one question the appropriate lifecycle of our buildings. Should we plan and build for permanence, or should we orchestrate lifecycles and design for general functions and disassembly?

We will discuss these topics and more in the Programming Room at Ada's Technical Books & Café in Capitol Hill at 6:00PM on Wednesday, April 6. Delicious light food and beverage samplings from the kitchen at Ada’s will be provided.

As always, Night School has been left intentionally somewhat ambiguous in the hopes that, over the course of time, events will adapt and respond to the topics and guests. Night School is a departure from our daily work at Board & Vellum to debate, discuss, and analyze broader topics that impact what we do, and we would love for you join! Past discussions have probed questions of equity and food, the shape of cities, and the role of architects in society. We are excited to continue this series, and look forward to seeing you there.

RSVP at our Facebook Event.