two years ago, I inadvertently ended up part of the Oyster Run to Anacortes Washington. My friend and I had not intended to join the festivities in Anacortes,. We were just out for a day long great motorcycle ride. We ended up cutting the day short when I was rear-ended by a beautiful Harley with a couple riding. My bike was still serviceable but required extensive repairs. I think I'll lay low this year.
I thought I would have some fun and post this essay by Witold Rybczynski. He was a student in planning when I was a lowly 3rd year architectural student at McGill University. This essay captures the problem quite nicely:
A Discourse on Emerging Tectonic Visualization and the Effects of Materiality on Praxis
Or an essay on the ridiculous way architects talk.
Although Ted Mosby, the architect character in How I Met Your Mother, has suitably tousled hair and his (client-less) firm has a trendy name—Mosbuis Designs—he doesn't seem to have mastered the lingo of his trade, for architects, like all professionals, have their own jargon, while Ted speaks like an ordinary guy. A brief history is in order. Architecture is a relatively young profession—the American Institute of Architects was not founded until 1857. Seeking to distinguish themselves from lowly builders and carpenters, architects adopted a specialized vocabulary, often substituting complicated Latin-based words for their simpler Anglo-Saxon equivalents, for example, fenestration for window, entrance for door, chamber for room, trabeation for beam, planar for flat. Then there were the mysteries of Ionic columns and egg-and-dart moldings.
When Modernist architects revolutionized the art of building in the 1920s, they scrubbed classical decoration—and classical terms. In the process of simplification that followed, language, too, was stripped down, and the pronouncements of architects such as Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier were lucid and to the point. After all, if a house was a machine for living in, then the house-maker should speak the straightforward language of the engineer.
This changed in the 1970s, on March 16, 1972, to be exact, the day the federal government dynamited the first of 33 buildings of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis. The destruction of the utopian "towers in a park" signaled the demise of heroic Modernism and its idealistic foray into social engineering. It also rattled the profession. What were architects to do? A few, such as I.M. Pei, soldiered on, seeking inspiration in a more monumental and stylish version of minimal Modernism. Some adopted Postmodernism, which turned out to be a short-lived fad. A few turned back to Classicism, while some, like Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, redefined architecture as an advanced technological craft.
Other architects, especially those teaching in universities, reacted to the collapse of Modernism by attempting to reinvent the field as a theoretical discipline. The theories did not come from the evidence of the practice of architecture, as one might expect (that was left to Christopher Alexander), but from arcane historical tracts and the writings of French literary critics in hermeneutics, poetics, and semiology. Thus began a new phase in professional jargon.
Discourse: What architects talk about when they talk about architecture.
Academy: Usually the Academy. Where underemployed architects like Ted Mosby work.
Praxis: How theory is implemented, which in architecture means building buildings.
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Tectonic: Also from the ancient Greek. Nothing to do with geology, it signifies, as far as I understand it, anything to do with building.
Assemblage: From the French, meaning putting things together.
Gesamtkunstwerk: From the German. The total work of art, meaning the architect designs everything, soup to nuts.
Materiality: What buildings are made of. Sounds more impressive than bricks and sticks.
Potentiality, spatiality, conditionality, functionality, modernity: When in doubt, add "-ity." Or "-ology." "Ology" means the study of something, but in architecture methodology and typology just mean method and type.
Visualization or representation: Architectural sketches and drawings.
Instantiation: I had to look this one up. It means representing something by giving an example. A term borrowed from philosophy.
Emerging: Trends in architecture that are just around the corner—maybe.
Metamorphosis: Change, as in, "Metamorphosis of space is a flexible correspondence of space to its situation, caused by certain external actions."
Morphosis: The name of an architecture firm in Los Angeles.
Ennead: The name of an architecture firm in New York.
Oculus: The name of an architecture firm in Chongqing.
The Urban Dictionary defines Archispeak as: "Large, made-up words that architects and designers use to make themselves sound smarter than you (you being the client or the confused observer of design). It does nothing to inform or enlighten the consumer of architecture and mostly serves to numb them into obedience or self doubt." That sounds about right.
Beautiful Post by Becca aboard Wandering Dolphin inbound to Washington State from Hawaii.
"This morning as I sit in the cockpit with my coffee and the sun shining (finally), a blue sky as far as my eye can see, and a smile on my face, I remembered what it was like for me almost nine years ago when we first set sail from Florida and I decided to write to everyone who is at that point in their sailing adventure. This morning I am writing to all of you who wonder if you have what it takes just to live aboard or do you wonder if offshore passages or even overnight passages are something you can handle or if you find yourself with an adventure in your heart a willingness to adapt and learn a new lifestyle (being just a smidgen crazy helps too). If that's where you are right now I believe you are ready to throw off the dock lines and get the water moving under your kneel.
I find myself writing this to you over 1000 miles from the nearest land after sailing almost 8000 nautical miles in the past four months after living aboard and sailing the East Coast of the USA and the Caribbean for the past nine years. I thought I might share my experiences, as a mom about what works for me and hasn't worked for me.
The only way to find out if living aboard works for you is just to do it. You can read, read & read some more about what others say and what they do. But the truth is that every boat is different and every family is different. Some people hate electronics and think we are crazy to have an Xbox, Gameboys and iPads on board, others who sail heavy displacement boats scoff at my Captains ideas about ground tackle and jerry jugs and his obsession with keeping the boat light. So for us, after many hours of reading, trials, and wasted money we have found what works best for us. The only way you will ever find what works for you is to get out there (here) and do it.
One of our areas of struggle when we started is that I am not an organized soul, so chaos would be rampant aboard WD without our Captain. Ok, if I could live in my fantasy world, it would be a perfectly organized one, but I could never make that happen. Everything should have its place onboard, really it should, every single thing should have a storage spot where it always rests and that's what our Captain does for us. The night we were motoring across the channel between Hawaii and Maui the fuel Racor filter started to sputter, he shut off the engine went right to the spot under Benny's bed where he KNEW the spares were, fixed the filter and we were underway in less than five minutes. He is my Master of organization, Master of all drawers & storage. Except for my closet, boys closet & Em's closet. He even straightens up my costume locker. (Yes, I have costumes...)
So do you have what it takes? Are you willing to cast off the lines and head out? I remember hearing Tofer's answer to my question. "Bec, let's sail around the world with the kids before it's too late." I am not sure if I even paused before I asked, "How do we make that happen?" The excitement of Internet boat shopping consumed hours of our life for 2 years. Of course I was always trying to push for a bigger vessel, while Tofer had his list of wants. I had two things I needed, an indoor shower and the other one I have actually forgotten. I have used the indoor shower a handful of times in 9 years. I shower in the cockpit which is much easier for sure (I think cockpit showers are out for the stay in the Pacific Northwest). So, before you buy your boat spend some time really thinking about what you need or think you need on board and remember, those things will change as you experience life on board.
So, to wrap this up, ten short years ago we lived on a prairie in Montana raising our babies in a huge farm house. We all had "our" space. Plenty of room to roam, to clean, to collect stuff in, plus three bathrooms! I had everything a busy mom could want for her family of seven. I also had a huge fear of the water and couldn't swim from one end of a pool to the other if I had to. Yep, that's right, I moved aboard WD with my babies and with a fear of the water and lack of swimming ability. What I did have was the spirit of adventure, the ability to adapt and the willingness to try something new. With much prayer I moved my young family onto WD. It wasn't easy, everything was so stressful and difficult because of my fears. Without the patience of Tofer and helpful spirits of other cruisers I am not sure how things would have turned out.
So here we are right in the middle of one of our longest passages ever. I am proud to say, I can swim now and that my fear has turned into an awareness of the water and to make sure safety come first. I know now that long passages are just about sailing, living, and enjoying where you are at that point. Also, if I had been thrown into the seas we have sailed in over the last few months at the beginning it would have stopped my sailing dead in the water. Pace yourselves, take it easy, don't push each other. Make sure everyone aboard is comfortable with the up and coming passage.
On WD we have those who love to sail, those who love to travel, and those for whom it is now their whole lifestyle. It takes all of us to make our home on WD work. One of the things that helped me early on was that I chose to make WD our home. In my mind she is not just a boat she is first our home. It just happens that our Captain can make her move around the planet.
So do you have what it takes? I can't answer that for you, all I can say is if you are longing for the sea under your kneel give it a go. Start small, with a smart weather window and add to the difficulty as you become more comfortable and capable. On WD we have an agreement that when one person is done sailing then as a family we look for the next adventure. Family first, adventure second is our motto.
Wishing you the very best on whatever adventure you choose. Becca"
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