Misconception #1
“Architecture is only about the exterior”
This article is part of The Second Studio Podcast hosted by FAME Architecture & Design.
Carla House by Walker Workshop - Photography ©MikeKelley
“I think the most common misconception that we hear gets back to the definition of architecture. It’s that architecture's only about the exterior, or that architects only design the exterior stuff.
I don't know what, where, why, or how this split between interior and exterior came around. Architecture as a practice could be defined as being the designing or helping in the sculpting of the physical environment to express an idea and to serve a functional purpose too. This is a definition, I think, most architects would agree with. This is how we're trained, what we see, and how we think. There are no boundaries between the interior and exterior, or between a building and its site, and then the streets, and the urban design of the place. It's all architecture.
Another way to think about it from the client's perspective is if you're walking around the city, or perhaps you're outside your home in the yard, then you transition to the inside. Does suddenly your experience become lesser in some way because now you're inside as opposed to the outside? No. The physical environment is not less important because you're inside, or more important because you're here or there. It's probably one of the most peculiar things that I'm always scratching my head about, this delineation between the interior and exterior.
“The table affects this room as much as the room affects the table.”
Separating the two is like saying I'm going to have a director to direct the beginning of the movie and the end of the movie, and then I'm going to hire a different director to do the middle because the middle is not the beginning and end. It's all one experience, isn't it? You walk inside and outside of your house, of your office building down the street. It's one experience, and that experience doesn't have boundaries. So that is the perspective that we come from. That is the perspective an architect comes from, and that is the perspective of architecture and the boundaries and the scope of architecture. That's why architecture can be a table. The table affects this room as much as the room affects the table. It's constant communication and negotiation and conversation between all these elements. And they're unified together in space.” - David Bruce Lee
Carla House by Walker Workshop - Photography ©MikeKelley