LOOKING BACK

March 15, 2016, LISA B. WELCH

"As a student, I conceived of spaces with such unrestrained imagination: fanciful, bizarre and completely unrealistic."
- LISA B. WELCH, FOUNDER

As I was looking through an old blog site I once managed long ago in 2009, I stumbled upon this little entry I published titled 'Education of an Architect.' The title is directly borrowed from a book by architect, artist and educator John Hejduk. This book contained a cross-section of studio projects ranging from practical to utopian..all from the influential architecture school Cooper Union. Per my entry, you may notice that I gravitated towards the utopian or even quixotic. As a student, I conceived of spaces with such unrestrained imagination: fanciful, bizarre and completely unrealistic. I wanted to share these pages from my sketchbook (a very personal glimpse of that time) because, although the drawings are so completely different than the type of work our office Welch Design Studio creates, what is undeniably similar is the process we go through as architects and designers to get to the end result. 

And what I am always remembering about my own education as an architect, regardless of what it covered and what it lacked is, as Louis Kahn so eloquently states, “Architecture is the thoughtful making of space.” 

It was during my university years that I learned the adventurous and exploratory approach to understanding spatial possibilities. In school, as architecture students, we relied upon the active dialogue among other students and our professors. Now, we have a similar dialogue in our own studio-based architectural firm. It is in this energized atmosphere that we discuss design decisions and thought processes that create successful spaces that our clients will enjoy for years to come.

'EDUCATION OF AN ARCHITECT' - May 4, 2009, LISA B. WELCH