Stephen, etc.

An architecture student from Austin, Texas.

About Me


Vudu Theme by David Rhyne.

• Last Day of Class

  Friday was my last day of class as an undergraduate student. You would think that this would be a joyous, boastful post, but it was a strange, roller coaster of a day.

  First, I attended a memorial service for all the members of the university who died over the past year. This included my classmate, Adam. The majority of my graduating class in the architecture school came out to support his family, who flew down from Kansas to attend. I wasn’t there in November, when Adam was hit by a drunk driver while walking home. I wasn’t there the last time our year came together, when his family was in town. And I realized that, as I sat there, listening to a list of names. 

  This was all prefaced by a bus hitting a student on the main crosswalk into the university. The front windshield shattered and the kid was thrown some fifteen feet, but somehow he survived with very minor injuries. The architecture school is the closest building to that crosswalk, and so many of us in studio immediately sensed that something was wrong. I felt like people didn’t know how to react, when the outcome was still uncertain. A disturbing curiosity, morbidity, distanced objectivity. It all felt wrong to me. Of course, someone captured the accident on video, which is now on youtube, and the whole thing has become something celebrated. I don’t get it.

  So, these were the two events that shaped my day. When I started my undergraduate education, I did not expect to feel this way at the end. There has not been a moment of finality. I feel like my undergraduate education sputtered to a finish, faded rather than culminated in an end. I know the people I will stay in touch with, and more people that I will not. To be honest, I feel lackluster about the future. The economy is still down. Architecture is suffering from an identity crisis. And a college degree just isn’t worth much of anything anymore. So hooray, I am graduating.

• Sonnet 47

  Five of us from the office, as part of our Hanukkah dinner, wrote letters to each other. None of us are Jewish, by the way. We picked names from a hat, and I got Ingrid - Norwegian, model building master, spiritual office aunt, and the only one in the office with a dark, mysterious alter-ego. This poem is basically all inside jokes, but I am proud of it, and I’m glad I had the chance to put into words how much I appreciate my friendship with Ingrid.

  My friend from over where black gold embraced white dust,
  Where sky meets ground and bursts all hues, all times,
  I write this poem to you because I must,
  Our aunt, cool aunt, O your awesomeness shines.
  Remember when you bathed your face with misted glue?
  You handled it with grace and calm and oil.
  Or when your shadow waked, darkly, too?
  All sex and drugs, you fought her with great toil.
  But as our time together nears the end,
  I will remember you as kind, as fair,
  Storyteller, singer, a hand to lend,
  Of late nights here and there, of laughter shared.
       I will miss you and all we did,
       Quirky, funny, the best, Ingrid.

• Still Breathing, Still in Copenhagen

  I have, once again, failed to update this blog. I figure that’s a good sign, that my life has been interesting and busy enough that I forget to document it, to process it. Quite simply, I love my life in Copenhagen. I love the friends I have made. I love my neighborhood. I love how comfortable I feel here.

  Looking ahead, I can already tell that I will return to Austin a different person. More confident, more mature, more willing to try new things. And I’m already planning my return to Denmark. One month left. That feels so strange and sad to say.

• Architecture Family

  I’m realizing, more now than ever before, how small the architecture community is. How interconnected. How closed. How similar we are to family. This past week, especially, has highlighted this in two ways.

  The first, the most important, the one that assures me that everything will be okay despite it all, relates to the death of my classmate. His loss, in so many ways, felt like a loss to the entire architecture community. We loss one of our own. So it was fitting, moving even, that those in Austin who knew him best chose to remember him in, of all places, the courtyard of the architecture school. Goldsmith, the only true oasis in the vastness of the university.

  What encourages me is how the school came together. It reminded me of just how important these people are in my life. All the time we spend together, through the long nights, through the frustrations and breakthroughs, pursuing a craft that we love. It is what binds us together. By choosing architecture, we inherently stepped away from the stability, the pay, the consistency that so many others chose. On a daily basis, I spend my time with people who share the same passion that I have. It is inevitable that we should form such close bonds.

  In a separate sense, the architecture community is surprisingly small. Just yesterday, as I joined a friend for drinks, I unexpectedly ran into a classmate who I did not know was in Copenhagen. When his colleague stopped by, we discovered a common friend from Lausanne. Furthermore, his roommates happened to be friends, and fellow Belgians, with my coworker.

  I’m not sure if this is particular to Copenhagen, where I am constantly running into people I know, but I do feel that architects seem to find each other. There are so few of us that it is not long before you are just a couple degrees removed from all architects in the city. The smallness of the community sometimes feels like we all share this enlightening secret. In truth, this also bothers me from time to time. But at this very moment, it makes me feel alive, inspired, optimistic.

• Adam

  Early Sunday morning, while walking home, my classmate was killed by a drunk driver. Hit-and-run.

  As I am writing this, my friends, his friends, are gathering to memorialize his life, to remember him together, to mourn together, to support each other, together. I cannot be there.

  Truthfully, I am not sure why I am writing this. I am not sure what it will accomplish. I am even not sure what this post is about. 

  Tragedy makes me both yearn for home, to surround myself with those closest to me, and yearn for escape, to detach myself from reality. My remoteness right now unsettles me. No one here knew Adam. So I did not know what to say when I found out. Or who to say it to. The sadness, the true weight of it all, feels ghosted. It is intangible. Life in Copenhagen barely shivered.

  I will end this now. I thought this would be a post about Adam, but I can’t find anything significant to say. My mind feels blank. And really, what do you say to this?

  In Austin, I wish I could be there right now to hug each and every person. To comfort, to support, to remember. Adam, wherever you are now, I hope you are at peace.

• Negligence

  I have been negligent. About posting. About photographing. About communicating exactly what I have been up to here in Copenhagen. It’s strange, on other trips I felt compelled to document each and every aspect of my adventures. But all my previous travels could be classified as “study abroad.” I was always, in some manifestation or other, a tourist, a visitor. But this time, I’m living abroad. This will be the longest I’ve lived away from Austin. Perhaps this is why I’m more content with not documenting everything. After all, I don’t photograph most of what I do in Austin, which I probably should. The city provides me with so many opportunities. But I’m making a better effort from now on. Copenhagen, prepare yourself.

• 

  May 23rd

  2 notes

  Pottery Studio, Unroofed

  A two week project I did earlier this semester. A regular structural system intersected with two courtyards, one partially covered, the other uncovered, with a perimeter shelving/shading system.

  
  

• Thoughts

  The semester is over. The crush of finals has passed, and I am finally free to pursue activities that were necessarily placed on hold. I’ve been reading Bolaño again, and it makes me wish that I had deeper, no, more exploratory discussions with my friends. We do have enlightening talks, but all too often they are about the pitfalls of architectural education. It is a system that has changed little over the past few decades, and it is rife with many, many problems.

  But I do wish I could discuss books and theory with my friends more. It’s horribly romantic of me, but I don’t really care. The graduate students get this, but my university has given me and my fellow undergraduates a trade school education. While I think that at heart, every architecture school is a trade school, here the graduate students actually get to study theory. They work at thinking about architecture on a philosophical level. How is it that the university treats the two programs so differently?

  Yesterday, I presented my project to non-architects and found it much more satisfying than my review one week earlier with architects. It’s so odd presenting to people trying to find things to like rather than things to dislike.

  So, I am done with this semester. I am moving on to residency. I am figuring out my thesis. I am approaching graduation, and that scares me. On Saturday the Interiors students graduate, as well as the class ahead of me. Last year, my Plan II peers graduated. I feel like I am so far behind.