Making Space for Art in Architecture

I don’t believe the architect is an artist. I believe I am an artist and that one day I might like to be an architect. A building can be a work of art in its own right, but we should never strive for this above making a great piece of architecture. Rather than seeking a one to one relationship, these two ways of making can and should have a reciprocal effect on each other. An artwork can affect a space just as a building can shape the space in which we perceive or create an artwork. This reciprocity can also be decisive in the process of the creator. Le Corbusier developed a shared language between his architecture and his paintings that was instrumental in his understanding of form, line, and process. In the abstract paintings of modernist painters like Mondrian, Malevich or Matta, the built environment guided a tectonic approach whose aim was not to simulate or represent, but to achieve similar qualities of rhythm, space, and form. In neither case was this critical link a matter of pulling forms from one world into the next, but rather a deeply felt understanding of how these mediums shape the world around us.
I have two principal creative interests, in my personal and academic life they intertwine. I enjoy painting for its own sake, without any responsibility to the world or to the people around me. But because of this my artwork does not have the power or potential to effect a change at the scale that I aspire to. Architecture can do more. An architecture at the service of art. Not subservient, mind you. Not a functional machine for painting, but rather a space that recognizes the needs of artists and is able to support them, materially, economically, spatially. Above all, an artist needs space. A space to work, a space to learn, a space to call his own and a space to share with the community are all essential for any creative person to be truly engaged in his work. The working environment shapes who we are and what we make as much we, as designers, try to shape the spaces around us. This project will be informed by the practice and process of a painter, but will not attempt to create architecture out of painting or vice versa. Instead it will strive to discover deeper links between the two means of expression, to know their own limitations and to allow them to aid each other without ever letting them interfere. The artist and the art itself are not the subject but the client of this project which aims at creating a better working environment for the creative people of all stripes in the East Bay.