R o b e r t · D a v i s · A r c h i t e c t

25 Dec 09

      practicing commercial, industrial, and occasionally residential architecture in the Gulf-coast region since 1980...licensed in TX and registered with the NCARB.


    Take a look: the  virtual restoration of small-town synagogues in TX (tjhs) and WI, a selection of brief essays below on topics of professional and personal interest, and a few  salesman's samples.

 
    Whose Design Is It Anyway?...When does the architect's artistic license expire?...The architect's job and the client's privilege of shaping and directing the work are usually terminated by occupation of the building...When building ownership changes hands, all the architect's effort to please the client goes up in smoke. Professional prizes notwithstanding, if a building's design prevents adjustment to altered use, if its decoration becomes an embarrassment difficult to remove, if the roof or walls leak, if omething big breaks, the users will condemn the building as a bad job.
    Memory...looking beyond the bricks and mortar to a building's hidden decoration...Every town has a visible pattern of streets and buildings and an invisible one of memories clinging to them. No one sees all of them, but everyone who lives there sees some. As a stranger, you see nothing.You are, upon arrival, interrupting a stream of consciousness without knowing till much later where you came in.
    Comfort...In the long run what wears best: good looks or good temper?... The composition may be artful, the colors match, and the iconography too clever by half, but the place may be drafty, noisy, smelly, or just plain uncomfortable. ..Comfort has no equivalent mathematical expression, no units, no standard onstituents, no single sensory correlate. It can't be seen so it can't be drawn; and may be more important than anything that can.
    Decay...There is no fooling Mother Nature...Decay represents a kind of wisdom--the pattern of wear and exposure an accumulated history of use. There is as much to read in the accidental dents as there is in the rot of decomposition or the breakage of parts. Abandonment tells a more complicated story--was the failure intrinsic to the thing or does it have an altogether different and unrelated cause? One wonders at the source of energy and optimism needed to build the now-desolate wrecks of towns on the Dakota plain.
    Ordinary Architecture...It is a gift to be simple...There are plenty of "important architectural statements" that have fooled some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all the time. Eventually they fall out of fashion and it becomes obvious that fashion was all they had to offer. Unable to change clothes, they live out what's left of their less-than-useful life as faded frumps.
    CAD: Is What you See ALL You Get? ...When out of sight is out of mind...The basic CAD task has been the simulation of appearance. First, in the two dimensions of the picture plane, and then in the three dimensions of the model. In 2D the selection of viewpoint is critical, but in 3D irrelevant. Yet while the design object may be fully visible, it still remains untouchable. However sliced or separated the parts have no heft, the model no substance.


Robert P. Davis, Architect

email: rpd611@rpd611.com

tel: 713-291-6023 fax: 713-721-721-6270