Andrew Blocha

ON DESIGN

People experience architecture in time, space, and within the context of a narrative defined by their memories. Since the beginning of the 20th century film and now digital media have increasingly influenced our comprehension of the space we live in. I find it is no longer enough to consider an act of architecture viewed from without as an hermetic object, but rather as a series of experienced moments, events and transitions that consider lighting, framing, and pace. Architecture is the live set for a multitude of life events.

For example, cancer patients become acutely aware of time, from the moment they first learn their diagnosis, through the weeks or months of treatment and hopefully to the day they are cancer free. Recognizing this connection, the design for the Mangurian building, at the Mayo clinic, is an essay in establishing naturally lit spaces that punctuate an awareness of cosmological time through connection to sunlight and time of day. This approach prioritizes the building as a way to create the life spaces for patients, families, and caregivers over the building as an object.

I speak about the work I have done as Stories in Shadow and Light because architecture is still distinguished by what is built and the direct experiential relationship with the human body. Stories because our experience with architecture always has a narrative connection to memory and anticipation of the future. I consider our built environment as foremost a cinematic engagement and secondarily an object oriented encounter. In this way our buildings are both life sets and props. But in all cases it is still rooted in the play of light and dark, sunlight and moonlight, resonance of energy and pause, sound and quiet.