Summary: Most of the readers who wrote in liked last week’s Fantasy Architecture issue, and we have posted some of their letters. We also have an interesting letter about last week’s poll on “How do you remember architecture school?”

From the July 20 issue, we have differing views on the National Cathedral article,
and some more accolades for Curtis R. Moody, FAIA, from a former classmate.

Re: Fantasy Architecture issue

What fun! Thank you. Why not follow up in 10, 20 years, to see what becomes reality?

—Stephen A. Kliment, FAIA
Editor, Principal's Report
New York City

Hey, guys, that is the best AIA e-mail I have ever received. Great design and color choice, purple is “so hot right now.” Anyway, very interesting and beautiful layout, give the person who designed that a raise!!!

—Jed Thomas, Assoc. AIA
LPAIA, Bozeman, Mont.

Ed note: The designer for AIArchitect is the fantastic Innov8iv Design.

Your article on fantasy architecture both intrigued and concerned me. I, like many architects, am a dreamer, and I enjoy fantastic ideas such as the projects in your article. At the same time, I know all too well of the demands of our profession in the "real" world. Architects are in a unique position as design prophets with one foot in the visionary and/or fantastic and the other in the real world (budget, timeline, client needs). I am working on a large-scale design-build project where I am barraged daily with questions such as, "Why do we need architects anyway?" And the answer is our ability to be visionaries. I am encouraged by the projects shown on the fantasy architecture article. I am also challenged to continue fighting the good fight to show, prove if necessary, the real value of architects is their skill in making the fantastic real.

—Adolfo Santos, AIA
Chicago

Fantasy Architecture more than being fantasy, is a glance to future architecture. Today more than ever, we see the evolution of art, function, and economics happening at lightning speed, and this is a very good initiative to explore our possibilities for the coming generations. I congratulate your efforts and I hope this becomes a continuing adventure.

—Alberto Manrique, Intl. Assoc. AIA
Aventura, Fla.

Re: Poll: How Do You Remember Architecture School?

Your poll for the week is timely as I prepare to send my son to Illinois Institute of Technology to begin his studies in architecture. I find myself at times wanting to be the one going, full of hope, excitement and more than a little trepidation to study in Crown Hall, live in Helmut Jahn’s dormitory and play in the Rem Koolhaas Student Center. As a parent, I want him to be successful, as an architect I have great expectations and can’t help but wonder at the comments from my fellow professionals: “Couldn’t talk him out of it?”

My education at Texas Tech University prepared me for what has been an almost 30-year career—very rewarding personally, professionally, and financially. I can only hope he is as well prepared for a rapidly changing profession. We toured several schools as father and son, and I marveled at the breadth of each new approach and excitement of faculty. As we in the profession continue to debate architecture education, I believe the program he selected offers an opportunity to learn how a building goes together, how to work with others, and to explore the profession.

So, do I want to go back? With his opportunity and knowing what I know now … maybe a little (…but I’d have to learn AutoCAD).

—Rex L. Carpenter, AIA, LEED AP
Vice president, HKS Architects Inc.
Dallas

Re: Where History and Spirituality Meet, You’ll Find America

"Where History and Spirituality Meet, You'll Find America" appalls me, as a headline, and as the promotion of an attitude that poisons today’s Washington, and much of the decision-making in the U.S. today. Claptrap! If AIArchitect and the AIA want to present this, or any cathedral as an architectural accomplishment, go right ahead—it offers your members an opportunity to bathe in the notoriety that the AIA promotes as the bubble bath of professional calling. But to celebrate the commingling of church and state perverts higher purposes that the AIA should serve, and adds more poison to our national tubfull of delusional rubber duckies.

As articulated by Reinhold Niebuhr, “The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.” As a barely continuing member of the AIA, as well as a past president of NCARB, I do not want to be splashed by the AIA’s acquiescence to—much less acclamation of—current politics as they pervert our nation’s founding principles, especially in the name of national celebration. I hope my voice is not alone on this issue, and that our exclamation might prompt the AIA to reexamine its mission fundamentally. I do not think that the mission directs this, our trade union, to serve the profession the way it should, and through its members, the public, as our society deeply needs and deserves. And to celebrate perversion of national principles panders to their prostitution.

—George B. Terrien, AIA
Rockland, Maine

Where politics and religion meet is where my organization had better be circumspect. I know the organization is national, and all the "rubes" in the South, Midwest, and Southwest need to be serviced, but more of this and you will have secession on your hands. I am already prepared to start a "secede from the U.S. government" movement here in New England, so secession from the national AIA is just an afterthought, and much more easily accomplished.

Sincerely ( and I do mean sincerely,)

—James W Hadley, AIA
Hadley Crow Studio
Orleans, Mass.

Super article on the National Cathedral, beginning with the headline. Ultimately, that is what it is all about. Design, what we accept from the architects, and what we pay to see that three-dimensionally, is all about how we feel about ourselves, how important we feel we are, how much we care about what others think of us. I think it was the 1920s funeral and holding for burial of Presbyterian Woodrow Wilson that moved the Cathedral from Episcopal church to National church. When he was finally moved from vault to his final resting place, that was complete—another of those English touches, a politician buried in a national church. A few awful presidents, FDR, and the birth of Presidential Libraries probably kept it from ever happening again.

The collection of drawings, data books, change orders, Clerk of the Works reports, photographs, etc., is one of the largest and most important ones for a private American building, and they actually value the collection and care for it. Again, thanks for such super work.

—Tony P. Wrenn, Hon. AIA
Historian and former AIA archivist

Re: Doer’s Profile: Curtis R. Moody, FAIA

Curt Moody was a classmate of mine at Ohio State from 1969 to 1973, our graduation year. He and I were the only African-Americans to graduate that year. He is well deserving of the accolades he is receiving because he is an outstanding architect, leader, and individual. (Did he also mention that he played on OSU’s varsity basketball team, which was unheard of for an architecture student?) It is important that the message of diversity be distributed to as many venues as possible whenever the opportunity presents itself, and the AIA can be instrumental in this area. The more minorities that are exposed to the challenging and noble profession of architecture the more likely it is that talented individuals of all races will want to become architects. As Curt says, minorities in general and African-Americans in particular represent a very small percentage of all architects in the U.S.–far too small, and that needs to change. Thank you for highlighting the career of my friend, Curt Moody.

—Elton E. Jones, AIA
Senior project manager, Mason Blau & Associates Inc.
Clearwater, Fla.