Here Comes the Sun

I’ve had this one calculator since the late 1980’s.  It is lightweight, thin and has never malfunctioned in the twenty years I’ve carried it around.  It does everything in need it to do, and several functions on it that I haven't used since I had a calculus class.  Here’s the kicker – I have never had to replace the battery.  It is solar powered.  Check that – it even works under a light bulb.

The solar cell on it is just a tad more than 1 square inch.  The overall thickness of the entire housing is a quarter inch at its thickest.  I’ve had this durable and dependable technology since the tenth grade, yet I still have to heat the water in my house with petroleum products.  You would think that the implementation of this power would have advanced in this generation, but it seems to me that much of the solar energy hitting the earth is just plain wasted, short of the solar calculator on my desk.

I’ve often wondered about other kinds of wasted energy.  What about the kinetic energy exerted at the gym?  It seems that the treadmills and stair climbers could easily be harnessed to run the lights inside the facility.  Where does all that energy go, other than being converted to heat, which makes the operator run their air conditioner more in the summers?  There has been a renewed effort into placing buildings to passively exploit the energy of the sun, but when I was in school, many of us dismissed this as “hippie talk”.

I am guessing that many people have seen the children’s experiment where the chemical properties of the potato can be harnessed to run a small clock mechanism.  Or how about placing a mint candy into a diet cola that produces a huge release of carbon dioxide (I guess this is not a great thing for the environment, but let’s use it as an example).  Having been raised in Lancaster County, I’ve learned not to waste things.  I’ve got to think that there are more things we can do as the designers of the built environment that capture the spirit of my Casio Scientific Calculator. 

On a slightly off kilter note, I purchased a rotary mechanical calculator, “the Addometer”, which works only on the power of the user, from EBay.  I had seen some of the more experienced guys using these in the office.  These babies have the lifespan of a giant tortoise, and can add fractions much more quickly (than in my head, not by a tortoise – I don’t have any empirical data on the tortoise).

The Education of an Architect

Having had the realization that I have spent more than forty percent of my life here at RLPS, I had cause to look back in retrospect. To put it another way, I’ve spent as much time in this institution as I did in school, including college. I was introduced to life here as a summer intern, working on a presentation model for Reformed Church, and I was under the tutelage of the “professor”, Mark Schlenker. It was a full time job for the two of us and one other intern. There were more layers of paint on that model than on the Golden Gate Bridge. I think I saw the striped of colors in my sleep at night. By the end though, it was a good learning experience, teaching me something about massing, color and rhythm. However, when I found out the cost of that model, I about passed out. It was more money than I would make in my first year out of school. That also taught me something. My first assignment as a full time employee included a renovation to a skilled care facility in Allentown. It was an odd project in that never had an executed contract, and the G.C. was on board to help make informed decisions on the design of the building. They literally were building while we were designing. The facility had deficiencies as well as next to no floor to floor heights to contend with. I tend to think that most of the design in that building was done in the job trailer. People kept leaving the project; the executive director and the director of nursing left for other jobs. The landscape architect, the superintendent and the lead electrical engineer left and, unfortunately, even the president of the construction company died. At the end it was just me and the Owner’s project manager remaining as original team members. Consequently, we have already undertaken a renovation of that renovation I worked on then. That made me think. This was not the first job I’ve worked on to have lived out its expectant life span and has been updated again. As it is, I am still considered more or less a Johnny Come Lately here, and I can appreciate that. Some have been drawing here at RLPS as long as I’ve been drawing oxygen. But this year, to shake things up a bit, we moved out of our old home and into these new digs. Everyone should do that every 30 years or so.

Fly the Friendlier Skies

I don’t particularly enjoy flying in any kind of craft, but the merits of flying in these small charter planes have got commercial flights beat in almost every way. If you have enough people going, the math actually works out in favor of these flights compared to even driving. Flying to Rochester, NY saves 8 hours of travel per person, knocking the travel time from 10 hours to 2 for a round trip. It allows a longer day of meetings and reduces the amount of overnight stays, putting less pressure on families at home. They do have their draw backs; however. These plans can either fly around weather or through it, because above it is not an option. Sometimes you have to wait out a weather system before you can take off. I have personally had one or to very bumpy and worrisome flights, although I was not on one flight were the door popped open. I steer clear of that seat next to the door when I fly. The planes are loud, but that allows me to zone out for an hour because it is too loud to talk. I told a friend of mine that I was in Rochester the previous day and was trying to explain the trip, and she asked how big the plane was. When I told her there were 5 seats, she asked if someone serves you drinks. I told her that would be a little difficult since you cannot stand up on the plane. But the benefits far outweigh the challenges. Aside from the actual flight time save, you can show up for an 8 AM flight at 7:55 without a problem. There is no problem parking and it is free. There is no check-in and you don’t have to take off your shoes or take apart your carry-on at the x-ray machine. I can only see this way of traveling expanding for business travelers. Charter flights just make sense in so many ways. There are areas of the world where these types of flights are the only reasonable way to get from point A to point B. For example one in eight people in Alaska have a pilot’s license. I would choose it every time, and I don’t even mind that there is no one to serve me a drink. I would rather have him keep his eyes on the road, or horizon, rather.

Memorial Day

I was given the opportunity to visit Arlington National Cemetery last summer on my own (meaning no kids to “enhance” the experience).  I was looking forward to finding the resting place of my grandfather’s brother, Peter, who served in the Second World War in the Pacific.  He was part of the invasion forces Saipan (specifically Guam) and the occupation forces in Okinawa.  It took quite a while after his death for the government approved his request to be laid at Arlington, and the internment took place very quickly thereafter, so I was unable to attend the memorial service there.  So I was looking forward to finding his marker and paying my respects.

I found what I thought was his location in the cemetery from the welcome center.  But I was woefully wrong.  I ended up walking in circles and as it turned out, was nowhere near his location.  But had I not been so lost, there would be no story…

I had decided to go back to the welcome center to see if I could get some help locating Pete.  It had been a beautiful day in Virginia, but it seemed that some rain storms may threaten my walk.  I had been walking for hours and was worried I may have missed my chance of finding Pete on this day.  But on my way back, I encountered an older gentleman sitting on the edge of his car’s seat with the door open.  It looked as if he may have needed some assistance, and he waived at me as if to confirm my suspicion.  As I approached nearer, I noticed he had flowers in his right hand and a cane in the left.  As I walked up next to him, he asked me if I could help him get to his wife’s grave.  Even in my haste, I wouldn’t refuse a request like that.

It turns out his wife’s grave was only a few yards from the road, maybe 15 yards.  I held his arm steady as he bent over to place fresh flowers at her headstone.  I noticed her name, and “wife of” Major General John W. “Jack” Huston, ASAF.   I asked, quite dimly as I look back on it, if that was him.  Of course it was him.  Well, when I helped him return to his car, we started talking.  I told him of my intended quest that day and he told me a little about how he came each week to place flowers at his wife’s grave. 

He asked what I did for a living. As it happened that I was working for another retired USAF Major General, as she was the director of the retirement community for which I was currently doing an addition – Falcon’s Landing - the Air Force Retired Officers Community just outside of Washington, D.C.  He knew all about the community.  I told him I was from Lancaster and went to Penn State and it turned out he was from Pittsburgh originally.  He mentioned that he was on an advisory group for an architectural project, I believe alongside of Lady Bird Johnson (whom he said was “just a lovely woman”).   

He offered me a ride back to the welcome center in his car.  As I accepted, it dawned on me that I just effectively hitch hiked with a guy that couldn’t walk 15 yards.  I hoped the speed limit on the cemetery grounds would prevent a high speed crash.  I sat in the back seat because the front passenger seat was filled with stuff, including magazines, books and, poignantly, many empty gravesite flower stands.  But as it turns out, he dropped me off at the welcome center without incident, we exchanged some warm fair wells, and he drove off and I returned to the welcome center and received the correct directions to my Uncle Pete’s mausoleum building (not grave, he was cremated, which I didn’t know).  After I found Pete’s marker, I looked up Jack Huston on my smart phone out of curiosity.  I discovered he had a professional biography on the USAF’s official website, as most General Officers have.

I found the older gentleman I helped was a WW II veteran.  He was the navigator for a B-17 crew and flew 30 combat missions.  Regarding the 30 missions, it was customary to only to fly 25 missions before being rotated home, but Jack flew five more.  It was nearly statistically impossible for crews to survive 25 consecutive sorties based on the massive losses in the European theater.  Through the rest of the war, he instructed navigation to airmen back in Kansas.  Subsequent to his service during wartime, Jack continued to train troops, worked in intelligence operations, served in various policy positions and finally as the Chief Historian of the Air Force.  A web search will reveal numerous books that he wrote or edited about Air Force history.

I consider myself to be lucky that I got myself lost and was able to provide a very small favor to such an admirable man who served our country.  It just goes to show that doing a service to a stranger can end up paying in ways that aren’t imaginable at the time.  I was looking to pay my respects to one hero, and ended up finding two.

Jack Huston Bio

Fly the Friendly Skys

How easily we can be reduced to a very basic and primal state.  I had the pleasure of an overnight layover in the Chicago-O’Hare airport a few years ago; unplanned, of course.  Summer thunderstorms delayed my outgoing flight from Denver to Chicago so late, that there were no more planes running that evening –  or morning, rather, because I didn’t land until after midnight.  This was my first experience being stranded.  I was just so thankful that I was traveling alone, or at least not with any children.  Here are some survival tips in case it happens to you.

1.         Find a line and stand in it.  You need to get a new ticket.  Chances are you will be told to move to another line, then another.  Just find the main service desk and stand in that line first.  The “temporary” lines the airline staff set up are just that – temporary.  The main line will be longer at first likely, but it won’t evaporate.

2.         Find the free sodas, blankets and pillows.  You won’t really sleep, so get all the caffeine and sugar you can.  The blankets and pillows provide some buffer between your behind and the floor.  Hopefully they won’t smell like ham.

3.         Find a set of chairs that does not have air rests between each seat.  Some people are actually skinny enough to squeeze their bodies UNDER the armrests to lie down on the chairs.  Let’s just say I sat up all night.  I saw cots, but I don’t know where on Earth they came from.

4.         Don’t bother setting an alarm for your 6 AM flight.  The cleaning crew will make sure you are awake at 4:30.

5.         If flights were messed up all night, they are going to be messed up for some time the next day.  Pilots need a minimum time on the ground before they are allowed to fly again.  I was flying standby on a flight for 6 AM and miraculously got a boarding pass.  Literally five minutes later they cancelled the flight.  No pilot.

6.         Listen to the other stranded passengers.  Chances are you have it way better than some of them.  One guy was on his way to get an operation.  One family of five (with young children) was to spend 4 nights vacation in London and was looking at losing two of them.  A few adults were chaperoning twenty-some teen aged girls and were trying to get home from three weeks in Europe.

7.         Don’t listen to anything the service desk staff says.  I called our travel agent to see if they could get me on the next flight.  I was informed they got me the last seat on the 11 AM flight.  When I went to get my boarding pass the customer representative told me I was just given an overbooked seat.  It apparently didn’t do me any more good than flying standby.  Literally five minutes later I had a boarding pass and seat assignment in hand.

8.         Look for celebrities.  They get stuck too.  I saw Dustin “Screech” Diamond from Saved by the Bell.

On my several mile walk from Terminal B to Terminal E, I witnessed what can only be described as a refugee camp.  Every horizontal surface was strewn with bodies wrapped in blankets.  Mothers with small children camped on the floors.  Bodies huddled around electrical outlets as if to gain warmth from them.  People who seem rational and mild-mannered while in line were stoked to a rage when they heard when the next open seat was.

All I can really say is “chin up” and try to work on your return from all angles.  As one of our partners put it, via email after I told him I wasn’t going to make it back, “Welcome to a national practice!”

 

Not Your Grandmother's Nursing Home (But It Is Mine)

If you’ve read this blog in the past, you may remember that I once wrote about how I refused to design a house for my parents and that it was a very wise decision to let others tell my parents that they are nuts.  I know they are nuts and I didn’t feel the need to become nuttier myself working for them.

However, in 2007 I had the distinct luck to have my grandmother admitted into a project that I designed.  My grandmother had fallen and broken her hip for the third time in about two years and needed structured rehabilitation.  She had been to other nursing facilities for rehab in the past and it was always very depressing to visit her in these very old, medical models.

I decided to try my best to get her into Landis Homes for rehab, with the hopes of securing her a bed in the Memory Support wing permanently.  Grandma had been living in an assisted living facility, but as the series of falls she took would tell you, she was ready for more assistance.  Luckily they had a space open for her in Rehab.    Talk about a post occupancy evaluation.  It so happened that the first day I was able to visit her in her new living arrangements was on her birthday at lunch time.  Since she lived much closer I was able to go over my lunch hour.  I got to see first hand how the food service and dining worked.  The dining room was spacious enough for residents, but did not accommodate visitors too well.  Grandma had three visitors at one time this day.

My aunt was anxious to let everyone know that I was the architect for this building.  While I didn’t think I had anything to be ashamed of, I usually don’t say anything about being the responsible party until I hear what the staff are saying about the place first.  Call me cautious.  On this day though, I truly looked at the building through different eyes.  This was no longer just a building I designed; it was my Grandma’s house now.  Some how everything I looked at was with a critical eye, as in “how does this detail work for my Grandma?”  It was actually quite an experience, almost an out of architect body experience.  I was looking at the building more like an end user.

The real funny thing about this whole experience was the fact that several years earlier, Gregg Scoot and Linford Good (from Landis Homes) did a presentation at a conferences on the design of this building.  As is typical, Gregg was looking for a peppy title for the presentation.  At the time I had a friend who also had a grandmother at Landis Homes in the Dogwood building.  All the residents from Dogwood were moved into the new building once it was competed and Dogwood was adapted to another use.  So my suggestion for the presentation name was “Landis Homes – Not Your Grandmother’s Nursing Home”.  The title stuck.

Once healed up, Grandma then was transfered to the Memory Support House (which was the predecessor to the building I designed, but also by RLPS) and I took my children over to visit on the weekends when I could.  We typically sat in the living room and Grandma enjoyed watching the kids literally run around in circles.   I can not help but remember the marketing photos we have of this space, graciously appointed with loveseats, coffee table, hutches and small dinette set.  The room as it appears now has only gliders and recliners at the perimeter of the room facing inward.  I remember the discussions we had on the design of this building’s successor and because of this situation; each floor of the new building has a much larger activity room to allow more flexibility for seating of the entire neighborhood, as well as several smaller seating arrangements for functions like visiting great-grandchildren. 

At the end of our visits, the children were usually tired of hearing me tell them to stop running and be quiet and Grandma is usually asleep in her rocker.  We would whisper good-bye and see you next time, and as we would leave I hoped that in some way I helped care for Grandma’s needs.  Grandma Helen lived at Landis Homes until Janualry of 2010, just shy of her 92nd birthday, I had gotten to see her just hours before she passed in a place the really had become her home.

Blow Torch Architecture

People pay big bucks for new things- new cars, new houses, new faces and new spouses.  It seems the appreciation for things that show their age has declined.  In one instance we were looking to give materials an old world look.

Mennonite Central Committee’s training center was a unique experience.  Everyone on the design and building team had to be trained to “get it”.  Team members were sent to Egypt and India in order to give them an appreciation for the lifestyle of missionaries as well as the landscape in which the people we were designing for were to be immersed.  As a result of this trip, we spent a lot of time trying of figure out how to make something look old or weathered, or even cheap.

This had many incarnations, such as applying paint to the walls with rags to give them a modeled appearance, experimenting with stained concrete floors, and having a local metal worker make some of the door hardware.

One activity really stuck out in my mind and it was the brilliant idea of the superintendent on site, Dave.  We used a lot of reclaimed lumber on the job for everything from doors to stair treads.  The thing about reclaimed lumber is that is has a surface patina that takes decade of dirt and oxidation to create.  The trick is how you deal with the cut edges because they look like freshly sawn lumber – a stark contrast to the look we were going for.

Somehow Dave knew how to deal with this.  Even though he had not gone on the trip to the two Continents and didn’t see any of the presentations the design team made to the Owner’s Board, Dave always “got it”.  He took it upon himself to treat the cut ends of the reclaimed lumber with a blow torch.  With just the right amount of acetylene and artistic flair, one can burn a patina into freshly cut wood.  Even if you were looking for it, it was difficult to see which ends were cut last week, and which had been cut last century.

Dave had done his part in contributing to the overall aesthetic (he contributed in many other ways, too), by pulling a non-tradition trick out of his bag.  I don’t know if I will ever have the opportunity to practice “blow torch architecture” in the future, but believe me, I am ready.