Beyond the Obvious: Seeing & Writing About the Built Environment

I’m not an architect but I work for an organization that serves the industry, and I’m always ready to learn about its practices and philosophy. My job offers me some nice perks. A recent one gave the the opportunity to join a writing course for architects. I’m not one to turn down a perk, nor am I one to turn down a writing workshop.

By virtue of working in New York City, I’m beautifully immersed in a built environment filled with architectural wonders and masterpieces, as well as something interesting to see on every street.

Bryant Park, Midtown Manhattan

Bronx College Library

I don’t even want to think about what I’ve missed by doing no more than walking into a building, staying inside for whatever reason, and walking out, all without seeing it.

Being away from the city during the pandemic has shifted my perspective. When I can return, I’m determined to hone my powers of observation and make a habit of looking beyond the obvious to understand and see what I’m living in.

My nonfiction writing involves the same principles: observing, digging beneath the surface and moving beyond the obvious, pausing to think about what I see, and building a structure. Practices I gloss over when I’m not on the page.

Architecture, like writing, calls for much more than producing a result. I already know that writing, telling my stories, is a gesture. It’s an invitation. In the workshop I learned to think of architecture as a gesture. It moves. It’s dynamic because it does something, does it for someone, does it in a specific location, in a specific manner, and for a reason. Just like a story.

Architecture determines how I enter a building, a park, a plaza. It can let me know how long I’m allowed to stay and dictate the conditions of my stay. Every building or built area I enter establishes a dynamic that has a designed effect on me. That’s what I have tended to miss.

Architecture is a statement about history, economics, along with societal and cultural intentions and aspirations. It’s about power and influence in who brought a structure about as well as how, where, and when it was built.

My plan — and I hope I don’t go back to New York City too excited to take it slowly — is to grab these wonderful stories in my path and listen to them.

Chrysler Building from One Vanderbilt