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Well my friends of 23 and the eponymous 38. Chaz is back! Here is a delve into the past that might be our collective future before we know it, where the discipline of architecture settles the score for all time.

Perspectives Unveiled: Craig-Martin’s Divine Reprieve

On this future Easter Monday, as the world mourns Pope Francis, an unexpected moment of cultural alchemy unfolds. His passing has sparked not only solemn reflection but also an astonishing visual epiphany—a controversial AI portrait of the pontiff in a white puffer jacket. This image, blending sacred remembrance with avant‑garde digital art, has become a lodestar for reinterpretation: global icons like Donald Trump and Kanye West have been drawn into an uncanny dialogue where high art meets streetwear.

For those steeped in the language of architecture and Renaissance perspective, this new aesthetic resonates deeply. Much like Aldo Rossi’s celebrated interplay of square windows and cruciform mullions—once derided for “occupying the line of vision”—this moment redefines narrative. What could have been dismissed as mere stylistic excess now emerges as a living canvas. The puffer jacket, here, transcends its utilitarian origins; it is transformed into a symbol of endurance and creative reinvention—the kind of shelter even a discerning wolf of sustainability cannot blow down.

Michael Craig-Martin’s “Deconstructing Piero” and his meditative engagement with Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation introduce a further layer. Through digital alchemy, he reclaims the heritage of Alberti’s perspective and reinterprets it for our time—a gesture that turns painstaking tradition into a fluid interplay of vision and technology. In doing so, Craig-Martin reminds us that architecture—and indeed, all art—must continually evolve, balancing the weight of history with the impulse for radical renewal.

An obelisk is an enigmatic construction. It draws the eye, both as a cipher for an unwritten message of intelligence and, once built, as yet another gnomon in the long history of shadows. It sparks the imagination but serves no function beyond referencing fire—none more so than the Hartley Obelisk on Putney Heath. There, after the Great Fire of London, fire regulations were tested by encasing timber houses in metal plates. The obelisk marks the site where such a house was built and burned in a controlled experiment, hosting even the royal family for tea while flames attempted to consume the structure.

It was not until iron construction—exemplified in the fire-resistant faience cladding of Berlage’s Holland House—that modern fire laws were established in the City of London. The English understood the obelisk's role differently from the Romans, who amassed a collection of Egyptian monoliths as diplomatic trophies. In contrast, the Washington Monument once stood as the tallest structure in the world, with its stairway leading to an apex, with an elevator added later. Unlike Wren’s Monument in London, which ingeniously incorporated a zenith telescope within its stairwell, Washington’s obelisk remains a symbol rather than an instrument of discovery.

This drawing reinterprets the Washington Monument through the lens of Chicago’s psychogeography in the late 1980s—a city where the layering of histories and urban forces reshaped perception. Here, the monument is stripped of its monolithic presence, its structure partially eroded, exposing the skeleton of a stairway, emblazoned in red. No longer a seamless shaft, it becomes an artefact of transition, revealing the latent instability within symbols of power.

In such transformations, architecture exposes the forces that shape our collective psyche. The hand, sketching in unforgiving moments, captures not just a form but an era’s anxieties—perhaps a fleeting moment, perhaps a future yet unwritten, but always a reckoning with the past. As the world grapples with the weight of misconceived power, architecture, like music, becomes the true score of our existence, notating a future that we can occupy and defend.

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Architecture should not be confined to a single ideology, nor should an architect pledge allegiance to one school of thought. The profession demands more than a rigid stance—it calls for fluency in multiple architectural languages, the ability to engage in dialogue rather than doctrine. Not an Esperanto of architecture, but a practice that navigates the contradictions of history, equally unsettled by Brutalism’s raw imposition, the Cold War’s paranoia, and Corbusier’s abstract prescriptions for living.

There is both derision and admiration in utopian visions; they shape and shatter in equal measure. To accept them uncritically is naïve, but to dismiss them entirely is just as blind. The same can be said of any creative pursuit—architecture, music, design. Why abandon the discipline of composition, of scoring one’s ideas with precision? And yet, do we even know what we want?

Ascending Dreams: A Monument to Possibility

As dusk settled over the Potomac River, I found myself standing before the half-constructed obelisk of the Washington Monument. Its exposed central stair seemed to rise into the twilight like the promise of something unspoken—a connection between the fragmented past and an uncertain, but hopeful, future. I climbed cautiously, not toward a finished pinnacle, but through a spiral of reflection, where each step felt like an intersection of history and possibility. The structure wasn’t complete, nor was it in ruin; it existed in a moment of transformation, a bridge between what had been and what could be.

The scaffolding wrapped around the monument like an embrace, supporting its metamorphosis. Some blocks gleamed with polished brilliance, while others remained rough, yet to be shaped—like a mosaic of contradictions, mirroring the complexities of a nation still defining itself. Light and shadow danced across its surface, creating a patchwork of textures, as though the obelisk itself was alive, breathing the stories of those who shaped it and those who would ascend it. It wasn’t just stone. It was a dialogue, a monument to progress, and a reminder that true peace isn’t found in the perfection of the past but in the courage to envision an inclusive, shared future.

But the genesis of this vision began years earlier, in the warmth of Max Tavern in Chicago. I remember those nights vividly. The tavern, a sanctuary for spirited souls, resonated with an effervescent energy. I would slip into my favorite booth near the photo booth, a glass of orange juice my only indulgence in the midst of lively conversation and laughter. The dim lights cast soft golden hues across the room, and as the world around me turned into a blur of sounds and movements, I would lose myself in my sketchpad. Pencil in hand, I’d let my thoughts wander beyond the tavern's walls, shaping outlines of dreams yet to be realized.

Plywood Chronicles: A Narrative of Memory and Renewal

On March 6, 2025, Ric Scofidio, co-architect of the Kinney House, passed away, leaving behind a legacy of spatial inquiry. The Kinney House itself stands as a spectral resurrection—reborn from fire yet never fully at peace. A budget drawn from ashes dictated its modest rebirth: gray-stained plywood panels, the humble voice of economy, became the house’s skin. Precision and imperfection coexist, as blind windows and erratic alignments echo the structure that once was. Yet rather than mimicry, it is an unsettling ode to its predecessor—a house of memory reimagined, rooted in both loss and creation.

Meanwhile, in SW19, at Alexander Court, plywood takes on another role—not as dwelling, but as a sentinel of transition. A temporary wall stands where a future home for war veterans will rise, its surface marked with pencil lines and anchored by screws. Here, plywood is not just a means but a message—its unassuming presence a quiet assertion of care, of the meticulous balancing act between constraint and vision. A level’s crosshair, simple yet profound, becomes both a tool and a symbol: the desire for precision amidst the flux of construction.

And then, in a stairwell at work, plywood speaks once more. As infill panels for a makeshift guardrail, it is pressed into yet another existence. Sheet sizes dictate form, their constraints shaping the very design. The past, held within the existing rails, is neither erased nor ignored—it is joined by a new layer of purpose. Here, style dissolves into necessity, and necessity into a quiet poetry of pragmatism.

Across these places, plywood endures. It holds memory, shields the present, and scaffolds the future—whether as the quiet witness of Kinney House’s rebirth, the threshold for veterans’ new beginnings, or the structure supporting passing feet. It is architecture stripped of grandeur, awaiting recognition not through spectacle but through its quiet presence in time.

Eulogy for Ric Scofidio

The passing of Richard (Ric) Scofidio marks the departure of an architect whose work was never content with the ordinary. As one half of the pioneering practice Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Ric challenged conventions, embracing the intersection of art, architecture, and urban speculation. His architecture was never just built form—it was an inquiry, a provocation, and a constant interrogation of space and perception.

My first introduction to Scofidio’s work came during my undergraduate years at Portsmouth Architecture School, where Hans Klaentschi unearthed the more obscure corners of architecture for us. Among them was the Kinney House, an image that never left me. It haunted me. The seemingly random logic of its windows—a half-blind ‘Ka’ marking and the unsettling staircase silhouette within a void—suggested a world of layered meanings. It was a house that questioned itself, a house that denied transparency while simultaneously amplifying the very act of looking.

It is remarkable to think that such a project was realized with standard sheet ply, elevating the mundane into a poetic statement. In my own house renovation, I found myself drawn to the same questions of presence and absence, embracing the blind window but in brick—an act of preparing for an opening or sealing one forever. It became a spatial allegory: as we navigate life, we sometimes obscure pathways before discovering the clarity to open them once more.

Scofidio’s legacy is one of fearless exploration, of architecture that resists finality. With every building, he left behind questions rather than answers. And in that, his work will continue to reverberate—through the Kinney House, through the silent narratives of closed apertures, and through the Albion Stair, where all signs, inevitably, point towards discovery.

The Albion Stair and the Giants of Deconstruction

Silbury Hill stands untouched, its ascent forbidden by law. A monument to time, sealed off from those who would reclaim its steps. Robin Hood Gardens, too, is no more—its mound leveled, its layered history erased in an act of sanctioned forgetting. And yet, the impossible persists.

Two figures stand at the threshold of a new mythology. Rem McKool—giant of architecture, echoing Finn McCool—walks this fractured ground, denying the permanence of modernist destruction. Alongside him, Virgil Abloh, architect of the ephemeral, holds the space between collapse and reconstruction. They stand level with the black sun—an omen, an eclipse, a void where meaning should be.

The stair extends from this moment, not as an act of defiance but of reconstitution. Where Silbury Hill cannot be climbed, where Robin Hood Gardens cannot return, the Albion Stair is proposed—not as a fixed form but as an invitation. It does not trespass but connects, forming an architecture of transition.

And so, the myth grows. Rem McKool walks between worlds, at once a builder and a disruptor, shaping land as the tides shape stone. If the future cannot reclaim Robin Hood Gardens, can it find form in Avebury? Will the stair rise, not in stone, but in the act of walking?

The Manifesto of Architecture and Reality: The Albion Stair and the Restoration of Vision

In a world where media distorts perception, there exists another vision—one cast aside as myth, yet more real than the illusions that shape our cities. Silbury Hill stands not merely as an ancient mound of earth, but as an axis of time, a measure of the land’s devotion to the cosmic order. It is not a ruin but a seed—a foundation awaiting renewal.

And so, the Albion Stair rises—not as an intrusion upon the landscape, but as an affirmation of ascent. A stair that is both literal and allegorical, climbing the mound as we climb within ourselves. It is not a conquest of nature but a reconciliation, a way to walk with the land rather than over it.

This is English time—measured not in the urgency of capital, but in the patience of craft, in the rhythm of the seasons, in the shadows cast by solstices and equinoxes. The stair does not defy time; it embraces it, recognising that the act of building must be aligned with the pulse of the land.

In this, the manifesto of architecture is written—not in glass and steel but in the memory of soil, the weight of history, and the future inscribed upon the horizon. The Albion Stair does not reject modernity, but it challenges its amnesia. It is not nostalgic but necessary, an architecture of re-enchantment that calls us back to the reality that media has blurred.

As we stand upon the hill’s summit, we do not escape history—we become part of it. In restoring the stair, we restore the land. In restoring the land, we restore faith—not in the past, but in the possibility of a future where architecture does not consume but cultivates, does not impose but invites.

This is the architecture of reality.

This is the architecture of time.

“The Inverted Plateau: Architecture in Defiance of Gravity”

The image reimagines the extraterrestrial unknown not as an invasion but as a foundation—an architectural plateau where gravity is no longer a given but a question. The inversion of the original landscape destabilizes our perception, forcing us to renegotiate the ground beneath our feet. The monolithic visitor, once an ominous presence, now serves as an elevated stage for discourse, where architecture engages with forces often left unsung in the profession: gravity, levitation, balance, and weight.

Atop this impossible terrain, a dialogue unfolds. A lone figure, sheltered by an umbrella, navigates the precarious edge between structure and void, a reminder of architecture’s role in negotiating uncertainty. A staircase, untethered yet assertive, gestures toward an ascent that defies conventional directionality. A spherical lattice, a geometric paradox, hovers like an unresolved equation of tensile forces. In the distance, a brutalist tower, now winged, escapes the earthbound constraints of its typology, suggesting an alternate trajectory for urbanism—one of flight rather than footprint.

This is no longer a landscape of fear but of transformation. The weight of architecture—literal, metaphorical, professional—is laid bare, inviting a reassessment of its relationship with gravity, not as an immutable force but as a malleable construct. Here, the visitors are no longer alien; they are architects, theorists, and dreamers, reshaping the mythology of space through the lens of built form.

"Monolith in Motion: The Architecture of Transformation"

The Celestial Visitation: A Tale of Cosmic Wonder in the Gardens of Hieronymus Bosch

In a land where time danced to the tune of both chaos and harmony, there existed a place known as the Gardens of Hieronymus Bosch. It was a realm where the fantastical and the familiar intertwined, creating scenes of both delight and dread. Within these gardens, the Dutch found a sanctuary for their boundless imagination and a canvas for their visionary art.

One twilight, as the sun dipped below the horizon and painted the sky with hues of crimson and gold, an ethereal phenomenon began to unfold. From the depths of the cosmos, luminous structures descended gracefully, their forms both alien and mesmerizing. These celestial visitors floated above the gardens, casting a gentle glow that illuminated the landscape below.

The inhabitants of the gardens, with their open hearts and curious minds, gathered to witness this extraordinary spectacle. They marveled at the intricate designs of the flying objects, which seemed to defy the very laws of nature. These beings from beyond the stars brought with them an aura of alchemical wisdom, a knowledge that bridged the realms of mysticism and science.

Among the gathered crowd stood a figure known as the Alchemist, a sage who had devoted his life to the pursuit of hidden truths. With eyes that sparkled with the fervor of discovery, he approached one of the hovering structures. The celestial entity, sensing the Alchemist's pure intentions, shared with him a vision of a ship—a vessel of exploration that sailed through the uncharted waters of both the mind and the cosmos.

This ship, reminiscent of Bosch's **Ship of Fools**, was now reimagined as a beacon of enlightenment. It symbolized the eternal quest for knowledge and the daring voyage into the unknown. As the Alchemist conveyed this vision to the gathered crowd, a collective realization dawned upon them. The celestial visitors were not mere observers; they were guides, illuminating the path to a new era of understanding.

The Dutch, with their innovative spirit and rich artistic heritage, embraced this cosmic visitation with open arms. They saw it as a celebration of the harmony between the terrestrial and the extraterrestrial, a testament to the boundless possibilities that lay at the intersection of alchemy and chemistry. The gardens, once a tapestry of earthly delights, were now imbued with the whispers of the cosmos.

As the celestial structures slowly ascended back into the heavens, the gardens were forever transformed. The inhabitants, inspired by the ethereal visitation, embarked on a journey of discovery that transcended time and space. They celebrated the unity of art and science, the fusion of mysticism and reality, and the boundless potential of the human spirit.

And so, the Gardens of Hieronymus Bosch became a legendary tale, a living narrative that echoed through the ages—a story of cosmic wonder, alchemical wisdom, and the enduring quest for paradise as a tangible reality.

Learning to Work as an Architect

From humble beginnings, I learned to see and shape the world. Sketching taught me observation, painting gave me patience. I built models in cardboard, crafting realities with my hands, and traced technical drawings with pencil, each line a projection of precision. Ink and shadows danced across drafting film, airbrushed tones breathing life into concepts. Timber and metal became machinery, boxes of wood and paper reached habitable scales, and furniture emerged as functional art.

Collage required the deftness of a scalpel, while folding paper and metal reshaped boundaries. Surveying, from homes to cities, taught me scale; film and photography, the framing of moments. Building work and installations grounded me in materiality. Through it all, my eye sharpened, honed by experiences of homelessness, the madness of judgment, the discipline of workshops, and the freedom of travel.

Sex, eating, drinking, smoking, dreaming, sleeping—living—infused architecture with humanity. Loving and believing anchored me, even as I embraced the inevitability of death. Music became a rhythm for thought, a language of structure. All this unfolded before the arrival of the digital—a new epoch that reshaped the way I thought, drew, and imagined.

This digital realm required me to unlearn and relearn. The computer became my companion, a soul mate in creativity. Conversations once held in ink and paper transformed into numbers, perpetually preserved. Geometry unfolded in infinite forms, shadows cast in an instant, materials materialized from algorithms. The scale was limitless, the work plane infinite—a future I was warned about, now a place I inhabit.

Here, my instruments were reborn, not as tools of tradition but as gateways to new architectures. Paper once carried ink, now it yearns for skin. The computer recalls what we have forgotten, reaching back to the origins of time and beyond. Its memory is vast, a cosmic minefield waiting for imagination to ignite. It names files, measures dimensions, and computes relationships between areas and perimeters, constructing logic that resonates with nature.

It reveals truth plainly, articulating architectures that may never exist but demand to be imagined. To be this kind of architect feels fresh, whether or not the world sees me as a document controller.

A house stands renovated, sheltering those I care for and who care for me. Buildings become memories, their forms slipping from sight. Yet the world is rewriting itself, and in that, I find joy—a joy that carries our spirits into an architecture of hope and possibility.

Unseen Architects: The 'En' Space and Its Influence on Typography, Architecture, and Biology

I've become fascinated with the "en" space in typography, the invisible but essential element that binds words together. This seemingly insignificant space becomes a profound metaphor for the unseen connections in our lives. It's like finding beauty in the void, the unspoken, the elements that make everything cohesive without ever being noticed. This concept led me to architecture through the idea of the building envelope. The letters "en" in "envelope" struck me, emphasizing how the envelope encloses and protects, much like the "en" space in text. I then delved into creating physical envelopes, taking standard DIN paper sizes and introducing folds to craft an envelope—a tangible representation of space, form, and function.

The folds of the envelope are unwritten spaces, akin to the "en" space. By documenting these folds and their shadows, I've created a dialogue between two-dimensional drawings and three-dimensional space. Observing and documenting the shadows of the folds, I began to see them as transient forms, constantly changing with the movement of light. These shadows represented a dynamic interaction with space, leading me to think about architecture as a living entity, always in flux, shaped by light and shadow.

This fluid understanding of space and form reveals a deeper connection between architecture and biology. Enzymes, like the "en" space, are catalysts that facilitate essential processes without being directly visible. They hold together complex biochemical reactions much like the "en" holds together text. This analogy deepens my understanding of both architecture and biology—seeing enzymes as the invisible architects of life, creating and maintaining the structure of living organisms.