Designing Space #196

Roger Richmond:

Space impacts our lives when we design our own or we have someone come in and design for us, whatever you do, it's going to have an impact. Could be positive, could be, could be negative. Generally you'd like to avoid the negative, accentuate the positive. And that's what the space therapy does.

Eric Stark:

The stuff that we learn, we in turn put back into the world, which has an effect on the world. Others learn from that. So there's this wonderful cycle in both the education but in the practice of architecture is that what we do actually affects that which we do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 196, airing for the first time on Sunday, June 14, 2015. Today's theme is Designing Space. We may be more impacted by the spaces we inhabit than we realize. Everything from our access to light to how we experience acoustics has the potential to contribute to our well being and our relationships. Today we speak with architecture Professors Roger Richman and Eric Stark about the work they are doing in this area and how they are educating the next generation of Maine architects about these important concepts. Thank you for joining us. On Love Maine Radio. We've had the good fortune to speak with architects before about the importance of things like light and space, and today we have with us an individual who really has an interest in space. Roger Richman is a professor in the University of Maine Augusta's architecture program, a program he founded in the 1980s. He is a design consultant and partner at Space Therapy, a design and behavior post occupancy analysis firm. Currently, Mr. Richmond, or Professor Richmond, lives in South Freeport, Maine with his wife, Beverly and Nora the cat. He was the first architect hired to work for NASA thanks so much for being with us.

Roger Richmond:

It's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. This is a treat.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So when we say NASA, we mean NASA.

Roger Richmond:

We mean NASA. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So.

Roger Richmond:

So that's a really big deal at the time. It really was a big deal because this was the era was we were going to the moon. I mean, we were ready to go to the moon. Kennedy had established the directive that by the end of the decade, the 60s, that we would have someone on the moon. So I was actually in NASA working at the time when Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon. And so I was, by kind of vicariously participating in that, all of that excitement.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell us what NASA might get out of a relationship with an architect. What is it that an architect brings to the table when it comes to space travel?

Roger Richmond:

Well, what I had proposed, I had to do in the University of Florida, where I graduated with my master's degree. I had to do a thesis project. The thesis project was. What I wanted to do was the whole country was so excited and agog about space travel. Right? This is a very, very exciting time. And so I want to do something that was involved with space, something off the Earth. And I just got to thinking about, wouldn't it be amazing if something were to happen like a moon port or something like that that was based on architectural principles even more than engineered principles. The issue, of course, was engineering comes first because that's survival. And this is a very, very hostile environment. And what I decided to do is I was going to do an architecturally conceived moon port. And the only way to get information about this was to go to NASA. So I made a proposal to go to NASA and talk with them and get information for my master's thesis. What I did not know was that they were very intrigued by. By this whole idea of an architect asking about how to design environments for space. So after I worked on my master's thesis, they invited me to come there and have a job and be the only architect. There were 5,500 engineers and one architect, and that was I. And I was involved with discovering and writing a book for them. That was one of the requirements of my job there, of writing a book for them about the human experience in a sealed environment off of Earth. And that started a whole lifetime of study for me on these what I would call hostile environments.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You discuss the change that occurred during the Industrial Revolution and the, I guess, the introduction of automobiles and how it really impacted the way that we designed towns and cities and how humans have Kind of taken a backseat, so to speak. Tell me about that.

Roger Richmond:

Well, you're tapping into an issue in architectural design that I call scale. Scale is our human connection. We seek clues and cues in the environment through which we can relate. And then by then, we can find our. Locate ourselves more accurately in the environment. So try to imagine. Why does everyone love to go to Europe? Because Europe in a place was a place that was really designed before the automobile was invented. So we go there and we walk around and we have this feeling of how warm the place is and how charming. And we put these wonderful qualifiers on it. Charming, quaint, this and that. And we just walk around. We just love to walk around the cities. And we come to the United States in. The United States is a fairly young country. So it really is more automobile oriented. So we design for the car more than we design for the people. Maybe that will use the environments that we use. So here's the classic example. Take a look outside. Where does all the snow on the road go? It goes on the sidewalks. What takes precedence? So what I try to do when I'm teaching architecture and teaching aspects of scale is to say the car is very, very important. We cannot exist without it. However, don't let its needs intrude onto the human needs of what makes for a related environment. Don't relate the environment to the car. Relate it to the person. The car serves the person, not the other way around. Although I think we lean sometimes to the direction that we serve serve the car. One of the interesting things I find language is very powerful. We will call a room a volume. Where we dine, let's say we'll call that a dining area, right? Don't we do that? We call it, this is the dining area. This is the living area. And then we paint two strips of color on a completely flat pavement. And we call that a parking space. Now, space is a higher form than area because it's third dimension. So we're giving more status to the car than we're giving to ourselves just by our language. So the reality is it's a dining space and a parking area. We have to kind of like reverse some of our thought processing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When I think about space, I think about sort of this vast, almost nothingness. But space is actually just as powerful as the things within space. As you're describing in the work that you've written. You describe sort of both sides of it. The thing, the table, the chair, the person that inhabits a place. But then also the air, the atmosphere around that person, the table. The chair. So that's an interesting kind of backwards. In my mind, it's more. It's an interesting backwards way of looking at it.

Roger Richmond:

Well, we're a very thing oriented species. Even from childhood, the first thing we do is we grab a block. So we are very object dominant in terms of our processing, our thought processing, our living and everything. We look at the car coming down the road that's about to hit us and we don't think about the diminishing space between the car and us. We think about the car is going to hit us. So that in that space, yes, there's the objects, the table and the chair and the this and that. But there are also these aspects of the environment that have like an ambience, like the level of, let's say, acoustic echo in this space. Now if we want to have a space, let's say that's intimate and we have a lot of hard surfaces that have a lot of reflecting, reflecting sound to it. If we have a lot of those, then the sound in the space becomes more echoey. And there are all these scientific studies, I can't quite quote one right now, but that the higher the reverberation time, the less intimacy is experienced. So if you want an intimate experience, then it's not just the furniture. You use the furniture maybe to help quiet down the sound. You use the curtain, you use a plant. You use these things to make the acoustics calmer and more quiet. And therefore it would support maybe the true nature of the space, which might be intimacy.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You were the national competition design winner of the main Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And I believe in that space and negative space, I'll call it negative, but not in a bad way. Played a big role.

Roger Richmond:

Any part of a design process is research and research, research, research. That's one of the keys. So I spoke to lots of veterans and one of the things that was a thread that was going through all of their kind of reports to me about their experience was that when they returned to the United States, they felt they were here. People said they were here, but they weren't really here. They weren't being acknowledged. So this thought kept playing in my head, here, not here, here, but not here. And so I thought, what's a way to express that idea? Well, if I make a statue, it's here and it's here. How can I make a statue that's here and not here? So what I came up with, with the idea of a cutout of these three soldiers, two of them supporting a wounded third comrade and it was just a cutout so that they're there in that sense, but they're not there because there's just a void where they would be. And it was designed so the sunlight would come through and through this opening and cast that shadow, that light shadow on a back panel so that as you walk through, your shadow impacts with their light, and then you get to participate in their existence even though they're still not being recognized. You can't recognize them. You can't tell if they're coming toward you or they're moving away from you. They're there, but they're not there. And when I presented that to the committee, the design committee for the competition, they got it. I was so ecstatic. They really got that when I said, you don't want another statue, because it wasn't that kind of a war. It was a whole different kind of a war. So when they heard my explanation and I built a model and I took the model and I shined the light on the thing, and they could see that shadow on the back, and they said, okay, we got it. And they went ahead and chose that as the design. And there it is in Capitol Park. And I'm thrilled to death about that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I really love this idea of light being an active participation in the sculpture, because you talk about light as almost as light and water both. You know, you kind of make a parallel between light and water, and I love that because it's such an active participant in what goes on in our lives, especially here in Maine.

Roger Richmond:

Light is a source of so much. If there are architecture. I mean, Louis Kahn, the architect that I studied with at Penn, said that your building never knew how lucky it was until the light shined upon it. Or that's. I'm paraphrasing, but there was something like that. And that was one of the things that he stressed over and over and over again. The light, the light, the light. And there's a big difference between window light, which is a hole in the wall, and designed light, which is light that comes in and has emotive content. It has spiritual content. It may have all also task content for working and being practical. In that sense. It's a free energy. We need it. Maine is a tough climate because we need the sunlight and the seasonal affective disorder because people don't get enough sunlight. I sometimes think that we may get that in our offices because we're not getting enough sunlight. The thing that sunlight does, and this is the most exciting thing about it for me as an architect. And what I want to share with my students is that there are no two seconds of light since Earth formed that have ever been the same. Every single moment of light is different. And now what's the relationship of that to us? Every single moment of our life is different. So we have a natural connection to that is almost like another living being coming and keeping you company. I used to tell my students that you can never feel like you're completely alone in a sunny space. Even if you are alone and there's not another person or a pet or something, you can never feel alone in a sunny space. But take that same person and put that person in a space that doesn't get any sun, then you're going to start to feel alone. The implications of this for students in a classroom, for the elderly in housing that don't want to be alone, maybe the most important thing, maybe in their environment, is not how much square footage they have, but how much natural light they can get into their world during the day when they may feel alone and they won't feel that loneliness because the light is another living being. It changes moment to moment. It creates mood, it creates pattern, it creates contrast through shadow. And what have we done with ourselves? Well, we have placed our work world in environments that have separated ourselves from the sun. We live in the cubicle age. It's not the industrial revolution, it's the cubicle revolution, right? And because we're in these cubicles all the time, the light never changes. So we get starved. Something happens to us, we will go to maybe a lower level of excitation. This is one of the issues when I was designing for NASA is what happens when there's not enough stimulation, because we thrive on that, enough stimulation to operate at maximum level. So in the classrooms, to save heat, we'll cut out the windows. This might be a dangerous thing to do. So light is such an essential part of design, and it's very big part of what I teach in architecture. You must bring natural light into every little spot in the environment.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

sound for you is also important, and you alluded to this before, but the way that light changes is similar to the way that sounds, sound changes. And it's something that needs to be taken into consideration.

Roger Richmond:

Well, we're talking about acoustics. I am certainly not an acoustical engineer, nor do I claim to be, but it's very important. Like I was saying about issues of intimacy and issues of publicity, meaning being in the public, each one of those may want a different level and quality of sound in order to support whatever that activity is. So if we're in a space, let's say that we seek intimacy, it's very important that the sound level in there reflect and support that activity. If it's too high, reflectance surfaces, the intimacy is going to perhaps start to fade away. And we mentioned in the beginning about this thing called space occupancy or space therapy, space occupancy profession, kind of. We will go into people's homes, and they will. And I have a partner in this, and his name is Terry Klein, and he's an architect who works in Massachusetts. And we started this thing together, and we would go into a person's home, let's say, and they would share with us issues like, oh, we're starting to not be as close or not as intimate as we used to be. And we want to know, is there anything in this environment that's contributing to that? So we walk around their environment and they present it to us. And then we get into the bedroom, for instance, and we'll see that, wow, it's filled with stuff. It's cluttered. The acoustic levels are very, very high. No wonder their intimacy is disappearing. Here's the sad part. They will get to the point being wise enough to go to a marriage counselor. The marriage counselor will say, well, this, this, this, this, and this, and that's all fine. And then they come home and to the pattern and to the mold that's giving them that may be contributing to the problem in the first place. So all the good work that the counselor may be doing is being undone by the environment. And they don't even realize it because it's so subtle. It's such a silent partner in their lives. So our job is to make that silent partner more well known to the individual. So that's why we do that. We go into people's homes and we tell them how this space may impact their behavior over the long term.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There is a very real thing that happens when people who are bigger than us or louder than us or have different energy than we do occupy a space with us. So you use as an example the big, loud, drunken guy at the bar. And we each have an individual sense of our own need for space. But there is more of a universal personal space that exists, as seen in things like elevators.

Roger Richmond:

There's this science called proxemics, I believe is a term coined by E.T. hall, who's an anthropologist, who is the late E.T. hall, who taught at McGill, and he talks about the spacing mechanisms in humans and in other animals. We are actually bigger than our physical selves, than the boundaries of our skin. We extend our out in space. You can very easily tell this when you get a group of five or six people standing together, they will automatically space themselves out so that none of them will cross that imaginary line. If you're sitting at a counter in a restaurant and the person next to you, glass of water, crosses this imaginary line, you suddenly feel that very aware that that person is invading. It's an invasion on a psychological level. So we all have these bubbles of who we are around us now because of that. Because of that, we obey these bubbles and we don't invade them. Now, the interesting thing that you mentioned is that in other cultures, that bubble has different sizes. If you read E.T. hall's book, the Hidden Dimension, you'll discover that the Arabs have a much smaller bubble. Most of our riots happen in the summer. Why would they happen in the summer? Because when we're warm, that bubble gets wider and it's much easier to invade it when we get on an elevator. Everybody understands that I have no choice but to invade your bubble. I'm invading yours, you're invading mine. It's a silent pact. No one talks. No one takes up even more space by engaging in conversations. So, yeah, some people will do that, of course, but the general tendency, I mean, haven't you experienced that? The general tendency is I'll stay quiet. I will contract my bubble as much as I can, even though I know I'm invading everyone else's, and they're all invading mine. And that issue right there is why we do what we do in elevators. Now, the interesting thing about this bubble. The interesting thing about the bubble is it's about, for us in western society, about 40 inches by 40 inches by 80 inches. So it's about 6ft 8 inches tall, which is, curiously, the height of a door. Most doors are 6ft 8 inches. They reflect to our bubble. If you were to lower that door to, let's say, six foot four, even though I don't know how tall you are, you're 5 10, okay, if it were 6 4, it would invade that space. You would unconsciously duck. So we are bigger than we are now. One of the keys to scale that I work with my students on is that, can you reference that dimension of that bubble in the environment? And then no matter how inhuman the environment may appear, if I can put that evidence of the human in it by referencing those dimensions or that line. So not only at 6 foot 8 with the door, but I'll maybe put a shelf around the room at 6 foot 8. And there's a statement now about the human in that environment. So that's how that bubble starts to impact how we relate to the environment. So again, going into someone's home, if these evidences of scale relatedness don't exist, then they tend to move into themselves. And that will affect how we relate to others. Personal interpersonal relationships, relationships with children. And children have a different scale. They have a different bubble than adults do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There is some ratio that humans are comfortable with, and the golden ratio, you know this. And it has become really something that I'm fascinated by, because I'm not really sure, like, how we could use this in today's society, but it seems like it should be. I mean, we've done it through the ages, so why can't we apply it?

Roger Richmond:

Now, what you're referring to is this relationship. It was designed by this mathematician, Leonardo Depeza, not da Vinci, Depiza. And that guy's name, he was Fibonacci. And he created this thing called the Fibonacci number. And it starts off with number one, then add one to one, you get two. Two and one is three. Three and two is five. Five and three is eight. La la la la la on and on and up, and that goes to infinity. But what that defines is a relationship of 1 to 1.618. Now, I don't know if this is more technical than you want to get into here, but our bodies are complete manifestations of this proportion. For instance, standing up, if you were to stand up, the distance from the ground to Your navel is 1.618. The distance from your navel to the top of your head. The width of your nose compared to the width of your mouth. Same formula. Front teeth to side teeth, your front first knuckle to your second knuckle. Second knuckle. Our bodies are completely expressing this kind of relationship. It's also in flowers, birds, bees, the shape of a violin. I mean, it's everywhere. It is a natural tendency for us to want to reflect this relationship, this ratio. I kind of did the play on words. Ratio null. It's rational. Rational. You know, it's a rational thing for us to do. When we put that in the environment, like, let's say, the length of a space compared to the width of a space, we put that into that Fibonacci proportion, then what we're doing is we're making that same kind of scale relationship of what I am, what nature is to the environment. Now, here's the interesting thing. If it gets longer than this relationship, if the space, let's say, gets much, much longer than that, then the space is no longer stable in terms of its natural desire to want to go into a relationship. It becomes more axial. So what happens is that we end up with. People will have a living room, for instance, or some other space that's quite a bit longer than it is wide. And they wonder, why are we not having good conversations in here? And it's the proportions of the space. It's saying, move. Because an axis says move. The activity in the furniture says, no, sit and talk. You're getting these conflicting emotions, these conflicting signals. And there's usually often a negative result. So what you do as a space therapist. And I guess I'd come back to that, is I would put a piece of furniture. I would take a piece of furniture and turn it and try to break the axis so it's no longer that long. And I try to recreate that proportion, that 1 to 1.618 proportion. I do that wherever I can. I do that. You know, I'll do that in the shape of a chair and where a painting is located on the wall in relationship to how high it is from the ground to the. You know, the top of it to the. From the floor to the ceiling. So you. If you can kind of sneak that into the environment, then we have a chance to relate to it. And it's also an aesthetic thing. If you give a thousand people a whole list of rectangles to look at, 90% of them will pick the one that's in that Fibonacci sequence in that same proportion. So proportion is a big part of what scale is all about.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There was an anecdote that you wrote about with twins. One twin was in utero in the uterus and sort of head down and plus one station on his way out. The other one was kind of free floating and just enjoying the greater womb, I guess. And then one of the twins in the bassinet would always head. The one who was head down would always head towards the edge of the bassinet. The other twin was always kicking off his clothing, his swaddling. So we are impacted by our environments from our very earliest life stage.

Roger Richmond:

Yeah, I say it womb to tomb. It's all spaces. Each space has an impact on us. It's some time. And it's interesting too, because the one child that had his head in the plus one position in the crib, he would always wedge his head in a corner. And he was only happy when he was really wrapped tightly in a blanket. The other one rebelled against being wrapped tightly in a blanket. So, yeah, these relationships form very early. And the interesting thing about that you're saying too is like, I don't know, it goes back to childhood. Okay, so let's say you didn't do well in school. All right? When you were in the fourth or fifth grade and your parents got angry at you and they sent you to your room and your room was painted blue, right? So you now go through life and you ready to buy an apartment or you're ready to live on your own and you say, I hate blue. It's not that you hate blue, it's just that blue is triggering that environmental memory that it's this kind of. Of is called a sight dependent memory. It triggers that emotion in you. And so you don't know why. I don't know why I don't like blue. I just don't like blue. Or I don't like green, or, you know, the dog or whoever, whatever happened, those events, we inculcate those and they become parts of our behavior and part of our what we expect from our environments and how we decide what we like, what we don't like a lot. We are con. We are an open system. We are constantly in this symbiotic relationship with our environment. When you are put in, there are two kinds that I consider. I consider the thing called personal environments and public environments. The personal environments are the spaces that you use every day. Your home, your office here in this studio, the school that perhaps your children will go to. They go to it every day, day after day after day. That's where the power of the environment really starts to impact us. If you walk into Notre Dame, you're going to go, wow, this is the most amazing place in the world. I am changed forever as a result of it. But that's an experiential thing. It's not a behavioral thing. It's the day to day spaces that impact our behavior. So that when we do the space therapy thing, we're not interested so much in doing the church, doing the bank, doing whatever. We're interested in doing the school, we're interested in doing the office and mostly doing the home where you spend most of your time. And it's little subtle change, it's little lack of scale or over or not enough or too much reverberation. Time after time will start to impact your behaviors. And that's where it becomes important to bring someone in. Look this over and say, look, this is what this space may be doing to you. It satisfies the codes you have all your furniture, everything in there is legal, moral, ethical, spiritual and whatever. Except that it's missing this little piece that is every single day it starts to worm its way. I use this little example in my class called boiling the frog. Do not try this at home. How would you boil a frog? Right. Well, if you threw a frog into boiling water, what's the frog going to do? Zoom. It's going to jump right out. Right. It's not going to stay there. Put the frog in cold water and let's just say the cold water is our environment. You start turning the temperature up very, very. The frog will never know what's happening to it until it's too late. Okay. I don't know if there's a too late issue for us in our environments, but there's a definite impact on these things over time on our behaviors, and that affects our social interactions. Even talking about. I talk about, okay, let's talk about the doctors and the nurses in the hospital. The nurse goes home to an environment, the doctor goes home to an environment, he or she, whatever is going to be affected by whatever environment they're living in. That's their personal environments. And then they come to work. Are they more stressed because of that environment? A little less stressed. Does that have any, any sort of influence on their work? I contend or suggest they it does, which is why I believe that this service is so important.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, there are two interesting things that I hope that people will take away from this. And one of them is Actually that we have an architecture program at the University of Maine, Augusta. And a lot of people don't think about that. The other thing is that this exists, that the work that you are doing at Space Therapy is. It's very real that people can go to you for design and behavior. Post occupancy analysis.

Roger Richmond:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So these are very real things. How do people find out more about your teaching and the work that you're doing?

Roger Richmond:

Well, the program at UMA, University of mine, Augusta, is in its 25th or 26th year now. So it's been around for a long time. It's unfortunately a really pretty well best kept secret. It's the only public school, five year public school of architecture in New England, as far as I know. I don't believe there is all the other schools, Harvard and Yale and Princeton, these are all private schools the public school didn't have. And that's one of the reasons why I moved to Maine in the first place, because I wasn't sure I thought my architectural education was satisfying enough because it didn't handle a lot of issues that I wanted to talk about. So I thought I would try to start my own program. And that took about eight years. But finally UMA and some of the faculty up there in support of it made it happen and we started this program. And we're now on track with nab, which is the National Architectural Accreditation Board. We're now on track to have full professional accreditation. It's the best financial deal in the country in terms of studying architecture because it's Maine. Right. It's very inexpensive to do this. So it really is a very strong program. And a lot of the curriculum is based upon these issues of space, which we were talking about. Scale, which is that connection that we have to the environment. And light, which is the thing that gives a space its vitality, it gives it its sense of aliveness, it gives it a sense of personality. All these things to which we may relate. And also that all of this under this big umbrella of that space impacts our lives. Space impacts our lives. When we design our own or we have someone come in and design for us, whatever you do, it's going to have an impact. Could be positive, could be negative. Generally you'd like to avoid the negative, accentuate the positive. And that's what the space therapy does. Now, because I am a full time teacher, well, not a full time anymore. I'm an adjunct now. But most of the consultations I sort of let my partner do them. But if they're up here, he and I might do them together. His name is Terry Klein and he's a Space Therapy consultant out of Massachusetts. And, and he's been my oldest and dearest friend, and we've worked together for 30 years at least.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We've been speaking with Roger Richmond, who is a professor and actually founder of the University of Maine Augusta's architecture program, also a design consultant and partner at Space Therapy. It's a fascinating conversation that we've had, and it's great that you're doing the work that you're doing, and I hope people take the time to learn more about it. Thank you for coming.

Roger Richmond:

Thank you very much. It's been an honor to meet you and talk with you, and I appreciate that you're in support of this.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

it is my good fortune today to have on the show Eric Stark. He is an associate professor and the program coordinator for the University of Maine at Augusta's Architecture program. Professor Stark maintains a small architectural practice in Portland, doing residential and institutional work. His ongoing research includes community partnering, the use of diagram in architecture, and furniture design. Thanks so much for coming in today.

Eric Stark:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you're not from Maine?

Eric Stark:

No. Well, I grew up in California, so I spent most of my life in the San Francisco Bay area.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it must have been quite an important thing, this architecture program going on at the University of Maine in Augusta to draw you all the way across the country and, and make it part of your life's work.

Eric Stark:

Well, actually I came across the country slowly for different school programs. So I actually did my undergraduate in Iowa, studied Shakespeare and theater design. And so I did a lot of theater work, both design and construction for a number of years and then went back to study architecture. And so I actually went to graduate school in Cambridge at Harvard, and that's how I ended up on the East Coast. And then once I graduated from there, in my first job, I met my now wife, she's from Maine. And so that's actually how I ended up in Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Your wife, she also holds an important position within the architecture community.

Eric Stark:

She does. She's the executive director of AIA Maine

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and her name is Jeanette Schramm. So those of you who are listening who have some connection with architecture know that I'm now speaking with the husband of the AIA director for the state of Maine. So this is a very, this is like the power couple of architecture in the state of Maine, which is pretty great, actually. I love what is being done with the University of Maine at Augusta. This is so exciting because we didn't have an architecture program until relatively recently.

Eric Stark:

Well, we didn't have it in its current form. There actually has been some form of architecture at UMA for 28 years. It started as a two year degree. It went to a four year degree back in 2003. And just recently it is a major change. What it's become is the first professional degree in Maine and it's actually the only public undergraduate degree in New England. So that's a huge thing. It makes it incredibly affordable. But I think it also begins to answer and fill a gap in architectural education, specifically in Maine. Prior to this program, starting two years ago, the five year degree, if you wanted to be a licensed architect, you had to leave the state of Maine. And now with this new program, students, whether they're getting their first undergraduate degree or coming back to school, can stay in Maine. A lot of our students, you know, they have families, they already have businesses. Some are true freshmen, but it gives them an opportunity to study in Maine, which, as I said, allows it so they don't have to leave the state. But it also, they're connected to Maine. I mean, Mainers, I think, really love where they're from. And this allows them to Stay here, study here. And a lot of what we do, where we do have a global outlook and we get our students outside Maine, we're also rooted here and we understand that now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did you get from Shakespeare set design to what you're doing now? What was your original interest in that?

Eric Stark:

Well, I studied as an undergrad, I went to school in Iowa and I studied theater with a focus on Shakespeare and Shakespearean literature. So I was designing sats, I was building. I like making things. That's what I like doing the most. I like making all kinds of things. And so I did that for a number of years on both coasts. I work in Washington D.C. and I also worked out in California, mostly for Shakespeare houses. And as that progressed, I started thinking about going back to school. And actually at the time I looked at, it wasn't just architecture. I'd always been interested in architecture. I got some really bad advice in high school from some architects. It was back in the 80s and it was a miserable time to be an architect. And they let me know that. And so it very much as 16 year old, I was scared. I was like, oh, that sounds awful, so I'm not gonna do that. But as I started looking back, as I hit my mid-20s, late 20s, I started thinking, I want to make stuff. And I looked at furniture schools, industrial design schools, and looked again at architecture. And I felt in the world of architecture there was more possibility I could design buildings, but I could also work in the landscape. You could think urbanistically and you could still design a chair, you could still do all those different things. And so that's what I ended up going back to school for. And I was lucky enough to get into Harvard and get into a school on the east coast, which I never thought growing up in California. If you told me I was going to end up on the east coast, much less in Maine, I wouldn't have believed you. So that's really how I ended up out here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm thinking about a conversation that you and I had just before we got on the air about your children who are six and nine and going to a Montessori school. All three of my children did their early years at a Montessori school and it was very hands on. There's something very tactile about the Montessori education. And in fact, I went through a Montessori school and I learned how to wash windows and set the table and everything is very physical, hands on, tangible. Do you think there's enough of that in education?

Eric Stark:

I don't. I Don't. And I think it's two things. I think it's definitely, there's a hands on quality that's really important. And I can say that because it's something we do in the architecture program. All of our teaching, we try very hard to steer away from lectures where someone's imparting knowledge to you, but it's really about discovery. Let's engage with a brick and see what we're going to do with it. Let's talk to someone who actually designs and puts up steel walls and see what that means. And I think that's the beautiful thing about the Montessori program is on one side it's very hands on, so you're actually doing it. But I think as important and perhaps even more so, there's this personal responsibility to the Montessori education where each student from age three, I mean, you are responsible for you and that means you're responsible in terms of how you interact with others around you, but also that you're in control. You have some control over what you're gonna do with your day and what you're gonna learn. And I think that's the phenomenal thing that they teach. And I see it in my kids. I mean, I think the teachers would say they see it more in the classroom than we might see it at home, but they really do. They understand that if they want to do something. My daughter just last summer was interested in the human ear. So she's like, let's go to the library and check out books on the human ear. And she was seven then. And so it's kind of shocking when your seven year old says that and you're like, yeah, but that's what she's been taught. She was learning how to learn. And I think that's sometimes, I mean, I'm certainly not an expert on education, you know, younger education, but I think a lot of times that's what's missing is that what is this individual, even though they're little, what are they interested in, what do they want to do and how do you empower them to go out and do it?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So if that's not present in some forms of earlier education and you are getting people coming in as maybe 18 year old freshmen or maybe people who are further along in their career, how do you bring that out in them? Because I would think that would be quite important as an architect.

Eric Stark:

That's a great question. That's actually really fundamental. You find a lot of our students who are coming right out of high school, most if not all of their education has been someone giving them something. And so really the way we try and flip that is initially through just discussion. We're very open with it is you have a huge responsibility here. You're responsible for your own education. You need to take that on. But also an understanding that this. They are the ones who are, in a sense, directing what it is that we're doing in the design studio. So it's the reason we'll do a. We just did a small visitor center that was located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of the projects I did with my second year studio and the reason I end up with 10 different visitor centers is because I have 10 different students. The site's the same, the climate's the same, the program's the same. It's sits on this amazing barren landscape with these three volcanoes. So that's all the same for the 10 students. The reason we get 10 projects is there are 10 individuals. And that's what we try. And really, that's what they have to understand. They have to understand that there isn't one answer to this. And the answer comes from you. It's not going to come from some book. It doesn't come. It certainly doesn't come from me as the teacher. I guide you through this, but it comes from you. That's where it is. That's where it lies. And so then we help through a number of different exercises, some that start very conceptually and slowly move more and more towards what most would think of as a building. We help them understand, how do I pull that out? How do I discover what I think this project's about? And a lot of that has to do with conceptual ideas. So when you're thinking of something, we're talking about schools. Certainly a school has to keep people warm. It has to keep people dry. It needs a place for the bus to stop. It needs classrooms of a certain size. But what's school really about? What does it mean to learn? That's a question and others similar to it that a lot of beginning students have never asked themselves, they think of as school. I went to a school. It has a roof, it has this. It has a cafeteria. But that's. It's important, but it's also not important because without that extra something, without that other thing, like what's it mean to learn, what's it mean to be curious, what's it mean to engage with others your age? Those are interesting questions. And those things all happen whether or not you are aware of them or not. As an architect, those Things are happening in those spaces, and so you have to become aware of them. And so that's really the push. It's a great question because I think that's so much of the push for those beginning students is it's always turning it back on them. They'll look at you sometimes, and they're waiting for the answer, and you just look right back at them and you wait for their answer. I tell all my students my job, pure and simple, is to ask why. That's my whole job, other than the coordinating stuff, and there's a lot of paperwork and all that. But my real job as a teacher, an architecture teacher, is to ask you, why did you do that? And initially it's a blank stare. Then eventually they'll start saying things, well, I like it that way. And you're like, well, that's not a really great answer. If you're sitting across from a client and they ask you, well, why does my house look like that? And you say, well, I like it. And they look at you, well, I don't like it, and I'm paying for this, so let's do something else. There's no conversation in just, I like it, right? Unless you happen to find a bunch of people who like what you like, you can't have a conversation with that. So you really have to be able to explain it. You have to be able to explain why I'm doing what I'm doing. I design it like this for these reasons. And that's helpful, definitely in terms of the client interaction. But it's most helpful for you as a designer. You need to understand why you're doing what you're doing. You need to have some basic conceptual idea that makes this school different from the this school. And that's hard. That's hard for a lot of people to come around to understand that. And then it's almost. Once you get that, the next step that's perhaps even harder is, okay, so how do I take that conceptual idea and now turn it into a building that people do have to move in? And it does have to keep them warm and it has to keep them dry. It's the reason architecture is really complex and hard. It's really hard. Good architecture is hard.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you do the design work and you're obviously thinking about materials that go, go into the designs of the buildings that you're creating. But then there's like the practical in the moment, on the ground, actually building of things. That doesn't usually happen at the hands of architects. So there has to be a back and forth, there has to be a cross talk between you and the people who are actually the artisans on the project itself.

Eric Stark:

Definitely, yeah. And that's actually, it's actually one of my favorite things, I think actually. And it's very important that you find those builders and those craftsmen who want to have that conversation. And I think all too often, at least in talking to those people, I don't think architects always want to have that conversation. And I think we should. I think it's really important. I like nothing more than getting a plan to a certain point and being able to work with the builder enough to be like, yeah, I'm not sure what we're gonna do there. So you have to start. We need to see it before we actually place that window or that bank of windows. I worked on this project a couple years ago where this builder gutted this space and it was so wonderful because he called me up and he said, yeah, you're gonna want to come see this. And once this roof, this ceiling in this third floor space, which had been at about seven foot six was gone, there was this amazing vaulted ceiling, ceiling. And he knew, he just said, I don't think you want me to build what you drew now that you see this. And he was totally right. And he said, all right, I'll be back Monday. And I said, all right, I'll have it all redrawn by Monday. Because he needed to keep going. But it was this great opportunity. I mean, he could have been halfway done and certainly I would have walked him like, oh no. I mean, there was no way to know that beforehand. It wasn't. I made a mistake. It wasn't. He was. It was just we needed to have that conversation. And that's one of the great things I think about design in general. But in architecture is that conversation, whether it's a conversation between you and a client, between a student and a community member, between a builder and other builders or the architect, it's a collaborative effort, which makes it hard, but makes it really exciting. I don't think. There's certainly some people who are so good at what they do as architects. They sort of have a vision for everything. I'm certainly not one of those people, and I don't think there are a lot of them. You want that input. That's really the exciting part is all these ideas and the architect is the one who then brings them all together. And it goes back to that concept. That's why that concept's so important. There's nothing better than sitting across from a client or even a builder, and somebody suggests something and that client or builder jumps in and is like, oh, no, no, we can't do that. That doesn't fit in with the concept. And you're like, they understand. You've translated in a way, and everyone understands that. So even someone who's laying trim on a wall makes decisions and you're like, that is a great decision because it fits with what we're doing. I'm not sure I would have seen that because I don't have 25, 30 years experience building. To not tap into that would be foolish. But you also want to give it a framework. We're working on this project, not a different one. So how do all those things that we're doing, how do we make them all happen together?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I love hearing this because there are two things that occur to me. One is that you were describing people saying back in the 80s, oh, don't go into architecture. This is a tough time to be an architect. And this is happening now in medicine where people are saying to their children, doctors are saying to their children, oh, don't be a doctor. Nobody wants to be a doctor. It's too hard to be a doctor. And I just think that's the wrong way to approach it. I think we need to be approaching medicine the way that architecture is being approached, that we can no longer come in as doctors and say, well, here's the big design, here's the evidence based medicine. Here's what we think should happen. We need to come in and understand this back and forth, this relationship, this Working with the team, this working with the patient. I mean, what you're describing really is collaboration. It's really the same sort of relationships that I deal with on a day to day basis in the practice of medicine.

Eric Stark:

Yeah, it's totally true. It's totally true. And it's. And I think again, it goes back to that community work. We, and we do a lot of that community work. We've got students, they're actually working in teams because architecture is collaborative. And so you have to understand that, you have to appreciate that. You have to be able to communicate, whether it's verbally, but a lot of it's visually. That's what we really do. You mentioned that architects don't build a lot of stuff. And it's true. We draw a lot of stuff. We draw the thing that is to be built. We deal in representation all the time. And that's so fundamental to what we do. One of the interesting things that's happening now in architecture though, is there is this actual lack of architects. The architecture profession as a whole is getting older, they're retiring. And so every indication is in the next couple years there will be a great need for architects across the country. It's not just here, but across the country. So I think it's a terrific time to get into if it's your calling. And I really think it's that because it's very consuming. It's all consuming. It changes how you see the world.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

World.

Eric Stark:

But I think if it is, it's a great time to get into the field of architecture.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I'm very happy to hear that because I'm going to ask you next, how do people who are interested in finding out about the University of Maine at Augusta's architecture program learn about how to do exactly what you've said?

Eric Stark:

Well, the easiest way to do it is to visit us online. So it's UMA Edubarch, B A R C H. And you can get all the information you want there. We've got great enrollment specialists and actually I'm very hands on in terms of both explaining the program as well as giving tours of our facility. We actually moved into a new facility three years ago which is continually growing. We got our first laser cutter, we got our first 3D printer starting last year. So we're doing some really fabulous stuff there. We're right in downtown Augusta, right on the river, right on the Kennebec. So that's been terrific. It's a great location, partially because we want to do work in the community to be in the community. So yeah, just go to our website and we'll get you all the information you need.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, if I wasn't already a doctor, maybe I'd think about becoming an architect. It's been great. It's been a great conversation. We've been speaking with Eric Stark, who is an associate professor and the program coordinator for the University of Maine at Augusta's Architecture program. Thanks so much for coming in today.

Roger Richmond:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been listening to Love Maine radio show number 196, designing space. Our guests have included Roger Richman and Eric Stark. Follow me on Twitter as DrLisa and see my running travel, food and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We'd love to hear from you. So please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Designing Space show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.