I agree with your assessment of things as they are today, but I have great hope for the near future of our profession. Buildings, being the individually designed and essentially hand-built products that they are, tend to be the last (and longest lasting) statement of a period. The world is changing at an alarming pace and Architecture doesn’t know how to respond yet.

I believe that when economic upheavals subside and the technology-driven democratization of society settles in – we will have the capital and the tools to design great things again.

I blog about (and not entirely tongue-in-cheek) the “Next Golden Age of our Profession” – hold on. It’s coming!

The Architect's Dream, Thomas Cole, 1840

Here are some earlier full-post thoughts on the bright emerging future of Architecture:

|  Insight From A Blind Architect  |  Utopia Forever: Review and Preview  |

|  Under Construction (The Future of Architecture)  |  CC: Embrace the Change  |

This is my entry in the year’s third Let’s BlogOff event.

The subject; “My grandmother always said…”

“Don’t you call Miriam ‘ma’am’!“

My grandmother didn’t always say this. In fact she only said it once, but it made a memorable impression! The event came back to me when watching the movie, “The Help“. In discussing the film, I’ve shared with some younger co-workers that the strange cross-racial customs in the movie are actually based in cultural fact.

The Help ~ Touchstone Theatrical Poster

Like many southern households in the sixties, my grandparents had a maid who came to clean and cook and help prepare for parties. She was, of course, African-American. As depicted in the movie, the “help” took a strong supporting roll in caring for the kids and grand-kids. One afternoon, Miriam intervened on the back porch, correcting some mischief my brothers and I had gotten into. Repentant and sincere, we answered in unison, “Yes Ma’am”.

Moments later we were pulled aside and chided, not for our misbehavior, but for our formal response to Miriam. We were puzzled. The kindly, towering woman with license to spank – certainly she was worthy of a “yes ma’am”. My grandmother carefully shared the reasoning for her rules of engagement. I won’t bother restating it here; is was based on the color of Miriam’s skin – and was apparently oblivious to the content of her character.

This was an open and unresolved chapter through much of my life. The fitting resolution came upon my grandmother’s passing many years later.

By Lisasvara | Dreamstime.com

As we assembled at the graveside with a modest gathering of family and church folk, my brothers and I turned to an approaching car we didn’t recognize. The young driver got out and opened the back door of the sedan. It took all of as a while to adjust to the decades of time travel that had brought us to this solemn place. My older brother was first to recognize the guest. “Miriam, is that you?” By the effects of age and perspective Miriam was no longer towering, but her broad, joyful expression was unmistakeable.

We had to introduce ourselves of course. We were not little boys anymore. But as each of us declared our names Miriam would call it out again and hug us dearly.  It was an unexpected reunion. It was a blessing to see her there. And it was a bit of a mystery how she knew of the funeral and why she even came.

In retrospect, maybe the soft bigotry I had remembered with a note of shame had been put away – by both women. How much did the two ladies share later in life? I don’t know. There’s no one now to ask. Maybe content of character was ultimately prized over color of skin. Perhaps grandmother wouldn’t have minded - that afternoon we all lovingly called Miriam, “Ma’am”!

If you have a recollection spurred by the story of “The Help” feel free to leave a comment below.

Previous Let’s BlogOff posts:

If Money Were No Object | My Obituary | Creativity is a Gift | Looking Forward to the New Year | If I could Turn Back Time

To read what other grandmothers always said, check these out:

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Why you might care about the content being created at Building Content:

This blog was born in a time of personal unemployment and career crisis. The architectural profession was being hit harder than I’d seen in over 20 years of practice. I turned to social media as a means to help myself and fellow Architects to find a way back to full and meaningful employment.

What started as a “how to blog” resource is now becoming a cornerstone of The Architectural Blogging Community. We believe that “Architecture Holds a Thousand Stories” and are looking for traditional and new media means to tell those stories. We call these efforts “meta-marketing” because we seek to promote our profession to the society at large. We believe that just as there is an audience for medical, legal, crime scene and detective dramas, there is a ready but untapped audience for the thousand stories of Architecture!

Man is forgotten…yet true Architecture exists where man stands at the center; his comedy and tragedy both. -Alvar Aalto

A quick thank you to Philippa Burgess with Creative Convergence for pointing me to NATPE and for fostering great content creation across an array of platforms. The Learning from Hollywood series (linked below) comes from online interactions with Philippa’s Media Brand Workshop:

•  Learning from Hollywood – Part I
•  Learning from Hollywood – Part II
•  Learning from Hollywood – Part III

These three posts document the initial thinking that has lead to my goal of becoming the “Bridge Between the Architectural Profession and the Entertainment Industry”.

So, NATPE 2012 participants, wherever you fit in the “Content First” community, if you’d like to investigate, collaborate, develop or produce the unique story content inherent in designing and building in the physical world, please contact me at collier1960@hotmail.com or at (704) 560-6772.

Architecture holds a thousand stories – let’s tell them!

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An ongoing feature of Building Content is regularly posted items of curated content; information and stories from the best sources on the Internet. These examples of content curation will be easily recognized by the “CC:” prefix in their titles. Please read these for your own enjoyment or to incorporate, with proper citation, into your own blog.

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Please consider this a follow-up to my recent “Curated Content” post; CC: Cold Cruel Numbers.

A tip of the hat to Randy Deutsch, a tremendous content curator (and BIM expert!) in his own right, who Tweeted about this New York Times article last Sunday, Among the Wealthiest 1 Percent, Many Variations.

3.4% of Architects live in households in the top one percent income

NEW YORK TIMES - 1% CHART

 CLICK HERE TO VIEW FULL CHART

Highlights of the article:

• 207,568 is the total number of Architects in this survey
• 6,973 Architects made the survey’s cut
• The numbers are are of those who “live in households the top 1%”

Related articles

• What percent you are in (flowingdata.com)
• Fun Fact of the Day: Lawyers and the One Percent (abovethelaw.com)
• NYT uses R to map the 1% (revolutionanalytics.com)
• CC: Cold Cruel Numbers (buildingcontent.highercontent.com)

This is my entry in the year’s second Let’s BlogOff event.

The subject; “What would you change if you could turn back time?”

What would you change if you could turn back time?

If I could turn back time I would change –

the very fabric of the space-time continuum!

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