How it works
Over the past 15+ years at the helm of Odyssey Works, I have used questionnaires, conversations, walks in the park, and interviews with friends and family to get to know people so well that my team could create artworks and performances that would change their lives. The Long Architecture Project begins with this same research. Together, we focus on three main aspirational categories: Friends/Family, Art/Aesthetics, Mission/Meaning.
Friends/
Family
A home codifies these relationships. What is the arrangement of family space and private space? How do friends and community members engage with your family? What activities are facilitated by the architecture?
Art /
Aesthetics
A building is an aesthetic experience that you encounter every day. The default is to treat the walls as haphazard galleries and other spaces as haphazard listening and viewing rooms. But what if the house were designed with a relationship to music, art, literature, and performance from the beginning?
Mission /
Meaning
As one of the few major life events that you actually design, building a home is both an expression of and a foundation for the mission you have in your life. The home is where you dream of projects, draft visions, practice utopia, and relate the natural and built environment.
Our work together moves through four phases, leading to a schematic design that will then be developed in partnership with a local architect.
1. Research
We begin with a series of questionnaires and interviews. This is a collaborative process and it will require your willingness to be open and to dream with me about the future. First you fill out a brief intake form, then, if the project fits with the Long Architecture approach, I will send you a longer questionnaire designed to dig deep into the three elements of the design triad above. It may be useful to interview family members and even members of communities of which you are a part.
2. Site Visit
The second step is the site visit. The site may be either an existing building that will be added to or replaced, or to a piece of undeveloped land. The site visit will also involve becoming acquainted with the local community. As built drawings and surveys may also be done at this time.
3. Diagramming
The third step is Diagramming and Mapping. The diagram and the map are the primary means by which the abstractions of the design triad are folded into the realities of the building, site, and project scope.
4. Schematic Design
Schematic Design is the final step in the process. Here we envision not only what the building will look like, how the floorplan will work, but how you will live in the house. During schematic design we will look at both big picture designs and small relevant details. We will begin speaking with artists about specific commissions for the house and for your life in the house. We will storyboard activities within the building. During schematics we will begin our partnership with a local architect.
