The details and delineation that have, in our recent past, defined us and our environments— pieces, originally made to sit side by side, categorized, are rusting together and inside of one another. Nothing is separate from one another-- neither in physical expression nor in thought.
I have begun to read my home in such ways. There was a time when, growing up in the spreading out of the Midwest, I saw it as one set of pictures with the same caption. But, I see its pieces now, no longer separate. Each piece and picture is an identity that gives way to identities. They are changing and moving. And in this change it is not that they require new environments, but simply new environments come about, and dialogue is begun. We belong, as designers, to a landscape of dialogue. A landscape which pauses, reacts. We cannot examine space, program, structure as singular, as individual and timely choices. Design is now, more than ever, about complex relationships, their identities and intensities. The city is experiencing the complexity effected by a substantial rusting.
This set of identities is not unique to Milwaukee, but to today's City itself. There is nothing I find more interesting, nothing more cross-disciplined than the study of cities and the participation in them whether that is walking down a street or designing in its context. It is important for me to be part of that dialogue as a critical and conscious observer and doer. I need to be plunged into new intensities, to understand different identities and their relationships. It is a concept to me, that seems, once understood completely, to govern the spaces that will change everything. But it is dynamic, quick and growing. It is large and small. It brings to mind movement and a designer's need to move with it-- literally. Extending limbs, touching, drawing-inward, outward, running, being-in. This exasperation, this shortness of breath is then, a design of participation and it is design through which I can hope to participate in this movement.
