Paying Attention to Place

 

Rue Saint-Sulpice, Montreal, QC (all photos by me)

Places reveal themselves in layers. Some register immediately; others take time, weather, and use to come into focus. Streets, buildings, and public spaces rarely explain themselves all at once. That slow unfolding, often missed in a rush toward first impressions, shapes how cities are understood and how they endure.

Certain places speak right away: a street that feels coherent the moment you step onto it, or a building whose presence seems fully resolved at first glance. Others ask for patience. Their character emerges through shifting light, seasonal changes, and the habits of daily life. I’ve learned to trust both kinds of encounters. Each reveals something different about how places actually work.

Cities depend on a legible fabric, the everyday buildings that give a place its rhythm and make its streets understandable. That fabric grows out of the ground it sits on; geography and topography often shape it outright, bending streets, breaking grids, and steering development in ways no plan can fully override. When the fabric holds together, even loosely, a city feels grounded. When it falls apart, everything around it struggles: landmarks lose their context, public spaces drift, and movement turns confusing. The fabric isn’t just background; it’s what lets a city make sense.

Within that fabric, a few buildings and spaces take on a larger role. They steady their surroundings, give direction to a street, or quietly signal that they belong to everyone. Some call these places monuments, not because they’re necessarily grand, but because they help the city orient itself. Their presence clarifies what’s around them. Without them, a place can feel disoriented; with them, the whole gains coherence. Here in Eugene, the downtown Park Blocks form a central public space that fulfills this role. I also like to think the main branch of the Eugene Public Library—a project I had a hand in shaping—functions as one of the city’s steadying civic anchors.

Piazza Navona, Rome 

History deepens this understanding. Every city carries traces of what came before: old street lines that refuse to disappear, materials that weather in familiar ways, settlement patterns that continue to guide how people move. Even when a place looks new, it rests on earlier decisions. Cities are palimpsests, not in a romantic sense but a practical one. The past sits plainly in the present, whether we notice it or not, and paying attention to those layers helps explain why places feel the way they do.

The rains of the Pacific Northwest test every exposed joint. Low winter light exposes the difference between a generous window and a half-hearted one. Moss softens edges whether it’s invited or not. Climate shows its effects early. Geography and history shape perception too: filtered light, volcanic soils, a layered cultural landscape. Every place has a character that precedes design and outlasts it, and buildings work better when they acknowledge that character rather than resist it.

What matters most is whether a building feels anchored to its purpose. Sometimes that shows up in small choices. Other times it’s broader: a space that gathers people naturally, a form that belongs to its setting, a presence that feels inevitable once you’ve lived with it for a while. The reasons vary, but that sense of rightness is hard to miss when you see and feel it.

None of this happens easily. Budgets, codes, timelines, and competing priorities shape every project. Attention is often the first casualty of speed and efficiency. I’ve been inside enough jobs to know how many compromises hide behind even the simplest building. Still, thoughtful decisions—daylight where it counts, materials that age honestly, plans that anticipate real use—can give a building staying power. These are far from new ideas. 

Times Square, New York.

I keep coming back to how the built environment shapes our expectations of one another. A well-considered public building quietly suggests that a community values its shared life. A neglected streetscape sends the opposite message. Those cues accumulate. They influence how we behave, how we gather, and how we imagine the future. Architecture doesn’t dictate any of it, but it sets the stage for what’s possible.

Over time, my own thinking has settled around a few recurring ideas: the importance of a legible fabric; the pull of geography and history; the honesty of materials; and the authority of well-placed civic buildings. None of these insights is original. They echo through the work of others I’ve learned from along the way. They’ve simply grown clearer the longer I’ve watched them play out in real places.

If there’s an arc here, it’s the arc of looking closely. Buildings reveal themselves in their own time. Cities take longer still. After a lifetime working in and around them, and now watching from a different vantage point, I see my role less as a conclusion than as participation in a long conversation. The best any of us can do is pay attention, make careful choices, and add something worth keeping.

Can an AI System Write Specifications?

Architects often encounter new tools that promise efficiency. Some deliver it. Others only shift the work. The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence has revived a familiar question in architectural practice: whether a machine can produce a complete set of written specifications for a building, formatted in accordance with CSI MasterFormat, with only limited direction from the architect. The premise is straightforward: provide the AI with a Design Development set or BIM model, supplement it with a UniFormat outline, and ask it to generate the rest. 

Before considering the question, it helps to define the scope of this discussion. My aim is not to evaluate the technical capabilities of AI or to predict its trajectory. I am describing the nature of architectural specifications as they function in practice, and why their essential characteristics do not lend themselves to full automation. The observations that follow come from the work itself, not from any claim to expertise in artificial intelligence. 

Conversations about AI-generated specifications tend to fall into two predictable camps: optimism that the technology will soon automate the task, and caution from specifiers who emphasize the role of human judgment. I am not positioning this essay within that debate. Instead, I am outlining how specifications operate in practice and why their structure resists full delegation to an automated system. 

With that boundary in place, the short answer is that an AI system can produce text that resembles specifications. The longer answer is that resemblance does not equal authorship, and it certainly does not equal responsibility. 

AI systems excel at producing language that follows a pattern. They can generate the familiar three-part structure of a MasterFormat section and fill it with plausible content. They can map a UniFormat outline to the appropriate divisions and suggest likely sections. They can expand common assemblies into generic descriptions suitable for a preliminary draft. For routine editing tasks, such as checking terminology, consistency, or cross-referencing, they already offer real assistance. 

But specifications are not primarily a writing exercise. They serve as instruments of service that carry intent, performance criteria, and contractual force. They allocate risk. They coordinate with drawings, consultant documents, procurement requirements, and the owner’s expectations. They reflect decisions that are technical, legal, and experiential. An AI system cannot distinguish between what the drawings show and what the architect intends. It cannot infer performance requirements from geometry. It cannot decide when a prescriptive specification suits the project or when a performance specification becomes necessary. It cannot judge installer qualifications, warranty durations, or the level of detail required to make a section enforceable. It can only generate text that sounds like something an architect might have written. 

A simple example illustrates the point: imagine a project where the drawings call for a mechanically fastened roofing system, but an AI-generated specification defaults to a fully adhered system because that assembly appears more frequently in its training data. The contradiction is not a technical glitch; it is a failure of judgment. The machine cannot know which document reflects the architect’s intent, and the architect must resolve the discrepancy regardless. The risk created by the mismatch remains entirely human. 

The gap does not arise from a lack of training data or processing power. It stems from the nature of the work. Specifications depend on judgment, and judgment depends on experience, liability, and the ability to weigh consequences. A machine with none of these cannot produce a specification in the professional sense. It can only imitate the surface features of one. 

Some may argue that future AI systems trained on liability-aware datasets could narrow this gap. Even if such systems emerge, the underlying issue persists. Responsibility for the document cannot shift to a tool that cannot bear it. The architect would still need to verify the content, and verification would still require judgment. More sophisticated text does not change the structure of professional accountability. 

It is still reasonable to consider what might improve. AI systems will become better at interpreting drawings and models. They will identify assemblies more reliably, compare documents more effectively, and flag inconsistencies more quickly. They may eventually serve as competent reviewers, for example, as tools that scan a DD set, identify missing sections, and highlight divergences between specifications and drawings. They may help maintain internal consistency across large projects. They may reduce the time spent on boilerplate. These gains are modest, but they are real. 

What they are unlikely to do is assume the role of the specifier. The profession’s obligations—clarity, coordination, and accountability—do not reduce to pattern recognition. Even if an AI system produced a document that looked complete, the architect would still need to verify every line. The liability would remain exactly where it is now. 

A more interesting question concerns the appearance of completeness. When a machine can create a document that sounds authoritative, the risk of misplaced confidence increases. A specification that reads smoothly but lacks enforceability poses more danger than an incomplete one. This shifts the architect’s labor from accountable authorship to comprehensive verification, a change in workflow that increases risk without reducing responsibility. 

For now, the practical answer is that AI can assist with specifications, but it cannot write them. It can organize information, expand outlines, and check for consistency. It cannot make the decisions that define the document. The distinction matters, especially as the tools grow more fluent. The risk is not that AI will replace the architect, but that it will produce documents that appear authoritative without meeting the obligations of the profession. 

Years ago, I argued that specifiers serve as the managers of a project’s essential information. That view has not diminished. If anything, the rise of AI has clarified how much of the work depends on judgment rather than text. (See my 2012 post, “Revenge of the Specifiers”). 

Architects have always adapted to new tools. This one will be no different. But the work of specifying—deciding what is required, why it is required, and how it must perform—remains a human responsibility. The danger is not that AI will write specifications, but that it will encourage architects to trust documents whose authority exceeds their judgment.

The Pace of a House

Our new TV.

My wife and I recently switched from cable to fiber internet in our home, mostly for the cost savings. Our old cable speeds had been fine—more than adequate for streaming and email—but the change made clear how far behind we’d fallen on home tech. Almost everyone we know crossed this bridge years ago. 

That switch prompted a closer look at how we actually watch television. Our old set, a once state-of-the-art 1999 model, sits in the bedroom: a 26-inch screen with 720p resolution. Before the new service arrived, we checked its back panel to see if it could accept a streaming device. There, improbably, was an HDMI port—so we plan to purchase an Amazon Fire TV Stick to extend its useful life. 

We've already bought a new 50-inch QLED screen for the living room to match the fiber’s potential. It now sits in front of the fireplace on a new stand, a simple piece of furniture that nonetheless changes the room’s proportions. It’s the first substantial item we’ve added to our home in decades, a small but telling shift in how the house is organized around our daily life. 

Last October, we finally completed a long-deferred maintenance project. With that out of the way, and alongside the move to fiber, smaller upgrades have followed naturally. These include the new TV, a noise-cancelling headset (so I can watch TV when my wife is sleeping), and subscriptions to streaming apps. 

Retirement recalibrates scale. With life’s major transitions mostly behind us, incremental ones come into sharper focus. None of these is momentous in itself. But small changes shape how we live in our homes, especially when larger shifts are no longer driving the agenda. Some people remake their spaces all at once; others, like us, move slowly, letting familiar things continue to serve while new ones find their place. In that slower rhythm, our everyday world has room to clarify itself, and the life we’ve built here becomes a little more legible, one measured step at a time. 

When Letters Become Landmarks

Amsterdam’s 2005 ‘I amsterdam’ installation, often cited as the earliest widely recognized example of the modern city‑name wordmark (photo by Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons).

 
Cities around the world have embraced a simple, highly legible device: spelling out their names in large, sculptural letters. These wordmarks have become fixtures of contemporary urban branding—instantly recognizable, endlessly photographed, and often adopted as informal gathering points. I’ve encountered them in places as different as Nanaimo and Ottawa, each using typography to project identity in a direct, almost cheerful way.
 
Amsterdam’s “I amsterdam” installation, introduced in 2005, is generally regarded as the earliest widely recognized example of the contemporary city-name wordmark. Its placement in front of the Rijksmuseum helped propel the device into global visibility, and many of the installations that followed, from Toronto to Buenos Aires, trace their lineage, implicitly or explicitly, to the Amsterdam wordmark.(1)
 
Notably, many of this country’s most symbolically loaded cities—New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia—have never adopted large civic wordmarks, relying instead on existing architectural icons to carry their identity. By contrast, some cities have experimented with the typology in design-forward ways. Vancouver, Canada, introduced temporary and illuminated “VANCOUVER” installations that proved popular enough to prompt council approval for a permanent waterfront version.(2) That uneven adoption underscores that a wordmark is never a neutral gesture; it reflects a city’s comfort with overt branding and its appetite for a certain kind of civic expression.

Nanaimo, British Columbia wordmark (my photo).

 
Their appeal is obvious. A city-name wordmark is participatory, democratic, and immediately understood. It offers a moment of civic pride and a ready-made backdrop for visitors. But the very qualities that make these installations successful have also made them ubiquitous. They risk becoming a global shorthand for Instagram bait: instantly photogenic, instantly shareable, and instantly interchangeable.
 
Despite their ubiquity, there’s surprisingly little critical writing about these installations as a global phenomenon. Most commentary focuses on individual signs or on municipal branding more broadly, but few observers have examined the wordmark itself as an urban placemaker, with respect to its appeal, its limitations, or its implications for civic space. That gap makes me curious about how a city like Eugene might interpret the device, and whether it can be adapted in a way that feels authentic rather than imitative.
 
I argued last year that the North Butterfly Lot needs a gesture capable of reinforcing the Park Blocks’ spatial logic, one that contributes to their civic presence. Since then, the City of Eugene selected Paradigm Properties through a public RFP process to undertake the parcel’s redevelopment. The design team, led by Dustrud Architecture (with Dougherty Landscape Architects and Michael Fifield contributing urban design guidance) has initiated design work. I’ve discussed the developing scheme with both, as well as participated in Mayor Kaarin Knudson’s design review group for the project. The City’s process to date has emphasized transparency and public engagement rather than imposing any architectural direction upon Paradigm, especially with respect to questions of scale, expression, or the appropriateness of strongly iconic gestures.
 
It’s worth remembering that the North Butterfly Lot has never properly functioned as a spatial terminus for the Park Blocks. Earlier civic buildings, now razed, primarily fronted on 8th Avenue, leaving the northern quarter block as an unresolved edge in the figure-ground. The site isn’t missing something it once had; it simply never received a gesture that acknowledges its role as the Park Blocks’ northern threshold.

 

"OTTAWA" sign in the city's ByWard Market District (my photo).

That brings me back to those city-name installations. I’m wary of their ubiquity. I’m wary of their tendency toward cliché. And yet, I find myself wondering whether the underlying idea—typography as spatial marker, a wordmark as civic datum—might hold potential here if approached with restraint and specificity. Not a photo prop, not a branding exercise, but a modest, materially grounded gesture that participates in the Park Blocks’ geometry and registers at pedestrian scale.(3)
 
Eugene doesn’t need a copy of what other cities have done. But it might benefit from a contemporary civic wordmark, or some related typographic gesture, if it can be conceived as an architectural element rather than a marketing device. Something that completes the Park Blocks’ sequence, acknowledges the city’s identity without shouting it, and feels inevitable rather than imported.
 
I’m not certain what that gesture should be. But I’m increasingly convinced that the question is worth asking. If Eugene can reinterpret the global wordmark phenomenon in a way that aligns with its modest, grounded, and quietly expressive temperament, then perhaps even this ubiquitous device could find a meaningful place at the northern edge of the Park Blocks.

 
(1)  The City of Amsterdam ultimately removed the original installation from the Museumplein in 2018 amid concerns about overtourism, a reminder that even the typology’s OG has grappled with the unintended consequences of its own success.
 
(2)  The City of Vancouver has leaned into temporary and illuminated "VANCOUVER" signs (seasonal installations near Canada Place since 2023–2024), which proved hugely popular and led to council approval in 2025 for a permanent, illuminated large-letter sign on the waterfront promenade, timed for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It's positioned as a public art/placemaking piece with tourist appeal, backed by tourism partners, and will incorporate First Nations design input. 

     

     (3)  This idea is not my own: In a March 27, 2025 letter to the Eugene Weekly, William Sullivan called for a park-focused design competition, suggesting features that include a giant “EUGENE” sculpture. 

 

A Lost Oregon Colossus

The Forestry Building, circa 1905 (all images public domain)
 

I recently came across photographs of a Portland structure I hadn’t encountered before: the Forestry Building from the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition. Although I had previously heard of the fair, I was not familiar with its architecture. The images of the massive building immediately impressed me.

The Forestry Building measured 206 by 102 feet and centered around a central nave of fifty-two old-growth fir trunks, each about six feet in diameter. Crews selected and matched the logs individually, handling them in ways that preserved their bark. All told, builders used roughly a million board feet of timber. The result was a monumental timber hall that reflected the confidence and priorities of Oregon’s early logging era. Contemporary accounts often described it as the “world’s largest log cabin,” though later comparisons (e.g., Old Faithful Inn) challenge that superlative.

A souvenir postcard image of the Forestry Building from the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition.

Construction of the Forestry Building, 1904.

The Forestry Building as it appeared in 1956.

The colossal central "nave."

Following the conclusion of the exposition, the city retained the building and used it as a museum and forestry hall to house logging and lumbering exhibits. Maintenance proved difficult. Decay, insect damage, and repeated fire scares accumulated over the decades, and by the 1940s, the building faced possible demolition. A restoration effort in the 1950s stabilized it. That process underscored how impossible it would be to replicate its materials or methods from scratch.

The Forestry Building, engulfed in flames, August 17, 1964.

In August 1964, faulty electrical wiring started a fire that entirely destroyed the building within hours. The intensity of the radiated heat was enough to blow out the facing windows of the nearby Montgomery Park Building. Nothing inside the Forestry Building survived. The loss removed one of the last physical links to the state’s early timber identity.

In response, civic and industry leaders established the Western Forestry Center—now the World Forestry Center—building a new facility in Washington Park to continue the educational mission. It occupies a similar footprint but did not attempt to replicate the original structure.

The historical information and images in this post come from several sources, including the Pacific Coast Architectural Database and Offbeat Oregon. Encountering the Forestry Building through their accounts was a surprise, a reminder that even in a region I think I know well, significant pieces of its architectural past can still surface unexpectedly.