My Own Season of Christmas

Photo by Elist Nguyen on Unsplash

The Christmas holiday season matters to me, though not for reasons of doctrine. I have always felt its pull—how it gathers families, neighborhoods, even strangers in shops and streets in celebration and good cheer. I value the season and its rituals and stories that sustain community.
 
I was born in 1959 and raised in a working-class neighborhood in Vancouver, often loosely referred to as “East Van.” Ours was not a churchgoing household, but like many families of the time, we were immersed in the family-oriented, conformist, consumerist culture of mid‑20th‑century North America. Christmas was everywhere, found on porches and in living rooms, in shop windows, and on television. It was less about belief than about belonging. The holiday’s rituals were woven into the fabric of our community, and they became part of my own formation.
 
Even now, I find myself drawn to the season’s festivity: the lights strung against winter’s darkness, the decorations that transform ordinary spaces, the merriment that softens daily routines. These are human inventions, rather than divine mandates. They push back against isolation, create warmth in the cold months, and remind us that joy can be cultivated even when the days are short. In this sense, Christmas is less about heaven above than about light against the long night.
 
The stories we tell at Christmas reinforce this meaning. Each year, my wife and I revisit the old animated specials—A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph the Red‑Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Frosty the Snowman. We watch the classic films—It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and A Christmas Story. These narratives endure because they speak to human concerns: generosity, unseen goodness, redemption, and innocence. They are moral tales, not just theological ones, reminding us that kindness and community are worth cultivating regardless of metaphysical certainty.
 
Of course, the cultural environment has changed since my childhood. The conformity of the 1950s and 1960s has given way to a more inclusive society, where Christmas is celebrated in diverse ways and often alongside other traditions. I welcome that evolution. It shows that the holiday is adaptable, that its meaning is shaped less by doctrine than by human needs. Christmas can be Christian, secular, interfaith, or simply communal. Its resilience lies in its capacity to gather people together around collective rituals of wonder and reflection.
 
That’s why Christmas matters to me, an agnostic. Its rituals sustain memory, community, and shared traditions. It connects me to my childhood in Vancouver, to the cultural currents of my generation, to the stories that continue to shape our ethical landscape, and to the inclusive present in which the holiday has broadened beyond its original boundaries. Christmas endures not only because of its spiritual significance, but also because it addresses perennial human needs: for light in darkness, for joy in community, and for stories that remind us of kindness and hope.
 
In my own season of Christmas, what endures is not certainty but continuity in the way memory, ritual, and tradition carry forward even when belief may not. The holiday gathers fragments of childhood, the warmth of community, and the moral imagination of its tales, shaping a season that still matters to me. Meaning can be made and cherished, even when ultimate answers remain unknown.

Robert A.M. Stern and Frank O. Gehry Remembered

Robert A.M. Stern (1939-2025)

Frank O. Gehry (1929-2025)

In just the past few days, two figures synonymous with the architectural culture of the past half-century died: Robert A.M. Stern (1939-2025) and Frank Gehry (1929-2025). Their deaths, so close together, invite reflection—not because they directly influenced my career, but because they figured so prominently in the architectural landscape during my formative years. Those years—roughly the decade between 1977 and 1987, encompassing my university studies and early years in the profession—would see the work of both men achieve prominence.

Gehry’s own home in Santa Monica provoked debate, dismantling domestic form and announcing a new architectural language. Around the same time, he completed the Information and Computer Science/Engineering Research Facility (ICS/ERF) at UC Irvine. I was working on another project for the university then, and I remember how cheap the building looked—which, in fact, it was, consistent with his raw, deliberately provisional aesthetic of that period. When the university demolished it in 2007, a mere twenty-one years after its completion, the decision confirmed my impression that the ICS/ERF functioned more as an experiment than an enduring contribution.

Gehry Residence, Santa Monica, CA (photo by IK's World Trip, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

ICS/ERF, UC Irvine (photo source: https://11011110.github.io/blog/2007/01/22/gehry-gone.html).

Gehry drew on an idiosyncratic vision shaped by the Los Angeles art scene. He stood as a dominant personality within avant-garde architecture of the day, an iconoclast whose originality commanded attention even as his influence remained limited by how personal it was to him. That individuality gave his buildings force, but it also made them difficult to emulate without sliding into imitation.

Stern’s work in those years followed a different path. His Shingle Style houses, such as the Wiseman House in Montauk, carried forward a historical lineage with studied care. At the same time, his more mannered Post-Modern efforts reflected Robert Venturi’s teachings during Stern’s time at Yale. Stern also stepped into the “Whites vs. Grays” debate of the 1970s, giving voice to the Grays—those who argued for historical reference and contextualism against the abstract modernism of the New York Five. His writings and advocacy gave coherence to that position, showing him not only as a designer but also as a polemicist in one of the era’s defining conversations.

Wiseman House, Montauk, NY

Lang House, Washington, CT (photo source: Meet This Year's CTC&G IDA Innovator Award Recipient, Robert A.M. Stern - Cottages & Gardens)

I met Stern during my graduate studies at UCLA. He visited Los Angeles and joined a small group of us for an interactive session. He carried himself with polish and approachability, more professor than provocateur. Gehry, by contrast, earned a reputation for bluntness and ill temper, qualities that matched the rough edges of his early work. Their personalities mirrored their architectural philosophies: Stern as the cultivated historian, Gehry as the restless experimenter.

Neither man directly shaped my development. Their philosophies stood far apart, and I found my path elsewhere. Yet as a student I fell under the thrall of the starchitect phenomenon. Architecture in those years revolved around celebrity, around the idea that a single figure could embody the discipline’s aspirations. Stern and Gehry ranked among the most visible of those figures.

Duo Dickinson, in his essay The Twilight of the Starchitect, argued that this era is ending. I share that view, though I believe the decline began long ago. In 2016, when Zaha Hadid died, I wrote that the starchitect phenomenon was already fading. The deaths of Stern and Gehry feel less like continuation than conclusion. Who among their contemporaries remains? Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster, Thom Mayne, perhaps a few others—but the celebrity of these architects today has diminished. Bjarke Ingels has cultivated a kind of stardom, but he belongs to a younger generation, and his fame seems the exception rather than the rule.

Where once a plurality of schools of thought gave architecture its coherence—Modernism, Post-Modernism, Deconstructivism, High-Tech—today the profession confronts a tangle of competing urgencies: climate change, equity, technology, housing, and economic precarity among them. During the starchitect era, aesthetics carried weight because they were embedded in those schools, which together defined the architectural zeitgeist. Today, no single school commands that kind of influence. The starchitect era, with its focus on personality and spectacle, has ended. Architecture now reflects a spectrum of overlapping concerns rather than a single, unified cultural narrative.

I acknowledge Stern and Gehry as presences in my education, unavoidable figures in the architectural conversation of their time. They were not direct influences, yet they informed the period during which I learned to think about architecture. Their passing closes a chapter and underscores the unsettled terrain the profession now inhabits.

The Sub-Critical City

A system held below its critical slope: grains settle quietly, avalanches rare. Eugene’s growth boundary has shaped a city that resists sudden cascades.

Cities often drift toward what complexity science calls the critical slope, where countless small choices accumulate into patterns of sudden avalanches—some minor, some transformative. Eugene has resisted that drift, making it a useful case for thinking about self‑organized criticality in urban form. 

I first encountered the idea of self‑organized criticality in 2008, in discussions of emergent urbanism and systems thinking under the tutelage of Alder Fuller. A recent Veritasium video on power laws reignited my interest and prompted me to consider how these ideas apply to Eugene’s development. 

Self‑organized criticality describes the way certain systems—sandpiles, forests, stock markets, earthquakes—drift toward a balance point where tiny disturbances can produce anything from nothing to catastrophe. At that balance point, the size of events follows a power‑law distribution: countless small events, far fewer medium ones, and a rare but inevitable handful of giants. These “heavy tails” mark a critical system. The same mathematical signatures appear across wildly different domains, a phenomenon physicists call universality. Cities belong to that list, and Eugene’s exception makes the concept especially revealing. 

No large city grows in a vacuum. All face shaping by topography, zoning, land prices, infrastructure budgets, and political decisions. Yet worldwide, power‑law patterns appear with remarkable consistency: in street lengths, traffic congestion, building heights, rates of innovation, even the spacing of coffee shops. The driver lies not in the absence of rules, but in the presence of millions of small, local, decentralized choices: where to build a house, extend a road, or open a business. Those choices act like grains of sand dropped onto a pile. Over time, cities tune themselves toward a threshold slope, even if aspects of that slope are far from perfectly free. 

Eugene’s growth has been pressed by constraints tighter than those shaping many other cities. The Willamette and McKenzie rivers, the Coburg Hills, and Spencer Butte already form a natural bowl. Oregon’s statewide land‑use program, enacted in 1973, was the first of its kind in the nation. It required every city to draw an urban growth boundary, a bold experiment in curbing sprawl and preserving farmland. Typically, a city’s boundary expands in response to population growth; in Eugene, such expansions have been small and infrequent. From the air, the city still shows a discernible edge: roofs and streetlights give way to fields and oak savanna more abruptly than in most American cities of comparable size and wealth, though ragged in places. 

A walk from the downtown grid toward the South Hills reveals streets that begin to branch and loop like tributaries. Cul‑de‑sacs and winding lanes mark a departure into branching patterns that resemble fractals. One accident on the Beltline at rush hour can paralyze half the city. Housing prices jump in ways that feel disproportionate to the trigger. Even in sub‑critical systems, small avalanches still occur. 

Explosive rings of subdivisions and sudden satellite towns have been kept at bay, leaving Eugene’s sandpile noticeably flatter than most cities of comparable size and wealth. In the language of complexity science, the city qualifies as sub‑critical: orderly, green, bikeable, and still livable. Most other cities, even with their own zoning codes, greenbelts, and natural barriers, live closer to the slope that complexity science describes. 

Eugene's urban growth boundary.

Whether such restraint proves beneficial remains uncertain. The gains are clear: farmland and wetlands preserved, infrastructure costs contained, weekend rides across town that still feel relaxed. Most residents value these outcomes and would not trade them for the unchecked suburban expansion visible in other regions. 

The concerns are less visible. Critical systems acquire remarkable properties—rapid adaptation, outsized creativity—precisely because they tolerate extremes. When a city holds back more forcefully than most, it intervenes in a process that has proved robust at finding its own balance. In Eugene, the muted tails stand out in housing: supply has lagged demand, and affordability has eroded more sharply than in cities that allowed broader expansion. 

Complexity science offers no prescription; it only reminds us that every path carries its own heavy‑tailed consequence. One set of consequences is visible now: open fields west of Bertelsen Road, a skyline that ends where the hills begin. Another set may lie ahead: reduced adaptability, economic stagnation, or exclusion dressed up as preservation. 

The urban growth boundary undergoes periodic review, and the same public process that set it can still adjust it. Eugene has not become locked into permanent sub‑criticality, only into a prolonged and unusually deliberate constraint as the region decides what it values more: the known benefits of containment or the unknown potentials that most cities, despite their own rules, still manage to reach. 

Eugene’s growth boundary has kept the city flatter than the slope that complexity science describes. Whether this restraint preserves resilience or erodes adaptability remains uncertain. Self‑organized criticality only reminds us that even deliberate interventions cannot escape heavy‑tailed consequences.

Architecture is Awesome: #42 Framing Long Views

Villa Rotunda (photo by Andrew Hopkins from his essay Neither Perfect Nor Ideal: Palladio's Villa Rotonda)

Framing a long view is choreography, not accident. Good architecture composes foreground, middleground, and distant horizon so that seeing becomes an intentional act: a measured approach, a threshold, a framed aperture, or a dissolving boundary. Let’s consider four strategies—classical porticoes, sequential garden choreography, glass pavilion, and intimate apertures—each a different way buildings make long views legible and memorable.

Villa Rotunda (photo by Marco Bagarella, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Perched on a gentle rise with a perfectly centered plan, Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda turns each portico into a picture frame. The portico sets up a designed foreground and a measured interval before the countryside. Terrace, approach, and panorama read as a deliberate triptych. The experience is ordered: the building does not merely reveal the land; it arranges the act of looking into classical perspective. 

Katsura Imperial Villa (photo by Raphael Azevedo Franca - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1527734) 

The Katsura Imperial Villa stages long views through movement and sequence. Rooms, engawa verandas, sliding screens, and planted sightlines craft a collection of composed tableaux. Each threshold recasts the foreground and repositions focal points so distant features and garden elements become destinations in a carefully paced visual narrative. 

Farnsworth House (photo by Victor Grigas - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42288805)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House pursues the opposite move: panoramic extension. A thin slab elevated above the floodplain, featuring full-height glass walls and a minimal structural frame, dissolves the threshold between the interior and the landscape. Instead of isolating discrete images, the house produces a continuous picture plane; its power lies in letting the eye move unbroken to the horizon and treeline, amplifying distance and continuity. 

Mount Angel Abbey Library (photo source: The Aalto Architecture - Mount Angel Abbey)

Alvar Aalto’s Mount Angel Abbey Library near Silverton, here in Oregon, resists spectacle in favor of intimate, painting-like views. Small, carefully placed windows and carrels frame clipped foregrounds, middle fields, and distant ridges, each opening embraced by warm, tactile surrounds. The building choreographs slow looking: the landscape becomes a sequence of shaped images to be read over time rather than consumed at once. 

Together, these examples describe a compositional spectrum. Palladio and Katsura use borders, thresholds, and procession to create discrete, framed vistas; Farnsworth dissolves the border to produce an immersive panorama; Aalto occupies a middle ground, shaping compact, outward-facing views that remain intimate. Each choice shapes attention differently—how long we look, what we remember, and how distant places enter the life of a building. 

Notice framed views in ordinary places: a porch that offers an agreeable perspective, a hallway that narrows the horizon, a small window that turns a distant ridge into a painted scene. Those everyday framings are the same compositional moves architects use at larger scales. Recognize them, and architecture becomes a reliable tool for making the world more legible—and, yes, AWESOME. 

Next Architecture is Awesome: #43 Market Halls and the Bustle of Commerce

Flight 93 National Memorial

 

Flight 93 National Memorial (all photos by me unless noted otherwise).

My recent trip across Pennsylvania, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, included three days of leisurely driving across the state. Along the way, I stopped at the Flight 93 National Memorial outside Shanksville. I wondered whether the visit would be worthwhile, especially since the Visitor Center was closed due to the federal government shutdown. I left thankful I had made the stop, as the experience was quietly profound.
 
The memorial recalls one of the most tragic and heroic moments of September 11, 2001. That morning, forty passengers and crew aboard the hijacked United Flight 93 realized what was happening and acted together. Their stand prevented the al-Qaeda extremists from reaching their intended target, though at the cost of every life on board. The crash site became a place of national mourning and remembrance.
 
Congress authorized the memorial in 2002, and an international design competition followed two years later, drawing more than 1,000 submissions. In 2005, the jury—comprised of family members, design professionals, and community leaders—selected Crescent of Embrace by Paul Murdoch Architects. The design evolved into the circular form seen today, emphasizing the flight path and place of impact. Working with Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, Paul Murdoch Architects transformed the site of a tragedy into a landscape of environmental and symbolic healing.(1)

Aerial plan view (source: Flight 93 National Memorial — Paul Murdoch Architects)

Entrance to the closed Visitor Center.

View back toward the Visitor Center from the overlook.
 

Minimalism has become the accepted language of contemporary memorials, and the Flight 93 Memorial follows suit. Tall concrete walls and a black granite walkway trace the flight path, directing visitors toward an overlook above the crash site. Below lies a field of wildflowers, designated by the National Park Service as the Sacred Ground. At the edge of the hemlock grove, a sandstone boulder marks the location of Flight 93’s impact, though visitors see it only from a distance. The simplicity of the materials and the clarity of the geometry allow the landscape itself to carry meaning.
 

Wall of Names. The Visitor Center commands the high ground in the distance.

The Wall of Names stands along the flight path. Forty panels of polished white granite rise in sequence, each inscribed with the name of a passenger or crew member. The wall is straightforward in its form, and its presence is unmistakable. Walking its length, one feels the accumulation of lives remembered, each distinct but joined. The wall ends at a gate that frames the view of the crash site, linking the names to the place in a solemn, direct way.
 
What struck me most was the quiet. The only sound was the wind across the fields and through the trees, and even that seemed to deepen the hush. Visitors moved in silence; even a busload of schoolchildren remained respectfully quiet. The atmosphere carried the weight of memory.
 

The Tower of Voices.

The Tower of Voices, a ninety-three-foot structure holding forty wind chimes—one for each of the passengers and crew—stands at the entrance. When I visited, the tower was silent. The wind was steady, but the chimes did not move. Whether locked or awaiting stronger gusts, their silence seemed fitting, reinforcing the quiet that defined the entire site. The tower, while striking, is one part of a composition whose scale is measured in miles and thousands of acres. The Wall of Names, the flight path walkway, the overlook, the restored wetlands and groves of trees—all work together to create a memorial landscape that is monumental yet restrained.
 
My high regard for the Flight 93 Memorial is personal, limited since I’ve visited only a handful of other contemporary memorials. Still, among those I have seen—including the 9/11 Memorial at the site of the former World Trade Center in New York, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.—this one stands out. It honors the heroism of the forty and transforms a scarred landscape into a place of healing. It is both vast and intimate, monumental and quiet. I left with a deep respect for what was accomplished here. 

(1)    I was not previously familiar with the work of Paul Murdoch Architects. This surprised me, given how impressive the firm’s portfolio is, which includes civic and cultural projects.  

Henry Chapman Mercer’s Quixotic Castles and Caves

Fonthill Castle (all photos by me)

During my recent trip to Pennsylvania, I visited three remarkable buildings in Doylestown, Bucks County: the Mercer Museum, the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, and Fonthill Castle. Archaeologist, artifact collector, and tilemaker Henry Chapman Mercer (1856–1930) designed and built the buildings to embody his interests in history, craft, and storytelling, innovatively employing reinforced, cast-in-place concrete throughout.
 
I’ve previously written on Mercer’s architecture, particularly drawing from University of Oregon professor Bill Kleinsasser’s insights. Like Mercer, Bill critiqued the effects of modernization and industrialization on design, especially the rise of standardization and the loss of diversity found in historical buildings. As a figure associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, Mercer championed vernacular architecture, nature-inspired motifs, and the craftsman-designer’s role. He stood out for his ability to weave legend, literature, Americana, and archaeology into his work. His three buildings are not only unique but also deeply personal and evocative. Bill appreciated their visual qualities, the lessons they offer, and their creator’s eccentricity.
 

The Mercer Museum rises an imposing six stories, housing Mercer’s immense collection of pre-industrial tools. The central atrium is crammed with objects, many of which are hung vertiginously from the ceiling above. Narrow staircases and abrupt transitions shape the experience. The building doesn’t guide visitors through a clear sequence; instead, it asks them to navigate on their own terms. The density of artifacts and the verticality of the atrium create a kind of spatial compression. It may lack legibility, but it is undeniably absorbing.

 

The Mercer Museum.

Inside the museum.

The Tile Works operates to this day. Its architecture is low-slung, with thick concrete walls, a ground-level loggia bordering a central courtyard, and a roofline punctuated by numerous kiln chimneys—each one slightly different in shape and tile adornment. Inside, the layout follows the logic of production, with workspaces, kilns, and drying rooms arranged in a straightforward manner. The building extends the tradition of Pennsylvania German potters and continues to produce tiles using Mercer’s original molds and methods. Mercer drew inspiration from Spanish Mission-style architecture when designing the Tile Works—an unusual reference for Bucks County, but one that lends the structure a sense of restraint and clarity. That restraint stands in contrast to the more elusive formal logic of the Mercer Museum and Fonthill, where spatial organization feels less tied to function.

The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works.

Courtyard.

Reception Hall.

 

Fonthill served as Mercer’s home. The labyrinthine building sprawls across the site, fully enveloping an older stone farmhouse. It holds forty-four rooms of varying shapes and sizes, eighteen fireplaces, and thirty-two staircases. Mercer embedded tiles, inscriptions, and found objects throughout. The stairs shift direction, ceilings rise and fall, and windows frame fragments of landscape. Bill remarked on Mercer’s fascination with caves, castles, and literary imagery. That influence is evident in the building’s spatial unpredictability and whimsical turns.
 

Fonthill roofscape. The separate garage building (now the visitor center) is in the background.

Windows.

Fonthill's saloon (living room). Every one of the irregularly spaced columns is unique.

Section through a digital model of Fonthill. Click on the image to view an enlarged version. The complexity and level of detail evident in this section are remarkable. Big thanks to Jim Givens for allowing me to share this image here.

Now that I’ve been to all three of Mercer's buildings, I’ve thought again about Bill’s interest in them and their broader relevance to today’s architectural discourse: He clearly wasn’t asking us to emulate their forms; rather, he saw them as (pardon the pun) concrete expressions of personal conviction and lived experience. That was the takeaway. He noted their complexity and resistance to straightforward interpretation. In Bill’s words, each Mercer edifice emerges from “images, first recalled and then carefully developed, from his travels and studies . . . places real, and places imaginary.”

Bill recognized that an architect’s internal landscape—the memory, narrative, and inquiry it might encompass—can shape architectural form in ways that are both personal and coherent. Mercer drew inspiration from his extensive travels and the archaeological sites he explored. I certainly considered how his subjective preferences translated into the spatial and material decisions I experienced as I moved through each building. As Mercer did, we can all reflect upon our own memories, values, or narratives when designing. Such an approach can foster buildings that carry individual significance and sensory richness, shaped by our own story and those for whom we design.
 
Ultimately, I left Doylestown with impressions of buildings that resist easy interpretation but richly reward one’s attention. Mercer’s buildings don’t yield readily transferable design strategies. They resist reductive generalization, yet they epitomize what’s possible when architecture is inspired by memory and shaped by craft and conviction. The Mercer Museum, Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, and Fonthill each convey Henry Mercer’s personal inspiration, improvisation, and principles. That’s what Bill saw in them, and what I tried to keep in view at each site.

Fallingwater, Finally

Fallingwater (all photos by me).
 

In a post I wrote back in 2009, I described how a photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater left me, an impressionable 5^th grader, awestruck. It was an image unlike anything I had ever seen: A dramatic composition consisting of concrete terraces cantilevered seemingly weightless over a waterfall, masonry piers of locally quarried sandstone, and horizontal expanses of windows dissolving boundaries between interior and exterior. It was a bold, fully realized expression of Wright’s organic design principles. That image didn’t just spark an interest in architecture; it defined the course my life would follow from that point forward.
 
Last Friday, I visited Fallingwater for the first time.
 
Seeing the house in person didn’t change my understanding, but it added something. The setting was familiar. The scale felt right. As acquainted as I was with its design, Fallingwater didn’t surprise, but it did affect me in a way that drawings and photographs never could.

Inside, the sound of the waterfall is steady. It’s not loud, but it is always present. That sound affects the experience of the house. It connects the interior to the site in a way that’s hard to describe but easy to notice. The house doesn’t invite interpretation as it presents itself directly. The built-in furniture, the narrow passages, the low ceilings—they all reflect Wright’s intent to guide how the space is used and understood.
 
I didn’t take notes or try to analyze every detail. I moved through the house and simply took it in. It felt familiar, but also new. I was happy to be there. Not giddy, but reverent. This was the place that first showed me what architecture could be and now I had seen it firsthand. It met the standard I had carried with me since childhood.
 

There’s a plaque near the entrance noting Fallingwater’s inclusion on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. It talks about “Outstanding Universal Value” and Wright’s contribution to organic architecture. That’s all true, but for me the value was personal. I finally had traveled to see the building that shaped my thinking before I even knew what architecture was. My visit gave me exactly what I hoped for.

 

I took some photos, which I’ve included here. They’re not exhaustive, and they’re not meant to be. They’re just a record of the visit. Proof for myself that I made the pilgrimage. That the house is real. That the path I chose all those years ago still makes sense.

Eugene/Architecture/Alphabet: X

Onyx Bridge framed by Cascade Hall on the left and Willamette Hall on the right (all photos by me).

This is the next in my Eugene/Architecture/Alphabet series of blog posts, the focus of each being a landmark building here in Eugene. Many of these will be familiar to most who live here but there are likely to be a few buildings that are less so. My selection criteria for each will be threefold:

1. The building must be of architectural interest, local importance, or historically significant.
2. The building must be extant so you or I can visit it in person.
3. Each building’s name will begin with a particular letter of the alphabet, and I must select one (and only one) for each of the twenty-six letters. This is easier said than done for some letters, whereas for other characters there is a surfeit of worthy candidates (so I’ll be discriminating and explain my choice in those instances).

This entry’s selection begins with the letter X, for which my choice is Onyx Bridge, located on the University of Oregon campus. The alphabet backed me into a corner. I’m not aware of any prominent building in Eugene whose name begins with “X,” so I had to cheat. With Onyx Bridge, I have a selection whose name at least contains the elusive letter.

South elevation.

Onyx Bridge

The Portland firm of Lawrence, Tucker, and Wallmann designed Onyx Bridge in 1962 as an east wing addition to the University of Oregon’s original Science Building, now known as Pacific Hall. The name refers to Onyx Street, which once extended through the site and intersected with 13th Avenue. Construction closed the street, and the University never reopened it. The building now connects Pacific Hall and Klamath Hall, spanning above the Cascade Annexes and the vacated street. 

Onyx Bridge occupies a prominent position on campus, anchoring the north side of the Onyx quadrangle and linking key science buildings. Its exposed structural system conveys a clear and expressive concept, consistent with architectural priorities of its time. The diagonal steel trusses define the exterior and carry the structural load, eliminating the need for internal bearing walls. This system enabled flexible interior layouts that accommodated evolving scientific research. Original plans proposed four additional stories, bringing the total to eight, but the expansion never occurred. 

The unique design is not without its drawbacks. Faculty reported “too few windows and vibration,” according to the University of Oregon’s 2006 Historic Resource Survey for Onyx Bridge. The windows follow no consistent exterior rhythm, reflecting interior function rather than formal composition. A flat roof, standardized metal-framed windows, and a palette of concrete and steel reinforce the building’s utilitarian character. 

The wall treatments behind the trusses—particularly the irregular fenestration and utilitarian cladding—appear inelegant and ad hoc, weakening the coherence of the overall composition. Exposed ductwork on the north elevation, which I assume was added years after the building’s initial construction, further complicates the visual logic and suggests expedient retrofitting rather than integrated design. 

North elevation. Cascade Annex is in the foreground; Pacific Hall is to the right.

The University Planning Office evaluated the building as having “good integrity” but “very low significance.” This assessment relied on internal criteria for preservation priority, including architectural distinction, historical associations, and integrity of design and materials. Based on those standards, the Planning Office judged Onyx Bridge as unlikely to be eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Although the building has not received formal recognition for architectural distinction, its structural expression implies a higher architectural ambition, one that sought but was not entirely successful in elevating its functional brief with clarity, restraint, and formal legibility. 

Within the context of this alphabetic series, Onyx Bridge did offer me a practical solution to my naming challenge, while serving as a relevant example of mid-century institutional architecture in Eugene.

Pennsylvania Pilgrimage

Image Credits: Left: Independence Hall, Philadelphia – Public Domain via PublicDomainPictures.net 

Center: Mercer Museum Atrium, Doylestown – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons 

Right: Fallingwater, Mill Run – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons 

A brief note from the road: I’m in Pennsylvania this week, with Philadelphia behind me and Doylestown ahead. The City of Brotherly Love offered what I expected—formal civic spaces, historic architecture, and a visible effort to balance preservation with contemporary use. William Penn’s original plan is still legible, a rectilinear grid punctuated by five public squares, with City Hall at its center. Much of the city’s symbolism is embedded in its built environment, from Independence Hall to the spatial logic of its civic layout. 

I’ve rented a car, avoiding interstates and tolls, choosing instead to navigate at a more deliberate pace along rural roads. It’s a different kind of access—less efficient, more revealing. Today I’ll visit Doylestown, where Mercer’s concrete constructions illustrate his idiosyncratic and eclectic design approach, one that is tactile and scaled to attention rather than spectacle. The rest of the itinerary includes Gettysburg, Pittsburgh, and two houses by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Laurel Highlands. 

This trip is, in many ways, a personal pilgrimage. Writing a fifth-grade book report on Fallingwater was the moment I first understood that architecture meant more than building alone. Turning the page of that book, I discovered a startling image of dramatically cantilevered balconies over a wooded stream—a revelation, and my first glimpse of architecture as a way of thinking, shaping, and responding. Visiting the house now is not about nostalgia, but about acknowledging that point of departure and the path it set in motion. 

I’ll write more once I’m back in Eugene, when the impressions have had time to settle and the reflections can take shape.

The Satisfaction of Enough

Our front yard's Norway Maple: A familiar presence that marks the years, and a reminder that change comes quietly, season by season.

When I was a youngster, I imagined a life shaped by achievement. I dreamed of becoming a prominent architect, someone whose work might appear on the cover of Architectural Record. I pictured proudly showing that issue to my parents as proof that I had arrived. My goal was to run my own firm by the time I turned thirty, and earning my license at twenty-five felt like the first step toward that objective. Yet even then, my temperament was steering the path ahead. I learned early on that much like a typical design process, ambition rarely unfolds exactly as imagined. 

The fact is I’ve never been inclined toward risk. While I always kept pace with the profession’s changes, I preferred steady progress over bold reinvention. I respected visionary thinking but favored reliable, competent solutions (such as those grounded in proven strategies and technologies) rather than novelty for its own sake. That preference came into clearer focus in my first job out of school with Bing Thom Architects in Vancouver.

Bing was a willing risk-taker, a gifted designer, and brought out the best in others. He fostered collaboration, always valuing contributions from employees and consultants. He was also a skilled statesman and raconteur, traits that served him well in professional and civic settings. 

I took note of Bing’s polish and presence and aimed to carry myself with similar poise. But public fluency wasn’t part of my makeup. As a project manager, I led meetings, gave presentations, and represented the firm to clients when needed. I handled those responsibilities with professionalism but felt more comfortable guiding teams, solving problems, and supporting the work itself. 

I eventually became a principal and shareholder with Robertson/Sherwood/ Architects. Jim Robertson and Carl Sherwood believed I had earned that role, and I accepted it with appreciation. While the title reflected the trust we had built over time more than any real change in how I approached the work, I remained cautious, still deferring to Jim and Carl on major decisions.

Risk-aversion shaped more than my career. It influenced how I live. I’ve tended to favor the known over the speculative, and the modest over the grand. In a culture that celebrates boldness, this can seem like a limitation. I’ve come to see it instead as a guide, one that has helped me build a life that feels stable and well-suited to who I am. 

My wife and I live modestly. We recently completed a renovation of our home—not a showcase project, but a long-overdue effort to address deferred maintenance. The project reflects the values we’ve come to prioritize. 

Me sitting in the tail gunner position of a WWII-era North American Aviation B-25J Mitchell bomber, high over the Willamette Valley countryside.

I still keep my bucket list and have checked off a few long-standing items: in addition to our home renovation, I've visited the Chrysler Building, the Robie House, and several National Park lodges. Fallingwater and Fonthill are coming up next. I’ve taken a ride in a WWII-era B-25 bomber and started learning Japanese. These are things I long hoped to do and now have had the time to pursue. 

In a post I wrote not long ago titled A Golden Age, I reflected on the good fortune of having practiced architecture during a halcyon time. The profession today faces challenges more significant than ever before, including climate change, economic uncertainty, cultural fragmentation, and the advent of AI. Because of these challenges, I respect and wish the best for those entering the field now, while also being thankful that my own career concluded when it did. 

At each major fork in the road, I made deliberate choices, guided more by my disposition than by external pressures. I opted for stability over striking out on my own, incremental responsibility over dramatic reinvention, and roles that kept me close to the work rather than bets that veered my career in uncharted directions.

Life now moves at a slower pace. Without deadlines or client demands, I focus on what matters: time with my wife, caring for our home, and pursuing interests I had put off for far too long. I make a deliberate effort to keep political noise at a distance. Retirement brings moments of disconnection—a recognition that professional relevance shifts once practice ends—but I continue to follow the steady approach that guided my career, shaping this phase of my life with intention and contentment in its rhythm and the satisfaction of enough.