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.

On Writing, Relevance, and Reflection

Piazzetta di San Marco, Venice (my photo)

In 2016, Architectural Record invited its readers to nominate the worst buildings constructed since the magazine’s founding in 1891. I submitted a list. My wife questioned the impulse. “Why tempt karma?” she asked. “If you can’t say something nice…” Her words echoed Thumper’s admonition from Bambi, and they’ve stayed with me. I understood her concern. To publicly disparage the work of fellow architects, even those I’ve never met, felt unkind and perhaps unnecessary. 

That hesitation wasn’t new. Even during my years in practice, I rarely offered direct critique of others’ designs. It wasn’t fear that held me back, but a belief in professional courtesy and a reluctance to engage in comparative judgment. Architecture is a collaborative endeavor, shaped by constraints often invisible to outsiders. To assess a building without knowing its full context can lead to misreading both intent and outcome. And doing so publicly can reduce complex work to seemingly a matter of one individual's opinion. 

I’ve written regularly about architecture and urban design, particularly as they relate to life in Eugene. My posts have occasionally been critical, though rarely polemical. I’ve tended to observe rather than opine, and to reflect rather than assert. That tendency has remained steady. 

These patterns—of restraint, of selective praise—raise questions I’ve never fully resolved. When is critique justified? When is silence ethical? What does commentary owe to its subject, and to its audience? 

When a project has struck me as particularly well-resolved, I’ve written about it with admiration. I praised Tacoma’s Museum of Glass, designed by Arthur Erickson, as a project that mediates its site with clarity and evokes regional history through form and material. That post is one of my more direct endorsements of a civic building that succeeds in both experience and context. If I’m cautious about critique, I’ve been less so with commendation. That imbalance reflects my inclination to recognize what works rather than dwelling on what doesn’t. 

When I have found a project or design ethos to be troubling, I’ve spoken plainly. I’ve written critically about Zaha Hadid’s legacy, questioning the civic relevance of her most celebrated work. I’ve challenged Bjarke Ingels’s Vancouver House and TELUS Sky as architectural spectacles disconnected from meaningful urban engagement. These were reflections grounded in concern for context and public life. 

My friend and mentor, Otto Poticha, has always taken a different tack. Otto’s critiques are famously blunt, and his voice has long been a fixture in Eugene’s architectural discourse. He speaks with conviction, and his assessments, however pointed, stem from a commitment to the city’s civic life. I admire his candor, even if I’ve never shared his style. My own writing leans toward the interpretive, not the declarative. 

Now that I’m no longer bound by firm politics or client diplomacy, I can speak more freely than before. But just because I can comment, does it mean I should? The impulse to weigh in is often there, but the sense of being situated—of having a defined part in the conversation—has faded. I’m seeing symptoms of relevance deprivation syndrome (RDS). I continue to write weekly, but I’m more aware now of the gap between having something to say and knowing whether it’s backed by any authority I still command. RDS shapes not only how I feel, but how I write, and what I choose to write about. It makes me question if what I say serves the work or merely signals that I’m still here. 

These questions about relevance aren’t separate from the ethics of commentary; they shape how I decide whether to speak at all. 

I care about the decisions designers make and the consequences those choices carry. I’m also aware now of my distance from the processes that shape those choices. I no longer participate in the conversations where decisions are made, and that absence changes how I think about speaking up. I write not to reclaim a role but to remain engaged and to test whether reflection still matters in the absence of direct involvement. 

At the end of the day, I want to stay connected to the questions that once shaped my work, to process the experiences I’ve accumulated over a long career, and to help maintain cognitive health as I age. These are quiet motivators for writing, but they feel essential. 

Commentary may affirm or diminish. It can clarify, or it can distort. I wrestle with whether discretion is a virtue or a deflection. Silence is not neutral. It can be a form of disengagement, or worse, complicity. If commentary is called for—if it might illuminate, challenge, or protect—then withholding it may be a disservice to the community. But not every silence is avoidance. In some cases, it reflects a calculation that speaking might oversimplify what’s complex or impose judgment where humility is more appropriate. 

Offering critique feels justified when a project’s civic impact is at odds with its architectural ambition—when the work risks undermining public trust, coherence, or care. Silence feels ethical when speaking would misrepresent the complexity of a project, or when my distance from its making limits my insight. As for what thoughtful commentary owes, it owes attentiveness, context, and proportion. By attentiveness, I mean a willingness to look closely; by context, an understanding of the conditions that shape design; by proportion, a sense of what commentary deserves in relation to the work itself. 

I will write as I always have: critically, when warranted, and with restraint where it feels more honest. That balance has remained consistent. What has changed is the context in which I write. I’m more peripheral now, less embedded in the rhythms of practice. Perhaps that remove makes the stakes of offering critique different. Still, the underlying awareness remains. And perhaps that awareness is a form of stewardship, a way of remaining present without presuming relevance, and of honoring the work, its makers, and the limits of my own vantage point.