Architecture firms come in a variety of sizes and types. The average firm is made up of 9 or 10 people. Many firms are smaller. Of course, there are also very large firms with staffs of 100 or more. Some firms specialize in one or more project or facility types. Some firms include structural, mechanical, and/or electrical engineering expertise in-house. Disciplines, such as planning, urban design, landscape architecture, interior design might be a firm’s focus. Architecture firms bring their own combination of skills, expertise, interests and values. All good architects will listen carefully and translate ideas into a viable construction project, so naturally it is important to look for a good listener in your search to find a good architect.

Architects help define the projects in terms that provide meaningful guidance for design. They do site studies, help secure planning/zoning approvals, help work out financing and a variety of other services. As you review alternatives among architects, you should ask to see projects the firm has designed. You may want to see projects that are similar to yours or that have addressed issues such as siting, functional complexity or design aspiration. Confidence in the architect is paramount. Seek also an appropriate balance among design ability, technical competence, professional service and cost. Once you’ve selected the best firm, enter into detailed negotiations regarding services and compensation. The AIA Contract Documents-the industry standard-offer an excellent starting point.

You know the old saying, “What isn’t said is sometimes more important than what is.” In architecture a balance of perfection is achieved through the expression of volume and void, the unspoken part of the equation. That is, the space itself is the void, with the walls and physical structure, the mass. We all talk about the walls, the physical entities that actually order the emptiness. But what about the voids, the negative space, the emptiness that abides within? Is it not just as important, if not more so, than the mass itself? Design is as much about “feeling” as it is about “seeing.” How one feels when traversing a room is, in many ways, more important than the physical boundaries which contain it. Unless a space “flows,” it doesn’t feel right, and we are at odds with our environs. We can’t touch that emptiness; rather, it’s an intuitive and synesthetic response our bodies and minds have to our surroundings. Of course, the most successful rooms embody a perfect balance of inside and out, volume and void.

In much the same way physical nature responds to critical mass or matter through its polar opposite, anti-matter, a volume needs void. It is that expressed dialectic, a  tension between positive and negative that holds the universe and space in place. There is a term in architecture that names a landscape void - poches.  It’s the ground between buildings, creating a bridge from one mass to another. I like this French word for pocket, for a pocket is, of course, a void defined only by the fact that it is an opening created by two pieces of fabric. In this way, the space between buildings, the air filling rooms, are also poches. These voids say as much about the architecture as the masses themselves, and oftentimes, they say more. But, it is a subtle, positive expression, rather than an expressed negative. These poches, voids, emphasize their existence as defined objects in their own right.

My colleague Frank Cuhna notes that “space is not the ‘left-overs’ of architecture but rather that the space itself is the architecture. It is the voids created by the solids that make the architecture interesting and pleasurable. The only reason I design and construct walls is to create the space (the negative). The process of producing architecture from a monolithic form is to subtract from the solid what is needed to create the negative space for the occupants to inhabit and enjoy.” This is an interesting perspective in the sense that in order to create the space he loves, he has to create the matter, the form from formlessness. It is a creation of something from nothing, the physical from the immaterial, matter from the imagination.

The Eastern philosophers saw the emptiness of space as positive. It’s nothingness is rich with imaginative possibilities, transcending temporal boundaries. Like the cesuras of musical compositions, whose stops elide bringing one note to another, a poche bridges one building to its neighbor. It is the formless field that allows ideas to dwell. The hollow between spaces, connecting solid to structure, suggests both absence and presence as an evolving negation. It is from the depth of the void that our ideas generate. The void explores the ideational. In Japanese philosophy, there are five elements, the void being one of them. It is part of the material world, yet immaterial.

Check back later this month for Part 2 of this article, but let me know your thoughts so far!