entangled spaces

My father did not want me to become an architect.

I believe he felt that I lacked a certain edge, or perhaps a sense of self-preservation, that One Needs To Get Ahead in this world.  He endlessly related to me the story of a casual acquaintance of his, whom in his mid-fifties was angry and disillusioned as an architect, not much more than a draughtsman, it seems, making reality of other people’s dreams but not his own.

Not for my father.  He was in control of his destiny.  When I was a child he was the archetypal traveling salesman, selling encyclopedias at exhibitions and carnivals across the US and Canada.  Visiting him at work was a child’s dream, being allowed access to the inner workings of the Show: Go! Stand with the Man Behind the Curtain!  As a purveyor of typeset and bound knowledge, he seemed to me (then a child of single-digits) like an island of respectability around which raged a sea of con-artists, hawking their dubious gadgets to susceptible crowds.  I later realized that he too was as much a player, wielding his respectability like a weapon, disarming the passersby with a winning smile, advancing mercilessly for the close.  Always making a play for the sale.

After many years he chose to leave that job and life behind; his traveling had become too hard for him and our family.  His skills transported well into his next career in real estate, where over the following 20 years he built a solid reputation that filled-out his image of respectability.

When his cancer struck, it was immediate and brutal.  After the initial misdiagnosis was corrected, he lasted four months.  He died in his home office, his den, where my family had set up a makeshift sick room.  I was nearby in the dining room when it happened, my mother was by his side.  It was two days after Christmas, several years ago now.

It strikes me that the plans we make and the passion with which we pursue them are ephemeral.  As Joan Didion succinctly phrased it, life changes in the instant.

Why architecture then?  Why build dreams, be they our dreams or another’s?

Because the city outlives us.   At least for a while.


Were he still with us, my father would have turned 80 today.  Happy Birthday Dad - though we had our differences, I still miss you terribly.