*For those that know me pretty well- especially those who took my Advanced Corporate Design course (remember all the fun of FiG², y’all)- this is not going to be anything new. For those who do not, SURPRISE!

Last week to my utter delight and with a welcome end to my vexing anticipation, Ubisoft released the next in its wildly popular series- Valhalla. Yes, I do play video games. Questionably violent, RPG, open world, parkour-intense video games. Specifically, Assassin’s Creed.

STILL working my way through this BEHEMOTH of a game

No, I am not a psychotic serial murderer in the making. No, I do not spend inordinate amounts of time playing. At least I do not think so. Yes, I know that video games are not real, though I believe PS5 is going to make that distinction harder. Playstation haters- you XBoxers and PCers- keep your comments to yourself.

From the moment I saw my niece playing Black Flag years ago, I was enraptured. As Edward Kenway, she was jumping around landscapes, climbing buildings, sailing the high seas, and yes, um, she was an Assassin.

What fascinates me about the franchise is how architectonic and bucolically immersive it is. The architect in me loves travelling through buildings, seeing the virtual textures of the worlds. Being able to ‘experience’ the Bastille, 18th century Boston, ancient (and scary) tombs of Egypt, including how the Sphinx may have looked is thrilling. Currently, I am working my way through Greece. It is massive. Viewing the Parthenon from pedestrian angles is now a possibility because of the gaming architecture. No longer am I Sheena Felece, but I ‘am’ Kassandra or Alexios, scaling the marble laden territory (avoiding wild boars and bears) to see how I will accomplish my next quest. Oh, what fun!

With Valhalla, Ubisoft has combined two of my favorite elements: Assassin’s Creed and Scandinavia. My excitement is high and my curiosity is piqued. How will the 9th century English and Scandinavian terrains and vernacular architecture look? Will there be tidbits of cultural history included along with identification of important landmarks?

OK, if I am being really honest, the teenager in me just loves playing games where I am able to jump from a building with a sword, spear, hammer, or axe to lower the BOOM on a bad guy. Or sparring with a group of soldiers while leaping from roof to eave to column. Plus, levelling up to beat the baddies easily is always worthy.

So grab your controller, a healthy dose of aquavit, yell Skål! and channel your inner Viking to become an architectural Assassin. Just make sure that you follow the Creed. (If you have to ask, then…)

Option #1. Grab the nearby 2x4 and smash my current model and rip up my drawings.

Option #2. Go home and get some much needed sleep.

Option #3. Grab the parallel bar (or mouse), some thick trace and keep going. Until the sun rises. A shower can wait.

It was usually #3. Working a solution, hitting a ‘design wall’, then starting again.

Wait- where is that sketch I did 2 hours ago? That one held promise… Do I use canary trace or white? No, this sketch calls for cold press watercolor paper. Rats, my leadholder is missing. And who borrowed my adjustable triangle? Grrr…

This is one of the story arcs of my undergrad and graduate architecture studio experience. Making the commitment to stay at that drafting desk until, well, I had the beginning of some thing that resembled a form or a mass or, dare I say it, a base building.

Fool that I was to believe that it would end after my time at UK, OSU, and UPenn was completed. The projects for the firms at which I worked became a little more complex, and the deadlines were not as forgiving. The initial excitement at starting a new design soon faded into the panic of seeing that design to its conclusion.

It would be disingenuous of me to say that much has changed through the years in working as an architect- student or professionally. What I now realize is that there was/is only one option- choice. My choice. And while I took some pride in working so hard, I could have- and at times, maybe I should have- selected one of the other two choices.

The catchy title of this post is actually a revision of the name of one of my favorite songs at the moment. So, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Eirik Bøe (one half of Kings of Convenience) from the band Kommode. The song is infectuous and the video is clever. Come to think of it, dancing all night would have been an option.

But I got no rhythm and two left feet.

*The sculpture is a lucky find from 15 years ago at a little shop in Reykjavik. And check out Misc Goods Co if you like the incense holder. The amazing incense is there too.

2021 will be an anniversary. It shall mark my fifteenth year as an educator. It has been one of the most unexpected joys and privileges of my life to teach design to students- many of whom have become some of my beloved friends.

What does this have to do with NYC?

Last year, while I was in mid-town Manhattan for a few hours, I took a late evening stroll with someone whose job is in communication- broadcast and online media. One of my biggest complaints when I visit the Big Apple is that no one ‘looks up’ anymore, even at night. This statement was the beginning of a conversation in which my constant concomitant and alter ego Archi-geek emerged. Oh boy, here we go…

While walking up Ninth Avenue, I marvelled at the amount of skyscraper construction that was happening. Which lead to me to thinking out loud- the structural core and foundation of these impressive new projects must have an effect on the architectonic fabric of one of the most famous cities in the world, which gave way to thinking about the weight of people and furniture and equipment pressing down on the ground, and there was this fascinating documentary I watched on Londinium recently…

The blank look (Say, what?) on my urban companion’s face told me everything that I needed to know about my musings. Though I tried again to get the rush of observations and cerebrations about skyscraper structure effects out of my head and into the open, I failed disastrously in my aim to relay what was clear in my head.

What does this have to do with teaching?

As the years have progressed, I have reached a level of comfort in my ability to communicate with clarity in graphic and written means. Speaking? That is more difficult. Teaching university level students challenged me to hone my skill at verbal communication, something with which I still struggle, obviously. The clarity that I strive to attain when conversing is still quite translucent and opaquely muddled.

One of the reassuring elements of recognizing my limitations is that there is usually an opportunity to build upon my lexical foundations. With a little verbal Windex and practice, maybe I will reach the level of expertise of my broadcast confidant- someday.

Palimpsest. It has to be one of the most glorious words in the English language- at least to me. It is all due to my discovery of and admiration for a single man. Well, two, if you count the person that ‘introduced’ me to the aforementioned single man. That man is Carlo Scarpa.

Early in my architecture education, and even now in some cases, one of the scariest things to encounter is blank media. A single sheet of cold press watercolor paper. A torn piece of 18# trace paper. Sturdy textural canvas.

As long as I did not ‘do’ anything to produce an architectural solution to a given design problem, I could play it safe by never committing to anything. The fear of never finding the right solution gripped me a spiral of indecision after indecision. It seemed that I was caught in a vicious circle of wanting to craft beautiful base buildings and interior spaces, without having to ruin the selected media with graphite smears, charcoal, and pesky erasure crumbs. Bye-bye, perfection. Or so I thought.

Enter, Signore Scarpa. Museo di Castelvecchio. Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Olivetti Showroom. Brion Cemetery.

From the first time I saw the layered, colorfully animated and incomplete sketches of this Italian master builder, I was completely and deliriously in love. Progressions of lines revealed as deep thoughts, cultivated over and over on canary tracing paper or a crisp white sheet-each thought being not necessarily a mistake, but a mode of exploration- tell a story of his design process. Sometimes there are sweeping strokes, or sometimes there are little vignettes that invite the viewer into Scarpa’s deeply creative mind.

His imperfect perfect drawings stir me with inspiration. With each new design opportunity, being able to see every one of my mistakes compressed on a single sheet is a chance for me to quickly see new (or what would have been otherwise undiscovered) possibilities.

study for a wood sculpture

massing sketch on a proposed site

Mistakes, I learned, are for making. Making drawings. Making buildings. Perhaps though, most of all, making is for mistakes.