arcCA: What are you doing that’s other than or beyond normative architectural practice?
John Loomis: Right now, I happen to find myself doing a lot. I am teaching at Stanford University where a new major in architecture is being developed, as well as at the University of San Francisco. I have been writing for Architectural Record, San Francisco Chronicle, and Urban Land. I continue to be invited to lecture. Recently, the venues have ranged from The Getty Conservation Institute in Brentwood to the Mattress Factory, an inspiring experimental arts foundation in Pittsburgh. I am consulting on an opera that will be based on a book I wrote a while back called Revolution of Forms, Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools.
Along with all this, what is occupying the greatest part of my time is my recent appointment as Director of Development and Communications of the non-profit start-up CyArk, a project of the Kacyra Family Foundation. The pronunciation “CyArk” will probably cause some confusion among my colleagues, since it sounds just like an architectural school in Los Angeles. CyArk’s mission is the preservation of endangered World Heritage Sites through documentation by high definition laser scan surveys and by archiving this data on the CyArk website network. HDS technologies can scan a complex site in the fraction of the time conventional surveys take, and the deliverables are accurate to within .5 cm. These scanned data produce 3D-point-cloud models, which can be put to many uses: archival, diagnostic, interpretive, etc. HDS technologies are rapidly becoming adopted by professions from civil engineers to archeologists for the documentation of complex structures and spaces. HDS is becoming regarded as a ‘best practice’ in the documenting of endangered World Heritage Sites, and it is surprising how many of the World Heritage Sites on UNESCO’s list or the World Monuments Fund’s list have no records, no as-builts, whatsoever. CyArk intends to redress this very serious situation.
Right now, my responsibilities at CyArk include project development, creating partnerships, managing communications, and fund-raising. We intend to go public within the year.
arcCA: How has your architectural education / experience made it possible for you to do these things?
JL: All the above activities are architecture related. At this moment, I am not involved in normative practice, creation of design and execution of construction. But through teaching at Stanford and USF and working for CyArk I am very involved in architecture. My undergraduate degree was in Art History, and I have always been drawn to that side of architecture throughout my career, even when I was deeply involved in practice at Mitchell/Giurgola and Kiss + Cathcart Architects during my years in New York. I am now also involved somewhat in the pragmatics of the profession. At CyArk, among other things, I review plans and evaluate proposals and budgets for heritage site surveys, skills which are derived not from architectural education, but instead from professional experience.
arcCA: What values are at work in what you’re doing? Or, simply: Why are you doing it?
JL: Creativity. All my current activities involve the creative process, the act of participating in enabling the endeavors of students or projects or new technologies to take on lives of their own.
arcCA: Do you consider this work an implicit critique of normative architectural practice, or an extension of architectural practice, or something else altogether?
JL: John Ruskin wrote, “To study architecture is to study all things.” This might sound like a bit of a conceit to people outside the profession, but architecture does indeed touch all things. And you never stop studying. The whole idea of there being a discipline of architecture and a profession of architecture, and that the discipline of architecture is more noble because it is a critique of normative professional practice, is so ‘90s. It is time to move beyond that worn out dichotomy. A large firm like SOM can, and does, very much engage in critical practice. A self-professed “theoretical” architect can be capable of great banality. The Latin word disciplina means both “discipline” and “profession.”
Originally published 2nd quarter 2005, in arcCA 05.2, “Other Business.”
