2006 SOM Prize for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design
Weather Permitting: The Journey of a Storm Chaser

Weather has the power and the will to change the day. In an instant it can alter the flow of a city. Over time it leads to regional abandonment. Daily it damages structures. Occasionally it strikes fear into larger populations. Undeniably, it is beautiful in its own right. Often it steals the thunder and at least momentarily removes the focus from everything else in the world.

While the Earth is diverse in its climatic distinctions, the atmosphere is a commonality that affects the lives of all of us. Weather is the immediate condition of the climatic patterns in the proximity of the greater atmospheric surrounds. Each region has unique conditions, but forces are connected over great scales, and storms and anxieties bring us all together through awareness and obsession.

In regard to climates, weather permits design and fosters its alterations. Humans have a tendency (and good reasons) to designate regions to be more suitable for living. The flow of the seasons, the precipitation, and the recycling of the world allows us to live, and despite our grumblings, it allows us to change. Cultures develop as they become uniquely acclimated to the patterns of the atmosphere in their chosen proximities. Tendencies and vernaculars develop in a deeply rooted respect for climatic conditions. Further, the birth of architecture rests on the development of shelters, commonly regarded as a basic human need.

We cannot run, nor hide from the weather. It is always there surrounding our spaces, effecting our decisions, and leading us in new directions. It provides the experience of an instant.

As much as we would like to predict it, and try to, you never know how or when a change will occur. We’ve devised means to look at it, we’ve chased it, we’ve tried controlling it, we’ve tried blindly barricading ourselves and despite all of these efforts we still don’t get it right. And thankfully, we never will.

All things considered, the weather ultimately receives great attention. Generally, it is the in the realm of negative press. Despite the attention, when it is not forceful enough to threaten change, are we apathetic to its warnings? And when the slightest scare strikes, we fall regretful and grow anxious. Even with all of the anxiety involved, there still remains an alluring excitement about the lack of control.

Unique to time and place, yet connected by the notion of scale, patterns, and attention, weather is the temporary condition and the surrounding influence of the atmosphere and well deserves strong attention in the definition of a site.

Instead of turning a blind eye to climates, writing off anomalies for another’s lifetime, and beyond the simple, pre-apologetic clause of weather permitting, the challenge remains to celebrate and harness these conditions. Invariably, by integrating and altering a predominately negative conception to a positive, an invigorating and hopeful connection can be developed.

Such a shift in thinking spurs new ways of viewing the site. Issues of scale, time, intensity, calms, anomalies, typical conditions, extremes, and energy harnessing emerge at the forefront of design criteria.

While not the most consistent or reliable source, at a time when strategies for new electrical sources is of great concern, one must recognize that the power of a place rests not only in minerals, but also in the climatic conditions, and the thrill of the weather.

To become attuned to its location and to provide the social and cultural grounding in particular locales, architecture has the opportunity to become a registration of its location both visually and energetically. Architecture after all, to fully understand its people and their needs, must breathe the air it is in. It must capture in some sense the site it rests upon. In such a manner, architecture would no longer be a stranger or bizarre appendage to its site.

With architecture’s social motive there is clearly a connection to the concern and attention given to the world’s climatic issues. Be it a disaster, a seasonal event, prediction or just plain hype, our spaces and cities need to grow ever more in tune with their greater surrounds if anxieties are to be calmed and the joy of a storm is to be more widely shared.

Conclusion

As a built reflection of our social and cultural intentions and stances, architecture must take the lead to better incorporate into the environment, participating in the atmosphere and contributing to a new sense of place. Ignorant and apathetic designs are no longer acceptable in the midst of increasing energy consumption, disaster anxiety, and building booms.

In effect, the field can therefore install a strategy that alters our mindset from one of simple site acknowledgment to that of fully understanding a place. A reduction of apathy is necessary. Barriers are to be removed and absorption techniques instilled. Captivating ambitions, and energizing strategies can embrace that which will not go away and inhabit the world instead of simply attempting survival.

Such a method alters site, takes it to the extreme, enhancing the definition of place and extending the definition of what actually composed a site and our experience of the atmosphere. As demonstrative clues for living, architecture can fulfill these aspirations.

Traveling

Unquestionably, traveling and living in foreign situations for the sole sake of learning and observing is a unique and overwhelming form of research. The absorption of knowledge and a newfound understanding of a place is unavoidable and never easy to describe. It becomes learned and ingrained, even restless in thought. A residue of ideas the emerged from the heightened sense and new definitions of survival.

It was quite fortuitous that I viewed these places through the eyes of an outsider. It is only with the mindset of a hypersensitive observer that I could take in all that was around and find great pleasure in even the “bad weather.”

Impact of the Award

January 1, 2022

When I look at the calendar and reflect on my career path thus far, my travels for the SOM Prize feel rather far away in years. And yet, when I consider the experience and the ideas that sparked the work and evolved over the journey, I am certain that time is still with me.

The true brilliance and joy of the SOM Prize for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design is the time and space to literally chase an idea around the world. For me, that chase was a very real pursuit of storm chasing and how the weather and geography play into our built world in a joyful and productive manner. This occurred alongside natural disasters that understandably were causing great fear and fortification against the threats of the atmosphere. Conditions and thoughts that will always be there. Hovering around this for me was also a keen sense for how the weather, shifts of day and night, and the seasons, are so key to the experience of any built space. It was here that I began to understand that these more fleeting moments in a way complete any architectural space and greatly impact our relationship to the environment. This can be read in all of the material and built work that I have made since.

Not only do I continue to work with these ideas that drove my time as a SOM Foundation fellow, but the dedication to sites, travel, and experiencing the atmosphere elsewhere has continued to be my most productive form of research and inspiration. The model of physically and optically experiencing new locations as seen through architectural thinking remains key to my practice.

I am forever grateful for the insight of the SOM Foundation to support the travel and ideas of young architects. The SOM Prize signals a commitment to timely and impactful inquiry that undoubtedly shapes the future both in method and content. My heart expands for everyone who takes up this journey knowing that it is lasting.