1987 Bachelor of Architecture
David Yama

My fascination with architecture has always been with its power of persuasion. In every building, in every sculpture, in every piece of furniture, we design, we instill a latent message, a message about how we perceive the world, and more importantly, about how we wish the world to be perceived by others. That is the power of architecture. It is not the power to change people through an appeal to the brain, but rather through a direct appeal to the senses—through a heightening of the senses. I believe that is what we call spirit. And it is only through architecture that architecture is made; by that I mean that the true measure of an architect is in how he builds, and in what he builds. Therefore, any verbal explanation, any theoretical discourse, is always secondary to the built work itself.

My travels will be devoted to those works in which there is both a strong commitment to building, and a strong expression of an architectural spirit. My time will be divided equally between the work of Alvar Aalto in Finland, Carlo Scarpa in Italy, and Alvaro Siza in Portugal. And, although I am fascinated by their buildings in and of themselves, I hope to see in them the greater expression of the respective cultures and regions to which they are inextricably bound.