How I was inspired by a writer to look at architecture differently.

The State of Architectural Journalism.

I love talking to people in the architecture industry to find out what makes their jobs exciting, learn about their challenges and use that information to try new things. I often do this with journalists and editors and find it fascinating to learn how to think like they do, and it helps me help them to find good stories for their publications.  

When I met with Dave LeBlanc, columnist for the Globe and Mail and well-known for his weekly column, “The Architourist”, I learned a lot about architecture from a non-architect’s perspective. Dave is not a trained journalist, he spent his whole career in radio production and serendipitously fell into writing about architecture a couple of decades ago when asked to produce short radio stories on Toronto architecture. Having been a fan of design and specifically mid-century modern architecture since childhood he jumped at the opportunity, which eventually led him to become a weekly columnist at the Globe.

Dave is as much interested in stories as I am and, similarly, thinks architectural narratives in their current state are a bit dry and factual, too often forgetting to speak about the human stories unfolding within the built environment, in favor of the building as an object, replete with facts, statistics and bombastic declarations, which are no-more than transparent, ego-inflating statements that makes the designers feel good, but leave the people who are looking to connect with architecture on a deeper level a bit hungry for a relatable story.

How Kahn and Mies brought this home.

When I think about some the best and most memorable buildings I've ever had the chance to visit and get to know intimately, like Crown Hall by Mies van der Rohe and the Kimbell Art Museum by Louis Kahn, the spiritual experiences that I've had in those space had very little to do with the architecture itself, but rather with my experience of the space, specifically through the way natural light was managed and let into the building in very specific and deliberate ways.

I didn't care that much that the building was made of metal, concrete or wood but rather that these materials provided me with an phenomenal sensory experience and therefore deeply influenced me. The Kimbell with its silvery natural light flooding from the slits at the top of each vaulted ceiling, grazing the galleries’ surfaces and revealing the textures and warmth of the wood and concrete combination. Crown Hall through the enormous amount of natural light flooding the space from all sides, and reflecting the seasons and time of day, while blocking a direct views on the outside, the black steel curtain walls, terrazzo floors and wooden partition walls taking a back seat to that experience.

I believe this is what Leblanc is trying to convey in his weekly column: how architecture is a machine for sensory experience, to paraphrase Le Corbusier. Perhaps that's what his "Machine for living " idea meant? After all, what is life if nothing but a succession of sensory experiences?
 

More experiential narratives, less verbosity.

The lesson to retain from this, is that aside from other designers and self-proclaimed design nerds, very few people care about who designed a given building, how much of a celebrity the designers or how expensive the finishes are, because these facts are completely irrelevant to the physical experience of a space. There is a reason the best writers and magazines in the design world are more interested in how the architecture is lived in and like to include the users in their stories. That reason is that it makes for quality content that will capture a reader’s attention. It is an absolute necessity that the story you tell speaks to your audience, or you run the risk of losing their interest.

There is no shortcut for getting to know your audience. You have to spend time engaging with them. It helps greatly to be able to show a vulnerable side of yourself that they may not know about. Digital and social media allows for unprecedented levels of access to your audience at a very low cost, making it easy to be in dialogue with the people who are interested in your work.

Spending the time to craft compelling narratives that speak to the way your building is lived in is the way to go. I know it’s tempting to wax lyrical about the technical achievements of your project, but if they do not directly contribute to the human, dare I say emotional, experience of your space, they can be ignored. Instead the focus should be put on what it feels like to experience your space from a user perspective.

In these days of instant gratification and casual consumption, most people will probably not pay attention to what you are putting out. However the level of care that you put into it will be noticed by the people who relate to what you have to offer. This minority of ardent supporters will go to bat for you. Once you have a few of those, you’ll know you’re on the right track.

A community of followers, the kind of people who will fervently support you and promote you because they believe in your vision, cannot be bought. It is primarily based on trust and that trust has to be earned. There are no shortcuts.

What can you do today to build such a following?

If you liked this, share with a friend and let us know in the comments!

Giaimo x Rvltr: lessons from an instagram takeover

In our quest to find new ways to tell captivating stories, we at rvltr constantly like to experiment on a small scale, and are particularly fond of Instagram’s potential to weave written stories with imagery.

Instagram takeovers have been around for a while, but we had yet to see a well-designed takeover designed around a central theme, telling a story over a given duration. As an experiment, we thought that one of our clients could take over our account for a few days to connect them with our audience and tell such a story.

Thinking about who would be a good fit for us, we determined that our good friends at Giaimo, a young Toronto-based architecture firm with whom we share a lot of values, would be a perfect fit. They were fairly new to Instagram and did not have an established publishing strategy, so there was potential for a big upside and virtually no downside for them.

We approached Giaimo with the idea, and they agreed without hesitation. We then engineered with them a friendly takeover of our Instagram account. Over the course of a week, they shared with our audience who they are, what makes them unique and imparted their approach to design in order to make our audience more familiar with their work.

Because we believe in transparency and honesty, we gave them the keys to our account and were purposely not involved in the day-to-day running of the account over the course of that week. After initially establishing some basic parameters regarding the posts format and general content, Giaimo came up with a week-long story arc, centered around each one of their employees, weaved into the idea of scales, from the house to the nation. Each employee was in charge for a specific day and a specific scale.

Visual overview of takeover: each line represents a day/theme, with one team member in charge for the day. Day 6 was the only exception, representing the firm's philosophy as a whole.

Here’s how it unfolded:

• Day 0 was the hand-off and introduction of the take-over. This was intended to ease into the takeover and signal to our audience that something special was happening that week
• Days 1-5, each employee was responsible for the account that day. They each prepared 2-4 posts showcasing some of their ideas, personal beliefs of projects they were working on, relating to the idea of scales: house, building, street, district and city.
• Day 6 was tying it all together by presenting their concept of “AS FOUND DOMINO” which they showcased through imagery of concepts they came up with, tying it all together around the idea of working at the scale of the nation.
• Day 7 was a video recap and wrap-up of the takeover. 

Over the course of that week, they posted 25 posts, both video and images integrated with captions that told a brief story of the idea conveyed through the imagery and forming a part of the whole week-long story arc. This made for a revealing series of post that took our respective audiences on a personal journey with Giaimo, in their office and their minds. They took to heart our initial idea to be authentic and transparent in the way they portrayed themselves, so that people would develop a more personal connection with the firm.

Since it was a new endeavour for both of us, we went into this with an open mind. From Giaimo’s perspective, it was a massive success, not only from a numbers perspective (more on that below), but also because they’ve learned a great deal about themselves and the way they appear to their small, but growing audience. All the while we kept an eye on Giaimo’s account statistics, in order to gauge the effect that a carefully curated posting strategy could have on their account.

Joey Giaimo, the firm’s founder and principal has this to say about the experience:

“For a relatively new Instagram startup, this takeover was a rare opportunity to connect with a larger and affiliated design community, to present not only our material but also revelateur's work from the perspective of our architectural practice. The visual distinction of Instagram combined with revelateur's photographs throughout the posts made the takeover a compatible one, with a seamless transition.

We are just past our practice's 2 year mark, and the takeover came at a time when we could compile a substantial amount of work to date and reflect on the practice's output. It was also an opportune time to be self-critical and determine if our ideas and approach to architecture were translated into the built works and the continued design process.”

In our minds, it was a tremendous success since there was a significant increase in engagement on our respective accounts throughout the week:

On Giaimo’s (@giaimo.arch) account:

1. They started the week with 119 followers and ended it with 178, a 66% percent increase, compared to a growth from 0 to 119 followers in 9 months since october 2016.

2. Over the course of that week, they went from 109 impressions (numbers of times any of their posts were seen) to 6728, a 6172% increase.

3. Their reach (number of unique account views) went from 20 to 546, a 2730% increase.

On Revelateur’s (@revelateur_to) account:

1. We started the week with slightly over 8400 followers and ended it with about 25 fewer followers, a 0.25% decrease.

2. We went from 8508 impressions to 36473, a 428% increase.

3. Our reach went from 1941 to 3493, a 225% increase.

If we strictly look at the numbers, there was clear benefits for our respective companies in doing this takeover. The stupendous engagement that Giaimo has seen has to be tempered by the fact they started with a small following so a significant boost in postings frequency and quality would bring about tremendous growth, but it is amazing to see how much organic growth can be generated with a defined strategy. For rvltr, the level of engagement was really the important metric and with our more mature account and audience, that’s really what we are focusing on, as we try to leverage our ability to reach to 8000+ people by capturing their attention.

Beyond the numbers, this takeover showed that a sustained posting strategy will yield results and that posting roughly 4 times as many posts as we would in a typical week has some value to it. What both Giaimo and ourselves realized is that it is a lot of work to put together and we particularly wanted to thank Giaimo for taking this to heart and go all the way, despite the amount of work and coordination that this represented for them. We will both go back to our normal instagram duties with a renewed sense of pride in the work we do. We were certainly inspired to up our game and start coming up with new ways of telling stories. We hope you’ll enjoy them!

Introducing TAXONOMIES, a photography art show in Toronto.

For immediate release

TAXONOMIES photography show (#taxonomiesoog)

featuring

Ultradistancia by Federico Winer

Architectural Inoculation + Attracted Opposites by Arnaud Marthouret, in collaboration with Reza Aliabadi and Melissa Tung

27 February 2016 -- The much anticipated gallery show opening at ONLYONEGALLERY will have its grand opening event on March 10th, 2016 starting at 6:00pm, while the show will continue to run through March 26, 2016. “TAXONOMIES” is a dynamic yet playful perspective centered on global human placement, as well as a look at how we as species interact with the surrounding environment; built or natural. This is not a critique or praise of human activity, but rather, a current snapshot of today’s times, showing our interaction with the world at three different scales: Macro, Meso and Micro.

Ultradistancia, Macro, is a global perspective using a simple and free visual apparatus – Google Earth – for use in abstract image manipulation. The abstractions play with color, texture and shape to a surreal degree. The objective being to understand how humans, as a genus, forget to look with our eyes and habitually perceive the world through technology.

Architectural Inoculation, Meso, with Reza Aliabadi, is photographic documentation showing injective designs residential designs into post-war era residential Toronto neighbourhoods. These middle-class unapologetic, sometimes disruptive, architectural customizations, which have become a phenomenon in recent years, many times disrupt their surroundings. The boldly truthful photos turned out - authentic, honest and beautiful - true to the architecture. Here, the subject isn’t portrayed as a stand-alone piece of art or architecture but rather as object trying to integrated within its urban fabric.

Attracted Opposites, Micro, is a significantly playful collaboration where “ownership of public urban spaces” was the overall objective. Together, Arnaud and Melissa came up with creative ways to explore and take over stylish, sophisticated public parks within Toronto to openly practice yoga poses. This project is about being temporary. Appropriating spaces for uses they are not intended for. It is about transporting vitality and seduction to sometimes hard, cold spaces, presenting final images that would otherwise be void of such beauty.

ADDITIONAL EVENT INFORMATION ON FACEBOOK.

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About the artists:

Federico Winer. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a multi-faceted artist, photographer producer, a habitual traveler and super friendly collaborator. With his background in Political Science, Philosophy, Architecture and the arts, it was natural for Federico to become a professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires, where he is currently teaching. He is also the founding member of the Experimental Group of Experimental Thought Soy Cuyano, with several academic and art performances in Argentina and Europe.

Arnaud Marthouret. Born in Grenoble, France, Arnaud, founding partner and lead photographer of revelateur studio is a trained architect and architectural photographer. As an inherently creative person, he brings an imaginative perspective that often categorizes him as quirky artist but that only feed his insatiable curiosity and thirst for the new and unusual. These traits he cherishes and nurtures to this day, as they allow him to understand the world with a different attitude.

TAXONOMIES Opening Night brought to you by our wonderful and generous SPONSORS:

Absolut Vodka - Liquor

TPH - Production/Printing

South Street Boatbuilders / Tim Richards - Furniture

Dr. Michel Marthouret - Financial Backer

Victory Social Club / Andres Landau - Logistics

RZLBD Atelier - Collaborator / Supporter

Melissa Tung Yoga - Collaborator / Supporter

About the organizers:

ONLYONEGALLERY (OOG) was created in December 2011 as a limitless experiment in concept space. OOG is about collaborating, creating, and demonstrating something special - a live physical experience. OOG is a multidisciplinary studio and gallery that hosts and produces individual and group exhibits. OOG is proud to support emerging and established artists alike, to present a roster of ambitious exhibitions, and to act as a creative hub where ideas come to life. In July of 2015 OOG relocated to a new 3000sq ft. gallery space in the heart of Parkdale, Toronto. For more information visit www.onlyonegallery.com

Cais Mukhayesh. Owner, director and curator at ONLYONEGALLERY located in Toronto, Canada. Since 2011 he has worked intensively with both local and international artists, photographers, and musicians; producing over 30 art shows, exhibitions, and events showcasing primarily urban contemporary art, music and culture. Cais has worked on many successful creative partnerships with companies such as Absolut Vodka, Jameson Whiskey, Havana Club, Molson-Coors, Steamwhistle Breweries, Lishiko Japan, Hennessey and Saks 5th Avenue; as well as established an impressive roster of talented artists.

Revelateur studio (Arnaud Marthouret). Revelateur studio brings together many curiosities uniting slightly schizophrenic yet opposite lifestyles: hip cosmopolitan urbanite vs. outdoorsy nature lover. The studio’s work goes the extra mile to ensure integrity for each building, photographically, which inspires and deserves the best photographic representation. Revelateur studio works with a team of the highest level photographers, photography assistants, PR professionals, stylists, film-makers, graphic designers, coaches and mentors. For additional information visit www.revelateur-studio.com