12_A Studio Desk
Growing up my mom always told me that a desk's cleanliness is a reflection on the owner's character. Somehow a dirty desk equates to a bad person. A messy desk may not be as bad as the dirty one, but it is still nowhere near good. The clean desk then obviously is reserved for the bestest of all people.
By these standards I'm probably not that great of a person.
I don’t think I agree with my Mom’s statement.
A Studio Desk is sacred. Bounded in a 6 ft by 2 and ½ ft rectangle, a studio desk contains the immensities of the world. We are no strangers to changing desks at the beginning of every semester but somehow my setup always ends up the same. The plains of my main working surface is alway flanked by a mountain of books on one end and a forest of pencils and tools on another.
A Studio Desk is sacred because within the 6ft by 2 ft confines, it is boundless. It is everything and everywhere all at once. It is at once the place of solitary contemplation and animate group discussions. Behind every desk left in various states of disarray, is a mind’s imagination running wild to the edges of the world and back.
A Studio Desk is sacred because when a lightning bolt of an idea strikes my mind, it is the studio desk that experiences the first manifestations of the idea. Whether it’s through a sketch or a model, the desk is the cradle in which the ideas begin to sprout.
Architecture in its variety of forms, I’ve come to learn, is the furthest away from a neat and tidy box.
It is negotiation, it is tension, and it is beautiful and everything in between.
A Studio Desk is sacred because it is the embodiment of the process in which Architecture as a medium takes its shape.
So if Ideas, Creativity, and the act of Making, are a jumbled pile of passion we slowly untangle as an Architect, then I would argue that our desks should be a reflection of that.
A Studio Desk is sacred because my Mom told me that a desk is a reflection of its owner’s character.
A Studio Desk is sacred because it is a reflection of the passion we hold for the discipline we love.
I don’t trust people with clean desks.
- T
5/17/2023