Brian MacKay-Lyons

“Do you find value in Lyon’s “Three F’s for an Architecture of Regionalism: fitting, framing, and forming?”

I believe that Lyon’s Three F’s are valuable in the first initial stages of design and are very vague guidelines from which he follows in all of his designs, however have a basis of truth applicable to all architectural designers.

In the fitting stage, he seeks to locate the architectural idea through exploration and development of the site. This is important because of how he completely immerses his buildings in the context of the environment. All three of his examples show a careful understanding of where his building is going to be located and he uses the subsequent F’s (framing and forming) to make the project unique in its surroundings.

After the initial fitting stage or site analysis, his next step is the realization of a design idea through construction and then forming the structures. Framing and Forming seems to build off of the ideas gained from the fitting stage, however makes the context of the building even more special by thinking of the site as a “form of skeletal exploration of space” rather than simply another random location. It is also interesting to see his usage of the word “framing’ in his design process correlating with the amount of framed views that he actually creates with his physical structures.

 

Would you like to participate in building the Ghosts? (This implies, “would you like to have that design/build experience.” As it is expensive.)

One of the reasons why I would have stayed at the University of Utah for graduate school is because of their renowned design/build bluff program located in Southern Utah. The opportunity to actually be able to design something and then physically build it for someone less fortunate than me is not something that a lot of people get the chance to do. I feel like my knowledge about the construction process is very limited and the information that I would learn from such a program would greatly supplement my design and architectural knowledge.