Hi,
Thank you all for the support on this newsletter. We are a few days away from surpassing 5,000 readers which is astounding.
For this occasion I thought I do something different: a Q&A!
Everyday, I interact with architects, architecture students, architecture professors, critics, and other members of the design field. We are quite insulated and I’m sure most people outside the profession can sense this. The insulation accounts for a lot of confusion and questions among those excluded. Questions like: Why do contemporary architects build like that? What were the brutalists thinking? Why don’t we build like we used to? Why do architects get paid little money? What is architectural education like?
I hope I can use Q&A to build a better understand of the architecture profession for my readers.
Beyond this, I haven’t really introduced myself..
My name is David, I currently work as an Architectural Designer for HOK in Chicago. On the side, I write this newsletter and I teach a course on architectural 3D modeling at the College of DuPage. I’m also doing some independent facade design research, pursing my architect license, and building chairs. Additionally, I have given lectures and workshops on portfolio design at a few universities and I hope to continue.
I studied architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and then at the University of Pennsylvania where I finished my Masters. My education was hyper-contemporary and formalist. My degree finished as AI was heating up so of course this was apart of my education as well. Most of my research was in conversation with architects like Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, and John Hejduk, as these were my professors’ bosses before they started teaching. You can see more of my academic work in my portfolio here.
So please feel free to ask any question you may have! It can be as personal or as professional as you’d like. Happy to answer anything about architecture, architecture theory, aesthetics, design, art, or even Substack growth.
I’d just like to start a conversation, I will do my best to answer every question. :)
Thanks,
David E. Perrine
How do you reckon with power dynamics between architects and developers? Plus a balance with designing for the people who actually have to experience the buildings?
Modern city construction is largely steel I bar built into concrete stacks which are clad - is a facade enough to insert character and design into?
This Q&A is like eavesdropping on a brilliant late-night architecture debate—equal parts practical wisdom and philosophical sparks. The way you balance technical nitty-gritty with big-picture musings on why design matters proves this newsletter’s secret sauce: treating buildings as cultural conversations with blueprints. Here’s to 5K more subscribers getting smarter about space.