Stewardship with Josh Lapp

Date: January 11, 2018

Author: Josh Lapp, Urban Planner - Designing Local

“We are called upon to help people and communities understand, preserve, and celebrate their history and culture.”

Stewardship is responsibility to culture

To me all meaning is derived from context. My context is that I am an Urban Planner and fortunate to have found a career that allows me to put my passions to work. We are called upon to help people and communities understand, preserve, and celebrate their history and culture.

Stewardship begins with responsibility. What do we as design professional have a responsibility to do? I believe that we have a responsibility to abandon homogeny and instead strive to harness the uniqueness and creativity that already lies within.

That means we must safeguard our local history and our historic buildings; we must use artists and artisans to inject creativity into our built environment; we must celebrate what makes our communities special and unique – our stories, our people, our diverse perspectives, and our resources; and we must embrace our past mistakes and use them to create a brighter future. These are all practices that we uphold in our work at Designing Local.

Our profession has a unique responsibility. What we create impacts our communities and all the people within them. In our work we try to remember that we’re not only responsible to our clients, but we are stewards of the past and creators of our future.

Stewardship with Sara Khorshidifard

Date: January 1, 2018

Author: Sara Khorshidifard, Assistant Professor - Bowling Green State University

“Design for the common good remains in support of vital needs and human desires. The spirit demands inclusive forms of practice and process that embrace shared values and genuine ways of connecting the people with their places.”

Stewardship emanates from an architecture aiming at designing the future. The architecture is projecting optimistic change while acting small. In an anticipation of making the world a better place, the steward architect can detect the needs and guides solutions through materializing spaces.  Architecture can work to address some of the biggest challenges the world is facing today.

Architecture holds transformative effects nurturing harmony in the lives of people, and between people and the earth, natural landscapes, and cultures. The design could be considered beyond forms, but weighed by the impacts to be anticipated from the proposed design solution. Design for the common good remains in support of vital needs and human desires. The spirit demands inclusive forms of practice and process that embrace shared values and genuine ways of connecting the people with their places. In a world rapidly using up resources, the steward architect would prioritize, continuously remaining on the verge and duty to first and foremost address timely needs of its most vulnerable populations.

­Architecture, at its very best, that can equally please desire, and culture is an important dimension. Consciously designed, architecture itself is a cultural construct, manifesting and expressing human values. Cultures shaping unique spaces are reflected in the way spaces are shaped and affected by human involvements. Integrating culture in architecture, as Charles Jencks has suggested, is twofold, both a primary and final role of architecture. It is a combination of the expression of culturally-significant meanings and the exposition of feelings and ideas. An architect creates from a diverse range of influence and work with existing elements in a non-selfish manner.

Stewardship with Father David Schalk

Date: December 25, 2017

Author: Father David Schalk - Christ the King Catholic Church

“We have received a great deal; thus, we must extend to others a great deal.  This is the heart of stewardship.”

Stewardship is the Christian way of life. It begins with recognizing that everything we have is a gift.  Everything. Saint Paul asked his audience in Corinth, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). The correct answer: Nothing. Even as we work, produce, and earn, we never forget that our life, our natural abilities, our education came from a source outside of ourselves. Once we accept this reality, then the only appropriate response is generosity – We have received a great deal; thus, we must extend to others a great deal. This is the heart of stewardship. All we have received is to be used not for ourselves, but rather for the wellbeing of those around us. As far as Christians are concerned, we accept gratefully and cultivate diligently our gifts, so that they can be employed for the common good. That is why we believe the fruit of good stewardship is a healthy community, which Christians piously call “the Kingdom of God.”

Stewardship with Brent Foley

Date: August 31, 2017

From TRIAD Principal, Brent Foley

I grew up in a working class (but privileged) family on Columbus' east side. Of the many great people I knew through family and neighborhood connections, I didn't know any architects, and it didn't occur to me for some time that architecture was a career I could pursue for myself. That was until I attended school with Matt Price, whose father Dave founded TRIAD Architects. Dave offered me an internship, and that jumpstart on learning my future profession changed my life. To this day, Dave is still my mentor and a good friend. 

Now that I am a principal at the firm that inspired me, I feel a responsibility to provide the same encouragement and guidance to the next generation of architects -- particularly those who have an even steeper climb to the profession than I once had. The lack of diversity in our profession isn't just an urgent, ethical issue, it is also making our profession (and thus, our environment) more homogenous and less inclusive. Until our profession represents our communities, we will continue to reinforce the problems we face as a society instead of fixing them. 

This blog is one way we at TRIAD hope to inspire conversation around architecture and stewardship. Over the coming months, we will be asking friends, colleagues, community members and civic leaders to contribute their perspectives. My hope is that this page becomes a launch pad for engagement and new ideas. If you’d like to share what architecture or stewardship means to you and your community, or if you have ideas that could help make our profession or our world a better place for everyone, email me at bfoley@triadarchitects.com.

Thank you for visiting!