Venezia 2004, via Wikipedia

My phone begins to ring, I lean over to see who’s calling, it’s my business partner calling from New York.  It must be two o’clock in the morning for her.  I hop out of bed, grab my phone and laptop and walk out onto the terrace overlooking the canals of Venice in Northern Italy.

Her excited voice comes over the line, “I can’t sleep, I have a great idea on how to improve the natural lighting scheme in the lobby and atrium!”

From my laptop I remotely connect to her computer and I watch as she goes over the design with me.  We conference in our third partner in California and by 9am local time the design solution has been agreed upon.  We forward our markups to the production team in India and by the end of the day we all receive an email saying the design renderings and animations are ready for final review.

For the last eight weeks the three of us have been able to dedicate all of our time to this design competition, it has been the highlight of our careers.  For the last two months I have been living in Italy, enjoying the weather and gaining inspiration from the works of Carlo Scarpa scattered throughout the city.

If we win the competition we will be busy for the next two years in the production and construction of this building.  If we don’t win we’re going to all move to Ecuador for the next year and volunteer our time with Architecture for Humanity.

This is the future of architecture. The framework for a distributed global project team isn’t new.  Technologies like remote desktop software and high speed internet connections allow project teams to work anywhere in the world.

What may be new to some is the idea that the Architect doesn’t need a mountain of paying clients to support themselves.  How can my project team devote two months to work only on a design competition and then turn around and expect to continue to work for free for the next year?  Did we just finish a string of highly profitable projects that have padded our bank accounts?  Maybe, but we didn’t need the work.  Did we win the lottery?  No.

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http://www.shoecomics.com/

Dear Friends,

In this age of hyper-connectivity it’s much easier to shout out the good news on Twitter and Facebook than the bad. Sometimes in life we might actually physically mail something to our friends, a wedding and birth announcement, or maybe an invitation to a graduation. Unfortunately there really isn’t a good way to announce what I am about to say:

Crystal and I have been separated for quite some time and our divorce will be final later this year.

I had hoped to tell all of you individually or at most that you would learn about it on your own, but I’ve realized that both of those options are unrealistic. Neither Crystal nor I have made any public announcements but I feel it’s only fair to you that you find out sooner than later. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. Trust me, I wish the situation were different, but I really want to save you from making any more potentially embarrassing and awkward comments online.

Besides this one mention I won’t be talking any more about this and it’s not something I wish to discuss publicly.  Please don’t comment on Facebook about this and don’t like the link to this post! I realize that now that I’ve said this one of you will! Private messages, emails, and gift baskets are always welcome.

Thank you for the love and support you have shown us both over the years. Crystal and I are taking separate paths in our lives and I realize that this may change the dynamic of the relationship I have with some of you. She and I are on relatively good terms given the circumstances and I wish her all the happiness life can offer.

Thank you for your friendship,

~Tim