Transcription of Rob Whitten for the show Maine Home + Design Show, #93
Lisa: I have always understood the importance of space, myself personally, and even as a physician spending time in spaces that can be more or less healing for my patients and for their families. So, I’ve enjoyed getting to know people who really know something about space and how to design spaces to create a healing atmosphere or a place in which people really enjoy living. And one of these people is here with me today. This is Rob Whitten of Whitten Architects here in Portland, Maine, who is a long time supporter of Maine Home Design and will be at the Maine Home Show coming up here in June. I appreciate your coming in and talking to us.
Rob: It’s a pleasure to be here.
Lisa: Now, Rob, Architects. These are people that are very highly skilled, lots of training, and sometimes there’s a misconception that they’re only for people who have a lot of money that are going to build a really big house.
Rob: Right, and it’s a misconception I like to dispel as soon as possible. I answer all calls. I go out and visit lots of folks, have lots of opportunities, and I think of myself as sort of an ambassador for architecture sometimes because I’m not a terribly complicated person, I try not to use jargon, and I try to put things in terms everyone can understand. I think those of limited resources really need to make the most of them and I think an architect can be very helpful there.
Lisa: Why did you decide to become an architect?
Rob: I loved building things, I saw the world in perspective. I remember doing a drawing in the Second Grade that everybody was very excited about and I thought, “Nothing special. It’s the way I see the world.” It just came to be my calling from the very beginning. I feel very fortunate to have found it and stayed with it and will continue to practice until I have a diminished capacity because it’s just a terrific…They say it’s an old man’s game and I agree because you get more and more experience and you see more and more spaces and you interact with more and more people. So, it’s a good way to continue to learn.
Lisa: In this day and age, we seem to have a lot of do-it-yourselfers and there’s a lot of ability to go to, I don’t know, a major box store, I won’t even use a name, and just create structures whether they’re inside a house or even the houses themselves. This can be both good and bad.
Rob: Right. I think if you’re a good planner and you’re organized, you can use resources from big box stores pretty effectively. But, if you’re just wondering around and you don’t really consider the full consequences of what you purchased, and how it will be used, and how it will effect the space, it may not be the most successful purchase. I tell people it’s much more reasonable to consider your design options on paper than to build a wall and decide maybe it’s not quite in the right spot. We see that fairly frequently in the do-it-yourself world. There is a learning curve, but it can be kind of an expensive curve.
Lisa: What type of training does an architect have?
Rob: There are a couple of different paths. I have a 4 year undergraduate degree, and then I had a 3 year graduate degree, and then you serve a 3 year apprenticeship under a licensed architect fulfilling a series of requirements, and then you go through a series of tests. Then you would become a licensed architect and your license is renewed every year, and you have continuing education requirements throughout your life as a practitioner to keep you current with new codes, new materials, new methodologies, and evolving ways of doing things. For example, the whole green sustainable design movement is a very positive movement and I think it really serves everyone very well and results in healthier, better living spaces, but there’s just a tremendous amount of new information to stay current on.
Lisa: It sounds as though it’s similar to the path that one takes to become a doctor, where you have your undergraduate education, you have graduate education, and then you have to keep learning. It’s not something that you become something and then you are that.
Rob: I agree. It’s called a practice for a good reason and we’re practitioners. We need people to work with all the time. I’m sure in your line of work you have good patients and maybe not so good patients. Well, we have the same experience. So, we always try to make the most of the resources available and that also includes our client, or client base, or their site, or perhaps it’s a renovation of a structure we’re being given an opportunity to work with.
Lisa: What are some of the things that you think about and some of the questions that you ask when you have somebody that comes to you and says, “Rob, I’d like to work with you as an architect or I’m considering hiring you as an architect”?
Rob: I start with a site. It’s the biggest, most important component of any design. It’s where you are on the face of the earth, it’s where the wind comes from, it’s where the sun comes from, it’s the views you might have, it’s natural features. The better you understand the site, the more you can make the most of it’s assets.
Second thing, of course, is if you’re dealing with an existing structure you need to understand it. But you can change that structure.
So, I really like to meet a potential client on-site, see the world through their eyes, find out why they like the site, why they’ve chosen this site, and what they really want to do with both the site and if it’s a renovation the structure we’re dealing with, or a new house. And at the same time, I think there’s a nice balance between the site which is the natural environment, and the structure we’re designing which would be the built environment. And the two can really compliment each other and I think that’s a very important discussion to have. I think that starts to help people understand the perspective that an architect has as he starts to work with a client.
Lisa: What about the types of things that people want to do? Say you have a family with young children versus an older couple that just wants to be on one level versus a couple that entertains a lot. I mean, how do you get to know people well enough so that you can guide them in a way that makes sense for their lifestyle?
Rob: Yeah, and lifestyle is just the word I was going to use. Lifestyle describes where you are in your life and in your family situation. We are trained and we have worked in a variety of circumstances. So, if someone has a toddler, they see the world as an enormous threat to this toddler. We understand that that’s only going to happen for about another year. Once the child discovers the edge, maybe it goes over it once or twice, we don’t have to worry about the edge as much. And if you let that toddler rule, you’ll have possibly a compromised house that may become an impediment to everyone else to enjoy.
Similarly, an older person, you really want to create a lifetime house for that person so they can continue to age in place and really work with the house and have the house really comfort and support and protect them. Universal Design is a really nice concept and it’s really more of a European concept where it’s not about designing for distinct disabilities or handicaps, it’s just saying there are some very good standards one should apply so that one can continue to live in a home, even as you become impaired or start to decline.
Lisa: Do you ever run into challenges when people…You can sort of see what’s probably going to happen for them, but they are very much stuck in where they perceive themselves to be.
Rob: Well, I think of myself as a coach sometimes. Where, you’ve been here before, you know the situation, and you just have to help them begin to understand perhaps what they’re asking for or, I think, if they’ve come to you for your expertise and you think they’re making a mistake, you owe it to them to let them know what you really think and you have to be very direct.
Obviously, do it politely and in a very civil kind of a way and in an educational spirit, but if they’re making a mistake, you really have to say…And you can play it out. You can say, “Well, you know, that’s an interesting position for a window to be in. You’ll have this lovely view, but you’re just going to look right at the meeting rail of that window and it will be an impediment. Or, maybe you’re just tall enough to look over it, but your partner is 5 foot 3. It’s not going to be well received.”
Again, that’s the kind of thing where carpenter trimming and opening in a wall, I’m worried about where all these pieces are going to end up in the final product. That’s something a home owner will only come to realize once it’s in place, once it’s installed, and perhaps if it’s a problem. If it’s not a problem, they will never know about it.
So, if you come to our office you’ll see little tape marks on the walls all over the place and those are where we’re studying the relationship of the size and height of our client, both sitting and standing, the view, and the window system we’re working with. Just trying to make sure it’s going to be a good fit for that client.
Lisa: Was there anything in your training that assisted you in understanding how to deal with people? Because I suspect that you probably are in a situation often where you have more than one person that’s involved in the building process and you have to negotiate that.
Rob: Right. Sure. If we have two individuals it is nicer, I often find, to work with an older couple because they’ve worked a lot of these things out and they sort of have their give and take. Then you can just sort of, if you will, encourage the process to follow it’s natural course because they’ll end up with a good decision for themselves. Younger couples, perhaps, aren’t as skilled at that, so then it becomes a little bit more of a challenge. We never keep score. No one’s ever right. No one’s ever wrong. It’s just, we want to make sure it’s a good fit for them. It’s really their house and, again, we’ll give them quite a bit of latitude but if we think they’re making a mistake we’ll let them know. But, generally, given the right situation and the right circumstances and little bit of good coaching, they’ll make the right decision for them.
Lisa: Right, for them. And that is the important thing that you must have to keep in mind is that you’re always balancing out what you believe could be really important for them to know and what they believe that they really need or want.
Rob: Right. And back to the do-it-yourselfer, there’s just an enormous amount of information out there today and it’s readily accessible. When I started being an architect, all that information was sort of the purview of the architect or the manufacturer. I mean, there were very detailed sets of information. It wasn’t available to the public. Now everybody can access it and be very current. How they evaluate it and how they use it is really, again, it requires judgment and I’d like to think some professional skills.
Lisa: Which, again, I hear you in the same thing happening in medicine. That, we have this overabundance, some would say, of information. But information doesn’t always lead you in the right direction. It’s just information. It’s the ability to sort of tease out what is actually going to be practical that an architect can help somebody do, the same way that a doctor could help somebody with.
Rob: A client can have 10 great ideas. So, you’ve got 10 great ideas, but you know it’s a small house and maybe 3 is sufficient and maybe 10 will be pretty confused. So, it’s an editing process and it’s helping them prioritize. It’s helping them make, what I’ll call informed decisions. And that’s really gratifying. Most of all, towards the end of the project, as the house comes together, because being an architect I’ve had a sense of the spaces, the volumes, the flow of the house, the views, all of that. It’s all done on paper. In a sense, I’ve built it on paper. And then you see the client get so excited about, “Oh, this is so wonderful. I’ve got that view, and I’ve got this, and the light comes in this way.” And you’re thinking, “Yeah, that’s not new. That’s been planned from day one.” But you get to share that enthusiasm, which is really one of our great rewards.
Lisa: I’m sure you’re familiar with the studies that have revealed the healing nature of space. Where they put a wall in front of a patient or they put a pretty window in front of a patient and they see how long it takes for a patient to get better after surgery, for example. What are some of the things that you believe to really contribute to a positive, healthy home, and healthy lifestyle for your clients?
Rob: Well, we have 5 senses, some people would say more. I think a good home appeals to every one of those senses and somehow provides some feedback to that. So, there’s sound, there’s texture, there’s sight, there’s almost taste. You walk into a house that hasn’t been well maintained and you get that funny moldy smell and you think, “Eew” and it just puts you right off. So, there are many different senses that you want to enrich someone’s life with and I think you can incorporate those things in a house.
So, it can be the texture of a brick wall, or it can be the warm colors that change as the light changes from outside, or it can be having light from two directions coming into a room that gives the house cross ventilation, daylight that is colored by the time of day so you can tell exactly what time of day it it. And it also balances it so there’s not so much contrast, so then you can look outside. So it’s not this dark wall and this very bright window because you’re getting some other light on that wall. Those are very subtle.
Again, I think the Europeans have been part of this for a long time. They talk about this and it’s inherent in their culture and their tradition. They also build houses and homes and structures to last many lifetimes. They’re not in the sort of quick, turn it, 5 year flip cycle. I think it’s a little part of American culture. Our restless frontier part manifesting itself.
So, I think there’s a subtler and more profound appreciation of how those senses can provide comfort and health and really make for a, if you will, a more holistic house. I try to stay in touch with those things. Again, hopefully if you’ve hired an architect who respects all those things, he’ll get those things and your life will be enriched. It’s sort of a value added that I’m hoping we provide.
Lisa: Having been to your website myself, one of the most interesting things I found were the line drawings of the walking tours that you and your wife take on a fairly regular basis.
Rob: Yeah, I must admit, one of the disadvantages of being an architect in Maine in the Summer is the people with resources come here for the summer and they take my time.
So, I go on vacation the second week of September when people have gone back to their other worlds and we get away. It’s very low tech. We’re going at 3 miles and hour, 5 kilometers an hour, walking through the countryside. We have a detailed set of instructions and it’s usually across a walk that may be an old pilgrimage walk, or something to a significant monument, perhaps in the Middle Ages, and it just puts you in a different place in time.
I often think about how we have evolved to become walkers. Your senses, day 2 and day 3, you’re suddenly hearing things, seeing things, sensing things, that unless you’re moving slowing and deliberately and you’re in a different place, you’d never perceive. That’s really…And then I get to record them because I sketch and draw. My wife, who is a editor/publisher, writes.
So, we keep this log and some days she writes and leaves me a little spot for a drawing. Some days I draw and then she finds a little spot to put in a little queue about what it is. We’ve been doing this probably for 12-13 years now. So, we have these little series of log books. As you get older, your memory starts to fail. She’ll pull the log book out with the date and what actually transpired. Oh, yeah, that’s right, that’s right, that’s the town. So, we enjoy that and it also puts us in touch with different cultures.
Lisa: I encourage people to go to your website and to see these log books. They really are beautiful drawings and descriptions and they made me…I think one of them I was reading was in Italy and it made me want to go to Italy again. So, I think it will also cause people to want to meet you as a…I feel as if you’re a kind and gentle soul who is able to bring joy into the lives of the people that you design for and I think people should spend some time finding out more about you.
Rob: Thank you.
Lisa: So, we’ve been speaking with Rob Whitten from Whitten Architects here in Portland and I appreciate your time. Thank you.
Rob: It’s been a pleasure.