Transcription of Eric Stark for the show Designing Space #196
Lisa: It is my good fortune today to have on the show Eric Stark. He is an associate professor and the program coordinator for the University of Maine at Augusta’s architecture program. Professor Stark maintains a small architectural practice in Portland doing residential and institutional work. His ongoing research includes community partnering, the use of diagram in architecture, and furniture design. Thanks so much for coming in today.
Eric: Thank you.
Lisa: So you’re not from Maine.
Eric: No, I grew up in California so I spent most of my life in the San Francisco Bay area.
Lisa: It must have been quite an important thing, this architecture program going on at the University of Maine at Augusta to draw you all the way across the country and make it part of your life’s work.
Eric: Actually, I came across the country slowly for different school programs. I actually did my undergraduate in Iowa, studied Shakespeare and theater design. I did a lot of theater work, both design and construction, for a number of years, and then went back to study architecture. I actually went to graduate school in Cambridge at Harvard, and that’s how I ended up on the East Coast. Then once I graduated from there, in my first job I met my now wife. She’s from Maine, so that’s actually how I ended up in Maine.
Lisa: She also holds an important position within the architecture community.
Eric: She does. She’s the executive director of AIA Maine.
Lisa: Her name is?
Eric: Jeannette Schram.
Lisa: Those of you who are listening who have some connection with architecture know that I’m now speaking with the husband of the AIA director for the State of Maine.
Eric: That’s right.
Lisa: This is like the power couple of architecture in the State of Maine, which is pretty great, actually. I love what is being done with the University of Maine at Augusta. This is so exciting because we didn’t have an architecture program until relatively recently.
Eric: We didn’t have it in its current form. There actually has been some form of architecture at UMA for 28 years. It started as a two-year degree. It went to a four-year degree back in 2003. It is a major change. What it’s become is the first professional degree in Maine. It’s actually the only public undergraduate degree in New England. That’s a huge thing. It makes it incredibly affordable. I think it also begins to answer and fill a gap in architectural education specifically in Maine. Prior to this program starting two years ago, the five-year degree, if you wanted to be a licensed architect you had to leave the State of Maine. Now with this new program students, whether they’re getting their first undergraduate degree or coming back to school, can stay in Maine.
A lot of our students, they have families. They already have businesses. Some are true freshman, but it gives them an opportunity to study in Maine, which as I said, allows it so they don’t have to leave the state, but also, they’re connected to Maine. Mainers I think really love where they’re from. This allows them to stay here, study here. A lot of what we do, where we do have a global outlook and we get our students outside of Maine, we’re also rooted here and we understand that.
Lisa: Now how did you get from Shakespeare, set design, to what you’re doing now? What was your original interest in that?
Eric: As an undergrad I went to school in Iowa and I studied theater with a focus on Shakespeare and Shakespearean literature, so I was designing sets, I was building. I like making things. That’s what I like doing the most. I like making all kinds of things. I did that for a number of years on both coasts. I worked in Washington D.C. and I also worked out in California, mostly for Shakespeare houses.
As that progressed, I started thinking about going back to school. Actually, at the time it wasn’t just architecture. I’d always been interested in architecture. I got some really bad advice in high school from some architects. It was back in the 80s and it was a miserable time to be an architect and they let me know that. As a 16 year old I was scared. I was like oh, that sounds awful so I’m not going to do that.
As I started looking back as I hit my mid-20s, late-20s, I started thinking I want to make stuff. I looked furniture schools, industrial design schools, and looked again at architecture. I felt in the world of architecture there was more possibility. I could design buildings but I could also work in the landscape. You could think urbanistically, and you could still design a chair. You could still do all those different things.
That’s what I ended up back to school for. I was lucky enough to get into Harvard and get into a school on the East Coast, which I never thought. Growing up in California, if you told me I was going to end up on the East Coast, much less in Maine, I wouldn’t have believed you. That’s really how I ended up out here.
Lisa: I’m thinking about a conversation that you and I had just before we got on the air about your children, who are six and nine and going to a Montessori school. All three of my children did their early years at a Montessori school and it was very hands-on. There’s something very tactile about the Montessori education. In fact, I went to a Montessori school and I learned how to wash windows and set the table. Everything is very physical, hands-on, tangible. Do you think there’s enough of that in education?
Eric: I don’t, I don’t. I think it’s two things. I think it’s definitely there’s a hands-on quality that’s really important. I can say that because it’s something we do in the architecture program. All of our teaching, we try very hard to steer away from lectures where someone’s imparting knowledge to you. It’s really about discovery. Let’s engage with a brick and see what we’re going to do with it. Let’s talk to someone who actually designs and puts up steel walls and see what that means. I think that’s the beautiful thing about the Montessori program, is on one side it’s very hands-on so you’re actually doing it.
I think as important and perhaps even more so, there’s this personal responsibility to the Montessori education where each student from age three, you are responsible for you. That means you’re responsible in terms of how you interact with others around you, but also that you’re in control. You have some control over what you’re going to do with your day and what you’re going to learn. I think that’s the phenomenal thing that they teach. I see it in my kids. I think the teachers would say they see it more in the classroom than we might see it at home, but they really do. They understand that if they want to do something … My daughter just last summer was interested in the human ear, so she’s like, let’s go to the library and check out books on the human ear. She was seven then. It’s kind of shocking when your seven year old says that. You’re like yeah, but that’s what she’s been taught. She was learning how to learn.
I’m certainly not an expert on younger education, but I think a lot of times that’s what’s missing. What is this individual? Even though they’re little, what are they interested in? What do they want to do and how do you empower them to go out and do it?
Lisa: If that’s not present in some forms of earlier education, then you are getting people coming in as maybe 18 year old freshman or maybe people are further along in their career. How do you bring that out in them? Because I would think that would be quite important as an architect.
Eric: It’s a great question. That’s actually really fundamental. You find a lot of our students who are coming right out of high school, most if not all of their education has been someone giving something. Really the way we try and flip that is initially through just discussion. We’re very open with it, is you have a huge responsibility here. You’re responsible for your own education. You need to take that on.
But also in understanding that they are the ones who are in a sense directing what it is that we’re doing in the design studio. We just did a small visitors center that was located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one of the projects I did with my second-year studio. The reason I end up with ten different visitors centers is because I have ten different students. The site’s the same, the climate’s the same, the program is the same. It sits on this amazing barren landscape with these three volcanoes. That’s all the same for the ten students. The reason we get ten projects is there are ten individuals.
That’s what they have to understand. They have to understand that there isn’t one answer to this. The answer comes from you. It’s not going to come from some book. It certainly doesn’t come from me as the teacher. I guide you through this but it comes from you. That’s where it is. That’s where it lies. Then we help through a number of different exercises, some that start very conceptually, and slowly move more and more towards what most would think of as a building. We help them understand how do I pull that out. How do I discover what I think this project’s about? A lot of that has to do with conceptual ideas. We were talking about schools. Certainly a school has to keep people warm, it has to keep people dry, it needs a place for the bus to stop, it needs classrooms of a certain size.
But what’s school really about? What does it mean to learn? That’s a question, and others similar to it that a lot of beginning students have never asked themselves. They think of it as school. I went to a school. It has a roof, it has this, it has a cafeteria. It’s important but it’s also not important. Because without that extra something, without that other thing like what’s it mean to learn, what’s it mean to be curious, what’s it mean to engage with others your age, those are interesting questions. Those things all happen. Whether or not you are aware of them or not as an architect, those things are happening in those spaces, so you have to become aware of them.
That’s really the push. It’s a great question because I think that’s so much of the push for those beginning students, is it’s always turning it back on them. They’ll look at you sometimes and they’re waiting for the answer. You just look right back at them and you wait for their answer. I tell all my students my job, pure and simple, is to ask why. That’s my whole job, other than the coordinating stuff and there’s a lot of paperwork and all that. My real job as an architecture teacher is to ask you why did you do that. Initially, it’s a blank stare. Eventually they’ll start saying things, well I like it that way. I’m like well, that’s not a really great answer.
If you’re sitting across from a client and they ask you why does my house look like that, and you say, “I like it,” and they look at you, well I don’t like it and I’m paying for this, so let’s do something else. There’s no conversation in just I like it. Unless you happen to find a bunch of people who like what you like you can’t have a conversation with that. You really have to be able to explain it. You have to be able to explain why I’m doing what I’m doing. I designed it like this for these reasons.
That’s helpful definitely in terms of the client interaction, but it’s most helpful for you as a design. You need to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. You need to have some basic conceptual idea that makes this school different from this school. That’s hard. That’s hard for a lot of people to come around to understand that. Once you get that, the next step that’s perhaps even harder is how do I take that conceptual idea and now turn it into a building that people do have to move in and it does have to keep them warm and it has to keep them dry. It’s the reason architecture’s really complex and hard. It’s really hard. Good architecture is hard.
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Lisa: You do the design work and you’re obviously thinking about materials that go into the designs of the buildings that you’re creating, but then there’s the practical, in the moment, on the ground, actually building of things that doesn’t usually happen at the hands of architects, so there has to be a back and forth. There has to be a crosstalk between you and the people who are actually the artisans on the project itself.
Eric: Definitely, yeah. It’s actually one of the my favorite things. It’s very important that you find those builders and those craftsmen who want to have that conversation. I think all too often, at least in talking to those people, I don’t think architects always want to have that conversation. I think we should. I think it’s really important. I like nothing more than getting a plan to a certain point and being able to work with the builder enough to be like yeah, I’m not sure what we’re going to do there so you have to start. We need to see it before we actually place that window or that bank of windows.
I worked on this project a couple years ago where this builder gutted this space. It was so wonderful because he called me up and he said, “Yeah, you’re going to want to come see this.” Once this ceiling in this third-floor space which would have been about 7’6″ was gone, there was this amazing vaulted ceiling. He knew. He just said, “I don’t think you want me to build what you drew now that you see this.” He was totally right. He said, “All right, I’ll be back Monday.” I said, “All right, I’ll have it all redrawn by Monday.” Because he needed to keep going but it was this great opportunity. He could have been halfway done and certainly I would have walked in and been like oh no. There was no way to know that beforehand. It wasn’t I made a mistake. It was just we needed to have that conversation.
That’s one of the great things I think about in design general but in architecture, is that conversation, whether it’s a conversation between you and a client, between a student and a community member, between a builder and other builders or the architect is it’s a collaborative effort, wk makes it hard but makes it really exciting. There’s certainly some people who are so good at what they do as architects, they sort of have a vision for everything. I’m certainly not one of those people and I don’t think there are a lot of them. You want that input. That’s really the exciting part is all these ideas. The architect is the one who then brings them all together.
It goes back to that concept. That’s why that concept’s so important. There’s nothing better than sitting across from a client or even a builder and somebody suggests something. That client or builder jumps in and is like oh no, we can’t do that. That doesn’t fit in with the concept. You’re like, they understand. You’ve translated it in a way and everybody understands that. Even someone who’s laying trim on a wall makes decision, and you’re like, that is a great decision because it fits with what we’re doing. I’m not sure I would have seen that because I don’t have 25-30 years of experience building. To not tap into that would be foolish. You also want to give it a framework. We’re working on this project, not a different one, so how do all those things that we’re doing, how do we make them all happen together.
Lisa: I love hearing this because there are two things that occur to me. One is that you were describing people saying back in the 80s, “Oh don’t go into architecture. This is a tough time to be an architect.” This is happening now in medicine where doctors are saying to their children, “Oh, don’t be a doctor. Nobody wants to be a doctor. It’s too hard to be a doctor.” I just think that’s the wrong way to approach it. I think we need to be approaching medicine that way that architecture is being approached. That we can no longer come in as doctors and say, “Well, here’s the big design. Here’s the evidence-based medicine. Here’s what we think should happen.” We need to come in an understand this back and forth, this relationship, this working with the team, the working with the patient. What you’re describing really is collaboration. It’s really the same sort of relationships that I deal with on a day to day basis in the practice of medicine.
Eric: Yeah, it’s totally true. It’s totally true. I think, again, it goes back to that community work. We do a lot of that community work. We’ve got students that are actually working in teams, because architecture is collaborative. You have to understand that you have to appreciate that. You have to be able to communicate whether it’s verbally, but a lot of it’s visually. That’s what we really do. You mentioned that architects don’t build a lot of stuff, and it’s true. We draw a lot of stuff. We draw the thing that is to be built. We deal in representation all the time. That’s so fundamental to what we do.
One of the interesting things that’s happening now in architecture though is there is this actual lack of architects. The architecture profession as a whole is getting older. They’re retiring. Every indication is in the next couple years there will be a great need for architects across the country. It’s not just here but across the country. I think it’s a terrific time to get into if it’s your calling. I really think it’s that, because it’s very consuming. It’s all consuming. It changes how you see the world. I think if it is, it’s a great time to get into the field of architecture.
Lisa: I’m very happy to hear that because I’m going to ask you next how do people who are interested in finding out about the University of Maine at Augusta’s architecture program learn about how to do exactly what you’ve said.
Eric: The easiest way to do it is to visit us online. It’s uma.edu/barch. You can get all the information you want there. We’ve got great enrollment specialists. Actually, I’m very hands-on in terms of both explaining the program as well as giving tours of our facility. We actually moved into a new facility three years ago, which his continually growing. We got our first laser cutter. We got our first 3D printer starting last year, so we’re doing some really fabulous stuff there. We’re right in downtown Augusta right on the river, right on the Kennebec. That’s been teriffic. It’s a great location, partially because we want to work in the community to be in the community. Just go to our website and we’ll get you all the information you need.
Lisa: If I wasn’t already a doctor, maybe I’d think about becoming an architect. It’s been great. It’s been a great conversation. We’ve been speaking with Eric Stark, who is an associate professor and the program coordinator for the University of Maine Augusta’s architecture program. Thanks so much for coming in today.
Eric: Thank you.
Lisa: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio show number 196: “Designing Space.” Our guests have included Roger Richmond and Eric Stark. For more information on our guests, and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our enewsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as Dr. Lisa, and see my running, travel, food and wellness photos as Bountiful One on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our “Designing Space” show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.