Write About Architecture

We are interviewing Harvard-educated Michael Kaplan today after getting acquainted over a great breakfast of pancakes and coffee at a local spoon. Michael joined the Peace Corps after his architectural studies and later taught architecture at the University of Tennessee’s College of Architecture and Design.

In our conversation today, we discussed aspects of being an architect in the Peace Corps to the importance of writing about Architecture and Design today, which Michael does on a regular basis for the Knoxville Voice. Read on and learn more about 3-D architectural photography, stories of meeting Eve Zeisel at the age of 100, and true tales of living in a third-world country in the Peace Corps and other very interesting stories.

Our interview was originally recorded and went something like this:

MICHAEL: I did an interview with Maynard Solomon, the founder of Vanguard Records, and I brought my recorder with me. I asked, “Do you mind if I turn this thing on? “Don’t.” I said, “Okay.”

TRACEE: Oh really.

MICHAEL: Yeah…so I got out my pad and pencil. (Laughing…)

TRACEE: Well, I did bring a pad and pencil. (Laughing…)

MICHAEL: You know, some people are funny about being recorded.

TRACEE: And is this okay? Michael, you can edit anything that you say before it goes to print!

MICHAEL: Don’t ever say anything in an interview that you wouldn’t want to hear in court. (Slight Laughing…)

TRACEE: That is a good point.
(After Michael agreed we began the official interview.)

TRACEE: Well, I was given a bit of information about you before we began today in order to prepare for our interview. I’ll begin there.
You received your undergrad degree from Brandeis University. Where is that?

MICHAEL: Brandeis University is in Waltham Massachusetts, which is a suburb of Boston. It had a reputation in the 1950’s and 60’s for being recoil radical. And I guess that is because people like Herbert Marcuse taught there, who was, I would say, a leftist philosopher.

TRACEE: After some research on which there was plenty to draw from, Mr. Marcuse: Herbert Marcuse, first served in the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) on anti-Nazi propaganda projects and later taught for Columbia University, Harvard and then Brandeis University.

MICHAEL: In the student body, there were people like Angela Davis: and many others…I was not among the radical students.

TRACEE: You weren’t!

MICHAEL: No…(Short laughter)

TRACEE: in my research here: Angela Davis, was a student at Frankfurt School From 1963 to 1964, then attended the University of Paris. After which she attended Brandeis University. Earned her B.A. (magna cum laude) She returned Germany for graduate research. Upon returning to the U.S., Davis enrolled at the University of California at San Diego, receiving a Masters in 1968.
She became a member of the Black Panthers. Davis became the third woman ever on the FBI's most wanted list. More info can be found on the web.

TRACEE: You were conservative? (soft laughter)

MICHAEL: No, I was just sort of a naive kid from NYC who got to go away from home for the first time in my life.

TRACEE: And that was your undergraduate experience.

MICHAEL: And that was my undergraduate experience.

TRACEE: And then what was life like for you?

MICHAEL: I had become interested in architecture even before I went to college. The thought was to get my bachelors degree in liberal arts and then move on to go to graduate school for a Masters degree in architecture.
And I did, and I stayed in Boston.

TRACEE: And you attended Harvard.

MICHAEL: I went to the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

TRACEE: Where did you grow up?

MICHAEL: I grew up in NYC in Queens.
And I keep finding people who also grew up in Queens. And there are some famous ones. Antonin Gregory Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, grew up in my neighborhood. Known as a conservative supreme court justice, he was interviewed about his childhood in Queens and he talked in great detail about my neighborhood.

TRACEE: Ah, fascinating.
How, for those of us who don’t know where Queens is, in relationship to Manhattan, how far away are the two from each other?

MICHAEL: NYC is made up of five boroughs. Queens is across the East River, east of Manhattan. And it’s on Long Island along with the borough of Brooklyn. And then Nassau and Suffolk Counties are further out.
So Queens is just to the north of Brooklyn - a foreign country for those of us growing up in Queens.
And Queens was the new suburb within NYC.
People moved to Queens because apartment buildings there had parking garages (Friendly Laughter) for your car. There were driveways if you lived in a small house.

Compared to Manhattan, this was almost like the country, you know. I remember empty lots in Queens that were undeveloped.

TRACEE: Which must have been unheard of in NYC?

MICHAEL: There were woods and empty fields and of course this was within the bounds of NYC. Today, it’s very built up and very dense, and very diverse ethnically.

TRACEE: Yes, as everyone thinks of NYC.

MICHAEL: I’ve heard that my neighborhood, Jackson Heights, is the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the world in terms of languages spoken, and countries of origin.

TRACEE: No kidding?
Hum, imagine that.
That truly must be an amazing place.
It must have been a big influence or have influenced you in a lot of ways while you were growing up that you didn’t realize until later on in life.

MICHAEL: Yes, absolutely.

TRACEE: Is it true that you were in the Peace Corps?

MICHAEL: Yes.

TRACEE: And that was in the sixties? Is that right? Can I say that?

MICHAEL: Yes, how did you know?

TRACEE: I have a secret source.

MICHAEL: It was in 1967-1969.

TRACEE: What made you go into the Peace Corps? What was that like?

MICHAEL: The State of New York exempted you from the military if you engaged in certain activities, like if you were in graduate school or the Peace Corps.

TRACEE: What was that like in the sixties?

MICHAEL: The Peace Corps changed my life in the end.

TRACEE: In what way?

MICHAEL: Politically, it radicalized me because I went to a part of the world that had been very recently under colonialism.

TRACEE: Where did you go?

MICHAEL: North Africa.

TRACEE: Wow.

MICHAEL: Tunisia only gained its independence in 1956. So, here I was, ten, eleven years after independence, living in a country that had basically thrown the French out.

That was also true of Algeria, which I visited several times then. It had been a French colony. Actually, it was part of France until 1962, at the end of the Algerian revolution which had been going on for some 80 years. And, here I was in 1967 or 1968, visiting Algeria which had been France 5 years before.

It was a violent revolution…

TRACEE: That must have been…

MICHAEL: It was extraordinary.

TRACEE: It must have been extraordinary. I’m sure it shaped some of your…

MICHAEL: Well, one of the things, of course living with the people and hearing the stories, people just recently liberated from colonization, I started reading French newspapers and I read Le Monde (a Paris newspaper). There was a great writer on middle eastern and third-world affairs named Eric Rouleau (a journalist from Egypt who traveled to Paris to live). He may still be alive … I was reading his column regularly in French and it… simply gave anyone reading that stuff, a view of the world - particularly the developing world - that you could not get in the United States very easily.

TRACEE: It must have changed your perceptions of the world incredibly, I would think.


MICHAEL: Well, another part of it was that Tunisia was an Arab country, and I went over there… I went into Peace Corps training during the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states. Israel and its Arab neighbors were at war and America became very much a target of the Arab counties. So here I was, a representative of the United States government, going to live in an Arab country just months after the ending of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

TRACEE: Was there ever a point where you thought you might not come home from there? You were very young and it was such a changed atmosphere, and…

MICHAEL: Well, no… because well, when you’re at that age, in your twenties, you’re totally (serious laughter) invulnerable…

TRACEE: Yeah, yes you are, it’s such an innocent age.

MICHAEL: But I’ll tell you, I took a trip to Algeria .. I took a land trip to Algeria from Tunisia, by taxi and hitchhiking and buses…the very week- or the week after - Arab terrorists blew up a plane at the Algiers airport.

TRACEE: Oh my…

MICHAEL: And, I believe, because I flew out of Algiers to Morocco to continue my trip, I think I saw the plane sitting on the tarmac.
There it was, the plane… that had a black hole in it.

TRACEE: My goodness. So was there ever a point, how…how often did you think of coming home.

MICHAEL: I was not allowed to come home. Because we had to sign on to a two-year stint, and that did not include home visits.
So I was out of the country for two years.

TRACEE: Oh wow, it was really like the military, where you could not come home the complete two years?

MICHAEL: Yeah…

TRACEE: But you thought about coming home, maybe? Often?

MICHAEL: Well, I thought about it, and yeah, I thought about home.
Wow…

TRACEE: We’re going to go back to your architecture and design aspects of the world although I think that could be a whole article in and of it self talking about the Peace Corps and your experiences in that.

MICHAEL: I was an architect in the Peace Corps…

TRACEE: Oh, you were?

MICHAEL: That was my job.

TRACEE: Did you get to build?

MICHAEL: Yeah…I built lots of buildings and I built them using vernacular building techniques. And I used indigenous materials such as, mud, bricks…

TRACEE: How exciting.

MICHAEL: Adobe, brick, stone…

TRACEE: How very interesting…

TRACEE: Now, I don’t know much about your experience but I had heard that you had met some people in the design world and I thought I’d ask you a few questions about that. And well, I understand that you photographed Eva Zeisel.

MICHAEL: That’s jumping ahead many years…

TRACEE: Oh, gosh, I’m sorry…

MICHAEL: ...
Well, you skipped my whole teaching career,…
(Laughing)

TRACEE: I wasn’t aware of the order. (Laughing)…

TRACEE: Oh well, lets talk about that then…I did have many questions in that area too…we can then jump back to talk about Eva…

MICHAEL: Yes, to talk about Eva, gosh, how would I make that connection: I have to tell you my whole life story (Great Laughter) about how I got interested in industrial design.

TRACEE: Yes, please do… How did you get interested in industrial design?

MICHAEL: Well, I always collected things. And I won’t go into my many, many collections, but in the 1980 when I was teaching at the University of Tennessee, I discovered mid-20th century dinnerware. I had a friend who discovered Roseville dinnerware designed by Ben Seibel and distributed by a company by the name of Raymor in 1952. I got really interested in that. Now, I had known about the Eames designs. I actually met Ray Eames back in 1966 in Los Angeles. I knew about Eero Saarinen, you know, one of the great mid-century American architects. As I was a fine arts major at Brandeis, I had known for many years about modern design, and was interested in modern design. But I never started collecting it until the mid-80 when I discovered this dinnerware, and then, just by association, Russel Wright’s work, and Eva Zeisel’s work. Two great designers of particularly “table top.”

TRACEE: Absolutely elegant table tops!

MICHAEL: Yes. I got to meet Eva Zeisel and after, I started writing about industrial design and talking about it at conferences, and for me it was an extension of my interest in architecture. Some of those designers were in fact architects; they were involved in architectural design, just as architects were involved in interior and industrial design. Frank Lloyd Wright designed furniture and textiles, so there is a natural crossover between all of these fields. There is an interface between all of it.

Then I wrote a paper on the work of Zeisel and Ben Seibel and Russel Wright, and gave the paper as an illustrated slide lecture at Russel Wright’s home

TRACEE: Oh how nice…

MICHAEL: In Garrison NY,

TRACEE: What an opportunity.

MICHAEL: It was in the late 80’s. I was staying with friends a few nights before, and I got this call, from Eva Zeisel, and I was going to speak on her water pitcher design and Eva was going to be there. She wanted to know what dinnerware line of hers I was going to talk about?

TRACEE: That’s fair.

MICHAEL: And she was invited to be there. So I told her, you’ll have to come and hear for yourself.

TRACEE: OH No, you didn’t…(Laughing)

MICHAEL: I’m not going to tell you, Eva. (Robust Laughing) but I told her I was going to bring the pitcher from that dinnerware line, and we could fill it with water and play with it.
(More Laughing)

TRACEE: How fun, really…

MICHAEL: And I did get to meet her. We had a really nice chat about many things including politics because she is keenly interested in politics. The dinnerware line that I talked about was Town and Country (Red Wing). So I brought a Town and Country pitcher and that has to be, if you could talk about her greatest designs and there were many, many, many,… great designs, the Town and Country, had to be if not the best, certainly, the most distinctive of anything that she designed.

TRACEE: Well, she is a timeless designer.

MICHAEL: When I met her - I don’t remember exactly what year it was - it was something like 1990 - I showed her the 3-D pictures I had taken.

TRACEE: That’s exciting.

MICHAEL: I showed her some of the pictures I had taken of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in 3-D. I had this idea then that some day I should really take a portrait of her in 3-D. And I got to do that, just as she was turning 100. It was a few days before her 100th birthday. I went to her apartment in Manhattan. It was very difficult to do because the light wasn’t adequate and I didn’t want to use flash or artificial light, and she couldn’t give me a lot of time, but I did get one really good 3-D picture of her.

TRACEE: Ah, that is an outstanding story. I’d love to see the photograph some time.
That is amazing.

MICHAEL: She is a feisty woman really. I have some funny stories…
After I had taken these few pictures, she had her assistant prepare tea…which came out on a tray, served on one of her white china lines, and was beautifully done, with the white tea cups, we poured the tea and I had the tea, and then it was time to leave. And I went up really close to her - her vision was not really good, it was definitely not good - she may be close to being blind at this point - but it wasn’t good at the time.

TRACEE: What year was this?

MICHAEL: This had to be maybe three years ago. Yeah, two to three years ago, she was about 100 and she is 102 now? She came out with a dinner line named “101.”

TRACEE: You’ve got to be kidding, that’s incredible.

MICHAEL: And I kneeled down really close to her and I told her, you know, what I thought of her, and that she had made this amazing contribution to design that really made a statement, and I kissed her on the cheek. Leave it to Eva, she said: “Well, what about the other cheek?"
(Laughing)

MICHAEL: You have to do that, you know, being a European and being a lady, it’s like the proper thing to do to kiss her on each cheek.

TRACEE: Absolutely! (Laughter) That is quite right…

MICHAEL: So, I thought that was funny.
(Laughter)

MICHAEL: She couldn’t just leave it at that!
She was right! You know, one cheek wasn’t enough…
She was right there…

TRACEE: And what a charming memory, thank you for sharing that lovely story about Eva. It’s a memory to be treasured.

I wasn’t going to ask you about photography in and of itself but I wanted to know, what one thing is it that interests you about photography as a person that uses photography?

MICHAEL: Well I think back to, getting my first camera which was a vintage 1932 Leica that my father gave me when I was about 14 years old, I think. You might ask the question: “What is it about photography that interests people in general?” And I think that it is capturing a realistic image of yourself and of the world you live in. Usually in two dimensions on a flat piece of paper, that simply mesmerizes you, it mesmerizes people.

MICHAEL: When I was in the Peace Corps I had a small Polaroid camera, and I took it almost every place. Photography itself was very expensive to do over there. Film was expensive, cameras were expensive, so people in general didn’t do much photography, but instant photography, where you can see the picture a minute after you took it, really captivated people and they would gather around and in some cases half the town would come over and look over you shoulder at this instant picture of them. We were warned when we went into the Peace Corps (in the 60’s) to be very careful about photographing people, because they attach to it, sometimes, spiritual aspects.

TRACEE: No kidding?

MICHAEL: That somehow, you possess a part of them by having a photograph of them. So I was very conscious of that and would always ask people before I took pictures, “Can I take a picture of you?” I wouldn’t do any of this undercover, I would always ask people and usually they would agree. Now remember, I was living in Southern Tunisia in fairly simple conditions. People lived in some cases without electricity, without toilets, in some cases in caves and underground dwellings…

MICHAEL: I think simple is a respectful term.

MICHAEL: Simple compared to the way that most of us were living.

MICHAEL: So, we were told going in, in our training, to be cautious and polite when using a camera.

TRACEE: Yes of course……

MICHAEL: Which I was, and I have some beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Polaroid pictures of the children and of course I gave away more, as you can imagine, than I actually kept.

TRACEE: Outstanding.

MICHAEL: The people just loved those things. They’re very beautiful.

TRACEE: Hum, I…

MICHAEL: Although they are faded now.

TRACEE: Oh… I can’t imagine what that was really like, phenomenal.

MICHAEL: I guess I should digitize them, and try to preserve some of them.

TRACEE: Absolutely, you should.

MICHAEL: But, I think that’s it, I think there is a magic to capturing the world around you on a piece of paper. Visual images of the world you live in.

TRACEE: It’s a frozen piece of time.

MICHAEL: Yeah…

MICHAEL: That has changed with digital photography where you can alter images, but in those days using film, what you saw on the piece of paper is what was there, without much modification.

TRACEE: And it is totally different today.

MICHAEL: Very different, now it can be anything…

TRACEE: I was going to ask, let me get this right, spelling it out for myself. You co-own View Productions.

MICHAEL: Yes.

TRACEE: Which is a product that uses View Master and seems to take quite a bit of artistry, in the use of photography and in such ways to produce magnificent, and I have seen them they are really magnificent three dimensional images, is that right? I mean that is the way I see it?

And I’d like to know how you began this vision?

MICHAEL: Well, first of all, a correction: I think it is more skill that artistry.
(Slight Laugher)

TRACEE: Okay, I personally think what you create is really artistry…

MICHAEL: I have to go back to the 1950’s. There was a 3-D photography craze that kind of coincided with the advent of 3-D movies… popular 3-D movies coming out of Hollywood. As a kid, seeing these 3-D movies was just an amazing experience. To put on the glasses and to have things pop out of the screen, to sort of have a window on the world that you could almost enter. You know, I have a 3-D lecture I call: “Like Alice Through the Looking Glass.” It’s sort of like, where did Alice go?

TRACEE: Where did she go?

MICHAEL: Alice in Wonderland!
Isn’t that the name of the book?
(Faint Laughing)

MICHAEL: Yeah, like the movies, 3-D pictures opened up a wonderland…that you could almost step into.

TRACEE: You mean like a magic of a kind?

MICHAEL: And I just became fascinated with it. I could never afford the camera, because they were expensive and of course taking slides was very expensive. Until I got to college and the fad had passed, you could pick up the cameras for $15.00, which I did and I started in 1963 photographing everything in three dimensions. And since I was in architecture school at that time, I thought that it was particularly appropriate to photograph architecture, which are buildings that are solid objects that contain spaces and volumes where three dimensional representation was about the most accurate you could get. And of course, there were architects at the time like Frank Lloyd Wright, who understood this and appreciated this, and then themselves started using 3-dimensional photography. Charles and Ray Eames started using it, as did Elliot Noyes, an architect and furniture designer.

TRACEE: Beyond using photography as 2-dimensional, and the View Master as 3-dimensional, what do you think are experiential differences between using, say, the View-Master and looking at a 2-dimensional photograph?

MICHAEL: In the 1950s, almost every kid and almost every family had a View-Master and reels.

TRACEE: Oh yes, we had one.

MICHAEL: Yes, everybody had one.

TRACEE: Yes. And we loved them.

MICHAEL: And people did love them. I have had this argument with photographers who have used flat photography, and they tend to insist that 3-dimensional photography is not art.

TRACEE: Really…oh, no…no…
I beg to differ on that.

MICHAEL: Yes. Shall I use a name..

TRACEE: No… we shouldn’t print that… but no, that is a shame.

MICHAEL: 2-dimensional photography is really an abstraction, because it is taking space and collapsing it onto a canvas.

TRACEE: Yes, that is true.

MICHAEL: So, of course there is always the relationship between photography and art and painting.
MICHAEL: Well, have you ever seen a three-dimensional painting? And I mean, one that really,…

TRACEE: Stands out?

MICHAEL: Dali tried to do it. He would do stereoscopic paintings, where you would have to wear an optical gizmo in order to see into them.

TRACEE: No, I had no idea that he created anything like that.

MICHAEL: So, the argument was that 3-dimensional photography is too realistic. It is not enough of an abstraction… therefore, it can’t be art.

TRACEE: Oh, boy…what an argument.

MICHAEL: It is an interesting argument.

TRACEE: I don’t see the argument, because, I see it all as creating, expression, and art. However I do understand the reality of what you replicate as 3-D images can not certainly be impressionist or abstract art.

MICHAEL: And all I can say, is, I’ve talk to really prominent photographers who have really pooh-poohed the whole idea of 3-dimensional representation, which is even more astonishing, but they just don’t see it as art.

TRACEE: I guess, I can’t say, how they perceive it or not, but I have seen some of the work that you did in 3-dimensional art and putting that all together, and creating it in 3-dimentions, it is a mystery to the mind because it is as if you can walk right into that area and that space and that’s creating- and it effects some of us as beautiful which provoks us just as what could be 2-dimensional and also affect us.

MICHAEL: Yeah...

TRACEE: To be able to create that is artistry.

MICHAEL: Well, I guess you have to go back to the definition of art, what is art? What qualifies as art … and I don’t think I want to go into that… (Laughing) I think I want to spend my time taking 3-D pictures.

TRACEE: (Laughing) You’re right, that’s a major discussion that could go on forever.

Both Agreed: And the argument is never ending.

TRACEE: Yes… that discussion could go in all kinds of directions.

TRACEE: Earlier, we spoke of you growing up in New York City …

MICHAEL: Oh, I forgot to mention the people that I found who grew up in Queens. It was Anthony Scalia, Paul Simon, the singer from Simon and Garfunkel, Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer, and I think, Lou Reed from the Velvet Underground. They were from Queens originally.

MICHAEL: But I guess one could research it and find many famous people from Queens.

TRACEE: What was you favorite memory growing up in Queens?

MICHEAL: The favorite memory?

TRACEE: Do you have a favorite, the favorite, one favorite, or many favorites that you’d like to share? I’d like to know one.

MICHAEL: They’re almost too many to list, but I have many really great memories, I mean, one thing I’ve been writing about in the articles for the Knoxville Voice, is the ability to walk out of your house, down the block and buy everything you need.

TRACEE: (Laughing) It sounds like a dream, because we don’t have that in this city.

MICHAEL: We had a supermarket, a bakery, a candy store, a delicatessen, a thrift store. There was a Salvation Army down the block from me then that I could actually walk to from my house.

TRACEE: You had all these nice places to go in the big cities…

MICHAEL: The neighborhood was pedestrian friendly because it was so dense. It supported lots of commercial activity… lots of retail.

TRACEE: I did a little research on the density of Manhattan in a building. It is thirty persons per square foot if you lay out a ten story building / one thousand feet wide, onto one floor and measure persons per foot and it came out to: thirty people per square foot.


MICHAEL: Well, when you build to that density, you have a population in numbers that will support lots of things. It means that a neighborhood being so dense can have hospitals you can walk to, schools you can walk to, restaurants you can walk to, supermarkets, thrift stores, department stores, cleaners, fish markets … and that’s what a city is about traditionally.

TRACEE: That is what I was getting to with this next question, and you’ve answered it. But, what are the differences in the style or the whole make-up in architecture of where you grew up –v- architecture in a small city? And well, you’ve just answered that, really,…that everything was right there in the larger city that you grew up in.

MICHAEL: Unfortunately, most of the country has not developed in that direction. And with cheap fuel, you create sprawl and that causes people to get into their cars; it was seen as unsustainable forty, fifty, sixty years ago. People and critics were already talking about how that wouldn’t take us very far down the road and today we’re seeing that happen, and trying desperately to figure out what to do.

When you’re paying much more for fuel, I guess the question of our time will be whether we’re able to solve it quickly enough…

TRACEE: That is true.

MICHAEL: Yeah, before people literally go broke.

TRACEE: And before they are destitute.

MICHAEL: Really.

TRACEE: It’s a good point, Michael Kaplan, and it’s very true. I know that you have written a lot about architecture. What is it that you focus on in your writing about architecture?

MICHAEL: You’re referring to my current writing?

TRACEE: Yes Michael. Currently, what is that you find important?

MICHAEL: Well, a little background on what I’m doing now.
I taught a course at the University of Tennessee, called Architecture as Power, and what I was trying to do was, relate for the students the connections between architecture and social, economic, and political forces in our society, and bring them all together. Because, when you build a building, which is usually - but not always - a functional thing, right? You need a clinic, you have to build a building to house the clinic, you need a house, you build a building to house those activities that take place in the house. There are exceptions to that where we just build buildings for whim, you can see lots of them in Pigeon Forge (Tennessee) and Gatlinburg… So what I had the students do was read the papers everyday, and bring in issues related to building and architecture and urbanism in their communities. And if you pick up a paper there is always something related to building and architecture. We don’t always think about the relationships, but they are there and they’re there on a daily basis. The course was organized around certain topics related to architecture and urban design, but I was really more interested in having the students open their eyes to what was around them. And, to really become aware, to become conscious of those relationships between architecture, the built environment, and social, political, economic issues.

TRACEE: Well Professor Kaplan, you have answered many questions here today about the relationship of architecture for the community, the city, and the relationship to the world which I think is very important too. What more is there?

MICHAEL: Yeah, so what I’m doing with the writing, is in effect doing the assignments that I assigned my students. I’m now doing them.

So I have to keep my eyes opened, and see what is going on, to read the papers, and then take some of those issues and develop them as articles, to try to make other people who may not be architects conscious of these relationships and the importance of them.

TRACEE: It is very important to understand what the issues are, specifically writing about architecture and what needs to be recognized, from a person such as yourself who would know –v- someone like a community planner, or developer in a small city who might not have the broad view of it all.

MICHAEL: What I’ve tried to do is use architecture as an engine for talking about some of these other things. So, the Column that I write, Buildings and Blocks, for the Knoxville Voice, is really talking about broader issues through the lens of architecture and urban design.

TRACEE: I think that is wonderful, we need to know all
of this as we’re growing in population.

MICHAEL: There is a fellow columnist Don Williams, who writes about politics but he writes about politics directly. I’m writing about politics indirectly through architecture.

TRACEE: Yes, I see, Michael, you are writing about the design of communities through architecture.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

TRACEE: That is more than valid, and a lot of young students and developers and city planners and individuals of the community, need to know all of this from someone who does have a broad overview, not only because your an architect, and not because where you have been, and not because you have taught at university levels, but all of that and because you’re from a larger city and you have seen far more that perhaps someone at the root of decision making in most cases.

We need to consult with experts in these minor decisions which become large community planning decisions and your background is very important.

MICHAEL: My experience and living abroad has really helped me do this. As one of my colleagues said, “You’re dealing with the whole hog.”

TRACEE: Well it seems, you comprehensively understand the whole hog.

MICHAEL: And I’ll quote him: “politics, development, transportation, aging, pollution, health, emptiness, settlement patterns, memory, history, landscapes, social life,

TRACEE: Do you have an extra copy of that?

MICHAEL: He might not want to be quoted.

TRACEE: I have a few more questions…Are there any great trends in small cities –v- say, NYC.


MICHAEL: Well, I would say that NYC is the oddity of the United States. Most cities are not like NYC. In NY, you don’t have to have a car to live. You can still not have a car in the city and that’s true of many European cities. In Knoxville, I can’t imagine not having a car, although there are people who do not have cars in Knoxville.

I know some people at work in the city that don’t have cars and take the bus, but I don’t think it is a choice issue, it is an affordability issue. That is the big difference. Now, NYC also sprawls.

TRACEE: That is right, I think.

MICHAEL: The government calls it a statistical area. Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), so it depends on how you define a city. There is a greater metropolitan area and it encompasses more than the legal boundaries of NYC. Just as in Knoxville the MSA encompasses more than the city. And I always think of Knoxville as a bigger entity rather that the legal area of the city alone. Most cities do sprawl. They have big centers, bigger centers in physical area than Knoxville’s.

TRACEE: Are you saying that the greatest differences in the cities, is that there is transportation in the larger cities that smaller cities usually don’t have? Among other trends in Knoxville, it’s that they drive more.

MICHAEL: I’ve always thought of Knoxville as fairly typical of a smaller city, our MSA population is about 500,000. and yeah, we don’t really have the developed transportation system, we don’t have much geographic size of our downtown. It’s a tiny, tiny downtown, very undeveloped compared to cities that are larger and even cities that are the same size.

TRACEE: Are you interested in alternatives in design as we progress as a society and as a culture? There are a lot of different ways to interpret that but I’d like to know what you think in terms of alternatives.

MICHAEL: I don’t think we are doing nearly as much as we could be in thinking and acting upon the future of a city like Knoxville. There has been very little thought - some, but not enough - about alternative transportation systems and increasing density and the talk has begun, yet, very little action towards increasing density and very little thought about how we as a society are going to change and change fairly quickly. Are we going to be carpooling?

TRACEE: Humm. The guild I belong to sometimes carpools for events Michael, but it doesn’t seem to be covering the problem.

MICHAEL: A lot of it is because we have sprawl. People tend to drive more and live far from where they work, far from where they shop, and all of that is predicated on fossil fuel, it’s built on energy as we know it rather than energy that will be…

TRACEE: Michael, you mean to say, we are using fuel that will run out rather that using fuels and other types of transit systems that we could be developing that will never run out, utilizing cost controls for our cities and our world and being environmentally smart. I see what you mean,… it seems senseless really when we already have the technology for rechargeable and solar vehicles, even electric rails for mass transit.

MICHAEL: Yes, so I write over and over again about “movement of people”, back and forth to where they shop, and the notion that you have to have a parent free with a vehicle to pick up kids at school everyday is, to my mind, an absurdity and an inefficiency that is astonishing.

TRACEE: I know what you mean, I grew up in a city where the buses were so valid and easy to use, and the buses traveled everywhere, and I lived in a suburb at that time.

MICHAEL: In New York City, I walked or biked to school - my high-school was a mile from my house. Or in really bad weather, I took the city bus. We had a bus pass.

TRACEE: Yes, I was from a city much like that.

MICHAEL: And in the end I think we wound up, most of us, my friends and I, walking. Because that was the easiest way to get there, so we walked a mile…

TRACEE: I too did that.

MICHAEL: Yeah! And we walked home a mile.
I don’t know what the statistics are in Knoxville, but I don’t see too many kids walking. There are some, you know. I live here in a close-in suburb…not far from a high-school and I do see kids walking.

TRACEE: Well, you have sidewalks.

MICHAEL: Some.

TRACEE: But not many areas in Knoxville have sidewalks to walk on and well, certainly the early development of the cities and suburbs in Knoxville did not foresee the sprawl and a whole communities needs as you have pointed out.

TRACEE: If you could point out one direction that young architects need to focus on to create great change in the world, Michael Kaplan, what would it be?

MICHAEL: The bigger question is, what should architectural education be today for the 21st century? Well the biggest problem that we have today is the incredible growth in population. And ultimately that will translate into every field including architecture. So we are going to have this explosion of numbers of people on the earth. Less so maybe in the United States than elsewhere. So we need to figure out how to house all of these people in an economic, efficient and comfortable way, and how to provide food for them.

MICHAEL: Those are two really big issues, and they are all interrelated because if we are going to take farm land and create “Mc Mansions” (excuse the term) but build large houses on large lots and use up our farm land, that doesn’t seem to be a logical way to go…
Now some people call that ”The American Dream”. You know, a house on a lot. I’ve always lived in apartments or close city dwellings.

TRACEE: As you get older, do people really want all of that, or do they really want something more manageable like a nice flat or a condominium with very small manageable gardens spaces. You certainly want something easier and closer to shopping markets and parks that you can walk in that is manageable in your old age/ don’t you?

MICHAEL: I don’t think that there is anything sacred about a house on a lot. What percentage of people in the world live in a house on a lot? I don’t know…
I know in the United States about a third of the population does not own their own house.
I don’t know how that compares to other countries. But my point is that there is nothing sacred about a house on a lot and human beings are very adaptable, and I think they do like to live in community.

TRACEE: I do undersand what you're saying. Living in a close or, closer dwellings and putting energy into building great communities makes people happier most often that not and is much nicer when a teenager as well as when you begin aging. You are so right...
Do you have a favorite city in the world Michael?

MICHAEL: I’m attached to the city I was born in and grew up in which is New York City, not that it is a perfect place but it’s nice to visit. I can take about a week of it. (Laughing….)

TRACEE: I was talking to someone from China yesterday, she doesn’t speak much English and I was trying to explain where California was in relationship to NYC, we got to NYC and it’s port, and she says, “Oh, I’ve been to NYC, it is very, very, busy and loud…”

MICHAEL: I don’t think of places as favorite or not, I don’t know why I don’t, but I never have. You know, I enjoy visiting … but it was fun going back to Boston after many years and hanging out in Cambridge. But I think more in terms of people and who I’m going to be surrounded with than I think of physical places. That is funny to say that as an architect…

TRACEE: But you’re an architect that thinks to develop communities.

MICHAEL: Well, we used a quote in our new folder for the latest set of View-Master reels; I chose the quote from, Ralph Erskine, so I have to believe it. It is almost a poem and I’ll read it to you.

TRACEE: Please do.

MICHAEL: “Architecture is the art around that which is useful, it is not first and foremost in emboldening buildings, it is emboldening people and their needs and out of people and their needs and their desires and there dreams comes the architecture.”

TRACEE: Thank you very much for all of your time and invaluable information on architecture and your vast experience in the world of it all, Michael Kaplan. There is much to be written in the field of architecture and we look forward to reading your articles in the Knoxville Voice.

I have enjoyed the time I have spent with you today and our conversation has reminded me that with all the problems of the world, the people of the United States still have much to be thankful for and even happy about, but we must remember to become active in what we believe is good for all of the world.

Thank you again for the interesting stories of your life and for sharing your wonderful insight into the world….

Art Education Designed to Change the Mind

@TRACEE AND COMPANY / Take a look at one, of over 1000 programs created by Tracee and Company under the title, "smArt" Programs. "smArt" are all apart of the LECTURE-INTERACTIVE for CHILDREN which can be found at Tracee and Company and the 1000 programs have been developed over the years for many organizations. "smArt"programs have facilitated change for students in many ways with great results. Promoting individualizm, focus, improvement of computative skills, comprehention, self awareness, and much more...
It is truly an Art Education Designed to Change the Mind.
"CAN BEETHOVEN HEAR COLOUR" developed by www.traceeandcompany.com/ Silent POD-CAST in the Link Directly Below/ no sound:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Design.World.One/CanBeetovanHearColour#slideshow


I hope you enjoy your lesson at Tracee and Company as much
as artist, Tracee Pickett enjoys
creating fine arts programs that
change the perception and the
interest levels of students as we develop our skills / focus / and
self-awareness along the way.
Find out more about the arts
@ www.traceeandcompany.com/
and be apart of it!

“Beyond the Engineering Mind”
Interview with Katie Vandergriff: who is an engineer/Smithsonian Award Winning artist photographer / wife and mother of three. Katie is extraordinarily accomplished and has a brilliant mind for change. Katie Vandergriff worked for Oak Ridge National Laboratory as an Engineer and has owned several business. One in Engineering and one in Photography. As an Artist she has exhibited works of photography at major museums and is a wife and a mother of three beautiful children.

Tracee: First of all Katie,
Would you tell me about your life as an engineer …

Katie: I have been an engineer for 17 year and my focus is in mechanical engineering, specializing in robotics.

Tracee: What importance has engineering played in your life…

Katie: The importance of the training in engineering was teaching me how to think logically as it helped me to work through difficult challenges.

Tracee: How much schooling did it take for you to become an engineer…

Katie: Four years of school taught me to become an engineer however you can school for up to eight years.

Tracee: You are also an accomplished and wonderfully talented photographer and I’d like to know more about what in the photography world if anything, has made any of your life more complete…
Katie: A lot of people talk about left brain right brain activity. The thing I have found is that the left brain and right brain work together, and the skill of visualizing something that could be there before you take a picture, or before you set up your shot, is creative, and the technical aspect of composing the photograph together, are both left and right brained. It's wonderful to capture a moment in time before it’s forgotten and being able to use both sides of the brain allows me to see my life as both a participant and a viewer.
Does that sound strange?

Tracee: No, not at all. As a matter of fact there is a movement known as “fluxes”, (who, artist, Yoko Ono, is involved with) that I was introduced to, and it is just that. It is, to create, and to be a participant as you are creating.

Katie Vandergriff: The moment that allows you to use your left, and right side of your brain, in a creative way with photography brings joy in life. One day I had a photographer friend taking pictures of me, when my children were very young and well, the baby had just made a big mess while the picture was snapped, and the friend of mine said, “guess we’ll use a soft focus filter on this.” Katie- “we both laughed.”

Tracee: What is your favorite subject in photography…

Katie: Children! And people. I like this subject matter so much because children change so much and you can record the transition as the photo captures the internal and external. Children change from day to day and from year to year and the transition in that person is so great. Often the change in children is energetic and inspirational as they grow.

Tracee: Is there any point in time that photography has made you feel great about your life…


Katie: Weddings are another area that brings me joy because it is that day where everyone is happy and they look extraordinary and often times the surroundings are beautiful and you can bring that beautiful moment to life forever in a photograph.
There are other times on mission trips that I can take a photograph that tells a story and that can create change.
It is that very special moment in time that you can freeze for a life time.

Tracee: Are there any times that you feel a relationship in your engineering abilities and your photography…

Katie: Yes, it is in teaching children. I teach a children’s photography class and I love to teach them to go after what they want to shoot. You just give them the equipment and show them how to use the it, and let them go after what their eyes and their mind sees. Teaching children photography is wonderful because they shoot the most wonderfully fresh subjects.”

Tracee: Are there any times that either your engineering ability or your creative ability fill a certain need in your life…

Katie: That happens because I can visualize things that are not yet present. Weird huh! It sounds strange even to me because, I have found that not everyone has the ability to see things that can be. I go after that in engineering and the creative ability allows me to expand an idea. In engineering there is a right answer and a wrong answer. In the creative process it is totally different- and that is where the two diverge. Without the creative process, the technical process would not exist because the idea is creative first and with the technical process, change takes place. Someone, I forget who, said, “if you’re not making progress your not moving forward.”

Tracee: Okay, now about being a mom… any opening comments about the changes in your life since you have had three children and have home schooled them…

Katie: It’s funny you asked me that question. Our generation has been brought up to think that we can have it all. And we can have it all but not all at the same time. It is hard to have a full career, and a complete family life, and be a wife, and have time for your self because if you try and do that the quality of your life diminishes. There is no time to give all of that your all. You can not give 100% to your children, 100% to your husband, and 100% to your career. The math for that is not possible.

Tracee: That is a very valid point in today’s world as a woman and as a mother as well as being a parent.

Katie: You have to make choices as to what is the most important to you. I gave my career and my family life 5 years together, but I had to make a choice as to what I wanted to give quality to.
I had fun in my career, I made accomplishment and gained knowledge, and then became a full-time mother, and I’m happy with that.
I cherish every moment.

Tracee: Do you ever feel like your other abilities in the engineering field or creative field have either faded or sharpened…

Katie: I feel that I have become a lot more creative. There is nothing more amazing to me than seeing the light in a child’s face when they are discovering something creative, my point of inspiration has changed and I’m thankful of that.

Tracee: Well, I know from talking to you before that you are truly a great leader in the education field with the way that you have educated your children…is there anything you would do differently…

Katie: I began home schooling four years ago and it is the best decision that our family has ever made.

Tracee: After getting to know your children, I’d say that being an active mom in home schooling, you have made the right decision and you have made an amazing difference in your children’s upbringing as they are wonderful and bright children.

Tracee: After speaking with others on the subject of being a mom and having had a substantial career, do you have anything you’d like to comment on, about how different it is to have a home life –v- a 9-5 office life…

Katie: Well, I never thought that I’d be driving home with a car load of loose chickens scrambling around the back of my SUV. After a 4-H family day, I was transporting chickens and the chickens were everywhere. It wasn’t that long ago that I was meeting with presidents of companies and even generals at the Pentagon in my business dress clothes. I never dreamed I would have been driving around country roads with chickens all over the place and having the time of my life.

Tracee: In your career life you have traveled substantially and you've lived all over the globe, do you think that you have influenced any young minds for the better in sharing your experience…

Katie: You never really know if you have influenced any one really. Though teaching/volunteering, I hope to make a difference.
It really is difficult to measure but I hope to.

Tracee: Do you have any thing you’d like to say in making more changes be it through you or your future engagements as your children get older or through other people that can make changes in a special interest area that you might wish for….

Katie: Something you realize as you age or grow into motherhood is that it is not all about you. It is about realizing, on a much larger level, that making changes in your community and making contributions in the world is more important.

Katie: There are people in the world that think there are children who will never have anything to give, or that there are certain children that cannot contribute anything. Because of the training and experience that I’ve had, not only as an engineer or photography instructor to children, but as a mother and a home school instructor, I know or feel that I can help to bring out something that they have to contribute.

Tracee: I want to say that this has been a lovely afternoon and thank you very much for your time Katie Vandergriff.

Katie: Thank you so much and I feel honored to be included in your Design World One interview.

Tracee: Thank you again Katie for sharing your afternoon with us and I was thrilled with the interview.