Vāstu Voyages: Reflections of an Aspiring Architect: 20150703

My internship with Jonathan Lipman, AIA has officially begun. My journey toward becoming an architect is now underway.

Today, Jon and I met at the building site of his future home. It is quite a treat that the builders are in the process of erecting it because I was able to accompany him through the construction site as he outlined much of what makes up the foundations of how one designs and builds a structure. This great primer for structural engineering was a glimpse into the standards, accepted procedures, and best practices one should mind when endeavoring to design a building.

We began on the ground level floor, which at the time was only plywood. Jon began with some of the basics of building a home in America, such as how pretty much every structure uses wood as its frame these days. We talked back and forth as he gave some contextual information and introduced me to his builders who were busy working, then pointed out some of the details that made the construction of his house a bit unique. He was using double-studded walls, which at first I thought this were somehow for more reinforcement, but it turned out that this allows for much more insulation than a typical single-studded one. Much of what followed were little details about how Vāstu in particular favored natural building materials and thick, well-insulated walls, such as minimizing the amount of wood in the frame to allow for more insulation.

We covered many more structural aspects of the house quite rapidly; it being the first day, I was soaking in a lot on the broader level as opposed to a lot of details. I think (or at least I hope) both Jon and I understood that a lot of these details were contributing to a larger wholeness of just how many particulars there are in building a home. If I took away one lasting impression from the morning, it was that the whole truly is larger than the sum of its parts.