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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23524249

This IS Architecture: an understanding of built beauty

If you were to travel through someone's life and pull out examples of beauty and the built environment, many of their ideas of beauty would greatly contrast and yet complement your own. This is from our own past experiences; experiences that shape our personal understanding of beauty, and only through these intimate experiences that one can claim that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

          Where One Grows Up and Lives

If one was to look into my past, they would find a trail of events in life that impacts the way I design. I, like other designers, draw on my past experiences to design starting ultimately with where I grew up. I was born into a middle class family in the hills and countryside of Southern Indiana. I grew up fairly secluded from other neighbors from the trees and plants at full bloom in the summer, and only seeing your neighbors in late fall and winter when the trees are bare. Not far from my family's property, one finds a much lighter, yet repetitive landscape of corn and soybean fields. It is these earliest experiences of playing in nature, discovering coves, caves, trees, plants, animals, and landscapes that I draw most of my design ideas. The complex geometry of forests, the relativity of spacial constraints, and the likeness and success of plants and animals living in close proximity to other environmental aspects all responds to the other in a living network. To accomplish the living network in my designs would be my grandest and most desired design idea for the built environment.

To live is to experience life to the fullest; only regretting not having time to explore every desire. I truly believe this in the aspect of designing in the built environment where one will always find new opportunities and experiences within a space, yet being drawn back into an environment for more experiences. I believe that like nature, the built environment is not only ever changing but ever-evolving. So, why can't buildings be the same way? Drawing on my experiences backpacking, camping, hiking, and living in the outdoors from the Boy Scouts of America; I hope to create more naturalistic built experiences that brings nature and biophilic design back into our everyday environment. I only hope to teach others about the natural beauty of the world and it's landscapes through architecture and the built environment.

          Obsessions from My Life Experiences

One of the most influential thing in a designer's life and what they perceive as beauty comes from personal obsessions. Leonardo da Vinci was known to obsess over understanding the physics of the human body. Some of the best medical artwork for early medical journals and research came from da Vinci and his obsessions of the body. I myself have my own obsessions that greatly influence my own personal work and how I perceive beauty.

Water – my first and most forward obsession. Water is the basic building block of life, without it, none of us could survive. Water has principles that are defined, yet remains elusive to most until their senses encounter the substance. Water and its properties of sound, movement, and feeling within a space is what will help draw me to architectural achievements. As people come into contact with water, their mood lightens showing the playfulness people associate with water.

Human Body – like da Vinci, I have a personal obsession with the shape, definition, contour, feeling, and pigmentation of the human body. Ultimately, the human body is to reflect nature, so the perspectives on sizes and interactions of and within spaces is relevant to the occupant. This also extends to the abilities of disabilities and the different ways one can move in and around environments for interaction.