Estes, Sanders & Williams
While meeting the basic programmatic and spatial needs of a group of attorneys and struggling with preconception of thought and approach to design, the opportunity was taken to visually show that the use and layered complexities of the line can dissect our cultural predisposition of form. We are addicted to that which new urbanism offers, a retelling of a storied past, promising something that cannot truly be acquired by material things. For we all solve issues of site, code, sustainability, and the forces of nature, but to challenge that which weakens us all, the preconception, became our focus.
Is it possible for traditional and modern approaches to interact positively within the same structure? Reflecting the past and pointing to the future, this structure speaks to the parody between these two approaches in a beautiful dance where neither side is compromised. The formal colonnade, pulls away from the building, leading to the entrance courtyard, visually bridging the two specimens. The columns, with their deafening rhythm, set the parameters on which all the exterior openings are placed. Ornamental lines comfort. They provide status in our region. Regardless of anything else sacred, they monumentalize the weakened pedestal on which we will not let go, exposing the true folly of our preconception of form.
Educating those in our community through example, that the power of the line and form is made clear by refining them into their raw elements is the triumph of the building, moving into its true vernacular. It dissolves the preconceptions held by so many and points to a uniqueness all its own.