Building a house, I learned, requires an architect. Actually, I figured that one out all by my self. But after that realization, I plunged again into ignorance. How does one go around selecting an architect? It is harder than you would think. Especially if the house you want to construct is in a foriegn country.

Ari Stonehill, my financial advisor, gave me a refferal. Not, necessarily, a recommendation, but someone who would be willing to act as a first resource in my search. I learned I like architects. They respect thier role as techinicians and artists. I feel they would all prefer to build somethign beautiful and novel, but they are not free to do that with thieir clients money, so thier job is to translate dreams, visions, into 3 dimensions with bathrooms, electrical hookups, and all the boring practical deatils like insulation and setbacks.

I learned that someone needs to take PageMaker away from architectural firms. Architect web pages are terrible. They tend to be self indulgent, non-sensical, and convoluted. Seriously, here I am, a potential client, and I could not even, on some occasions, figure out that the website was indeed that of an architet. No blase, common terms like, say, "architect" denigrated thier web pages. They did not clutter the space with descriptions of anything gauche like houses. No, I learned about missions, and approaches and interconnections.

Look, I practice Zen. I like me some esoteric, contradictory, introspection. But I am shopping for a service here, and the web sites could just make you naseous.

for example, this comes from the website of an architect in which I was genuinely interested:

"Our office occupies a ground level storefront. The windows are a transparent filter between our interior work-space and exterior public-space.As the traditional storefront presents that narrow reach where the passerby is invited to shop but not obliged to buy, The [] storefront similarly exhibits ideas and materials to be glimpsed and perused, but not necessarily taken as conclusive or final.And in the same way storefronts continually transform, the SsSTOREFRONT presents a varied scene of manifestos, theories, or musings.Analagous to our physical storefront, this web version documents, augments, or presents alternatives to the actual one."

are you kidding me?

a transparent filter? I was a poli sci major but even I would have dificulty employing this much BS in a single paragraph without serous counseling.

Where was I? Ahh yes.

I looked at hundreds of websites. Naomi, a friend of an associate of mine, is an architect. She is also a crack up. She was, like I discovered a lot of architects to be, very excited about design, and very honest. She knew she could not tackle my projec,t but gave me good and blunt advice about looking for an architect for the project.

She recommeded that I try a larger NY firm which might have offices in CR. She gave me some names. She recommended that I get an idea of what I wante to build. She told me that she had had people apprach ehr firm looking for a cape style house, when it was clear, from a 10 second purusal of the portfolio, that Cape Style is not what they did. There is a disconnect. Like hair dressing, architexts spend all day designing, and thinking of design, but the average person does not employ their services enough, and the cost is high enough, that they are uneducuated in the possibilities and wary about a bad experiment.

I spent a lot of time pulling images. I waited for responses from some big NY firms, and I thought about my position. I decided that it made sense to choose a Costa Rican Architect. A CR architect, I reasoned, would know what builidng materials were available, what unique construction challenges would be faced, be in a position to build a house that refected the lang, its traditions and its special characteristics. I did not want to slap a victorian home down in Costa Rica. I wanted the bulding to refelct CR traditional architecture.

Oh yes, and I also love post modern architecture.

Its a dirty secret. One I have kept in the closet for years. But this project is my big coming out party.

Thats right, I prefer the Government ceter in Boston to the state house. I like IM pei's contributions to the Louvre. I like Falling Water, the Moscone center, and I am no ashamed. not anymore.

Its not that I do no like victorian homes. or colonian architecture. or Classical, Barouque or any other movements. I dont like neo-victorian. Neo-colonial. neo-greek, etc... Let it die, evolve, make new things. I reached this conclusion while living in Paris. They boldly blended glass a steel with even the historial buildings. It was alive. And I wanted one.