If there is any religion to architecture, it lies in the distinction between inside and outside.
The grounding principle, first and foremost, is that there is such a distinction, and that the distinction is meaningful.
A dry bit of feathered wing on the mantle is a natural history specimen, a memento mori; if flies discover it and spawn larvae there, we aren't merely concerned about disease: our sense of sanctity is violated. Our home, our inside, is sacred. The distinction is psychically powerful and generative.
The wildness lives outdoors, and we close ourselves in as we close it out. We establish a selectively permeable membrane between us and them: windows flood us with light and view, seep breeze and sound; doors provide for our passage and restraint. Thresholds and sills are meaningful, interstitial spaces.
As a boy in Alaska, I watched helplessly as the woods I explored morphed into plastic houses ringing cul-de-sacs. As a young adult, I was angry at the built world, and the people that made it happen. As an innately creative person, this was a troubling time of cognitive dissonance for me.
I began my university studies with my interest studying the natural world divided (quite artificially in retrospect) between scientific studies in biology and an artistic representation of it all as run through my own wet circuitry.
I spent many years in and out of school trying to get it sorted. I finally realized that the most satisfying solution for my engagement with the world around me was to actively participate in its design.
I hold a Bachelor of Science in Biology (1999) and a Master of Architecture (2003), both from University of Oregon, and am a licensed architect in the state of Washington (2009).
My professional experience has been entirely within the subdiscipline of residential architecture, as practiced in several small firms, in design-build, and in construction. I initially pursued this scale and type of architecture because I wanted to be able to wrap my head around the whole thing, start to finish; I am continually reminded of what a fine choice that was. I have been delighted to learn how much I enjoy designing directly with clients, consultants, and contractors over the course of a project.
The envelope reflects massing and meaning and structure, climate and program, aesthetics and desire. It is skin; critical and complex. In order to refine the nature and scope of my scholarship and research interests, I read back through several years of notebooks, sifting for pertinent inquiry admixed with the illegible rubble of daily life and hastily sketched ideas. Here is what I have found.
My most consistently interesting questions are all derived from this reduction: What is The Best Way to Separate the Inside from the Outside? I come to this by way of multiple, brief inquiries into the various assemblies which make up the envelope, in terms of structure, insulation, and air and moisture control, especially in regards to their durability and energy efficiency (including embodied energy and constructability). Further, I am interested in the relationship of currently employed technologies to those we have abandoned: I am interested in the history and evolution of these assemblies. I want to know if what we hold to be improvements in envelope technology actually are, most especially in light of our 21st-century awareness about our finite and diminishing natural resources.
Link to CV: John David McEwen Arnold, Architect AIA