An Interview with Gregory Splinter, Architect
Gregory Splinter is an architect with a unique and contemplative approach to the art of design. While studying Architecture and Urban Design under Charles W. Moore at the University of Texas in Austin, Gregory began to explore ways to integrate his personal beliefs and spiritual practices with the design process.
“I’d always felt that the spiritual side of myself was something that was important to me; I’d grown up Catholic, and I’m still a practicing Catholic. I’ve always felt there was real value in integrating one’s faith life with one’s work life, especially in the arts or architecture. I thought, if I want to design architecture that invigorates people’s sublime sensitivity--which is a spiritual thing--wouldn’t it make sense to use a spiritual process to create that architecture?”
While working on his thesis, entitled Design through Contemplation, Gregory's primary influences were the writings of Thomas Merton and a class in Creation Breakthrough at Mundelein (now Loyola) University in Chicago. The program was founded by Matthew Fox and enabled him to develop further his interest in integrating spiritual practice and his work.
“We were doing some very cool and creative things out of a very prayerful environment, a prayerful experience. So it wasn’t a huge leap to say, ‘What if I did this process with another creative enterprise, called architecture?’ And it just evolved from there.”
In 1998, after almost 20 years of teaching and practicing architecture, Gregory and his wife Diane founded their own firm, Splinter Associates.
Carrie Bergman, CMind's webmaster, phoned Gregory in late June to discuss his work; he spoke from his studio in Wisconsin.
Could you describe your creative process and how you create the contemplation drawings?
The process is that after meeting with the clients, when the timing is right, I do a 20 minute silent contemplation--contemplative prayer essentially--and right after that I go to the paper. With the majority of these I use watercolor paper, watercolor pen brushes and sometimes watercolor [paints]. Mostly watercolor pen brushes. After the 20 minute contemplation, I go to the paper, and with the intention of fulfilling what’s required, in the spirit of what’s needed for my clients, I begin the contemplation drawing. It is coming out of this nothingness, and not my biases or my own prejudices or what I want to rationally put on that paper.
I think that a key to the process is that when you’re doing it, there’s an internal tension, that at one point you’ll think, “Well, I think that should be more, or bigger, or three,” but after reflection, “well, this is how I feel.”
You want to place your feeling on the paper, even though you don’t understand it.
Even though the rational part of your mind is telling you to do something else, you want to try to just go with your feeling about it?
Right, during the drawing, just go with your feeling about it. As wonderful as the rational mind is, I’m saying, “I give you 23.5 hours a day; can you just calm down for 20 minutes and leave me alone? You (the rational mind) have your chance almost all the time!”
One project that we just finished construction drawings for, they gave me a Victorian plan from 1892, and said, “Can you give us this plan but put bathrooms in there. We love this house!” I took the Victorian plan and I put bathrooms in it, and they liked it, but without them knowing about it, I also did a contemplative drawing. And then I looked at the contemplative drawing, and from that emerged another floor plan.
One thing that was really good about the plan that they brought in was that it really cut to the chase. It told me exactly how big of a house they wanted--they wanted to use it as a country inn bed and breakfast--and it gave me the number of bedrooms, how much square footage, and how many floors; it really was very helpful. So, then taking all that – and this is a good example of how the process comes into being -- after taking all that rational information and getting to know the client, then I do a contemplative drawing.
I let that sit for a few days, and then I start taking a look at it, and some schemes start to emerge. Some ideas that may or may not have come to me without having done the contemplative drawing seem to starting a making a lot of sense. And at that point, then I take the contemplative drawing and rationally emerge the forms, and the rooms, and the experience of the building, to what I think the contemplative drawing is meaning to say.
So, I let that be a guide of sorts, and let the drawing take the lead in how the building is designed. And one of the real beauties about the methodology is that you find yourself just getting out of its way. And letting it be what it wants to be, rather than imposing my own prejudices, biases and all of that, on what I personally think that it should be. It’s weird; it’s a paradox, where I am the architect of it, and yet the process seems to be one of just letting it emerge itself. And the paradox is that with this kind of methodology, I’m able to express myself in deeper ways and find a solution that’s better for the client than what they would have had without the process.
It looks like the new floor plan is based around these tilted squares – and I can see those shapes in the contemplation drawing. Was that based around the original plan that they brought you, or did that evolve from the contemplation drawing?
That is actually one of the primary things that emerged. It wasn’t part of the Victorian plan. After the contemplative drawing, what became apparent was that we had these two square pieces turned 45 degrees, and from the center it formed two other v-shaped rooms: one being the dining room and the other a guest bedroom with a fire in the middle. So it had some symbiology attached to it. In the middle was the fire, was the hearth, was the center, it has a maternal presence to it. And we had these two other squares on the ends of the building. And it popped into my head, well doesn’t that make sense, because if I were owning a bed and breakfast, if I had to live with strangers all the time…wouldn’t it be nice if I had a sort of psychological difference in my own habitat, so that psychologically it’s separate, but certainly part of the same house. And that’s really what happened. The square to the right that you see on the first floor is the working kitchen, and it’s pretty much off-limits, there are sliding doors so you can get in there if you wanted too, but it can be closed off. And upstairs is their suite. So there is this definite difference in how the plan is used so that they have a sense that they have their own house within the house.
A lot of the elements that come up seem very inventive, like the tilted squares in the Victorian plan, or the straw bale house in Palos Hills which has the triangular shape going through it. That’s another element that arose through the contemplation drawing?
Absolutely. In the best sense, there should be surprises in the emergence of these plans. Like, “Oh, cool!” There should always be an “oh, cool!” in there somewhere, at least one! And this was another one. When I took a look at this, I really had to sit on this one for a couple of days, and I came back to it and thought, “if I look at this drawing like it’s a triangle, then what happens?” So when I started looking at it like a triangle, i saw a room over there, a center space here--just getting out of the way and letting it design itself.
It was designed for a woman with special needs who was being cared for by her mom and her aunt, who needed full-time care. She was prone to seizure, and they would have to find her if they couldn’t see her. So it was mandated that it had to be a ranch design, single floor. And [with this design], instead of trying to find her daughter, all the mom needed to do was go back to the kitchen, the center point, and she could look into the vast majority of the house all at one time.
I don’t think I would have thought of that consciously. So, with the contemplative drawing, the plan emerged according to the needs of the client, not just an architect’s ego.
So when you look at the contemplative drawings, is there any kind of shorthand or language that’s developed, in how you draw them or how you interpret them? Or does it stay unique to each project?
Every one is always unique, as every project is unique, and every person is unique. And every place is unique. But there’s some symbiology that seems to hold through, though I try not to think about it too much as I’m doing the contemplative drawings, because it really needs to come out of the nothingness rather then the somethingness, the consciousness. But the symbiology I attach to it as I’m looking at it later on, many times green is landscape, grass, so forth; blue is often a relationship to water in some way; sometimes expressive strokes of yellow are views outward or views inward; and sometimes I come up with some floor patterns. If the contemplative drawings are architectonic, meaning that there’s geometry explicit in them, we’ll make that a floor pattern, or maybe take it on in some poetic expression, or perhaps some detailing. So it’s very multi-scaled, and varied, what the drawings are interpreted as.
Do you ever make a second contemplation drawing, if the first one doesn’t feel right?
No, I only do one, and I don’t do it again. But when I start rationalizing it into the architecture, I step away from it …I need to step away from it, get away from it, and then I look at it another day, or two days, or three days later, and hopefully see it with fresh eyes.
Is this technique something that other people could adapt for their own purposes?
Yes, definitely. This contemplative design process, by its very nature, lends itself easily to holistic and sustainable design. You naturally begin to think about how the design will affect yourself, the community, and the environment. It is surely applicable to other professions and practices. Again, one of the paradoxes is that a methodology such as this helps designers, or, if we just talk about architecture for right now, helps architects be more themselves. It helps access their inner self, their inner gifts, as intended for a client. It just helps you be your fullest sense of who you are, rather than a stamped print of what somebody thinks you should be.
Gregory Splinter will be presenting "Designing Architecture Through Contemplation" at Thomas Merton and Moral Reflection in the Professions, a conference at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY, March 10-11, 2006.
For more information on Gregory Splinter's work, visit the Splinter Associates website.