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Kyra Straussman
Why I Do This |
| Eight years or so ago, I read Jim Kunstler's Home from Nowhere. I think I got to page ten of his love letter/rant about the state of the built environment when I realized that I'd stumbled into my next career. It's hard to say what I thought I was going to do exactly. That is, how a living was to be made being crushingly disappointed in the American landscape. I suppose I resolved it by noticing that as much as I was AGAINST the WalMartization of the public realm I was really FOR something more powerful. The intact, historic urban grid of this city, and frankly any city over 100 years old, is a school girl crush that does not die, that criss cross of time space people energy and rhythm that makes a city a city. I never get bored with it. It's what drives me, and the clients, one way or another, they get that.
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We've been building disposable buildings for over two generations in America. This is not an era, sadly, where we are any good at challenging ourselves to craft what we make with care and consideration. Once upon a time, and not my time either, even ordinary objects could be conceived of as possessing grace. Whatever you labored to make, you gave a chance to be beautiful. When we talk about reuse of old buildings at the Cool Space Locator, it's really this chance we offer to clients to reacquaint themselves with the functionality of that which was crafted to be beautiful, to be singular, to be around awhile. I think it improves your state of mind to work in such a place. It helps you be more creative.
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