studioTEN architects

A PATH OF DISCOVERY

We view architecture as an endeavor of discovery and exploration. It is a journey that explores the present as well as latent meanings in a site, a client, and a culture. We believe these meanings are both factual and mythical, and that they can reveal the very underpinnings of human habitation relative to the specifics of a given site. While buildings facilitate our day-to-day needs, we believe that they can facilitate an interpretive sense of wonder. If viewed as more than a simple container, architecture has the power to act as a mediator between ourselves and the world around us. It can provide a medium to underpin our understanding of the communities we live in and the places we call home.

The path of discovery is not so much a process as it is a framework for seeking a resonance, a balance, between human habitation and the spirit of place. We believe that a building has a spiritual as well as intellectual life that exists within the contact of a specific culture, community and geographic location. We believe that this ‘life’ is more than the ordering of the human body in space and the recording of it’s motions through a defined list of rooms; we believe that it is also a collection of experiences that root a person to a place, and that can provide a foundation for personal meaning and inspiration.

This ‘rootedness’ of place creates possibilities of encounter and experience that facilitate memories for a building’s inhabitants. We believe these memories are what endear a place to us. We believe that it is this endearment, this experience of encounter and discovery, which defines the true power of architecture to affect a person’s life beyond the necessity of use. It enables architecture to become somewhat of a window, a way for us to recapture the child-like sense of ‘threshold’, and the ability for our built efforts to not only trace our past, but to reveal understandings of our possible futures.

Architecture by nature is an invasive act that disrupts the landscape. We believe there exists a responsibility, a stewardship, to offset this act by leaving more than we took. This disruption offers the opportunity for architecture to act as an agent for the physical and conceptual reconstructions of the landscape it has disrupted, and in doing so, to establish a reciprocal relationship that opens new understandings of the site. This approach views the relationship between architecture and landscape as mediation rather than exploitation. It is not an apology, but rather a charged morphosis.

Architecture is, in the end, a balancing act between use and experience. To ignore the specific needs of use and occupation would be the abnegation of a responsibility, but to ignore the inner world of content and experience is to leave the essential power of architecture unexplored.

A wide range of experience allows one to move through this discovery process from an advance starting point. We see this as a kind of freedom – a freedom that purchases our design teams and clients the ability to concentrate on progression rather than entrenchment.

But it all folds into a basic belief that ‘the end depends on the beginning’. We hope that the enclosed portfolio reveals what we consider to be a distinguishing mark, namely, that the work begins at a point a bit beyond what is typically expected, and that architecture is a personal passion for us and for those working with us. It is within these bounds that we believe we as architects are responsible to practice our craft, and it is beyond these bounds that we are able to replenish ourselves, both practically and spiritually, with each project.

1327 N. Cascade Avenue Colorado Springs, CO 80903 719.578.5799 info@studiotenarchitects.com Copyright 2007