Corey Gracie-Griffin

Architecture is often celebrated for how it looks or is visually experienced, like a sculpture. Herman Hertzberger reminds us of all the ways in which architecture should focus on the people who use the spaces and places that architects, landscape architects, and planners design. Hertzberger also demonstrates how architecture can and should change over time as people make small (and large) transformations to their surroundings. One of the most sustainable actions an architect can take is encouraging their clients to reuse an existing building over building a new a one, but the next best action is to design new buildings for future uses not yet anticipated. Herztberger provides lessons in this book for how to do both.I read this book the summer before I started graduate school, and in my teaching, I continue to emphasize the importance of designing architecture that is generous, that offers choices and provides multiple opportunities for people to inhabit and transform a space, be it an apartment in an affordable housing complex or a library. We need resilient, adaptable buildings that can meet the changing needs and challenges facing society, and this book started me on the path for how to do that. I didn't know it at the time, but this book also planted a seed that teaching values like these to others would be how I could have the greatest impact with my career.