Architecture is not for selected few but EVERYONE.
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Category: Built

Stevens Addition (Tacoma, WA, USA, AIA Seattle 2014 Award of Honor Winner)

The Stevens are an active couple in their 70s who appreciate good architecture and design.  The husband was a chemistry professor who became a ceramic artist and the wife is a physician assistant involved in medical research. In the early 1970s they commissioned a prominent woman architect in Washington to design their house.  The house […]

Chinese Tomb (Central Java, Indonesia)

The Chinese does not only view a tomb only as a burial place to commemorate those who have passed away but also a place to gather with family members along with the departed.  It is a place to pay respect, eat together, and talk to strengthen family ties.  That is why this tomb is placed […]

Suburban House (Puyallup, Washington State, USA)

The project started as an ambition of a young architect trying to fulfill his dream to design and build his own house with a very limited budget.  The project became possible with the idea of splitting his property where his family lived and building a new house in the back accessed from the side road.  […]

Playhouse II

This playhouse is intended to teach children our mother nature.  Water, earth and sky are the components of mother nature to be explored within the structure. Water is located on the ground floor as clear acrylic or polycarbonate pool.  Above it is earth in the form of sand box.  Again, acrylic or polycarbonate materials for […]

Promotion and Cultural Center (Houston, Texas, USA)

This project is approximately 4,000 SF of  permanent exhibition space in Indonesian consulate building in Houston, TX. The exhibition space is dedicated to show the richness of Indonesian culture and natural resources. Indonesia is a very diverse and complex country.  It cannot be described or understood by its diversity but by what holds the country […]

Floating Wood Dinner Table

The intention is to create intriguing, ambiguous and cheap dinner table. The table is made out of ready-to-use 4” x 4” x 4’-0” wood block and steel rods.  No cutting, finishing or special joints needed.  The wood block is drilled to receive spaced evenly steel rods legs in a diagonal pattern.  This allows an illusion […]

Tenggarong Theological Seminary Dormitory (Tenggarong, Borneo, Indonesia)

This project is intended to house a minimum of 12 dorm rooms for two students in each room. The size of the building is limited to the budget they had at the moment which is approximately $ 50,000. The building should also fit with local culture and climate. The site was not determined yet, but […]

The Just Happened Table

This table design is to pay respect to the world-renown architect, Frank Gehry, who said that building under construction is beautiful with its open wood studs and framing before it goes down hill aesthetically after being wrapped with finishes as the building construction completes. The idea of the table is to capture this notion combined […]

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News

Architecture for Everyone is part of BCRA Design and Korsmo Construction Design-Build team to deliver the Lowell Elementary School replacement for Tacoma Public Schools.

Ko Wibowo presented Texture Materials for Children at Design for Early Learning Conference in Tacoma, Washington State on Monday, January 22, 2024.

Architecture for Everyone and Johnston Architects began designing the Sumner Library for the Pierce County Library System.

Architecture for Everyone was selected as one of the on-call architects for Seattle Colleges.

Architecture for Everyone was selected as one of four architects for the Child Care Capacity Initiative in Pierce County, Washington State.

Sibert Remodel is currently under construction and nearing completion.

Architecture for Everyone is part of TCF Architecture and Skanska Design-Build team to deliver Bryant Montessori School replacement for Tacoma Public Schools. Ground breaking ceremony was May 10, 2023.

Western Washington University Salish Sea Studio at Fairhaven College is now substantially completed. WWU will install acoustical treatments with the projected opening in May 2024.

Thoughts

Architecture is not for selected few but EVERYONE.  The upper 1% can buy with their wealth, the bottom 5% are taken care of by the government.  The challenge for each architect is to also serve the middle from the bottom 5% to the upper 1%.  That is social justice in architecture.
If Disneyland is to Apple Macintosh in its integrated design, Las Vegas is to IBM PC in its open-source method.  But both employ Robert Venturi’s “ugly and ordinary” design approach.
Creativity is to solve design problems, not to creatively force the realization of a heroic design ideal.
We expect our buildings to be flexible and adaptable but fail to recognize that we, humans, are the most adaptable creature. Architecture is heavy and static and, therefore, shall not be expected to be able to be changed too much without significant intervention.
London is historic, Paris is grand, and Basel is organized.
Recent protests on issues of race and inequalities were staged in public spaces: our streets, parks, plazas, bordered by our buildings. While tolerance is built by understanding each other through listening to others, done as individual human beings, the result is a democracy that takes place in public spaces.  Our behavior in these spaces defines how successful democracy will be.  Thus, the design and quality of these spaces, undoubtedly, influence our behavior.  We learned about listening from Slim’s Table by Mitchell Duneier.  We learned how we instinctively behave on the street when faced with a perceived danger in Street Etiquette and Street Wisdom by Elijah Anderson. We learned how buildings can contribute negatively to our streets in Fortress L.A. by Mike Davis. We learned how we can collectively contribute to segregation in Community Becomes Uncivilized by Richard Sennett. We learned how we prepare and deal with potential negative experiences on our streets in The Uses of Sidewalk by Jane Jacobs. Now it is time we care about our public spaces and apply what we have learned to design these spaces so democracy can flourish and spread out.
Between three east Asian traditional architecture of China, Korea, and Japan, the most ornate and decorative is Chinese, followed by Korea and Japan being the least. That is why Japanese architecture can accept and adopt the idea of modernism well, especially minimalism.
The greatest gift architects can give our clients is the added value of their design while they live in and the increased property value when they sell. The increased property value would be much more than the assessed value and beyond the fee they paid for. This could be one of the ways to close the wealth gap.

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