A few months ago, one of my old professors from architecture school -- Phu Hoang -- reached out to me through this blog. That's one of the benefits of writing publicly -- it becomes your calling card. In this case, it had been at least 16 years since I was in his design studio.

We connected over a call. He told me about his and Rachely's firm, MODU Architecture. And he let me know that he's no longer teaching at Penn. He is now the Head of Architecture of the Knowlton School at Ohio State University.

Then, following the call, he was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book, Field Guide to Indoor Urbanism:

The typical approach to modern building design is to have clearly defined boundaries between interior and exterior spaces. The outside is the outside. And the inside is a climate-controlled space that is, for the most part, sealed to the outside.

Most of us spend the vast majority of our lives in these latter spaces. In fact, since the advent of modernism and the International Style over a century ago, the general idea has been that these spaces can and should be mostly the same.

HVAC systems make it so that you don't really need to worry about context or the environment. What works in Toronto can work in Phoenix. You just need to dial up your cooling loads.

This is so much the case that whenever I'm in a city with a fairly benign climate, such as somewhere in California, I always find myself fascinated by the fluidity between interior and exterior spaces. It's such a foreign concept to me that it stands out: "Wait, how is this not sealed?

Indoor urbanism, on the other hand, makes the argument that this binary approach is the wrong way to think about spaces. Here's an excerpt from a recent Metropolis article about MODU:

They call this approach “indoor urbanism,” which privileges the blurred boundary between what has traditionally been considered interior space and exterior space. This in-between space–straddling open and closed, artificial and natural–deserves architects’ keen attention, especially as the planet warms. “Indoor urbanism recognizes that architecture and cities are situated on an environmental continuum, as a matter of degrees rather than absolutes,” write Hoang and Rotem in Field Guide.

Examples of this thinking can be found throughout their work. This project in Jackson, Wyoming is one of my favorites both because I love Jackson and because it's a cold and snowy place. And yet, even in this climate zone, their design includes for several "semi-exterior areas" that serve to connect you to nature.

This is a decidedly different way to think about architecture and urbanism. But as our climate crisis intensifies, it's only going to become more relevant.

In a few days, a new exhibit, called the Aluminaire House™ Exhibit, will open in a parking lot of the Palm Springs Art Museum. It will form a new part of their permanent collection. Now, museum goers won't be able to go inside of the house due to accessibility limitations, but they'll be able to look at it from the outside. And this alone is a big deal because this house is a big deal.

Initially constructed in 1931, the house was designed by A. Lawrence Kocher (then the managing editor of Architectural Record) and Albert Frey. Albert was a Swiss-born architect who had just immigrated to New York from Europe, after having worked for the famous Le Corbusier in Paris. And so he was a practitioner of the International Style and this house was a clear representation of that.

Erected in only 10 days, Aluminaire House is thought to be the first all-metal house ever constructed in the United States. Well, metal and glass. And at the time, the overarching objective was to build something cheap, modular, and durable. Something that many are still trying to accomplish to this day.

Not surprisingly, the house was polarizing. Supposedly, architect Philip Johnson picketed in front of it. But this house would go on to become an icon, and it was eventually featured in MoMA's 1932 exhibition, "The International Style -- Architecture Since 1922" -- an exhibition that has been largely credited with introducing European-style modernism to the US.

Albert also ended up moving to Palm Springs later in life, and became known for pioneering something known as "desert modernism." So it's only fitting that this house ultimately end up here. Even if all-metal maybe isn't the best choice of material for a hot desert. If you find yourself in Palm Springs, you should definitely go check it out, or picket in front of it.

Images: Surface Magazine & Palm Springs Art Museum

Greg Isenberg recently wrote about what he refers to as the fast-foodification of everything — including cities. His arguments are that (1) we have reached peak sameness (Toronto is largely indistinguishable from, say, Sydney) and (2) the best brands and companies going forward will be local, unique, and community-driven.

I don’t know how to assess whether we have reached peak sameness, but I do know that, whatever we are experiencing right now, is at a minimum 100 years in the making. The International Style (of architecture), which emerged after WWI, is exactly what the name suggests. The intent was to fashion an approach to architecture that worked anywhere in the world. Location, climate, and context were all irrelevant.

This approach has been widely criticized for the reasons you might expect and for the reasons that Isenberg outlines in his post. But sameness is not exclusively the result of European architects who wanted to eschew ornament and local flourishes. As the world continues to globalize and become “smaller”, there is an inevitability to this growing and continued sameness. Business wants economies of scale.

But there is no question that, more than ever, people are craving unique and local experiences and places. And if you can create that in our globalized world, you are going to win.