James Huemoeller is one of four professors currently leading SALA’s Comprehensive Studio in Architecture, co-teaching with Inge Roecker, Joanne Gates, and Amanda Reed. He founded JIM Studio, Field Collective, and is spearheading SALA’s Design Build pathway for students in their final year of study, undertaking their capstone graduate design projects. James spoke to us about straddling the worlds of archaeology and architecture, and his views on design.
How did you transition from archaeology to architecture?
I went into archaeology as an architect. Students sometimes fail to recognize that while they are learning skills to become architects, those skills are valuable in other fields. Archaeologists need people to do surveying, field drawing, and analyze of what they’re finding. That was my role. I did all the surveying and field drawings for the projects I was on. The archaeologists would excavate a little bit, I would document it carefully, excavate a little bit more, and so on. Largely documenting through drawing until we introduced digital tools. As an intern architect, I would always make sure I could negotiate a few months’ leave to go and dig. I just enjoyed it a lot so I always prioritized continuing that research.
I’ve learned a bit about archaeology during my 10 years in the field. I’m now finishing a book with the architectural historian Ingrid Edlund-Berry from the University of Texas, who’s been working on this Morgantina dig in Sicily for over 40 years. This material is 70 years old, and I’ve been working on it for about seven or eight years. At the site, there’s all this amazing stuff that’s been found that we’ve never published. Publication of that material is what we call a legacy project, and here we are focused on disseminating the data for one building, a Sanctuary.
What do you feel you gain from straddling these 2 very different time periods and scales?
I think knowledge tends to inform architectural design intuitively, so it’s always difficult to point to a specific impact. One example, though, is that archaeology has taught me to avoid seeing space tied too much to use. Sometimes it is just about creating a series of rooms that could be used. The so-called domestic spaces we’ve found at Morgantina were far more than that. The way we design houses now is very tightly fitting, very prescribed. We leave little space for flexibility. On dig sites, there are rooms that archaeologists have initially tried to tie to specific uses, but it now seems the Greeks and Romans didn’t think about buildings that way. They were just creating buildings where domestic spaces were also offices and workspaces; their uses were undefined. It challenges you, as a contemporary designer, to question some of the preconceived ideas about how spaces work. Archaeologists and historians think about day-to-day life through a different lens.
What do you gain from staying involved in both disciplines?
Classical archaeology is an area with a lot of literature produced by a specific demographic. We don’t have the written words of slaves or women, for example. So how do you think of a place not in terms of what Vitruvius said, but in terms of how people actually lived in and thought about it? Then, how do you think about your own world in the same way? How do you design for uncertain occurrences, for example? I think questions raised by looking at different architectural contexts can influence contemporary approaches to architecture. These older ways of thinking and living can be innovative when they’re reframed in our context.
Questions raised by looking at different architectural contexts can influence contemporary approaches to architecture. These older ways of thinking and living can be innovative when they’re reframed in our context.
Where do you think our obsession with tightly prescribed program in design comes from? Why do we need definition so badly?
You never want to create binaries, but a lot of what you call “Capital A” architecture was for very wealthy people. Their houses had dining rooms: specific rooms for specific functions. But this was a luxury. The houses that had the most architectural “innovation” tend to be what we’ve focused on for a long time in the canon. Luxury houses, churches, where everything is ritualized. Then you get into modernism, where suddenly we’re going to make everything super functional. Everything’s going to be designed, tailored to the function it’s supposed to serve. Before you know it, you’re designing everything to be super tight to program. Of course, we forget that opinions and tastes change.
So now we create functional buildings around very specific technologies of the moment that only last 15 years before having to be torn down and redone. That is the problematic thing about technology; by itself, it doesn’t tend to be the solution to problems. In practice, technology can change how we design and work. It has an impact, and you can’t ignore it, but it’s not always true that the more technology we apply, the better off we’ll be.
What is a particular attribute of Vancouver that makes it an exciting place to design in?
I wouldn’t mind designing a building on an Italian square. It’d be a lot easier, but it will never happen because I don’t live in a place with Italian squares. Vancouver is a wonderful place to live. Culturally, it’s a cosmopolitan city. People forget it’s 3 million people in the metro area. It’s a small city, and we’re quite isolated. Despite this, you can get on the city bus and hear all sorts of languages from all over the world, and I think that’s pretty cool. Metro Vancouver is incredibly diverse, culturally rich in a beautiful setting. The unfortunate thing is that urbanism sucks, and it can be quite insular here because of its remoteness. There’s opportunity here, it’s just challenging. Being able to leverage those awesome things is a really good start. A lot of cities don’t have those qualities.
What kind of design is necessary here?
There’s a lot of value in an awesome urban context, but I think we need to find ways to operate in places that are overlooked design-wise, like Port Coquitlam, for example. This is why I started doing more urban planning projects. As designers, we must create the conditions we want and show people the potential. You don’t have to keep doing the same subpar work. We have to say, “Here’s a way to do it better.” It’s our responsibility. We’re the ones with the skills to create the visual tools to show people what’s possible. When you show people what’s possible, they get super excited, and at the same time, they think it seems impossible or really complicated.
Actually, it’s often no harder than what we do under the status quo; it’s just better. It can be hard to convince people, and you have to work at that. It’s difficult, but it’s our job. If you only went into this field to design ultra-cool buildings and places, you’re maybe in the wrong profession. If your goal is to take something overlooked and improve it, you’ll find projects much more rewarding. It doesn’t mean you’re always going to create a beautiful, perfect object; sometimes it’s just about small victories. If you’re okay with that, it can be really rewarding.
Project in progress from JIM Studios
What excites you about being involved in academia, and teaching? Why teach, and why SALA?
I’m here because I enjoy teaching. I wasn’t born knowing how to teach; I had to learn. Some think that just because they’re principal architects at their firm, they’ll be good teachers. But you need to learn to listen to students. Your job isn’t to make them care about your idea, it’s helping them bring their ideas forward and achieve them. You must learn how to do that, and it’s not easy. But I find it rewarding. Students bring a lot. I learn a lot from their different perspectives. It makes me a better practitioner by ensuring I keep asking relevant questions.
Learning architecture takes a long time. In architect years, I always say I’m still in my 20s, so I’m not fully cooked yet, but at my age, it’s easy to get complacent. Students, through their unique lived experiences, offer insights that are highly relevant to the problems we face, even if they haven’t yet found their architectural voice.
I’ve found that in my work with the Field Collective and the events we hold, if we want excitement and energy, we need students. Any opportunity to give students a voice, through events like our “Reverse Crits,” for example, they’re going to be enthusiastic about it. These kinds of events are exciting in their reversal of typical power dynamics and in giving voices to these members of our profession.