Once I met a man from the Cote d'Ivoire and as he said the name of that place out loud – Cote d'Ivoire – it conjured an entire world.  The same happened recently when I heard architect Angela Garcia de Paredes say mulberry tree.  She was speaking about a kindergarten that her office, Paredes Pedrosa Arquitectos in Madrid, just built in Gandia, Spain.  This site for the school had a ring of six old mulberry trees at the center.  Rather than cut down the trees, the architects built the school around them.

Sometimes I think architects shouldn’t be allowed to speak about their work.  They use fancy words, they go on too long, and, even if the work is powerful enough to speak for itself, they end up confusing matters.  Paredes was an exception; she spoke with great simplicity and power.  The essential absurdity of speaking about architecture is built into the way architects are trained, in a studio setting with wordy presentations and critiques.  Just last week I sat on the jury for a first year interior design studio.  The students had been saddled with a highly theoretical, terminology-heavy design problem.  Nonetheless each one presented drawings and models that were sculpturally and spatially resonant.  If we need to speak about architecture at all – something that’s not at all about language – then maybe all that’s needed is one word.