Not Built in a Day

Another old unfinished post from the drafts pile... now complete! Often I have to explain to my colleagues that I studied art history (with a concentration in architecture) in undergrad, and recount how I decided that staying in art history wasn't for me.  Those outside the arts fields usually wonder what one does with an art history degree anyway, and I have to explain that many graduates either go into teaching or research or, after getting their master's degree or PhD, become curators.  As much as I respect the brave souls who choose those routes, I have some fairly strong opinions about why I didn't think that curating or teaching was for me.  And most of those reasons have to do with money and politics. Regarding the PhD route, my undergraduate advisor recommended that I take it, so I spent a summer doing independent research at Stanford to test it out.  Although I don't mind research, I was so unmotivated that I never actually wrote the paper I set out to ...

Time to clean out the ol' half-written blog post inbox! What does it mean to call a building a "forgery"?  Is it possible to forge a work of architecture in the same way that a painting can be forged? In Japan, apparently architectural forgery means that you have forged the certificate stating how much your building cost, which is used to determine if your building meets earthquake codes.  Unfortunately, this seems to have happened with some frequency, resulting in buildings that are not safe to inhabit, and are a danger for buildings next door. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_Forgery_in_Japan In the US, buildings are now copyright (since changes to the copyright act in 1990), so it's possible to "forge" a building by copying it.  The professor of my Professional Practice course told us a story of desperate clients who copied a house.  They first contacted the architect of the house that they had noticed while driving around their neighbo...