1,000 Blog Posts!

Yes, it’s true! This post marks my one thousandth entry since I started SW Oregon Architect back in 2008. Though the accomplishment hardly ranks up there with the greatest of human achievements, I will pat myself on the back for my dedication to writing on a regular basis.

I embarked on my blogging journey with only modest goals. Initially, SW Oregon Architect primarily served as a means for me to communicate with the membership of the Southwestern Oregon Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (now the Eugene Section of AIA Oregon) on chapter matters during my tenure on the SWO board of directors. Since then, I have turned to a broad range of topics related to architecture and urban design, while maintaining a weekly writing cadence.

It seems many of the prolific architecture-oriented blogs that flourished during blogging’s heyday (roughly the mid-2000s to the early 2010s) have become inactive, including several of those listed here on my sidebar. With the rise of social media and a concomitant reduction in attention spans, long-form blogging lost its appeal for some audiences, prompting many bloggers to abandon the platform in favor of alternative outlets for their content.

For me, blogging is not about garnering followers and page views, but rather about being an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. I do not intend to give it up anytime soon, especially now that I am on the glide slope toward retirement. Writing is good exercise for my brain. Regular blogging will support my cognitive health as I age, so I figure the more words I write, the better.

Assuming an average of 600 words per post, my cumulative word count has now reached approximately 600,000.(1) For some perspective, that is more than such prodigious works of literature as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (587,287 words), Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (561,996 words), and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien (481,103 words). If I continue blogging as I plan to, my word count will one day surpass that of the King James version of The Bible (783,137 words), if it hasn’t already.

While my musings across 1,000 posts do not rise anywhere close to the profundity of renowned authors, I occasionally surprise myself by generating a piece I’m particularly pleased with. This is mostly the case when I avoid being too guarded about expressing my thoughts on a subject. It has been good to stick my neck out on occasion.

To commemorate achieving this milestone, I offer the following selection of posts because they offer a sampling of my views on architecture and urban design. Consider this an immodest list of SW Oregon Architect’s “greatest hits." I invite you to randomly read a few of them if you have some time and missed the opportunity to do so when they first appeared (click on the title you select, which will appear in a new window): 

1.  Architecture and the Culture Wars
2.  The Timelessness of Libraries
3.  Hyperlocal Identity:  A Strategy for Small Cities and Towns
4.  Commonsense Architecture
5.  The Worrying Absence of Housing Choice
6.  Challenging Our Biases
7.  Philosophy and the Metaphysics of Architecture
8.  The Better Angels of our Nature
9.  Oregon is Burning
10.  Corner Stores
11.  A Moral Obligation
12.  Eugene and the Menace of the Black Swan
13.  Architecture on the Frontline of the Culture War
14.  Private Good and Public Space
15.  Does Eugene really have an affordable housing crisis? Yes, but . . .
16.  Light
17.  Restoring the Related Wholeness of Notre-Dame de Paris
18.  In Praise of 5-over-1 Construction
19.  Looking Beyond 2019 (Way, Way Beyond)
20.  We Shouldn’t Fear the Change Diverse Housing Types Herald
21.  Riding the Rails
22.  Morality and Architecture
23.  Sunlight is a Powerful Healer
24.  The Fine Grain of Cultural Diversity
25.  The Obama Presidential Center
26.  Architectural Record’s Top 125 Buildings
27.  R.I.P. Zaha Hadid
28.  Architecture is Awesome: #11 Sense of Place
29.  The Pritzker Prize and Neural Nostalgia
30.  The Future of Architectural Craft
31.  Architecture is Awesome #6: Space
32.  Debate and Discourse: Hallmarks of a Healthy Community
33.  The Perils of Building Cheaply
34.  Self-Actualization
35.  Revenge of the Specifiers
36.  Awe, Wonder, and Curiosity
37.  The Pitfalls of Public Planning Process
38.  Incremental Growth
39.  Progress
40.  Revitalization + Reinvention
41.  Automobiles and Architecture
42.  Monarchy and Architecture
43.  Influences: Christopher Alexander & Peter Eisenman
44.  What is Architecture?
45.  San Francisco Walkabout
46.  Influences: Frank Lloyd Wright
47.  Ecopolis and the American Dream
48.  Utopianism, Cynicism, and Sincerity
49.  Authenticity
50.  Eugene, Genius Loci, and the Butterfly Effect

The ride SW Oregon Architect has taken me on has been both humbling and invigorating. What began as a channel for communication with the local architectural community is now increasingly a repository for my personal thoughts, topical insights, and occasionally whimsical digressions. I look forward to continuing this adventure, exploring new topics, and—with good luck and health—reflecting again upon reaching the 2,000-posts mark.

(1)    I am not going to bother to accurately tally my total word count. I may not make the most of my free time, but I do value it enough not to undertake the task. A 600-word per post average is a fair guess; if anything, this number might be on the low side.