A Fire Within

The 2017 CallisonRTKL Design Conference took place September 11-13 in Seattle. “Ascend” was the theme of this year’s event, which brought together 15 up-and-coming designers from each of the firm’s global offices for three days of professional development, team-building and design inspiration. This post is the third installment in a series of reflections from some of this year’s attendees on their experiences.

For the final event of the Design Conference 2017, we were left totally in the dark. We knew no details of what was coming, and that made all of us wonder—and made us a bit nervous, as well.

Through leaked intel—mostly from Lori…ok, entirely from Lori to be factual—I quickly gathered information about the secret event and could add the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle to get a clearer picture of what might happen. We were going glass blowing! And it should have been no wonder. Yes, Seattle is known for Starbucks, Frasier and Amazon, but its hidden gem is crystal glass blowing!

I was always impressed by the giant crystal chandelier at Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and I only realized that it was a masterpiece by Dale Chihuly, a renowned crystal artist from Seattle, when we visited his boat house on our first journey in Seattle. What a sensation to end the journey where we first started!

Of course, it was not Dale’s workshop where we were going to do glass blowing but another workshop near our basecamp. We all had Dale’s inspiration embedded in us from our first encounter with Seattle, and we certainly had the passion to create a masterpiece.

Starting with Glen, Ashley and Francisco, we began crafting our own masterpieces. All the other observers awaiting their turns, we watched and learned. Designs started to evolve; first it was a clear crystal bowl, but adding small pieces, it moved to create patterns. Then it started to have textures.

Each design before mine had been more and more beautiful. Creating something with our hands, we are used to it. But creating something with our breath is completely different league. It’s almost our souls are pushed into the vacuum of glass bowl!

Finally, it was time for me to become an alchemist. There I could see raw glass silica and dyes in a box, next to a burning kiln. Time for a magic show.

The design was ours to define. After a short consultation with the experts, I decided to make a Christmas ornament with a red crystal backroad and white wavy patterns. My teacher prepared liquified raw glass silica in the kiln. Once melted at the end of a steel pipe, it required constant rotation to evenly melt it and purify it, and it was my role to keep it rotated with constant speed. The glass silica had the colour of melting lava, and hot air from the kiln was blowing into my face. The kiln had such a heat and force that draws you into it.

Once perfectly melted for texturing, the raw glass was then rolled onto various pigments to give it the desired colour. When it is ready again, it is then put into a mold. The molds define the pattern that the glass will have. Mine was a star profiled mold that would eventually create wavy stripes once completed. After it was put into a mould, white pigments were applied—then again, the rotating process. After continuous melting processes, it was finally the moment to blow. As I started to blow at the other end of the pipe whilst rotating it, a bubble stated to form and eventually blossomed into a sphere. It was a magical moment—a moment of liquid becoming fragile glass, a moment of vision becoming a solid object!

It probably took me about 25 minutes, all in front of painstakingly hot air coming from kiln, but the crystal bauble was a piece of creation!

After all that excitement, I realised that there’s much more to it than just blowing a glass—having a vision of what the outcome might be, consultation with professionals to plan a journey and focused anticipation to achieve the goal—it is just like what we do with our clients. We, architects, are born to create, and create from immaterial thoughts, vision. We create spaces, just as the glass blowers create objects. This reminded me that we are creative beings, and we always put our utmost efforts to bring the vision to the reality.