About David Kesler

I believe that regardless of the “real-ness” of our experience, we are best when we try to heal the planet in whatever discipline we are practicing. Always try to heal the world.

Following the above logic, Architecture should in some way “repair the world”. How can the building arts make our constructions more integrated with our environment?

I use an extension of what I refer to a “mimetic” methodology. I use a catch all phrase for this- MI Architecture (for Mimetic Interweave). Buildings are interwoven into their sites in some way, so that they reveal essences of their site and in some way let us see their environments clearly. It is the depths of the mimetic that can enrich a specific work of architecture into something which helps us see the earth in a clearer and more revealed light.

The mimetic ideology includes many of the man-made disciplines. Bio-mimesis is the best known of these mimetic devices. We research a specific biology prevalent in an environment or not, then abstract an understanding of that biology to invent form that reminds us in someway of the abstracted object or process. Bio-mimesis can include the movement systems of living things, as well as the phenomenon of our planet in space.

Here is where the mimetic starts to expand. One might use Geo-mimesis to emulate the crack systems defining geological formations in a specific area. This type of mimesis can yield material inspirations. Physio-mimesis implies a learning from physics. How would wind react to form? How would waves form a building? How would a massive storm influence geometry? A twister, for instance.

Urbano-mimesis, in this sense, is the use of cities to help create specific building imagery, so that a nearby city or a city in which a project appears, can be a direct organizational influence on that very project.

Chemio-mimesis attempts to learn from chemical processes. How does acid affect the form of a building, or its program? In this sense the idea of acid as a corrosive can imply a blending of program elements as well as a burning through of form itself.

Psycho-mimesis suggests a building that might evoke nervousness, or sadness, or anger. Here we can argue that a building could induce these feelings, or simply that an “angry” building might be designed using sharp angles and hard materials. etc.

The mimetic process releases architecture from stylistic pre-occupation. Instead, it proposes a scientific analysis of program, site, client, and environment in an effort to blend and break down the illusion of boundary that separates us all from each other and the earth itself.