I'll admit I was only in Denver for a day, visiting a building I suspected I would hate. Next door to Daniel Libeskind's new addition to the Denver Art Museum, Gio Ponti built the first iteration, a little brutalist concrete gem. Needless to say I loved Ponti's building. I say "needless to say" because even though I visited it, I shot no footage of it...

I'll admit I was only in Denver for a day, visiting a building I suspected I would hate. Next door to Daniel Libeskind's new addition to the Denver Art Museum, Gio Ponti built the first iteration, a little brutalist concrete gem. Needless to say I loved Ponti's building. I say "needless to say" because even though I visited it, I shot no footage of it.

On the road, some events happen, some events don't and oftentimes neither is captured on tape. There are the photos I don't have of my sketches because I chose not to bring a sketchbook with me, figuring whatever idea was worth sketching was worth figuring out how to shoot with a camera. There is no footage of me washing a T-shirt in a motel sink. This, along with avoiding showers, is something else I'm glad Pearl Girl wasn't around to witness.

The people I meet on the road are mostly other people in transit - hotel guests, campers, tourists - though traveling under the auspices of an Archinect editor makes it easier to meet the locals. But even though being "on the road and the people I meet" is as much a part of my experience as the architecture I visit, there were times when I didn't want to burden myself or total strangers I just met with the presence of a camera.

Cameras are like guns. People put up their hands, turn away, stare like deer and change their tone of voice whenever one is whipped out. Strangely enough, I find that people are more comfortable in front of my camera when I always keep it at my side and in the open, finger off the trigger. Like movies, like cameras, like guns, it's what's concealed that makes all the difference.

In these letters, I can reveal as much about my trip as I'm willing to, but with these movies, what I can say is limited by what corresponds to the footage I shot. This becomes particularly problematic when I visit buildings that prohibit interior photography. Like sections, perspectives and interior elevations, I'm keen on the camera's ability to capture space through movement. As I said in one of the earlier episodes, "travel is about re-education."

I like the idea that architecture is the science of space and that these travels are about learning how to sketch the idea of space better by treating a camera with the reverence of a gun.

As always, I hope you enjoy, keep keep on, watch your head.

Watch your head,
Marlin