Whether it’s Music, Painting, or Writing, Architect Anthony Poon Has a Story to Tell – Metropolis Magazine

Brian Libby: Given that Death by Design at Alcatraz is a mystery, did you know who the killer was before you started?

Anthony Poon: No. I had no arc. At first, I was writing about a character. Then I decided to kill this person off. I was probably a good halfway through writing the novel, and I still didnt know what the ending was.

Youve probably heard the phrase that writers often fall into two categories: the planner or pantser. A planner would be someone like J.K. Rowling, having the entire seven-book Harry Potter series arced out and the characters outlined before she started writing. Pantsers fly by the seat of their pants and include people like Stephen King. In interviews, King just says, Look, if you need to plan your book, then youre not a writer. Some of his books are better than others, but he just writes and sees where it takes him. I feel the same way.

The question of rigid composition versus improvising also relates to being a pianist. Could you talk about that?

Growing up, my training was classical music. Its this process of aiming for perfection, a flawless performance. Playing a piano sonata, there are a hundred thousand notes and youve got to hit them all right. If I would get one note off, my piano teacher would say, That whole performance is ruined. But what I really got interested in was something beyond technical proficiency. Youve got to be able to add a voice, a story, some kind of narrative to what youre performing. Thats what I eventually learned about jazz. It blew my mind that these pianists would just sit at the keyboard and start making things up. I was at a performance called The Jazz Bakery, where the pianist asked the audience to throw out numbers between one and eight. Then he associated those with notes on the keyboard because there are eight notes in an octave. Through that, he started to improvise and build a song, and his ensemble jumped in. It was incredible.

Your thesis at Harvard was about how jazz improvisation informs the architecture process. What did you learn?

Architecture is very methodical. It takes a long time to produce a building. There are a lot of practical considerationscode, budget, square footage. You cant just whip out a building the way a jazz musician would whip out a piece. But in the creative process, I always ask: Why cant we just grab colors and make an idea? Why cant we just have this sort of jazz-like conversation of bouncing ideas and just grab something from that, and make that the basis of an entire building design, whether its a library or museum or a house?

Lets go back to this question of architecture and narrative. Could you talk about the importance of storytelling in design?

Its all about communication. Everything that I do creativelypainting, music, writing, architectureis all a form of language. In architecture, we look to our clientswho they are and what they areto craft a story. If its a family, we want to know how they celebrate the holidays, if the in-laws stay with them, whether they have dogs. And thats the story we tell when we design a house. For designing a school, we ask: whats the educational methodology? How do the teachers teach? How do the students learn? Same thing when we do an office: whats the corporate culture, whats the mission statement? And obviously, when we do a religious project, there is an entire set of beliefs that need to be somehow expressed in architecture. Whats exciting about music and architecture, and what makes them different from writing, is that they are abstract. Its kind of open-ended communication.

Besides being a mystery, Death by Design at Alcatraz reads like a satire of architects and their clients. Did you enjoy puncturing egos a little bit? After all, in your memoir, Sticks & Stones | Steel & Glass, you write about realizing you didnt want to design big arenas and corporate projectsyou wanted to design more intimate spaces for people.

Well, its funny the timing of your question. I just came back from Modernism Week in Palm Springs, where I did a presentation on ego and arrogance. The lecture was saying that society has granted us architects a tremendous amount of influence and power. And the question is what have we done with it? Whats also interesting about your question, though, is I didnt think of Death by Design at Alcatraz as a satire. Maybe the developer is an amalgam of two or three actual clients blended together. But these architects, theyre all people I know.

What we talk about at my firm is that good design belongs to everyone. It could be a restaurant where everyone can go and eat. It could be a design of a bench. It could be a corporate headquarters or a public school. There isnt any specific kind of project that I seek. Its more about harnessing the talents that my team brings, and then reaching as many people as possible.

Where do you stand on the introvert-extrovert scale? Because architecture, especially when you get to a certain scale, is teamwork. Painting, which youre also acclaimed for, is a more solitary activity.

Im probably somewhere in the middle but skewing a little towards the extrovert side. Some of these art forms are solo explorations, but I dont see the art being complete until it reaches the audience. The enjoyment for me comes from people engaging the art, or better yet, if its going to hang in their living room or their conference room. Thats the completion of the artistic arc.

With any kind of artist, both introversion and extroversion are tapped. In architecture, for example, the introverted, introspective, self-examining qualities usually launch the design process, and the extroverted side leads a team, sells the idea to a client, and supports the creative ego.

In Sticks & Stones | Steel & Glass, you described how San Franciscos Portsmouth Square in Chinatown inspired you to become a designer. The park dates to 1833, but its 1963 redesign was derided at the time for raising the park to fit a parking garage underneath. What made it special to you, and the community?

I would answer that question with a question: Isnt it incredible that it is a parking structure and an extraordinary park? A structure like this would often be an eyesore. But they found a way to maintain an active plaza on top. It acts like a blank canvas, and you watch the community paint their life onto this canvas, whether its old men gathering together to play chess or children playing on the play equipment. It was across the street from the church that I went to as a kid. Its just that kind of wonderful, idyllic place that you dont imagine would be in such a dense area. Im looking at Portsmouth Square, not as an architect fetishizing its design, but as what it offers to the community: to have a Tai Chi class at 5:00 in the morning, a wedding there at noon, and kids running around in between. Thats the power of architecture.

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Whether it's Music, Painting, or Writing, Architect Anthony Poon Has a Story to Tell - Metropolis Magazine