To speak of a garage.

Shifting from a familiar structure we all know as iconic to our houses in America and blurring right past the decades of customizing the workshop with fancy benches and shelving and lighting, bumping over the grunge bands that grew up there and the inventors that found solitude ‘out in the garage’, and landing right..splat..in 2026 where we just passed codes removing the requirement to store an automobile on your property. And just like that – the end of the mandated garage. There is a crack in the solid foundation of what we think of as house. A house has a garage because you need to store a (or many) car(s). Perhaps the time has come to rethink what we are storing.

What are we storing in our mind: Dismantling a belief

Unique shapes are hard and expensive to build…says who?  

Recently, my meditation landed the following on my lap: “Don’t get into street fights.” I tend to be a coward anyway, so this did not frighten me. It wasn’t until I recalled a moment in a game with friends where, as the tension built toward the end of the game, one of the players pointed a finger and disclosed something that instantly put me at a disadvantage. I cringed and protested. In the height of the emotion that thickly spread over me, I completely missed the opportunity that had also presented itself. Completely missed it.  Sometimes things do not look like what they truly are. Poche is a simple manufactured truss AND all trusses are custom.

Looking today’s moment in the eye

A week ago I posted the one with me at the summit of Kilimanjaro. What I didn’t do, was look today’s moment directly in the eye. I am championing the creation of a Collective to put intelligent small house options into housing for the people. What? Grab a cup of tea, sit down and see how this fits: Poche 2026: a collective

It was undeniable

Part Two: I attended PAACADEMY Design Tech Talk a few weeks ago because StructureCraft was one of the speakers. I (Poche) was a tiny guppy among sleek whales. But here is the thing, the impressive scale difference was irrelevant because where Poche was headed had been undeniable. The world of parametric architecture, where the environment, geography, zoning, and truss constraints push and pull to make intelligence was right there in that first wobbly sketch. And the power embedded in that sort of sketch has cajoled me into places I would never have entered. I make small houses. Computational design and all its heavy lifting has nothing to do with my work. Or does it?

Being pulled by something undeniable is not negotiable.  It will find a way to catch your attention and land you on its path. Poche thrust me into the world of startups, famously thick in Boulder, where the irascible lessons peeled me apart. Pivot, pivot, pivot: I know the path is here somewhere. And then it landed. Design software. And what do I know or care about software? – the universe is laughing! But the bell kept dinging every time I faced ‘software’. The tech talk illuminated all the micro dots that I had noticed but failed to see (innovation afoot?). Software is not my landscape. Yet here I am. The Poche Optimizer is design software. It will enable that undeniable sketch to enter the world. I know the power of those sketches, we call them Parti, but never before has a Parti jumped beyond its’ specific site. The Poche’s Parti entered the entirety of architecture. And at least a decade ahead of my wee studio.