#Interview #Podcast w/ Patrick Tighe, FAIA of Patick Tighe Architecture

June 24, 2024

#Interview #Podcast w/ Patrick Tighe, FAIA of Patick Tighe Architecture

Patrick Tighe, FAIA of TIGHE Architecture

This podcast and blog are sponsored by Loewen Windows and Lutron.This podcast episode is sponsored by Loewen Windows and Lutron. Please let the sponsors know where you saw their sponsorship!!!!

LISTEN HERE to podcast with Patrick Tighe, FAIA of TIGHE Architecture

Patrick Tighe, FAIA, FAAR, is one of Los Angeles’ preeminent architects / interior designers.

The highly acclaimed namesake firm, Patrick Tighe Architecture, is committed to creating an authentic, contemporary Architecture informed by technology, sustainability and building innovation. Since its inception, the firm has produced a strong and diverse body of projects that includes city developed affordable housing, commercial, mixed-use projects, public work, parks, residences and award-winning interiors.

The firm’s work has received over 100 design awards including ten National AIA Honor Awards, American Architecture Awards, a Progressive Architecture Award, Los Angeles Architecture Awards, Architizer Awards, Best of Year Awards as well as local AIA Honors. In 2011 Patrick Tighe was elevated into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, the highest honor bestowed by the AIA. Patrick Tighe was awarded the prestigious Rome Prize in Architecture. Tighe is a Fellow of the American Academy and The MacDowell Colony.

Patrick Tighe received a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to establishing Tighe Architecture, Tighe worked in the offices of Frank Gehry and was an associate at Thom Mayne’s Morphosis for 8 years. Tighe is a professor at the University of Southern California.

The work of Patrick Tighe Architecture has been published extensively, appearing in Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Global Architecture, The LA Times Magazine, Interior Design, LA Architect, Wallpaper, Metropolis, the New York Times and Newsweek. The firm’s work has also been included in numerous architectural anthologies including The Power of Pro Bono and the latest edition of The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture.

Tighe lectures on his work and has been exhibited internationally. The work of Patrick Tighe Architecture has been shown at the Venice Biennale and was included in the MOCA exhibit, A New Sculpturalism, Contemporary Architecture from Southern California. A monograph of the firm entitled “Building Dichotomy” was released in 2016. The firm is considered a leader in housing and sustainability and has received the industry’s highest honors including the HUD Secretary’s award. Patrick Tighe was named one of the top 50 innovators of the 21st Century and inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame. Tighe Architecture was listed as one of the top 50 design firms in the US by Architect Magazine.

So I have had people over the years ask me, rather they tell me, "You know who you should interview? So and So! They would be great for your podcast."

And it is not to say that I don't want to interview, sometimes it is, quite frankly because I have never heard of them so that is why I never thought about interviewing them. Soooo, that is not to say that I would not interview them but there is still a list of people who I need to interview because I have met them and we have had a conversation and I need to follow up on it, which can end up being a big process for people who are "starchitects", so I usually am looking to interview people who I already know because it is an easier ask.

And to be quite honest, I have had several of my friends say that they don't think I should interview them, or that they don't think they have anything to say.

Which, you know there aren't that many architects who have nothing to say.

So, a couple of times, a person's name will come up as a person to interview and this time because I actually saw him at an event, I asked him.

So..... I am interviewing Patrick Tighe, FAIA of TIGHE Architecture and

I ACTUALLY DO KNOW HIM!!!!

I first met Patrick when I went to school in Copenhagen, Denmark with the DIS (Denmark International Students) program and I was there with a lot of other Californians with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and the DESIGN school of Cal Poly Pomona (that was intentional) (he was there with the U. of Amherst, where Patrick was attending as an art major. He then went on to masters programs in architecture. I saw Patrick a few times as we navigated the Los Angeles scene, he worked for the starchitecture firms Morphosis and Gehry, before starting his own firm and doing multi-family housing (some for CCSM) and custom residential and winning Design Awards and accolades, I worked for a woman architect, Diane M. Caughey, who taught at SCI-ARC and did smaller, "socially conscious projects" like the Home Caring for Babies with AIDS I and II and the CCSM and a few other people Appleton and Mechur, Gordon L. Polon Consulting Engineers getting experience before I started having children and having my own firm, first in Venice Beach and then relocating to my second hometown of San Diego.

And after one interview via zoom in December that didn't make the cut for audio, we decided to meet in person and that way I had a chance to see the studio, (I call it a studio as it was called in the 90's because they actually were and looked like these raw spaces that evoke creativity, models displayed like the ones that were always built in the "model shop by hand, not a 3D printer..." and DRAWINGS.... which I always enjoy seeing and I never have enough time to do now that most clients want things, "faster, cheaper, HGTV "better" and conceptual thought and process has gone by the wayside for images conjured up by AI.

And of course meeting with an out of town EntreArchitect friend with two other SoCal friends and a discussion led to "Where does your son live?" and Christian Nielsen-Palacios said, "he lives in a really cool building and I asked him who the architect was and he told me and I can't remember his name and I googled him and he looks like a movie star" and we three locals said,

"Patrick Tighe"

and he said, "no, I don't think that is what his name is and I took out my phone and I showed him this pic.......

Patrick Tighe, FAIA in his
TIGHE Architecture studio

Patrick's Three Classic Buildings:

Salk Institute by Louis Kahn
photo: AD

TWA TERMINAL by Eero Saarinen
photo: ArchDaily

Casa Malaparte by Adalberto Libera
photo: Archeyes

Today I live on an island, in a house that is sad, hard, severe, that I built for myself, solitary on a sheer rock over the sea: a house that is the spectre, the secret image of prison. The image of my nostalgia. Maybe I never desired, not even then, to escape from jail. Man is not meant to live freely in freedom, but to be free inside a prison.

– Curzio Malaparte

So... a little bit more about the Study Abroad Program because I think that some people view it as being this opportunity that is only available to the elite. It is actually part of the California State University International Programs (CSU IP):

The DIS (Danish International Students Architecture program that Patrick and I were in was located in the downtown Copenhagen area and we learned about Danish Urban Design, Architecture, Industrial Design from Danish architects. The program focused on Social housing which is an important topic that has only become more relevant over the years as the world's population grows, cities densify and still people and politics especially in this country do not feel any obligation to help in any way in spite of complaining and criticizing the "issues" of the unhoused.

CSU students can apply to these study abroad programs and upon acceptance, the students attend for the same cost as their regular tuition and fees, plus their living expenses which are highly subsidized by the school and foreign country which you attend and reside. I, as many of the students in the DIS program, lived with a Danish Family and we paid about the same per month as we did living in our college at home but because the money had to be paid upfront each semester, many of us took out student loans as we could not pay monthly or work in the foreign country where we were attending school. Our health care was paid for by the Danish government as we were considered resident international students. In this way, it was very affordable for many of us and it was an experience that most of us who were in the program felt was very beneficial to our careers in architecture and life. And Patrick and I speak a little about that and I also have another podcast that was done during the pandemic with our fellow Aussie Australian student Marc Dixon.

And I am actually one of those people who am proud of the work and careers of most of the people that I went to school with and I feel that the more that the profession can lift each other up instead of putting each other down in a competitive manner, the more that the public will appreciate who we are and what we do. And it is hard sometimes because some of us do better in school than others, some of us work at better firms than others and some of us start our own firms because of reasons that might not even be about design but it is about our personal life and the way we choose to live it.

And that is ok.