Baker Artist Portfolios

“I stepped out of my own existence and found myself.” ---Fernando Pessoa in The Book of Disquiet

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I find myself stepping out of my professional existence and sketching and thinking about dwellings, some inspired by words or ideas, others stream-of-consciousness expressions. These are my oneiric houses—my houses of daydreams. Regardless of their proportion or scale, they are where my daydreams dwell. 

I draw with a fountain pen in sketchbooks. But I also sketch with commercial modeling software. All images presented are either scanned from hand drawings or created with various digital software, including Adobe Capture, Trace, SketchUp, and Render-In, a SketchUp plugin, and other software.

I was born in Donora, Pennsylvania, and graduated with a degree in architecture from Carnegie-Mellon. I moved to Baltimore in 1979 and have practiced architecture in Baltimore since. My professional work as an architect is a socially conscious practice designing for disenfranchised populations. I also co-edit and publish a journal on architecture and design called, T3XTURE. The journal explores ornament, texture, and pattern in contemporary architecture and design.

T3XTURE #4, was selected, in an open call, to be included in the "Reading Room" exhibit--part of the New Urban Challenges Festival created by Itinerant Office. The festival featured emerging architecture practices, innovative publications, and editorial projects through events at the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome.

"...emerging publishing projects, developed in new and experimental forms, open unprecedented windows on the issues of the present and outline the potential "new urban challenges" of the future."

                           Cecilia Rosa, Il Giornale dell'Architettura.com

I also produced a book titled,  DRAW•MODEL•PROMPT : Tectonic Speculations.

In the world of architectural design, the relationship between drawing, computer modeling, and AI is complex-- is it progression or evolution? The earliest architectural drawings were drawn on the ground at the site. Pencil and watercolor drawings required a talent that favored one designer over another. Computer-aided drafting permitted an ease of creating repetition, simplifying the process. Recent innovations introducing artificial intelligence accelerate the process, effectively making hundreds of iterations possible in a short burst and allowing the designer to act as a curator. Yet the AI tool is still new, how will it affect the practice?  The drawings, computer models, and models generated with text and image prompts in this book explore the interconnected nature of these processes.

All of the work herein was created by me. No AI was used for any of the results presented.