Two Human Desires

During my radio show today, I will be sharing what the two human desires are.

Do you think that these desires include love, money, a bigger house, a fast car, travel...? If so, you will be surprised with my answer.

Listen in at http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/LaneArchitecture. The show is only 15 minutes and will start at 5:30 pm EST.

Click on the "ReTweet" button below and follow me on twitter. I am LaneArch there.

What a banner weekend!

Yesterday, I joined in to celebrate my oldest son's 13th birthday. My, oh, my! Now I have a teenager in the house.

Another exciting thing happened yesterday too. I launched my book titled, "The Designed Office." It is a book written to help people find, design, and build an office that will explode their profits even in these recession times.

Feel free to click on the book icon to the right to get a closer look at it.

Create an Experience that will Empower Others

A while back, a friend of mine, Steve, was visiting a mutual friend who was suffering Parkinson disease at a NYC hospital. Our friend, Betty had a roommate whose bed was nearest to the window.

When Steve came into Betty’s hospital room, the curtain was drawn that divided the room into two parts. In a few minutes, he heard someone singing to the lady behind that curtain. The music was soft, sweet, and comforting. It was a woman’s voice.

When visitation time was over, the lady who was singing on the other side of the curtain walked pass Steve, nodded, and left the room.

It was Carly Simon.

She was singing to her mother in the bed nearest to the window behind the curtain. What a blessing it was to be in the still room and experience the tenderness that only a daughter can share with her mother! She was using the gifts that were only hers to offer.

What gifts do you have to share that are unique to only you? Have you shared them with the people that mean the most to you?

Have you experienced things in a room that were so profound that you will remember it for a lifetime? Circumstances and settings can influence how you experience a place. That is what I mean by Experience Architecture. It can affect the way you work, shop, play, and rest.

My new book, “The Designed Office,” covers this topic for office spaces. It will be in a bookstore near you really soon.

Oh how we have grown since the 1800's

Joe Vitale really hit a homerun when he shared how we can overcome obsticles that are nothing like they were in the 1800's. Here is what he wrote in his recommended book, "There's a Customer Born Every Minute:"

The mid-1800’s, PT Barnum prospered when it was a stressful time that had conditions that are not here anymore such as:
• 4/5 of all Americans were farmers.
• There were only 3 large cities in USA. NY was the biggest with only 400,000 people.
• Most of today’s technology was not invented.
• Radio and TV did not exist (therefore not available for advertisements).
• No fax, computers, internet, telephone, or cabs to take you to a client.
• Trains did not travel to many places before the Civil War.
• No electricity, in door bathrooms (bathing was done about once a week).
• Surgeons washed after the surgery – so most of your clients who had surgery died.
• There were still terrifying Indian Wars, gun fights, and a large part of the customer base was killed during the Civil War when business was restricted to only the northern states.
• It took 2 weeks to journey across the Atlantic from Europe to USA via ship.

Hope you are grateful not only for living in such a wonderful country as United State of America, but also that we are free to grow with more opportunities now than ever before.

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Birthday to architect John Johansen

While studying architecture at Texas Tech University, John Johansen visited our campus and shared his design philosophy with us. I was a wide eyed pup that hung on his every word. What an impression he made on me!

John Johansen was a contemporary with my mentor I.M. Pei. Along wit Mr. Pei, Mr. Johansen was one of Walter Gropius' (pioneer of the modern architecture movement) first pupils at Harvard.



During his lectures at Texas Tech, I remember Mr. Johansen showing photos of his current work (at the time) that included the Oklahoma City's Mummer Theater. It was finished in 1970. He chose to expose all of the air ducts, pipes, and beams. To accent those exposed items, he chose generic paint that would express their presence even more. Colors were chosen like red for the hot water line, blue for the cold water lines and so on. He boasted that the selection of colors was from the Sears catalogue so it would be easy for his clients to match while patching up the place in the future.

John Johansen turned 93 and there was a big celebration of his birthday in New York City. Here is a link that will tell more about him http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/2958

You can also hear more about him on my podcast at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/LaneArchitecture/2009/06/23/What-did-Irans-Mr-Mousavi-do-before-he-was-a-politician-