Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "built-environment"
Dad's Lifelong Passion
Today, I again found new things about my dad. Well, not new in his ideas, but new in his professional life, which I'm writing about in my biography of him.
In 1969, Dad testified to the following in front of a Senate subcommittee: "The final point I made in my testimony which I submitted for the record and which I would like to repeat because I think it was not stressed enough today, is that when we begin any of these processes of regulating the processes of building homes, we ought not to just measure whether or not materials are adequate and whether or not buildings are structurally sound but we ought to measure whether or not these buildings meet man's need, whether or not the people who are going to live in them have their physiological, psychological, and sociological needs being met. Mr. Chairman, we are abundantly ignorant about how to do that. We really don't know how to measure man's needs in that sense."
Dad, from the time he started at the National Bureau of Standards, and possibly before that, was a proponent of "performance-based building standards". I knew this about him, because it's one of the things that a lot of the people I've talked to about Dad talk about. Because it made Dad something of a pariah in the building industry.
You see, most building codes prescribe the size of things. They are engineering based. Dad advocated for performance-based standards; that is, not prescribing how things should be done with the size of things but rather with what we are trying to accomplish with the things. Moving toward these kinds of standards was a change in thinking. It's part of what made Dad a maverick.
But what I didn't realize until now is that Dad's push for performance-based standards was an early indication of his desire to measure how the built environment works for the people who use it. Not just to make buildings better by measuring the outcomes of their use, because that makes more sense than prescribing the walls have to be so thick, etc. But to produce better outcomes for the people using those buildings, whether they are homes (as in the case of his testimony here) or churches or schools or hospitals.
This passion, as science progressed, was what he was trying to accomplish with his last career move - the Academy for Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA). To use this new science, neuroscience, to measure human's interactions with architecture, to improve the built environment for human's use.
Maverick indeed.
In 1969, Dad testified to the following in front of a Senate subcommittee: "The final point I made in my testimony which I submitted for the record and which I would like to repeat because I think it was not stressed enough today, is that when we begin any of these processes of regulating the processes of building homes, we ought not to just measure whether or not materials are adequate and whether or not buildings are structurally sound but we ought to measure whether or not these buildings meet man's need, whether or not the people who are going to live in them have their physiological, psychological, and sociological needs being met. Mr. Chairman, we are abundantly ignorant about how to do that. We really don't know how to measure man's needs in that sense."
Dad, from the time he started at the National Bureau of Standards, and possibly before that, was a proponent of "performance-based building standards". I knew this about him, because it's one of the things that a lot of the people I've talked to about Dad talk about. Because it made Dad something of a pariah in the building industry.
You see, most building codes prescribe the size of things. They are engineering based. Dad advocated for performance-based standards; that is, not prescribing how things should be done with the size of things but rather with what we are trying to accomplish with the things. Moving toward these kinds of standards was a change in thinking. It's part of what made Dad a maverick.
But what I didn't realize until now is that Dad's push for performance-based standards was an early indication of his desire to measure how the built environment works for the people who use it. Not just to make buildings better by measuring the outcomes of their use, because that makes more sense than prescribing the walls have to be so thick, etc. But to produce better outcomes for the people using those buildings, whether they are homes (as in the case of his testimony here) or churches or schools or hospitals.
This passion, as science progressed, was what he was trying to accomplish with his last career move - the Academy for Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA). To use this new science, neuroscience, to measure human's interactions with architecture, to improve the built environment for human's use.
Maverick indeed.
I May Be Done
At least with the first draft of Dad's biography. Today, I finished the principal writing on the book. I have a proof coming from Amazon.
In last week's blog on Rich People's Problems, I talked about wanting the book to be between 300-350 pages. Dad's biography is less than 200 pages right now. But I feel as though that's okay, because I feel as though I said what needed saying.
Now, the process will be for me to do an edit. I've ordered a paperback version, which I can use for the edit. But also will give me a sense of what the biography looks like. I've never published in color before, so I will be curious how that works, including the photographs throughout the book.
And I will also send the biography out for review by the people I interviewed. I've never done that before, either. Never let others review what I've written. But I've never written a biography before. And I'm not an architect or a neuroscientist. So, while I think I've gotten things right, I need the experts to review. Also, most of these folks worked for Dad - some several times. So, they will have a different perspective that way, as well.
I'm nervous as hell.
In last week's blog on Rich People's Problems, I talked about wanting the book to be between 300-350 pages. Dad's biography is less than 200 pages right now. But I feel as though that's okay, because I feel as though I said what needed saying.
Now, the process will be for me to do an edit. I've ordered a paperback version, which I can use for the edit. But also will give me a sense of what the biography looks like. I've never published in color before, so I will be curious how that works, including the photographs throughout the book.
And I will also send the biography out for review by the people I interviewed. I've never done that before, either. Never let others review what I've written. But I've never written a biography before. And I'm not an architect or a neuroscientist. So, while I think I've gotten things right, I need the experts to review. Also, most of these folks worked for Dad - some several times. So, they will have a different perspective that way, as well.
I'm nervous as hell.
Nerves and Reviews
I sent Dad's biography off today to the folks I had interviewed for it. There are 11 of them.
It will be interesting to see what their response is. I started with Dad's "autobiography" which was notes and pieces he'd written about his life. He'd also written a book called Extraordinary Events of My Life, which is also heavily referenced.
But much of what I've got in the biography is based on articles about my dad, books and magazine articles that he wrote or helped to write. And then my interpretation of what he was saying in those pieces and their impact.
Flavored throughout the biography is also tributes from various people that Dad knew in different stages of his career. I tried to spread them pretty evenly, but also use them where they related to the topic at hand.
I talked to my husband about how best to elicit reviews. I could post the file to a single directory or just email it - I chose to email it, figuring that getting to my Dropbox or Google Drive might be too much for some of these folks, who are older than I am! (We're not the tech generation). I also wondered whether it made more sense to share the Word file or a PDF. Eric's insight was that a PDF would allow people to comment, but not wordsmith. And that they might see the Word file as asking them to do "too much", whereas the PDF would be "friendlier". Because I do collaborative documents for a living, I'd actually been thinking about the Word file, which would have been a nightmare to track comments in - assuming people had left tracks changes on. So, the PDF is actually - from my perspective - easier. So, I'm glad Eric thought it was the right path to take.
I also shared the cover I've designed. If I'm successful in getting a publisher for the biography, I would assume they would want to develop their own cover. But for the purposes of self-publishing - at least to start - I wanted to have a cover that I liked. I used one of Dad's drawings on the cover (attached here), which I also think is poetic.
I've already heard back from two of the reviewers that they are excited to read the biography. I can only hope that they are still excited when they finish it.
It will be interesting to see what their response is. I started with Dad's "autobiography" which was notes and pieces he'd written about his life. He'd also written a book called Extraordinary Events of My Life, which is also heavily referenced.
But much of what I've got in the biography is based on articles about my dad, books and magazine articles that he wrote or helped to write. And then my interpretation of what he was saying in those pieces and their impact.
Flavored throughout the biography is also tributes from various people that Dad knew in different stages of his career. I tried to spread them pretty evenly, but also use them where they related to the topic at hand.
I talked to my husband about how best to elicit reviews. I could post the file to a single directory or just email it - I chose to email it, figuring that getting to my Dropbox or Google Drive might be too much for some of these folks, who are older than I am! (We're not the tech generation). I also wondered whether it made more sense to share the Word file or a PDF. Eric's insight was that a PDF would allow people to comment, but not wordsmith. And that they might see the Word file as asking them to do "too much", whereas the PDF would be "friendlier". Because I do collaborative documents for a living, I'd actually been thinking about the Word file, which would have been a nightmare to track comments in - assuming people had left tracks changes on. So, the PDF is actually - from my perspective - easier. So, I'm glad Eric thought it was the right path to take.
I also shared the cover I've designed. If I'm successful in getting a publisher for the biography, I would assume they would want to develop their own cover. But for the purposes of self-publishing - at least to start - I wanted to have a cover that I liked. I used one of Dad's drawings on the cover (attached here), which I also think is poetic.
I've already heard back from two of the reviewers that they are excited to read the biography. I can only hope that they are still excited when they finish it.
Putting Mom in Dad's Biography
As I've written about before - many times - I'm just finishing the writing for a biography of my father, John Paul Eberhard.
As Dad's career is what makes his biography of interest, that's what the book is mostly about.
However, my parents married in college and were married for nearly 70 years. They died within weeks of each other, as is relatively common for people who were married that long.
So, I wanted to make sure to include my mother in my father's biography. The question was how?
In the early years, it is easier. I talk about their college years, how they met in 1948 and married in 1950, when Mom was 19 and Dad was 23. How they met is not known precisely. But they were both active in the Lutheran Student Center, which is known from pictures I found on Ancestry. So, that seems the likely way they met.
Dad mentions Mom in his autobiography pieces, which start most chapters of his biography, especially when he's just starting out. Apparently they lived on an inheritance Mom got from her grandfather in some of the early, lean years. I have the paperwork from the inheritance, and it wasn't more than a few thousand dollars. While things were cheaper in the 1950s, they also had three children by 1956. Dad also mentioned that he and Mom ended having to "buy" a strip of land for one of the houses Dad designed, because the survey - that Dad had done - was a little off and the newly built house encroached on the property next door. Knowing my parents, that had to have been a hard conversation - both for my father to admit fault and for my mother to agree to use what little money they had to cover his mistake. Yikes.
After that first job, after Dad went to MIT for grad school, his autobiographical pieces don't mention Mom again.
But I do.
I wrote a bit about where we lived, as my parents moved often, at my father's behest and for my father's career. This topic became a source of some contention late in my parents' marriage, when they lived in a fancy apartment building in Pittsburgh when Dad was at CMU with a doorman and an elevator man. Mom HATED that there were people who knew her every move coming and going to the apartment. She also struggled because most of the families in the building used maids for their laundry, and Mom still insisted on doing their laundry herself. The move to Asbury was also a source of conflict, especially when Asbury built an iron fence around the property. Mom said she felt like she lived in a prison. The fence isn't that high, but you did have to use a card to get the gates to open.
I also included my mother in referencing a bit of her schooling and career. Mom had gone to grad school herself when we lived in Buffalo, presumably not the least of which was because she could go for free as her husband was dean of the school of architecture at SUNYAB. But I do mention, and I think it bears repeating, that my mother not only completed her undergraduate degree, even though she'd gotten married before graduation, she also earned a master's degree and worked throughout her life. As far as I know, she didn't work when my siblings were little. But she went back to work when I was a child and worked until her 60s.
So, in the end, it was important to have my mother mentioned in my father's biography. And, yes, when I created the Index of People (for people mentioned other than my father), she's the person who shows up the most often.
As she should be.
As Dad's career is what makes his biography of interest, that's what the book is mostly about.
However, my parents married in college and were married for nearly 70 years. They died within weeks of each other, as is relatively common for people who were married that long.
So, I wanted to make sure to include my mother in my father's biography. The question was how?
In the early years, it is easier. I talk about their college years, how they met in 1948 and married in 1950, when Mom was 19 and Dad was 23. How they met is not known precisely. But they were both active in the Lutheran Student Center, which is known from pictures I found on Ancestry. So, that seems the likely way they met.
Dad mentions Mom in his autobiography pieces, which start most chapters of his biography, especially when he's just starting out. Apparently they lived on an inheritance Mom got from her grandfather in some of the early, lean years. I have the paperwork from the inheritance, and it wasn't more than a few thousand dollars. While things were cheaper in the 1950s, they also had three children by 1956. Dad also mentioned that he and Mom ended having to "buy" a strip of land for one of the houses Dad designed, because the survey - that Dad had done - was a little off and the newly built house encroached on the property next door. Knowing my parents, that had to have been a hard conversation - both for my father to admit fault and for my mother to agree to use what little money they had to cover his mistake. Yikes.
After that first job, after Dad went to MIT for grad school, his autobiographical pieces don't mention Mom again.
But I do.
I wrote a bit about where we lived, as my parents moved often, at my father's behest and for my father's career. This topic became a source of some contention late in my parents' marriage, when they lived in a fancy apartment building in Pittsburgh when Dad was at CMU with a doorman and an elevator man. Mom HATED that there were people who knew her every move coming and going to the apartment. She also struggled because most of the families in the building used maids for their laundry, and Mom still insisted on doing their laundry herself. The move to Asbury was also a source of conflict, especially when Asbury built an iron fence around the property. Mom said she felt like she lived in a prison. The fence isn't that high, but you did have to use a card to get the gates to open.
I also included my mother in referencing a bit of her schooling and career. Mom had gone to grad school herself when we lived in Buffalo, presumably not the least of which was because she could go for free as her husband was dean of the school of architecture at SUNYAB. But I do mention, and I think it bears repeating, that my mother not only completed her undergraduate degree, even though she'd gotten married before graduation, she also earned a master's degree and worked throughout her life. As far as I know, she didn't work when my siblings were little. But she went back to work when I was a child and worked until her 60s.
So, in the end, it was important to have my mother mentioned in my father's biography. And, yes, when I created the Index of People (for people mentioned other than my father), she's the person who shows up the most often.
As she should be.
