- Via Archinect

” At a time when headlines are dominated by Dubai and disaster, it’s refreshing to see one of our own trying to unpack decidedly less glamorous parts of our world. In this love letter / propaganda / manifesto by Archinector Fred Scharmen, the outsider (that’s you) is given a glimpse into the fullness of the contemporary American city as exemplified by Baltimore, MD. Fred’s peripatetic tour of Baltimore is ultimately a plea for others to care about the places at hand. To be sure, Baltimore has its own specific cocktail of aspirations, afflictions, successes, and opportunities but more than a single mid-Atlantic city what’s at stake is a way of thinking about the world.

Starting from the material evidence of the city itself, captured here in Fred’s photographs, and blooming into a network of larger concerns, we find in Scharmen’s love letter to Baltimore an advertisement not only for his hometown but for the position of architects as a group who are uniquely able to link up- in thoughts and actions- the material to the abstract. This perspective, the architect’s perspective, is a way of thinking that retains the importance of the local without giving up the complexities of contemporary life.” Read the article here

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