Christopher Borno

Before I understood buildings through plans, sections, structure, or systems, I experienced them through their presence. Sometimes it was a place I stood inside; other times, it was only a drawing or an image. A space may only be encountered once, but what it makes you feel can remain long after you leave. Sometimes memory becomes the only way we ever enter that place again.

Art has always been a place of peace for me because of that. It gave me somewhere to place my curiosity, imagination, drawing, making, material, and desire to understand the world around me. I did not really understand where that was leading me at first, but looking back, I was already moving toward architecture before I ever decided to study it.

As I learned more, I stopped seeing architecture as just the object in front of me. I became more interested in what sits around it and beneath it: the people who use it, the materials that form it, the landscape it enters, the memories attached to it, and the larger systems it becomes part of.

If all the projects I’ve worked on existed in one world, what would that world look like, and what would it leave behind?