A r c h i t e c t
Veery: What do you look for in a piece of architecture? Fay Jones: Initially, it's how you respond emotionally and essentially to it, and then I suppose at some point your intellect takes over, and you try to analyze what it is you're responding to, and to observe it in all its detail. I don't know that there's any special order of looking at architecture; I think it's the initial impact that it has that pulls you in and makes you want to explore it further. Veery: What do you think it is that pulls you in? Fay Jones: It can be different things. Certainly, there are so many building types and so many types of forms and spaces out of so many different materials, that something might be the way that building is sited, or fitted to the landscape, or the way it contrasts with it in some special meaningful way, and something about the craftsmanship (how well it's all put together); and then, of course, the way that light affects the forms and spaces, and the way you begin to wonder what it looks like under different lighting conditions, different times of day or seasons of the year - it can be just ten million and eighty-seven things. Veery: Have you found a thread that runs through the work that you admire? Fay Jones: Well, I do admire the work of so many people. I feel like the work I do for myself has a certain set of principles or a certain philosophical base, but I try not to judge everybody else's work based on my particular set of principles or philosophical position. I try to figure out what it is they are trying to do and judge it on how well they do what it is that they seem to be trying to do. Veery: And at what point is it that you say that whatever it is that they are trying to do that they have done? Fay Jones: If all of the smaller aspects of the design somehow strengthen and reinforce the larger idea, and there seems to be some consistency of thought that determines the large elements and the small elements, that increases my admiration for it. Veery: What artists do you respect? Fay Jones, Oh goodness, there are so many. I'm not into having a certain favorite period, but I guess in painting I lean to more of the early modern masters because in college my first course was history of modern art right up to WWII; so, certainly Picasso, Braque, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, and the work of that period had a very strong impact on me and formed a lot of ideas I had about art at that time. Veery: What is it about them that made it so influential on you? Fay Jones: Well, at a younger age it seems to be a fascination with people who have broken with tradition or somehow opened up some new avenues, new approaches to thinking - where their ideas are fresh and have attained some real acceptance. Veery: Who are your favorite writers and why? Fay Jones: Oh goodness, so many whose work that I do admire and read from time to time, and when I quote some author in a talk, the one I quote most is T.S. Eliot as far as poets are concerned. With T.S. Eliot, from years ago, there's a certain appeal there, and there are certain parts of poems and things that strike me that I've found as I go back over and over again and find some meaning in it that seems very special for me and at times in architecture. Veery: Did you have any tough years of trying to make it all work, money, prestige?
Fay Jones: There never was any real aim for the prestige, but I think anyone would want the work he does to be respected. It's well known that teaching at a school of architecture is not a lucrative profession, but I must say there was never any time of thinking of giving up architecture because there were other ways to make more money. Veery: Were there any years where money was a problem? Fay Jones: To some degree. Veery: What is architecture? Fay Jones: It's the science and art of building, both of these things. But, it's more than mere construction or mere building or the technical putting together of things. It's more than mere accommodation, or, certainly not just stylistic notions; it must transcend these things, and it's something that the human spirit has to be involved with. Veery 1994 
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