by Robert Gordon
Moto-D Architecture and Design
San Anselmo, California
PREFACE TO SELECTIONS FROM
NOTEBOOKS FOR PASCAL'S ROOM
TASK: Create a design for a hospice that would include a room for Pascal McLaren. The design would be available to the general public on the Moto-D web site.
COMMISSIONED BY: In-house Project. Robert Gordon, Project Director
These are selections from my journal. Motoyoshi Sensei wants us to keep them for all projects.
I've never designed a hospice before. I would never have thought of doing this on my own. But Sensei and the rest of us at Moto-D were so close to Pascal McLaren that he felt it would be a fitting tribute to her. I was selected to head up the project because of my relationship to Naomi. Through her, I'm the one on staff who is the most emotionally related to PM.
I want to start with the room for Pascal -- the entire structure will be designed around that -- what I feel about her. About this family -- my family -- I don't know but I feel everything in my life has suddenly become connected somehow.
Hopkins wrote in a sonnet in which he said that this caring for the sick endears them to us -- us too it endears. So we come to think about ourselves and our lives as we think about those who are going to leave us.
I guess it goes without saying that a hospital and a hospice are very different types of spaces. In a hospice, there is no hope in one sense but there is focus -- a focus on what is truly important in life.
In another more personal light, someone -- I think it was James Baldwin -- talked about going to Paris and discovering his Black identity with a Bessie Smith record. For me, it would be three things -- a recording of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier by Glenn Gould, a jar of old Bizen -- and the old motorcycle helmet my father used to wear. The helmet was nothing fancy. He flew recon missions out of Beale Air Force Base in U-2's and SR-71's. No top gun bullshit. But that's my father -- nothing fancy, just dialed in -- a professional pilot, one bad-assed motherfucker as my brother, Loo, would say.
My notes -- these are a few of my some of my notes -- from my journal -- for Pascal's room.
Robby Gordon
San Anselmo
