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Duo Dickinson: Architecture is Human

Calling Duo Dickinson an architect is kind of like saying Ben Franklin flew kites. Duo is a a renown architect, author, teacher, activist, and historian who has made impacts both large and small to his home town.

Even those familiar with Duo’s work and career may not be aware of the helping hand he’s provided for numerous town projects including the design of Tuxis Square, the Lee’s Academy renovation, Salt Meadow and Bauer Park, the Madison Center Project, and Strong Field, almost all in a pro bono capacity. Duo’s work can be seen in numerous homes and businesses across Madison and his work on the Lutheran Church of Madison and Temple Beth Tikvah are among his prominent designs.

Duo says he didn’t start out on a road to become an architect, his interest was in English and history. However, teaching teachers didn’t exactly fit with how Duo wanted to make his mark, and he says he fell into architecture somewhat by accident.

“It’s kind of a crazy story,” says Duo. “At 17, for reasons that are still not clear to me, I just said to myself that I wanted to be an architect. And the reason I think I wanted that was because back in the ‘70s, you went to college for what you knew you wanted to do. Not like now, where you find yourself in college. Back then, you went to college to do your chosen field.”

According to Duo, after some intense English and history courses during high school at the University of Buffalo and a discussion with his advisors, he realized that teaching students how to teach English just wasn’t something that was going to scratch his itch.

“As I was going to sleep after that last class, I was looking at my bookcase and saw all these books on history and art and then I realized as I was falling asleep every night I would be thinking about how things were made. And I simply said, ‘Oh, I’ll be an architect’,” Duo says with a laugh.

Duo has a unique philosophy when it comes to his building style and eye.

“They say architecture is the ‘Mother of the Arts.’ The idea being that there is a pantheon of aesthetics and practicality and culture and theory. It’s this idea that you can design a warehouse and do a great job or design a chair and do a good job and still be an architect. That bandwidth is hugely great but also tough. It puts people who are studying in a place where they are called upon to determine who they are in order to know what they want to do. That’s different, I think, than a lawyer or a doctor. Architecture isn’t where you win a case or the patient either lives or dies, you do something and it’s judged. For every building an architect does, there are people who are going to love it and those who are going to hate it. There are almost no universally loved or loathed designs — you’re kind of in this middle ground,” says Duo. “What I tell every intern who comes to me to see if they want to be an architect, ‘There’s only one reason to be an architect and that is because you can’t do anything else’. Because if you could do something else, you’ll probably make more money, you’ll probably have fewer disappointments, and you’ll probably be happier when you come home at night.”

Duo says a guiding design principal for him is the motivations behind the architecture.

“What is true is that architecture is human. No other species thinks about this stuff; beavers build dams because it’s in them to make a dam, bees make hives because it’s in them to make the hives, ants make anthills because it’s in them too. No ant is saying, ‘Well, I think we should go the other way and build on the west side of the hill, or maybe it should have a wider opening, or maybe it should have a commentary on our social environment.' No, humans are the only ones who do this and the only ones who actually appreciate this. It is this manifestation of something that is human.”

Duo adds, “Sometimes that can take what architects do and turn it into a pretty cynical thing which becomes all about the architect, and the truth is, if you believe architecture is human, it’s not about making what was made before, it’s about us. The universal reality is the home, but the universal reality is also idiosyncratic, home by home. That’s really human nature. We are all humans, and we are all extremely idiosyncratic, and somehow architecture channels that. I would prefer having less work that does more things with the resources available and creates value and changes things. A lot of the work we have done here is in that good place.”

Duo is also an author having penned numerous articles for a wide variety of publications and has also written eight books and is working on more. He is a prolific speaker and author and also teaches, currently at the University of Hartford.

“I’m an architect who writes, I guess you can say. I really wanted to do a minor in English when I was in college, as well. I overloaded my program to get it done in four and a half years in a five year program, and I’ve been writing pretty much since I got out of college. My first book was in 1983,” Duo says. “It was back when books actually meant something. Some have sold quite well. Remember there was no internet, and books were how you connected.”

According to Duo, among his many interests in both his personal and professional life, his passion is for projects that are civic in nature. His designs and collaborations are integral to many town projects, like the Tuxis Walkway Commons and projects for the Madison Land Trust, and Duo has served on numerous boards during his decades in Madison as well.

“We have a rather large geographic area where we work. But in Madison, it was mostly civic projects until we became a bit more established. Now, we have most of [our] business in the last 10 years in Madison,” says Duo. “About a third of what we do starts out as pro bono for non-profits, and about half of that gets some money with whatever grants are available, but about 15 percent of the work we do as a firm is totally for free… If your desire as an architect is to build something — something that will have an outcome which ends up being independent of you — your motivations totally change. The problem with architecture is that the outcomes of what we do are how we are judged, but the motivations of what we do are why things are happen. My goal is to scream at the profession of architecture that unless you understand the motivations of what you’re doing, the actual outcomes are not understood. If you want to make something in any place, you have to be part of the place. If not, you’re just making an object. You have to ask, what does the building want to be for the people using it 20 years from now?”

For those interested in seeing Duo’s work, his almost 1,000 commissions can be seen across New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. He has worked with the ABC House, the Hole in the Wall organization’s property, and more than 130 projects for Habitat for Humanity of Greater New Haven.