Wilfred Armster, Founder

Architecture – by Wilfred John Oskar Armster, AIA


You live in it, and you live around it.  There is a sense of safety that good architecture can provide.  The design, the forming of structure develops and fulfills a need for protection, and it is in a very real way, a fortress.  Really good work, especially in a home, has the very distinct effect of having security dance very closely with excitement, with peace and being well.  It is where we belong when we live as ourselves, for ourselves.  A masterful house offers protection and excitement, using spaces and forms that evoke our imaginations, our emotions and passions that flavor our lives.  Strong exterior forms, sculptural forms are the structure and sinew that we feel as a part of our protection.  What these forms hold, what they contain are the spaces we live within.  It is where we create, and the light that passes into and through these forms color and sustain our spirit.  We are connected to the earth and the air of life when our spirits are touched.

And Architecture should be strong.  The storms are strong.  The wind is strong.  The air of winter is cold with ice and the light of winter is quick to leave into the dark of nightfall.  A house needs strength in a way to stand with these forces,  the heat, the cold, the swiftness of the wind and the darkness of the night.  The day comes and we may leave our homes into the light of morning.  It is my strong belief that without passion as evoked in strong often symbolic forms, there is a dullness to our movement.  But ultimately, our quick existence is, I feel, at the least, excited by memory, and by forms and spaces that connect us to nature as well as protect us from nature.  These notions of forms are the excitement of myth and the play of our imagination and form the food for our spirit, for our minds to thrive.  And then I say to myself, “what am I talking about”, but the instinct survives, the instinct to form.

Co-Founder Sarah Armster, Mill Manager

More to come!

The 20th century Wood, Steel and Glas team

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