The Living

If you were like most architects starting a practice and needing to call it something, you'd probably use your name and add "architects", "architecture", or maybe "studio" after to let the people know what you do. If you wanted to sound a bit more like an artisan, with a yeoman connection to the craftsmen who construct your designs, you might use your name but call it a building workshop. If later you added a couple of partners, became an office of some stability, and began to take on more corporate and institutional clients, maybe you'd be a three-letter firm. And if you wanted to project a cool, detached demeanor, sound more arty, and benefit from a calculated obscurity, you might choose a self-consciously generic name.

But if you wanted to transcend all that, and sound like you could be a German new wave punk rock band, or a 70's art and media group that drove a Cadillac through a wall of burning televisions, or a collective of cyborgs bent on assimilating the universe, you'd call yourself The Living.

And you'd be speaking tonight (Monday) at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco at 7 pm.