I got pretty comfortable with architect lingo the past eight years. Programming, parti, AHJ. After three weeks at a landscape and planning firm, I am still chuckling at the odd words and phrases that keep coming up. Multibenefit. Armature. Ecosystem services. PDA. (No, not that PDA.) It’s fun, in a way, all the head scratching … Continue reading On a whole new world of words
Tag: jargon
On the silly term porte cochere
Why use jargon? Sometimes there’s just no other way to say something: you can say electrochromic glass or you can burn a full sentence glossing “glass that responds to an electric current by changing color.” Clearly, there’s an advantage to the first option, though it may occasionally send something scurrying for a dictionary. (But sometimes, … Continue reading On the silly term porte cochere
On jargon from another industry
My wife showed me a diagram the other night. It was a simplified diagram of how programmatic ad placement works—the steps between buyer and publisher. It included a term—“DSP”—that I’ve heard my wife utter innumerable times on work calls over the past few years. If pressed, I might have been able to break out the … Continue reading On jargon from another industry
On words to avoid in architecture writing
Having written over 200 project narratives in the past seven years, I feel in the position to offer some advice on writing them. For this first post on the topic I’ll start simple—a list of words to avoid (or limit your use of). Because I don’t want it to seem that I’m only criticizing the … Continue reading On words to avoid in architecture writing
Taylor Coe 