Licensed Architect, Member of the American Institute of Architects AIA & Professor of Architecture since 2006. Owner of Architecture Firm since 2010.
Joined March 2024
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Tim the Architect retweeted
À Orléans, l’emblème de notre XIXe congrès ne pouvait être que Sainte Jeanne d’Arc.
Tim the Architect retweeted
Monet’s Iris sold yesterday for €50 million.
Art or speculation?
Art is treated as a financial asset, bought and sold for profit.
Is that fair?
Tim the Architect retweeted
John Cowperthwaite did more for human prosperity than any development economist drawing a government salary ever managed, and he did it by refusing to do almost anything at all.
As Hong Kong's Financial Secretary from 1961 to 1971, Cowperthwaite ran one of the most radically free economies the modern world has ever seen. He kept taxes flat and low (the top income tax rate sat at 15%), ran consistent budget surpluses, abolished import tariffs, and blocked nearly every subsidy request that crossed his desk. When British civil servants demanded economic statistics to justify intervention, he refused to collect them. Not out of laziness. He genuinely believed that giving planners numbers gave them excuses.
The results? In 1960, Hong Kong's per capita income stood at roughly 28% of Britain's. By 1997, Hong Kong had surpassed Britain. That trajectory happened without natural resources, without foreign aid, and without a single five-year plan drafted by well-intentioned economists from Oxford. Hong Kong had a harbor, people willing to work, and a bureaucrat with enough intellectual discipline to keep the state out of their way.
Capital flows toward secure property rights and reliable rules, and flees the moment politicians start allocating it. Every industry Beijing picked as a "priority sector" during those same decades burned through subsidies and produced junk. Hong Kong's industries emerged organically, serving real demand, building real wealth.
You benefit from this history whether you know it or not, because Hong Kong's success gave the world a controlled experiment that still embarrasses every advocate of managed development. The control group thrived. The planned economies didn't.
Cowperthwaite retired to St Andrews, received a knighthood, and gave almost no interviews. That restraint was entirely in character.
Tim the Architect retweeted
Merci à Christophe Clavé pour cet éclairage sur l’appauvrissement de la langue et la ruine de la pensée 🙌
"La disparition progressive des temps (subjonctif, passé simple, imparfait, formes composées du futur, participe passé…) donne lieu à une pensée au présent, limitée à l’instant, incapable de projections dans le temps.
La généralisation du tutoiement, la disparition des majuscules et de la ponctuation sont autant de coups mortels portés à la subtilité de l’expression.
Supprimer le mot «mademoiselle» est non seulement renoncer à l’esthétique d’un mot, mais également promouvoir l’idée qu’entre une petite fille et une femme il n’y a rien.
Moins de mots et moins de verbes conjugués c’est moins de capacités à exprimer les émotions et moins de possibilité d’élaborer une pensée.
Des études ont montré qu’une partie de la violence dans la sphère publique et privée provient directement de l’incapacité à mettre des mots sur les émotions.
Sans mot pour construire un raisonnement, la pensée complexe chère à Edgar Morin est entravée, rendue impossible.
Plus le langage est pauvre, moins la pensée existe.
L’histoire est riche d’exemples et les écrits sont nombreux de Georges Orwell dans « 1984 » à Ray Bradbury dans « Fahrenheit 451 » qui ont relaté comment les dictatures de toutes obédiences entravaient la pensée en réduisant et tordant le nombre et le sens des mots.
Il n’y a pas de pensée critique sans pensée. Et il n’y a pas de pensée sans mots.
Comment construire une pensée hypothético-déductive sans maîtrise du conditionnel ? Comment envisager l’avenir sans conjugaison au futur ? Comment appréhender une temporalité, une succession d’éléments dans le temps, qu’ils soient passés ou à venir, ainsi que leur durée relative, sans une langue qui fait la différence entre ce qui aurait pu être, ce qui a été, ce qui est, ce qui pourrait advenir, et ce qui sera après que ce qui pourrait advenir soit advenu ? Si un cri de ralliement devait se faire entendre aujourd’hui, ce serait celui, adressé aux parents et aux enseignants : faites parler, lire et écrire vos enfants, vos élèves, vos étudiants.
Enseignez et pratiquez la langue dans ses formes les plus variées, même si elle semble compliquée, surtout si elle est compliquée. Parce que dans cet effort se trouve la liberté. Ceux qui expliquent à longueur de temps qu’il faut simplifier l’orthographe, purger la langue de ses «défauts», abolir les genres, les temps, les nuances, tout ce qui crée de la complexité sont les fossoyeurs de l’esprit humain. Il n’est pas de liberté sans exigences. Il n’est pas de beauté sans la pensée de la beauté."
Christophe Clavé
Tim the Architect retweeted
Most people buy a Porsche 911 Turbo as a weekend prize, keeping it tucked away to preserve its resale value. You did the exact opposite. By treating a legendary 3.6L twin-turbo machine as a daily commuter braving brutal northeastern winters, everyday traffic, and rigorous track days you have proven what true automotive passion looks like.
Passing 784,000 miles (1,261,726 km) on the same car is not just a victory for meticulous maintenance and legendary German engineering; it is a masterclass in living life behind the wheel. While your physical odometer famously maxed out at 999,999 km, your dedication to the road hasn't skipped a beat.
Thank you for showing the entire car community that cars are meant to be driven, memories are meant to be made on the blacktop, and that the journey to one million miles is the ultimate destination. Keep rolling, Tom!
Tim the Architect retweeted
It’s not just what I write in my books that turns them into journals. It’s also what I put into those books. I try to add keepsakes and bookmarks between the pages. I like the idea of being surprised by these things when my future self takes books off my shelf.
booksoftitans.com/p/books-as…
Tim the Architect retweeted
I have an older gentleman who comes into the shop about once a week. He’s very quiet, says hello, browses books for half an hour or so, finds something he likes, leaves. Today he told me that he has spent years trying to rebuild his library after his wife decided she was
Tim the Architect retweeted
Fun family history moment: in the early 00's, my father owned and operated the Yule Marble Quarry in Marble, CO. Best white marble in the world, few cracks, beautiful gold veins. This is the quarry that provided the stone for the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Speaking of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, there is a major crack going right across the middle of the stone there right now, clear through the entire thing. For several years, Dad worked on trying to provide a replacement stone. The stone was cut. It was to be donated, for free, to Arlington. The carvers were lined up, again for free. It would have been identical in form, but with no crack. After several years of meetings and calls, nothing was done. The stone still sits by the creek in Marble.
And that's why I know that painting a pillar is truly impressive for Washington, DC.
Tim the Architect retweeted
Beautiful. Turkish professional soccer player Semih Güler holds his baby daughter, reminding the world of the humanity and dignity of people with Down syndrome.
“They are actually just like us, even though they have one extra chromosome, but they are more beautiful people than we are.”
Every child with an extra chromosome is worthy of life and love.
Tim the Architect retweeted
“The Pope said the icon would go not with the thousands of other gifts in storage, but in his own bedroom to serve as a source of inspiration every day” ❤️
Nearly everyone who meets the Pope brings a present. From flowers to photos, tennis racquets and t-shirts, many of the items end up in the Vatican archives, sitting in storage, or donated to charity.
But when Chicago attorney Michael Airdo planned to visit his old friend, he wanted to bring something special: tinyurl.com/4mtu3y5x
Tim the Architect retweeted
Women who have aborted their children.
Historical Totals (Through 2018): According to the Johnston's Archive, which compiles historical data across 107 areas since the early to mid 20th century, there were 941,574,807 reported abortions and an additional 110,997,348 estimated for missing or underreported data, totaling 1,052,572,155 (over 1.05 billion) abortions through December 2018.
Modern Estimates: Independent researchers and data people projecting numbers back to 1980 estimate that the historical global cumulative total ranges from 1.3 billion to over 2 billion.
Current Annual Numbers: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that roughly 73 million induced abortions occur globally each year.
Tim the Architect retweeted
Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s iron dagger is one of the most fascinating objects found in his tomb, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.
Unlike most Bronze Age weapons, which were made of copper or bronze, this exceptional piece was crafted from iron, an extraordinarily rare material in ancient Egypt during the 14th century B.C. Its blade, accompanied by an ornate hilt and a sheath decorated with gold motifs, reveals the craftsmanship of the era.
Decades after its discovery, scientific analysis confirmed that the dagger’s iron came from a meteorite. Using modern techniques, researchers identified a composition rich in nickel and cobalt, characteristic of meteoritic iron. This demonstrates that ancient artisans knew how to work with a material from space long before iron smelting became widespread.
For the Egyptians, the sky held profound symbolic and religious significance. Although we do not know exactly how they interpreted the origin of this metal, the dagger serves as an extraordinary link between archaeology, science, and the cosmos.
Tim the Architect retweeted
Add this masterpiece to your collection…
Entitled “the student social movement”.
Tim the Architect retweeted
Beneath the splendour of St Peter's Basilica lies something far more important than the greatest architectural achievement of Renaissance Rome: the tomb of a fisherman who denied Christ three times.
A new documentary, Pétros ení, revisits the extraordinary archaeological excavations beneath the Vatican Basilica, undertaken during the pontificate of Pius XII, which uncovered the ancient necropolis and evidence associated with the burial place of St Peter. The story is fascinating in itself. But what interests me most is what it tells us about the papacy.
We spend an enormous amount of time discussing popes as personalities, administrators and political actors. We analyse appointments, speculate about factions and argue over the direction of successive pontificates. That scrutiny is entirely legitimate, the government of the Church matters enormously. But beneath all the splendour, ceremony and institutional complexity of the Vatican is the grave of a man who was neither a brilliant statesman nor a worldly success.
Peter was a fisherman who misunderstood his Master, promised a fidelity he could not sustain, and denied knowing Him when courage was demanded, yet it was to this same Peter, humbled and restored by Christ's mercy, that the Lord entrusted the care of His flock. The authority of the papacy does not arise from the personal greatness of the man who occupies the office. It comes from Jesus Christ.
That distinction is particularly important in an age when Catholics can become so absorbed in their approval or disapproval of individual popes that they lose sight of the office itself. The Successor of Peter is not called to become the centre of the Church's life, but to strengthen his brethren in the faith and bear witness to the One upon whom the Church is founded.
And perhaps that is the most profound thing about the tomb beneath St Peter's. The magnificent basilica above it bears witness not to the triumph of human power, but to the extraordinary work of divine grace in a weak and fallible man.
Peter's greatness was never that he could not fall. It was that, having fallen, he returned to Christ and followed Him even to martyrdom. That is the foundation upon which the splendour of St Peter's must always be understood.
Tim the Architect retweeted
Totally agree. Penguin is the Goldilocks of books not too big, not too small, just right. (You can have your Loebs too small for me.)
Tim the Architect retweeted
Re-posting this video almost exactly one year later, because unfortunately, it's relevant again. Seeing the scenes of destruction out of France and Italy, the two most incredible countries of all western civilization, is heartbreaking and maddening. We are living in shadow of a once-great society. The only answer is Jesus.