Michel Rojkind: Rising Star
Rojkind currently has an entry in the Vitra Design Museum’s Open House exhibition, which premiered in Essen, Germany, last year and is now on tour; the exhibit will be in Pasadena in March. The assignment, to imagine the house of the future, drew concepts from 90 architects worldwide; Rojkind was one of 12 finalists.
“I decided to focus on housing for the elderly,” says Rojkind. “I believe we have to think of a future where you can live and die in your own home. The population is aging, governments won’t have enough money to take care of all the seniors, and people don’t want to be sent to nursing homes or hospitals. I see the need to look at how we can age better in our own homes, using preventive medicine and technology. For this competition I thought about how my grandmother and mother lived, how I live, how my kids will live.”
Rojkind also was one of six finalists among 600 entries in a worldwide competition for a Toronto residential tower. His vision for the 60-story, 520-unit building has what he calls an organic feel. “I tried to break out of this straight, neurotic modulation of structure that’s so common,” he explains. “My design has an exterior mesh, an exoskeleton, which creates an open interior space — there are no columns to avoid in designing the units. And from the outside you see this curving, unpredictable line.”
All Mac
From the time he was an 18-year-old rock ‘n’ roll drummer, when he used Digital Performer to do sequencing and sampling on his PowerBook, to his current career, for which he uses Archicad and other programs on his 17-inch MacBook Pro and 20-inch Cinema Display, Rojkind has relied on the Mac to help bring his ideas to life.
As usual, Rojkind was a bit ahead of the curve. “When I was starting, there wasn’t one architect in Mexico using the Mac for architectural design,” he points out. “Today, more and more are Apple users. For me, I just love the Apple environment. Working inside a Mac is where I want to be.”
He happily totes his laptop to lectures and teaching gigs around the world and gets a kick out of converting the uninitiated. “At first,” he laughs, “I take out my MacBook Pro and people are shocked. They ask, ‘Do you think our projector will work with your Mac?’ And I say, ‘Of course it will!’ Or they ask, ‘Oh, you’re using a Mac… what do you run on it?’ And I say, ‘Whatever I want!’ I love to break down the myths.”
Back at the office, his designs evolve from a mix of hand-sketching, digital models and physical models. Sometimes his firm creates QuickTime VR movies, which simulate 3D objects and spaces, to help convey challenging concepts to clients.
As enthusiastic a Mac booster as he is, Rojkind is eager to put one fallacy to rest. “Some people still think the Mac is not accurate enough for architecture — that you can use it for design and graphics, but you need a PC for building and construction. That’s been proven to be totally wrong,” he states emphatically. “The Mac is perfectly accurate. I send files directly from my Mac to a 3D printing machine for my models, and it’s amazing. You don’t have to have a Silicon Graphics workstation — the Mac is the best hardware around.”
Easy Collaboration
To Rojkind, the advantages of his preferred platform are palpable. “I use lots of programs at the same time,” he notes. “My colleagues on PCs can’t jump from one to the other the way I do. I’ll be working on a building in 3D software, jump to rendering software, then to Photoshop, then back to 3D. On the Mac it’s always very fast and easy.”
The architect appreciates how the platform lends itself to collaboration. “When I’m involved in an international competition,” he says, “I may be working with 40 people all over the world. On the Mac I can send information back and forth using Skype, email, Apple Remote Desktop, and a lot of software. That allows us to actually be producing work in different countries at the same time.”
Compatibility, stresses Rojkind, is a big deal in architecture. “People ask me, ‘If you’re doing an architectural drawing on your Mac, how are you going to send it to your structural engineer who works on a PC?’ I tell them it’s no problem. The Mac has taken care of that. I’ve convinced so many people to switch to the Mac. I’m hooked for life on the Mac. I wouldn’t go to any other system.”
A Principled Approach
Each project Rojkind undertakes represents a heart-and-soul commitment. “If a design doesn’t turn me on,” he states, “something is wrong. And if I cannot imagine myself using the space I’m designing, I won’t present it.”
Adhering to those principles keeps the young architect true to his inner compass — though the needle doesn’t always point to a fat bottom line. “I choose to do what I really believe in,” he says simply. “So designing a house with Roman pillars for a client who wants Roman pillars, just for the money, is something I’d never agree to.”
“It’s a personal matter,” he concludes. “I’d go back to drumming before doing architecture that lets me down.”