I moved to Portland in the summer of 2006, completely unaware of what stood before me. A bachelors degree in architecture taught me that ideas can be the foundation of design. My professional work has managed to reaffirm those principles. It is my hope that design will not end where sustainability begins. I sometimes wonder if modernist minimalism is the path to moral idealism. In other words, design is a somewhat self-indulgent process, and occasionally more satisfying than anything else.

Simply stated, my chaboo is composed. Honest in its shallowness, it is a reinterpretation of the original chaboo's clarity and strength, but reconstructed into something slightly different. With some cartoony sketches, Kari Merkl's welding skills, Ken's table saw, and some powder coating, a new chaboo will eventually emerge.

Having practiced architecture for three years now, I recently concluded that so little of our {architects} time is spent on raw composition - the arrangement of forms and colors, purely for the sake of beauty. This fairly benign revelation triggered a new level of self-analysis and personal scrutiny, and the requisite professional soul-searching commenced. In other words, I realized that perhaps it was necessary to create something with almost no basis whatsoever, besides my own creative instincts.

Project Chaboo has been an enormously valuable experience in large part because of the effort and enthusiasm each member of the team has demonstrated. I haven't been personally involved in many projects like these; it has been so thoroughly positive. A collaboration in the truest sense, Project Chaboo will surely be a success.