Upon graduating in 1969, I was lucky enough to have a  kind of two-year period of “architectural cleansing” living  on the edge of the Atacama Desert in a small village in  Chile: A two-year reprieve from the constant design  investigations and architectural dialogue characteristic of  architectural school. I didn’t read American architecture  magazines during that period or even design very much. 

Every now and then architects from the capital (about 8  hours away) would pass by our little village, and we would  drink fine Chilean wine at night at some candlelit  neighborhood bar and have interesting discussions about  architecture. There was no electricity or refrigeration and  horses were tied up at the hitching post by the door on the  dirt street. 

One of those conversations actually changed the entire  way I looked at architecture. At one point after enough  wine, a Chilean architect became rather aggressive and  asked, “Why aren’t there any American architects? You  

have the world’s most dominant culture, but why isn’t there  an American architecture?” I was sort of stunned by that  question actually. I had never really considered the issue.  My hero at the time was Louis Kahn. “What about Kahn?  What about Saarinen?” And the answer was, “No, those  are all European ideas; Kahn and Saarinen have just  tuned their ideas to the American condition. But that’s  hardly an American architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright was  American; that’s about it.” So I said, “Well, what about  these young guys that started practicing just before I left  the U.S.?” MLTW and the Sea Ranch publications were  just reaching South America at that time. And he said, “are all European ideas; Kahn and Saarinen have just  tuned their ideas to the American condition. But that’s  hardly an American architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright was  American; that’s about it.” So I said, “Well, what about  these young guys that started practicing just before I left  the U.S.?” MLTW and the Sea Ranch publications were  just reaching South America at that time. And he said,  “Well, okay, that’s American architecture.”  

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about that discussion,  and when I returned to California I was focused on the  idea of architecture as an expression of cultural identity ––  especially regional and local identity. I wanted to un franchise the American landscape, to focus on the unique  richness of place and the idiosyncratic qualities of our  various micro cultures.