A chance encounter with James Rossant

The weather that day was mild, bright, and crisp. I was mak­ing last minute prepa­ra­tions for a review I had that day at Columbia’s GSAPP. A dap­per gen­tle­man with white hair and thin rimmed cir­cu­lar glass begs my par­don and pro­ceeds to ask me about the stu­dios and the school in gen­eral. “My, you all are crammed together in here,” he remarks. “Yes, appar­ently it induces cre­ativ­ity, or so the dean would have us believe,” I reply.

“You’re not from New York.” the man quips.

“Is any­one here?” I ask.

“No, I sup­pose not, myself included.”

Float­ing City No. 2

The affa­ble old man con­tin­ues to make small talk with me as I con­tinue to trim down some draw­ings I had printed out that morn­ing. Despite the poten­tial loss of fin­ger­tips due to his dis­tract­ing and per­sis­tent inquiries, I found the con­ver­sa­tion com­fort­able, even famil­iar in an oth­er­wise “no time for chit-chat” town this can be.

He asks about my stud­ies, and I inform him of my dual degree path in archi­tec­ture and urban plan­ning. “Why, that’s a great com­bi­na­tion.” he says. He explains that he is an archi­tect and plan­ner, though no longer prac­tic­ing. “My son, he’s an archi­tect too, a part­ner at Pol­shek.” he says with a frank­ness that doesn’t quite hide his pride.

He takes out a pad of paper, scrib­bles some­thing on it and hands it to me. “Good luck with the remain­der of your stud­ies,” he says with a warm aged smile.

“Well, thank you, sir. And you are…?”

“James Rossant.”

“Nice to meet make your acquain­tance, Mr. Rossant.”

“Is there a place to get a cup of cof­fee around here?”

“Yes, down­stairs, in the basement.”

He col­lects his things and makes his way through the sun­light stream­ing through the win­dow and toward the ele­va­tor. It arrives packed with peo­ple my age, younger, with draw­ings and mod­els. He looks dis­con­cert­edly at the crammed ele­va­tor car, turns, and skips down the stairs.

*  * *

From the New York Times arti­cel, James Rossant, Archi­tect and Plan­ner, Dies at 81:

Rec­og­nized as a con­sum­mate drafts­man, he exhib­ited his archi­tec­tural draw­ings and paint­ings fre­quently. Often, his shows included paint­ings of fan­tasy cities free from the forces of grav­ity, with build­ings radi­at­ing in every direc­tion. Many of these were col­lected in “Cities in the Sky,” which he pub­lished in 2009.

Learn more about James Rossant at www.jamesrossant.com.