UEA

Tada Ryvola is a partner and founder of the design/build company United Environment Architecture (UEA) based in Los Angeles, California. In an interview via Skype, Tada shared his thoughts on the therapeutic and spiritual significance of making things by hand.

What is your artistic process like?

Well, I work with a partner on almost all of my projects. We usually have a bunch of things that we are excited about or find fascinating. It could be a certain way of making something, a technique or a process - low-tech metal casting for example. We have played around with carpentry using methods we wanted to try out because we have liked how they looked or how they felt and we wanted to see what we could do with them. Often times a project becomes a venue where you can pull from what have you been reading or researching and try to apply it. 

It’s often a process of integrating things that are captivating or that you want to try out. There is an opportunity to put it into play….play around with it. A lot of creative work feels like playing around with things. Sometimes it goes somewhere and often times it doesn’t. 

The other part of making or designing things, which is parallel to this, is that the work is a response to someone’s needs. We are responding to a design problem that fulfills a certain function or helps someone live a certain way, or enhances their space in some way. People usually want an improvement in some area of their life and our job is to balance an understanding of creating something beautiful or useful with mundane concerns of cost and ability. So those are interconnected factors that all come together and ultimately affect what you’re working on and how you think about it. 

I think even the most menial jobs involve a little bit of creativity. Different jobs require more focus on creative solutions and those are correspondingly more interesting and more fun, more challenging. The creativity can then extend beyond efficiency and be a way of looking at things differently. In trying to come up with ways to make something work, feel better, and look better the hope is always that you can do something and achieve something amazing. That’s the hope though, I don’t know if that happens. That’s the aim and the challenge.

What does creating things mean to you?

It’s a process of being engaged in making something - that could be making anything. It could truly be anything. You’re focused on making something and it’s hard in the sense that you want something to happen - getting yourself to work on something isn’t hard - but trying to start with an idea and work with that and go through a process of trial and error and fuck everything up and see all the things that don’t work, that’s hard. You’re looking to see how things work and you don’t really know how it’s going to go. 

Trying to create something is interesting because you start with a set of assumptions about what something could be or how something should be and then you get to put those assumptions to the test by making something. A prototype, a sketch, whatever, you start seeing what it could mean as more than an idea when it takes on a physical form. When it starts to meet all the challenges using your own limited skills, and generally those assumptions about what is good or what is right, or what the answer is almost always change. It’s unpredictable and things work most beautifully when you’re most comfortable with the change. It’s always the hardest when you’re really attached to the assumptions. 

  The more you are ok with trying a bunch of things and feeling like it doesn’t matter if they don’t work because you are going to do more after that and you are going to be experimenting and learning the whole way along - that’s when you can end up in some amazingly surprising places.  

That’s what’s awesome about making things. I think that if there is any secret to creativity it’s letting your self do that. Consequently, I find that to be the most challenging thing because I think it’s very seductive to be attached to knowing how something is going to go. You often have a fantasy about how something is going to be and you want to see the fantasy through. Usually the cool shit doesn’t happen until you let go of it. Then it is allowed to become something else - that part is especially important in terms of the process when working collaboratively. 

You have your own personal assumptions and you have your partners assumptions and yours get challenged by how they view the same problem. It means that the things you believe might work, or the things that you find valuable might get torn apart because the person you’re working with will see it in a different way. That’s one of the biggest reasons I work with somebody - I know myself well enough that I know how valuable it is to have somebody tear that shit apart with me. It’s really important to be self critical, and having someone next to you that’s a bit less attached to the work because they didn’t make it directly; they can help you see it critically. I know if I didn’t have that, the work wouldn’t get anywhere near where it is. To have someone to help me look at what I’m doing and challenge the assumptions of how it should be is so important to me. It’s easy to be blind.

How does making things help you process things emotionally or help you psychologically?

I think the process of making things and having that being an involved part of your life is one of the biggest factors in well-being. I feel like it’s the biggest factor in my well-being. It’s funny, if I think about the other things that are important in terms of well-being, like ones connection to other people and I think that’s important, but if I know if I feel like I have a strong connection to what I’m doing in terms of what I’m making, I can relate to people differently. I know they probably feed each other, but if I am out of touch with making things or I’ve procrastinated or let too much bullshit get in the way, my ability to feel relaxed and healthy around other people diminishes. I know I derive the greatest amount of meaning in my life in trying to relate to making things. It’s a big motivator. I think the biggest one. 

I think making things, literally making anything is therapeutic. The process of putting effort into something and then seeing a result, I don’t mean a finished thing, but you’re working on something and it’s happening, and you’re not just thinking - you’re moving things around, you’re pushing material around, you’re hacking at something, you’re ripping something apart - that’s therapeutic. 

You’re somehow taking your energy and you’re molding something with it and you have a record of that in someway. I think a lot of people experience this and it’s very satisfying - emotionally satisfying. I do a lot of work with my hands and some work that isn’t with my hands….by that I mean some work is on the computer and some is working with tools and physical materials. I know there is a difference in satisfaction working in those two ways. Being able to change how something is in the world, just with your hands, directly physically and instantly - you’re carving wood or you’re sawing something and there is something so viscerally pleasurable about that. You can get totally lost in it. I feel like it’s really important to me. It’s really vital to me. 

I think a lot of people that do design work end up in front of the computer - almost exclusively and I know I can’t do that. I know that a lot of the satisfaction that comes from working with my hands, you can’t get working in front of the computer. At this point in my life emotionally or psychologically, I know I get so much of a hit from working with my hands. It’s such an important hit. I don’t know if I can go without that. It’s too satisfying to forgo. It’s so valuable for me to create things in the world that you can see, feel, touch, and smell. It’s really satisfying. Out of all my attachments I feel like that’s the most important one. I see it as directly attached to some kind of mental well-being. Ultimately I think there is a huge spiritual significance to being able to do that kind of work.

In what way is it spiritually significant?

I think the process of making something and being in touch with how a material feels or works together…or how that thing can then be an object in the world that you’re sharing with people becomes invested with energy and that energy is going towards making something that is in peoples lives and your own I think that has spiritual significance. At this point in my life it’s maybe the only way that I have some kind of understanding of what a spiritual realm could be.

I see making things is a way of being connected with people. It’s a way of being connected with ways of doing things that are bigger than myself. When I’m most excited about doing something in a certain way or trying a certain technique I feel like I’m in touch with a long line of people doing the same thing. 

I am connected to others that have worked with the same materials, the same processes or practices. A lot of the work itself is about learning how people have done things in the past. Learning how those materials have been handled or trying to gain some kind of respect for what you’re trying to achieve. That doesn’t mean you have to copy things or do them in ways that people tell you, but if you’re picking up a saw or trying to melt metal you’re one of millions of people that have done that and you’re part of a tradition of making things for people - people making things for each other. 

If you’re fortunate enough to make those things useful, meaningful for others, or even beautiful, then I think that’s really special. I think it’s profoundly special. I think it’s a total driving impulse. I don’t think it’s a given that you can do that or that I can do that. I don’t know how well I do those things, but I know I’m motivated by the possibility that I can. 

There is also the recognition that the materials that I work with are really beautiful. Whether it’s metal or wood, all of those things have their own properties, they feel a certain way, and they smell a certain way. Touching them and looking at them and working with them is such a sensual process. As you’re changing how something looks and works, you’re being totally affected by it sensually - I know I can get totally lost in that. There is so much going on in that experience. As you work the material changes and you watch that change happen and that change is directly in proportion to what your doing, there is no given how that’s going to go - you can just see that unfolding before you as you affect it – and that’s really special I think. 

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