The First Post

   Welcome to F/stop Architectural, a blog about architecture, design, and the world. This blog is owned and operated by Trevor Weltzer (that's me), and the views and opinions contained within are exclusively my own.
   Chances are that for the first few months of this blog anyone reading this knows me personally already, but i'll introduce myself briefly anyway. I live and work in the mid-west for a small architectural firm doing mostly restaurant remodels. Recreationally i'm interested in music, games, and technology, and those will likely emerge as topics within this blog as well.
   Whenever i find myself in this sort of position of introducing myself as someone who works in architecture, i often hear responses along the lines of "Oh, i don't know anything about architecture."
   That's ridiculous.
   Everyone knows about architecture. If you've ever eaten in a restaurant, or gone to school, you've experienced architecture. Almost every job engages with architecture in some way or another (in fact, i challenge you to come up with a job that doesn't). And whether you live in a mansion, apartment, or trailer, you've lived architecture, and you know what you like.
   So, everyone knows architecture. Architects just know how to design architecture. After returning to school for an M.Arch degree, i hope to be able to call myself an architect as well. In the meantime, i write a blog, and you're reading it, so let me talk about the blog.
   First off, the name. An f/stop is a photography term which describes the ratio between the focal length and the aperture size, and it roughly measures the depth of field of the photograph to be taken. In general, a low f number (confusingly named for the math oriented) like f/1.4 has a shallower depth of field than a high f number like f/16. Wikipedia's article on this is fairly complete, so if you're looking for more information i'd start there. Each post on this blog will carry a f/stop tag to describe the general scope of the article.
   The reason for the f/stop reference is because of the importance of context in architectural discussion. Context is what determines good or bad design, so to critique design we have to be careful to specify in what context we're discussing it.
   Finally, please comment! This is a blog about architecture, yes, but it should be accessible to everyone with any passing interest in design. If i bring up a more technical topic (like the structural properties of flying buttresses), or even just use some words that are specific to the field (like EIFS), i'll do my best to explain them, and post lots of pictures. Not this time though, you have to look those up.
   So, welcome to F/stop Architectural! Tell your friends!