George Calys

As a child, a visit with my father to his downtown Kansas City office was always an adventure; the clustered skyscrapers forming urban canyons and the bustle of folks going about their business spoke of an urgency and immediacy that my suburban world didn't  have.

Maybe that's why architecture school seemed like such a comfortable place.  There was urgency there, if anything!  It was in school that I learned about the vital connection between language and architecture; I still feel the impact of Giedion's Space, Time, and Architecture to this day.

Thirty years as a practicing architect also meant thirty years of talking about architecture and design and urban space.  Arriving in the midst of San Francisco's dotcom craze, there were plenty of design issues to discuss.  Perhaps it was inevitable that I found myself discoursing on the state of the Bay Area's built environment.

That's what I'm still doing today in the written word, speaking, and  film.