What’s On My Desk: Robert Boyce
Saint John-based architect Robert Boyce doesn’t just have one desk, he has several.
With a career spanning over 40 years, he’s learned a thing or two about the creative process and has crafted a workspace that ensures he designs his best work.
We paid a visit to his office in uptown Saint John to see how he gets it all done:
Can you describe your workspace?
My workspace is an office that’s way too large for one person, but I have been here in this space since 90’s. I used to share it with some other people, but as they left I just piled some paper on top of their desks and I guess that’s how I organize my workplace. I have a desk for this project and desk for that project. If I have too many projects, I just stack them on top of each other. If I hid it in a drawer, I’d forget about it. That’s why there’s paper everywhere.
Did you put any time or effort into making your space the way it is?
I surround myself with things that interest me. So I’ve got a collection of paintings and other artwork or photographs that have caught my eye over the years … Frankly, I’ve never spent much time organizing my space to create an impression. My work, I guess, speaks for itself. It’s honest in the sense that people quickly get the impression that I have an active mind because I have a visually active workspace.
What kind of work do you do here?
I do mostly commercial work. Car dealerships have been my bread and butter in terms of my steady income for quite a few years. But I’ll do condominium developments, multi-unit residential, office and commercial stuff. Right now I’m doing a major renovation of a church out in Quispamsis and a new sales and service building for Leisure Time Sales.
I just finished a project I was excited to work on, which was the Social Enterprise Hub down on Prince Edward Street. It was fun to be involved in realizing a really wonderful vision, combining a bunch of community organizations and social enterprises together. What they share is an attitude of social enterprise, so hopefully I gave them a workplace that encourages the collaboration and interplay that they’re looking for. It also gives them a blank sheet to fill it with what they’re doing.
What kinds of things do you surround yourself with to help you be productive?
Just by having each project in a different spot so I can readily move my mind to that particular project. If a question comes up, everything that’s associated with that particular project is in a spot that I may gravitate to and work around that.
In terms of productivity, once the mind starts working away, for me, it will be working away in the middle of the night and I will wake up to a thought. So it doesn’t necessarily flow from the workplace. I think that’s the curse of creativity, frankly. Once the problem starts to circulate in your brain, it won’t go away until you’ve at least got one solution.”
Is there anything that you can’t have around?
I suppose people, oddly enough. That’s probably one of the reasons why I’ve chosen to be uptown is so there are people around that I can go meet and chat with when I’m not working. I take a break at lunchtime and go out, go to the market, bump into some people. But when I get back to work, it’s probably healthiest not to have the interruptions of somebody.
Though I do miss in some ways having somebody to bounce ideas off of. So certainly when I had other people in the office it was nice to be able to say ‘hey, what do you think about this?”
What would you say is the most important thing on your desk?
Whatever the current project is … That is one of the challenges of having more than one project on the go at the time. You do have to focus on one for a while and I guess you have to learn to set it aside to let it simmer. In terms of the way my creative process works, that’s where it is good to have several on the go. You switch gears and deal with another problem while the other one is rotating around somewhere in the back of your creative brain.
Some answers were edited for length and clarity.