Jonathan Ochshorn (@jonochshorn) is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Architecture at Cornell University and has a nominal private practice in Ithaca, NY, USA. He is the author of Building Bad: How Architectural Utility is Constrained by Politics and Damaged by Expression and is also a founding member of the defunct rock group, Rollo. Jonathan continues to make music on his own and continues to write about architecture, technology, and construction. He has organized and consolidated his entire life (well, almost) on a single website.

The name “impatient search” derives from “patient search” — this latter phrase could certainly be imagined as a website for locating your infirm friends and relatives currently recuperating in hospitals. However, its use in this context refers to an attitude or method necessary when you want to create something: this according to the architect Le Corbusier (Creation is a Patient Search is the name of one of his books). In fact, I initially created a patientsearch.com URL and gave it to my young son, who unfortunately let it lapse. It was immediately scooped up by some corporate entity and — at least for a while — was listed for sale. Not sure about its current status… So I moved on, and ultimately decided that impatient search actually suits me better.