Archinect School Blog

[AAPhD] AA Projects Review

Below are a few photos from last night�s opening of the AA Projects Review. [Image: Bedford Square after graduation ceremony; photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: The infamous strawberry tables; photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: Paparazzi parents on graduation pride, with the Int. 2 "pavilion" backdrop - more on that one later...; photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: EmTech canopy. Slightly more waterproof and shade-producing than the previous year; photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: EmTech canopy assembly (the day before); photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: DRL playthings; photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: Who said rivalry was dead?! An EmTech student carrying out a last minute decision to mark the divide between their exhibit and the DRL's; photo by Kirk Wooller].

all this talk...

...about North Korean missiles got me thinking back to my experience in White Sands. I've just put together my first podcast in five weeks. In the recording, I will walk around and point out various missiles in the park, and then let some of the museum video material speak for itself. You might want to sneak over to my flickr set to look at the missiles while you listen: There is a simple fact about America, and that is its bigness. Because of bigness, we can pretty much do whatever we want within our borders. (and we have remarkable freedom outside of those borders, too--like all of these bases on foreign soil) We can take a forty by one hundred mile stretch of desert and launch over forty thousand rockets over a period of sixty years, if we want to. Today we are responsible participants in nuclear non-proliferation treaties, and we instead focus our development anti-missile defenses. There's a lot of inferiority syndrome going on out there. Take North Korea, for example. I don't think they even have a desert to play war games on. They have an ocean, but too bad that's bordered by a host of angry, terrified neighbors. What else can they do, marginialized as they are? Of course, North Korea should not be allowed to follow our path toward missile supremacy, just as we don't want third world countries spewing out the same CO2 emissions that we did decades ago. But maybe we should refrain from labeling the country as insane, unless we wish to wear the same label ourselves. I don't think it would be far off-base. We're in love with military power and our anti-missile missiles. How redundant. The tour through White Sands has convinced me of our insanity. I bought a postcard and sent it to my wife while I was there. It was an anti-missile missile launch against a beautiful twilight sky. The smoke trail featured a loop de loop. It was a beautiful postcard. Walter Benjamin famously wrote "All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war." These anti-missile missiles, having their own currency in politics, have been rendered aesthetic. Aren't they, then, just begging to be tested? I will be in New Zealand on July 4th, and I can only hope there won't be any fireworks to see.

[AAPhD] Designated Graffiti Area

The PhD Programme exhibit (created by Emanuel de Sousa and yours truly) for this year's AA Projects Review plays on the tension between officially sanctioned architectural research (certified and library-catalogued AA PhD dissertations from the grand old days of yesteryear) and more recent, uncertified research-in-progress; research that, while perhaps considering itself as somewhat subversive, will more than likely end up becoming just another background tile on the wall of knowledge. Or will it� [Image: AA reception wall, tiled with library catalogue entries of completed AA PhD dissertations; photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: Wallpaper tiles... clean; photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: 'Designated Graffiti Area' and someone's quite fitting post-graffiti graffiti; photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: AA reception tagged with (predominantly, for now...) research-in-progess; photo by Kirk Wooller]. [Image: AA reception tagged; photo by Kirk Wooller]. AA Projects Review is on from the 3rd to 25th July. Marker pens not included.

[AAPhD] MA (H&T) Thesis Reviews

[Image: MA (H&T) End of Year Thesis Reviews. Photo by Valerie Bennett]. In this manic part of the year (yes, here in the UK we are STILL in school), where every day there seems to be a new set of juries being run and your own work flounders as a result, the MA (Histories and Theories) graduate programme hosted their two-day end of year thesis reviews. Run each year, the objective is to enable each student to present the topic of their thesis, which they then write up over the next 3 months - making for an ambivalent summer of enjoyable writing/research and not-so-enjoyable self-imposed house arrest; when all you really want to do is head to the beach (he says, remembering the fabulous summer of 2006� through his bedroom window to the world). This year I was on the other side of the desk, as an invited critic alongside Bob Maxwell, David Dunster, Murray Fraser, Brian Hatton, Douglas Spencer, Emanuel de Sousa, Braden Engel, Reuben (sorry, can�t recall his surname), as well as the course tutors Mark Cousins, Marina Lathouri, Francisco Gonzalez de Canales and Pedro Alonso. It was, indeed, a full house. The experience was intense, thoroughly enjoyable and, hopefully for the students, productive. Now it�s up to them to decipher the barrage of constructive critique so they can power through the next three months, without too many distractions from what is shaping up to be a highly unproductive (I mean, amazing) summer.

Prologue: Hej from Copenhagen!

Goddag Archinect! It's great to finally be blogging - I've anticipated this for awhile. I feel like I know most of you regulars... I've been posting for a few months, now! Anyways, for those of you who don't know me, I'll briefly introduce myself. I'm a 4th year Architecture student at the University of Cincinnati, and I'm currently in Copenhagen (DK) enrolled in the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (D.I.S.) architecture program. I'll be taking a Scandinavian architectural history course and participating in an architecture studio with perhaps 75+ other American students from all across the States. I've met people from Pratt, RISD, and Harvard, to people from UOregon and Sandiego - though I must say that the contingent from UC is the largest (~35 students). Anyways, I'll be sharing what life and studio is like in Copenhagen for Archinect's benefit, as well as interested 2nd year students back in Cincinnati. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [6/30] So! I left the states about 2 weeks ago, and hit up London, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam before coming to Copenhagen. Whole 'nother story - check FB for some photos. After arriving at CPH yesterday we were collected by some friendly DIS staff, and taken to the city center for some orientation stuff. After being shuttled to our kollegium (student housing, not unlike dormitories), we chilled and got settled in, then eventually hit the sack. [7/1] Today was the first REAL day of class. After meeting downtown we took some DIS buses to Christianshavn, a district on the eastern edge of the main Copenhagen canal. After congregating in the Danish Arch. Academy, we went through some welcome and introduction speeches and kicked off the quarter with a dope performance by a Danish string quartet. We had some time to kill after that, so we walked around the corner to check out Copenhagen's Opera House, done by Danish architects Henning Larsen and M�rsk Mc-Kinney M�ller. Apparently there was some controversy between them regarding some design decisions with the opera house cladding... can anyone shed light on that? I couldn't understand our tour guide. >_< After some lunch, we sat down for a stimulating lecture on Copenhagen's historic to current day city sprawl, touching on different periods. Given by Erik Skoven, who's a practicing Danish architect and graduate from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. I think he's prof'd at UC Berkeley and UOregon, too. Then, we went for a canal tour! It was a beautiful (albeit hot) afternoon, and luxuriating on a boat was a fine conclusion to the day. Here's an image from one of Christianshavn's canals. All in all, I'm really psyched about the next 7 weeks. We'll be taking some study tours to Stockholm and Helsinki, and I've heard talk of an unofficial expedition to Oslo to see Sn�hetta's opera house. Yea, that's about it for today. I'll check back in this weekend and give you guys a sense of what studio's like, and what our project will be. I'll be sure to include some Danish life-in-general stuff, too. I took some more photos of Copenhagen, and will continually be adding to them, so check up on those via my Facebook. Hej hej!

DISCO Project 1: The Stair Project

The only way to describe any 6-week design program is INTENSE. Intense for the administrators, instructors, but specially for the students. I empathize, I did my first two semesters of design school in two six-week semesters over the summer with studio everyday. And one of those was with UF's infamous professor Bernard Voichysonk, a man known for being a GREAT professor who was rumored to occasionally destroy drawings and models (never happened to me). I did not sleep. This is a little different as no one here is in design school and we are all aware of it. However, design is design and it takes a lot of time and it takes its toll on everyone. Some of my students decided that this was not for them and out of the eleven I started with we are down to eight. This is the process we took during the first project. The first week project was to design a new staircase for the Laurentian library, except we did not tell the students. Their job was to simply connect an abstract tall room to a long room. This first project was so lose and open that I decided that what I would try to teach each student how to develop an architectural language. I began the process by asking each of the eleven students that were working with me to bring me a stair and a staircase of their choosing. We then took that staircase and tried to find its main concept. The way the staircase shaped the space. We sketched that and tried to separate it from the stair. We then went out into different spaces in Harvard yard and sketched similar conditions in real stairs. At that point we took all the sketches and tried to distill that concept in a watercolor. It was back in my second semester that Voichysonk (who worked for Joseph Albers) taught me how to make analytical watercolors. I had workshops for all the techniques used (focusing on quick and 'sketchy', if colorful, ways of working) and worked individually with each student to find their own individual spatial languages and logics. Those watercolors served as the 'blueprints' for the design of the staircase. By this point each person had both a spatial concept and a burgeoning architectural language to work with. The process this first week was clear but at the same time weirdly chaotic. I had to get to know my students, I had to teach them how to use all their tools and what the different media can do for them. Perhaps more importantly I had to remember what is like to not know what plans, scales, sections, etc... are. How to unlearn the archispeak that I have developed in the past ten years. The week ended with a joint review with DK Osseo-Assare's studio. DK and I are good friends and invited other people that we are close to for the jury. The result was a fiery yet friendly critique (among the jurors) that the students loved as entertainment and pedagogy. As the archinect blogger I obviously think that showing work and writing about it is an important thing for a designer to do, so I asked each of my students to make a flickr account to begin their digital portfolio. Check out this one week project (in no particular order): elaXderivat Tatiana Rodriguez11 alec.bialosky Jaclyn Jung stefan_zr Fanny_GSD samjl45 Some of the students have not put up their pics. Up Next... DISCO Project 2: The two house project (final review is tomorrow) Above from left: Q, Jonathan Evans, DK Osseo Asare Below: Full crit mode (photos of the crit by Patricia)

Pet Power Lines

I've spent the last week packing up my apartment, preparing to travel for a continuous four months. And finally, my wife is able to join me! She's taking a four-month leave from her office . Luckily she is in architecture too but getting her to accompany me on 25-mile circuits of military bases is another matter.. So I have a strange love for packing up and moving out (my own stuff, that is). It's a pleasure to discover things like that favorite pen you thought you had lost, or to open an old sketchbook as you stuff it away. It's fun to try and erase your presence from a building. All the dust, the flour, the marks on the wall. Voices echo hollow inside the rooms lacking the stuff to absorb sound. Moving out means another opportunity to adapt to a new location, to build out a new space. For the next four months, that space will be a nomadic one. moving south Driving down the 5 freeway to Los Angeles , I have finally found a way to entertain myself on what has to be one of the world's most monotonous drives. The Central Valley is actually a landscape of great diversity and interest. That is, if you are interested in power lines. Some of them have rat faces and some of them look like dejected puppy dogs. You can collect pet power lines: foxes. giraffes, rabbits, spiders, orangutans. The scale can get gargantuan. I would like to drive across the United States some day and make a typology of power line structures. They might become an endangered species in our lifetime. I suppose that wouldn't be such a bad thing. While my wife was driving I had some fun sketching: moving further south Next stop: New Zealand

2009 Graduation Exhibition

Some pictures of our Thesis Student's work on display in our gallery. The display is up until July 12 and open to the public, come visit! I'm going to start liking these photos to my Flikr account, which is a little easier to post photos to, so click on the images below to see more.

Summer Prologue Part II

Where to begin? Since my last post I worked with a local Miami firm, BEA, on a small mock-up model (1/4"). While there, I met one of the partners named Gus who graduated from Columbia in the 90's. It was a nice long chat about the nature of the profession and GSAPP back then and now, BIM, and his experiences in New York. The theme of our chat would reiterate the need for architects to learn the language of business, something that his own firm has had to learn along the way, and I suspect, most other firms do as well. Besides that talk, not much else was as memorable during my time there. In other news, the design company my friend Adrian and I started (FOM) close to a year ago has a revamped website. No glitz and glamour, just something simple currently being hosted by the fine folks at cargocollective. Their platform was a breeze to use and would highly recommend it. We also are working on a poster for FIU's SOA Fall Lecture Series. The collection on this site has been helpful in learning what mistakes to avoid and we hope to reveal it sometime soon. I am also currently working on a competition with David De Cespedes and Emily Navarette sponsored by IAAC and HP. We've been recording our conversations during meetings to see if we can, post-submission, develop a way of presenting the process. It should be interesting and I'll keep you posted. Other than that, I have my ticket ready for July 28. I move in August 4th and am ready to spend the next month before school starts in good company, exploring the city, its people, and of course its food.

Graduations at the Salk

Last week on June 20, 2009 I had the opportunity to attend the Graduation ceremony of my former classmates and friends finally complete the mission of getting through architecture school. The ceremonies where held at Louis Kahn's Salk Intitute. It was something special as I could see the happiness that filled their eyes. An even though the economy has hit the industry hard the joy of completion is still there. The ceremonies began around 9am and did not end till the late hours of the night. (some are still celebrating) note: these image were taken from my cell phone - not a good idea Watching my friends walk has re motivated me to keep pushing forward. With one more year to go and my two beautiful kids waiting for me I know its time to get back to work and kick some butt (my own butt of course). These last three years have not been easy working full time and going to school. Truthfully it has been a pain, difficult, stressful, and of course lots of fun! Going through architecture school can be one of the worst and best experience one can go through in their lives - at least it has been for me. Architecture school = boot camp for architects - it rocks

New Desert City

Just got back from a stellar week in militarized West Texas. I got out to former Fort D.A. Russell in Marfa, went on a tour of the US/Mexico border with homeland security, and spent a day touring one of the largest military construction sites in the world. Just to give you a sense of how militarized this corner of Texas is, when you walk out of the security checkpoint at the El Paso airport, a huge sign directs you as follows: Banners advertising the Army on the walls paint scenes of adventure in some desert land (is it the Chihuahuan Desert or somewhere else? ). The airport also shares a large boundary with Biggs Army Air Field and Fort Bliss. Fort Bliss, measuring in at 1,700 sq miles, is the second largest military installation in the United States, right behind the nearby White Sands Missile Range (3,200 sq miles). It's a little one-two punch in the American Southwest, and together they are almost the size of Connecticut. El Paso itself would not exist as a city of over 600,000 people without the enduring presence of Fort Bliss. Fort Bliss was founded in 1853 and moved five times before settling in its current location ,a few miles from downtown El Paso. Several times the fort was relocated due to pressure from the resilient Apache tribe. The Cavalry division stationed there helped to put down the resistance in the 1880s. One of the locations was scrapped because the South Pacific and Santa Fe railroads put their tracks straight down the middle of the parade ground. The fort was needed to protect settlers and the growing railroad economy from banditos, and to establish an American force on the frontier. From the book Top Secret Tourism, I found out about the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) which is housed on Fort Bliss. EPIC was set up to document drug and alien traffickers and keeps a database of information on anyone who may have committed a drug-based offense. It is the "narc capital of the world." Fort Bliss is also home to Joint Task Force North (JTFN), an organization that, under the command of the president, is prepared to enforce the quarantine of a city or respond to a large-scale terrorist attack. It's a giant machine waiting to be sprung. In some ways, then, the base has always been and still is an outpost along a foreign frontier. It's not just about proximity to Mexico. By way of its desert climate, the base simulates the arid terrain of Iraq and Afghanistan. In this way the world map is folded, and Fort Bliss becomes a threshold unto the Middle East. Several things I experienced on my visit the other day underscore this impression of an exotic location. After passing through the checkpoint, having secured a day pass for my rental car, I drove into the main post. I almost couldn't believe what I saw next. A Japanese Garden, complete with torii gate and a miniature Himeji era castle. Various plaques around the garden designate certain elements--a garden gate, a rock garden--as symbols of cultural understanding. It appears that the garden was built by a volunteer group associated with Japan's Self Defense Force which visits Fort Bliss annually. I saw a number of soldiers clad in a variety of camouflage: olive greens and browns, in patterns that I was unfamiliar with. Their faces were African, Asian, European. I learned that Germans use the base to test some of their aircraft, lacking the vast uninterrupted flight zones that we have. The land asset becomes a political bargaining chip.

Now something about this city that is popping up in the desert. The 2005 BRAC round made Fort Bliss one of a handful of "big winners". Most bases are looking at downsizing and closures. But here in El Paso, local businesses are drooling at the arrival of over 10,000 military jobs and another few hundred civilian jobs by 2012. An entire armored division is coming from Germany (why we still have tanks in Germany in this decade blows me away). This all means that Fort Bliss has become a major construction site. A bill is in the House right now to approve $800 million for new Fort Bliss construction. My favorite description of this new desert city comes from a Historical Architect employed on the base: "it's deadly, just deadly what they are building out there." You're looking at barracks for several brigades, mess halls, headquarters for the armored division, and that's still only a pie slice of the $4.6 billion desert killing machine extravaganza. Hey, still looking for a job? The buildings must be set back 82 feet from the road as per the Anti-Terror/Force Protection code. This means that sewer, power, and water lines cost more, the parking lots must be more numerous as everyone has to drive everywhere, and a greater burden is put on landscaping to reduce heat-islands and such. Shouldn't government construction be the model of sustainable development? Astonishingly, these buildings are Silver LEED. Warrior Construction Management handled the "permanent prefabrication" described in the above link: The option to pursue LEED certification is inherent in the permanent modular construction process. All of Warrior�s projects incorporate these green qualities. Despite sustainable advantages, Warrior Group has worked hard to overcome design misperceptions about permanent modular construction. It does not limit buildings to one-story boxes. Fort Bliss Permanent Modular Barracks in El Paso and Fort Sam Houston Military Residences located in San Antonio are two of Warrior�s projects in Texas that incorporate many green features and are built more like condominiums than dormitories. Please blast me if I'm wrong, but it should be an automatic disqualification for any "green" standard when you are building in a desert!

My visit to Fort Bliss funny enough spans across the topics of the two other Branner Traveling Fellows. Nicolette Mastrangelo is studying "untested" cities--cities made from scratch. She's spent a lot of time in Asia where cities are popping up in China, Korea, India, and Abu Dhabi. Taylor Medlin is looking at remotely constructed buildings. His travels have taken him to some far off places, most recently the desolate landscape of south south South America. He is studying both prefabricated buildings and buildings constructed from the materials of the remote context. Later this year Taylor is traveling to Australia to look at some military barracks in the outback!

Why is Fort Bliss important to my research? As I look further into this massive construction project, I am thinking about the bases we are building all over the globe. What are the criteria for a military base, what are its weak points in terms of design, and where might we civilians initiate a dialogue or counter-architecture?

Epilogue #3 :: An Open Letter to My Fellow Under- and Unemployed Archinectors

Hi folks.... As mentioned briefly in my last blog post, I'm launching an effort to help my fellow under- and unemployed friends out there in the midst of this terrible economy. I'm calling it the Portfolio Project, whereby fellow designers are invited to host their portfolios on my Web site (the GDC) for free for a period of up to a year. I'm posting now just to make sure everyone is aware of it! I've already got several people involved and once their portfolios are live, I'll link to them on a special page on the Web site, to make sure we get our names out there. And no doubt advertise it here too :o) PS. Unfortunately this does not mean that I can offer free online Portfolio design at this time... only free hosting. We'll have to wait until I achieve financial independence before I can design everybody's online portfolios...which means never :-P Cheers!

What's Next...

You know that moment of boredom you are supposed to feel after thesis is done? Well not for me... in fact I may be busier now! 24 hours after my final review and with little sleep I got on a plane to Madrid to do some research. I am working there on the next three books of the TransUrban series with Christian Werthmann, Thomas Schroepfer, and Andrew Tenbrink. I will post some pics soon, but we are studying, analyzing, and critiquing a couple of 'ecocities'. The books are exciting but right now a lot of my attention is focused in the first week of my Career Discovery architecture studio. Eleven students from a variety of disciplines (from math to MBAs) and I are working together to find appropriate architectural languages for a variety of problems. I will keep my blog open for the next few weeks to document my experience teaching this studio. Then I will say my goodbyes and hope that another GSD student takes over the blogging duties...

Art | 40 | Basel

As far as I know, I graduated, and am now the proud owner of a Master degree in Architecture from the Ohio State University. I assume, because I left the states before the graduation ceremony to come to Art Basel, the international contemporary art fair held annually in Switzerland. Conveniently, the organizers decided to hold the fair the week prior to KSA's annual study-abroad tour, which I'm joining this year as an auxiliary professor, and which kicks off tomorrow in Berlin. I'll be flying out in the morning, and I hope to keep up with the blog at least for the next six weeks on the trip, after which I'll be following in the footsteps of former KSA blogger Marc Syp, and moving to Rome for a position with Fuksas. So, expect at least a few more updates here from me, here or on my [url=http://chakroff.blogspot.com/]dormant blog[url]. Until then, here's a selection of images from Art Basel and several associated fairs.
Created with flickr slideshow. full flickr set here (still uploading)

The Wonders of White Sands

image source Two days ago I drove through the country's largest military installation, the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico. The site of the Trinity detonation--the world's first atomic explosion--is there, but can only be visited twice a year. Unfortunately I had not timed my visit so perfectly. This massive tract of google-map-grey-space measures one hundred miles north to south and forty miles wide. This is the ultimate war games playground. The land was seized in 1942 from ranchers and turned into a proving ground. After WWII, the military began an intensive period of testing rockets. The German V-2 was reproduced and tested here. Many of those fancy Desert Storm weapons and surveillance technologies were tested and developed here. Among the toys I learned about and found most amusing was a three-mile long kevlar cable, advertised in this army magazine: Another unique White Sands asset is the aerial cable test range, which has a three-mile long kevlar cable strung between two mountain ranges. Large targets can be suspended and rocket-propelled down the cable. In addition, drop tests can be conducted from the cable. In 2002, tests of the Air Force�s large aircraft infrared countermeasure system and electronic verification and demonstration system were performed, consisting of development and testing of various sensors. A shooting gallery fit for the scale of the American Southwest. image source But there are more wonders in store. Take, for example, the above image from a company leading hunts of the exotic African Oryx Gazelle. What is this animal doing in the Chihuahuan Desert of southern New Mexico? We put them there, of course, as part of the New Mexico Dept. of Game and Fish's "exotic animal introduction program" in 1969. Since then, though, the little beasts have been getting it on, and outside the Missile Range's borders too. So they've been hunted down outside the fence to minimize damage to local land owner's property. The population inside the Missile Range needs to decrease, and they are issuing "once in a lifetime" permits to hunt them. What I find funny is this repeating theme of military bases pairing up with some kind of demented nature conservancy. Earlier this year I visited Camp Pendleton in Southern California and was told by a marine that the beautiful hills which harbored endangered species were in fact active firing ranges. And yet the military considers they are protecting the species. This gives them leverage when they go to bat against outside interests on their land. "No, we can't close this base because we're a wildlife refuge." It's the perfect buffer, though, for the military. And why not, these army guys need something to hunt. If it's not devising the latest missile to strike down those pesky terrorists, how about an exotic African beast? You should be creeped out by now. Yes, it's true, you can even visit a "missile museum" on the Range complete with a missile park. On the one hand, it may be worth admiring the ingenuity of American scientists and engineers. Look at all the different forms, the imagination that had to go into producing things on such a grand scale. The cost� I think a 1920's Le Corbusier, when he praises the military apparatus for its evolution of machines in Vers Une Architecture would have delighted in the park. And there it is, little fat boy, sitting so benignly on a towing trailer. It's a relic. It's our national fetish, as Joseph Masco writes brilliantly in Nuclear Borderlands. The nuclear bomb ushered in a new era of experience, where we experience the "uncanny" on a daily basis. Haven't we all become numb to the presence of nukes, to our dependence on them to maintain the so-called world peace? One last interesting note. Inside the museum, a video boasts of the Range's ability to recreate 90% of the world's environments, even nuclear radiation. I mean, it makes sense right? Our anti-nukes need to keep working if the world is enveloped in a nuclear haze. Our nukes also better be performing. I wonder how the simulated nuclear radiation affects those gazelles running around? It is fascinating to me the reproduction of exotic cultures and atmospheres on military bases. I recommend a visit to White Sands Missile Range, where you can live the uncanny, and see for yourself the real grandeur of our nation amidst a truly grand landscape. You almost want to kneel down and weep. P.S., this billboard made me laugh out loud:

the end? Or just the beginning

It has been quite a few since I've made a blog entry. The design studio and the final critiques came to an end in May to mark the close of the school year. A few things have transpired since then most notably an offer to teach full time at the Caribbean School of Architecture. An offer that I am seriously considering. Aside from that I had something else to share. The school of architecture is starting their own Discover Architecture summer programme. See the poster below.

It's over.

I finished presenting for my final review literally ten minutes ago. Literally, I just sat down and started blogging. I have to say this semester has been a more than a little bizarre just in the way it's set up, though I guess it's just my non-French self trying to figure out how studio works here. We spent an enormous amount of time doing "research" about the site or about various subjects related (maybe) to the site. Normally I'm used to the studio being a lot more directed (not that I like that) but for the project here everyone developed their own program, scale, and project that has absoultely nothing to do with anyone else's project. For me, this meant a multi-modal platform primarily featuring a system of transit I'm dubbing as a derivative of Personal Rapid Transit, though I really hate to do that as PRT people in the States are generally wackjobs, kind of the second cousin of New Urbanists. But luckily in France, that term doesn't mean much so I can get away with it. The most interesting part about the way we worked was that I developed a problematique and a independent solution on the site that was purposefully generic in nature. The idea in the end was to adapt that system to the one of the more programmatically-based projects. So my multi-modal station was kind of a model that adapted to the parameters of a large built project on the site from another student. So voila, quelques images:

Epilogue #2 :: Third time was not the charm

I'm not going to bother restating here how bad the job market is; I'm pretty sure you all already know. I did know that it was going to be bad a long time ago, however, which is why I started applying to jobs back in February. I got several follow-ups, and I had a few interviews. The third and most recent interview was with a company in Denver a couple of weeks ago for the position of "energy modeler". This was looking pretty good; they called all of my references, had me take a personality test, the whole deal. In the end, they decided to redefine the position to be geared towards someone with a physics degree. I like Physics! But I never got a degree in it. :o/ So the third time was not the charm, and it's back to the job-hunting grind for me. The good news is, I got all of my loans deferred due to unemployment, and I got some great advice from a lady at the Federal Direct Consolidation offices: she explained to me that you should NOT apply for consolidation of your student loans until very near the end of your grace period. If you apply too soon, as I was about to, they will think you are ready to start paying your loans! Obviously you do not want to lose your grace period so you should wait until that's almost up. Also, since I have so much free time right now, and partially due to the fact that I'm a worrier, I've decided to start a new initiative on my Web site, the GreenDesignCollective. I've recently learned that several of my good friends have lost their jobs in the past couple of weeks, and several others have had their hours reduced. Therefore, I've decided to offer free Web hosting to my unemployed friends for their portfolios, complete with a sub-domain and their own user name. More details can be found here. Let me know if you are interested! Finally, my thoughts are now shifting to what I might do with my free time. I once thought it would be a good idea to criss-cross the country in an RV and really explore America. And now that I have nothing on the agenda....well, I'm seriously considering it. The mere mention of it on my Facebook page launched a full-fledged planning effort! And an RV makes sense but I'd really love to do it in one of these beauties: So what do you think? Should I get an RV/EuroVan/micro-bus and go on a national tour? Perhaps a blogging adventure? Maybe I could pick up Marlin and we could get a few more episodes of Archinect Travels completed? :-D

Wow, done! (almost)

This will be a quick one as I'm taking very well to the luxuries of "regular" life. Finals was crazy. Absolutely crazy. Never has it been so drawn out and difficult. It also is amazing how things went considering how little sleep I got. But I'd never want to do it again. Final jury was equally crazy. The undergrad studio I TA'ed for did very well and I was excited to see their work. Most of them pulled off good projects and I was psyched especially since we got Thom Mayne and Jesse Reiser to be on the morning session of the jury. The discussion was great and I think the kids were a little starstruck at times. On our jury included: Eric Owen Moss (who we were unaware was showing up), Thom Mayne, Paola Antonelli, Hernan Diaz-Alonso, Florencia Pita, Kivi Sotamaa, Sylvia Lavin, and a grand entrance by Frank Gehry, who rolled up with an entourage 4 deep. Halfway through my review nonetheless. The jury of superstars attracted a huge audience and it got to be standing room only with people hanging over the upper level railings. More thoughts and image posting soon. But in the meanwhile, I'm getting some sleep.

First week of graduate architecture school @ clemson

Ahh, the first week of architecture school. There's a line in a song that is often stuck in my head now that says "neglected, stressed out, and living in fear." That pretty much sums it up. At Clemson, for the 3.5 M.Arch students, we do a warm-up summer session of sorts in Charleston, SC, off-campus. They pretty much take a semester's worth of work and cram it into 8 weeks. On the first day, I was extremely excited. The buzz about the studios, new students, new beginnings. I kept explaining to everyone who kept asking about my first day that it felt like a mix between The Real World and one of those Design reality TV competitions - Project Runway or something (without the fashion and Heidi Klum of course - the latter quite unfortunately....) After just meeting each other for the first time, we walked around the city and talked a little about each other, our first impressions, nerves, excitedness, etc. After a few quick, "Hi, I'm..... from...." we only had a few minutes to begin our first studio experience. The difference between this program and any other university program is that it was just the 9 of us. There were no other students, no dorms, no campus, just us, a few teachers, and the studios. 9 people in a new city ready to tackle the rigors of architecture school. June 1st came so quickly after learning of my acceptance in early March. This was very little time to let it sink in that I was actually going to be starting architecture school. Oh well, it was time to get the ball rolling. And boy, did it roll. We jumped right in with a group project based on a short film that we watched about the concept of architecture as the nexus of space and time. The film was The Third Man. Our project was to "design and construct a freeze-frame - a space that measures time." We were to do this using our materials: twine, (2) 30x40 black and white posterboards, + 33 bamboo skewers. with the following tools: glue, hole puncher, + tape. It was to be done in the context of the building. What a project. I didn't even know my group's names and we were asking each other philosophical questions like 'How do you measure time' 'What kind of space measures time' 'Is this project for real....' After hours of deliberating idea after idea, and a massive creative block, my group finally came up with a basic concept revolving around some sort of static and dynamic space within a window frame exploring the interior and exterior of the window - Blacking out the lights of the window with the black posterboard except for one in which you could look through and see a cantilevered white box with a frozen moment in time on the exterior of the window. Within the box would be the glue bottle turned upside down with glue dripping out - wet one day, dry the next. A neat idea to use one of our "tools" as one of our main "materials." Maybe a different approach. It seemed like everyone was doing something with the sun as some sort of sun dial. After a status meeting with the Professor, he liked our idea of the glue depicting our frozen moment in time. So, we switched gears and decided to come up with a way to show how glue, a dynamic, moving material at one point, can be shown as a frozen entity as well. So we came up with the following.... It turned out okay for a day and a half project. Movement of glue paired with the frozen quality of glue. We actually calculated the time and speed as well. Time = Distance/Speed. It took the glue 10 minutes and 35 seconds to go from top to bottom, roughly 1 foot/min. Thrilling. Like watching glue dry....