Archinect School Blog

minarets, zumthor, and swiss turkeys

-Another review this week. Not quite the disaster of 2 weeks ago, though it was certainly an improvement. Mateo said no less two times, it was the best images I had produced all semester. He never said it was good, or that the design itself was okay-- but certainly better than what I got two weeks ago. -I've been watching this stuff about UC's budget cuts via the internet. I don't really know all the details, but is this 931million figure correct? If these numbers were passed on from the state, shouldn't protests be directed at the state level? It would seem like the hands of the university system are tied to generating 931million in one way or another. -Another political debate--- but this time on my side of the pond. In Switzerland there is a fierce battle ragging over a proposed ban on new construction of Minarets at mosques. These posters have been put up all over the city and I am sure the rest of the country as well. Here is the poster, it is quite scary. And here is the logo of the SVP (the political parties largely behind the initiative) My head is pounding from all the subliminal messages that just got rammed into it. More information about the controversy here. Themals Vals this weekend. Hoping for snow. Oh yes-- and buying a Thanksgiving turkey (Turten) in Zeurich is not easy. For future reference, they have frozen turkeys at Migros (the 10th place I went) but none bigger than 6.2Kg. And they still cost an arm and a leg.

HELP please

Hello everyone, below is the mission statement of my project: The community of the Niger-Delta have witnessed the slow poisoning of their waters and destruction of vegetation and agricultural land by oil spills which occur during petroleum operations. There has been less concern and effective effort on the part of the government, let alone the oil companies to control the environmental problems with their operations. All people have the right to self-determination, by virtue of that right they freely can pursue their economic, social and cultural development, create their own energy with their natural resources run by the people, �A community of self generators�. I NEED HELP ON HOW BEST TO REPRESENT NIGERIA, BE IT ABSTRACT, ARTEFACT, INSTALLATION OR ARCHITECTURAL. Any comment welcomed. Abu

DRL snapshot

On my desk are a number of things: 1 book by the philosopher Lacan which explains where the origins of serial killing behavior lie. This is for a paper on Anish Kapoor�s Cloud Gate sculpture. 13 kenetic sculptures in lacra which bloom open or closed as passers by pull and push the wires embedded within. 1 Arduino board, 4 working servos, 2 burnt out servos, 1 hacked power supply, 2 flex sensors and a tiny �zzzzzzzzzz� sound as it does its thing. These will eventually be hooked up to the lacra sculptures Trying to crawl up my desk is 1 light sensing robot that obviously feels my labtop screen is the preverbal light at the end of the tunnel. It is fairly common to be confronted with such a diversity of objects at the DRL in the morning, all begging for attention and potentially dangerous to touch.

008 / African Cities By Way Of Kansas

TODAY Garth Myers, University of Kansas Informality In African Cities 5:30 pm KSA Auditorium FREE See you there!

The Return of Nature

The Return of Nature is apparently a series of symposia held at Harvard GSD in which a historian, a theorist, and a hysterical woman discuss--and I quote here from the official description--"the question of architecture's autonomy in relation to contemporary debates." Each of the three panelists presents a thesis, perhaps positioned polemically relative to the other two, and then engage in discussion: first, among just the three panelists; second, taking questions typically from the bigwigs (or the big haired, in a few prominent cases) in the front row; and third and finally from members of the peanut gallery. These events have been heady and entertaining, and very well attended. The conversations have been a bit too glib and theatrical to get at some of the potential intersections between the three presentations in an orderly (and therefore accessible, for us little peanuts) manner, but overall they've been pretty exciting. One of my professors, Michael Hays, was on the panel tonight and I thought he gave us a very lucid and touching moment in a response to an audience question. This is a very loose paraphrase, but what he said is that the reason why he's so interested in the sublime (a topic to which he's returned frequently this semester in his lectures) is because in a world where everything has become so ever-available and immediate, it has to do with negative reasoning, in that it calls up and faces that which is absent. In this anecdotal and rather garbled form, this may not seem like that profound of a comment, but coming at the end of an event that saw both a good amount of high-level discourse as well as tussling egos and extravagant claims, this very simple and heartfelt statement of one person's position somehow struck a chord with me. Anyways. That was the third installment of this series, but we have not yet had the second, which unfortunately had to be postponed. But I really hope to see Liz Diller, Mark Jarzombek, and Andrew Payne up there at the front of Piper auditorium sometime very soon.

Desensitization

Took a two-week trip to Thailand with my brother... for research purposes (cough cough).. Really though, I find myself having to be very critical of observations here, navigating the chasm between A) business-as-usual/nothing special Tokyo and B) hey! this could something interesting.. So, even though traveling offers a somewhat naive perspective... its always refreshing to come back with new state of mind... On a sidenote, if anyone is interested in the Yakuza among other things culturally interesting, take a look at Jake Adelstein's Tokyo Vice... he was on the Daily Show two days ago I'll try to post some of my thoughts for thesis soon; until then.

Manila Madness

Manila. This ain't no vanilla. Stinking hot sweat stepping over fish heads pig intestines. Big guy with a big backpack on getting looks getting stared at squeezing through the market crowd. Jeepneys belching smoke choke cover the face no use no way out but through. Swimming through air hop on a tricycle munching a 3 peso donut motors rip the air horns honking in your ear. No way out but through. One day later on a bus stop. Stop. Slow delicious AC watching Ghost Patrick Swayze on the way out of Manila takes eternity. Hello Angeles City Sin City place where the air force dudes bought booze bought girls lived it up til Pinatubo popped. Philippines senate said no more bases 1991 adios soldiers packin it out under two feet of ash looters come in backlash. Casino man business man Philippino Air Force man keepin' the girls workin Sin City still alive. Walkin' down the main drag through girls hangin on my arm I'm saying "I got a wife" that doesn't seem to matter I need to scatter. On the old base people camping out selling flutes. Duty free shop big aisles American crap just like the base commisary before jars of peanut butter fake nacho cheese as seen on TV. Near the Philippino barracks barber shop I go in ask for "Air Force Cut". Clean cut hit the streets catch a flight to Guam by the skin of my teeth. I am ready for the military island paradise.

Open House Edition, Part Two

Hello Archinect, I wanted to follow up on last week�s post with some thoughtful prose about the GSD, my experience of it so far, and what I�m learning. But�and maybe this is the best sign that I�m starting to be a real architecture student�I can�t seem to muster up the words. So I�ll show you some images and will try to narrate them the best I can. The best way I can describe what it�s like to be here�and this probably goes for most architecture schools�is that it�s like a really advanced kindergarten. Or maybe a really rigorous one. We play, we invent, we get immersed in our own fantasy world, and we push ourselves so far that the normal conditions of the civilized adult world cease to apply and only a thin shell stands between us and a temper tantrum or, say, complete loss of continence. With this in mind, here is a time lapse video, taken by one of our TAs, of our class setting up our inflatable projects for our materials and construction class which ended a few weeks ago. [follow the link for the video: ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqwe5eqf0Z4] The giant one at the front totally rocked�this team was the only one that realized you could create air locks and actually inhabit the inflated structure. To keep it together, so that the air pressure didn�t just push the plastic out into a more or less spherical blob, they built these tensioning elements (like columns, but acting in tension) that cut through the space. This created strange orifices on the exterior that passed completely through the structure but which you couldn�t see through without moving them with your hands, since the air pressure from the inside closed them off. It�s also a giant playground because every day there are all kinds of events, most with eye candy, food for thought (and often food for the belly), and opportunities to see and mingle with Important People, or indulge in perfectly uneducational play with absolute seriousness. [The above is Dean Mostafavi speaking the opening of Le Laboratoire at Harvard, which is run by scientist/artist David Edwards.] [This is Mark Jarzombek from MIT responding to Marcel Meili's talk in a symposium on Materiality + Construction in Swiss architecture that is going on at this very instant.] [This is my desk space.] [This is a party.] But let�s settle down for a moment and talk about the work. I had a little mid-term discussion with my studio prof (Danielle Etzler from SHoP Architects) about what I should work on for the rest of the semester, and we talked about wanting to be more deliberate in achieving something specific through each artifact, whether it�s a drawing or physical or digital model. So I need to strategically deploy my (limited, but growing) skills so that each representation is not just trying to �show the project� but is a testing ground to develop a complete thought. This thought should neither be identical to nor developed in a linear fashion from the previous thought, but instead stand in a kind of genealogical relationship to it, so that at the end of a project I�ll have a series of artifacts that document the development of an idea over time. It�s basic, in a way, and it�s something we talked about quite a bit in my History and Theory program at McGill, in terms of the history of representation�but actually doing this in studio on a daily basis is another story. So wish me luck! [This was my desk crit from yesterday, one week into the "Locks" project: analysis of one artifact so I can extract its essential juices to congeal into a new form.] Before I go, a few more pictures. Here is the review for our third project, which was called �Hidden Room� and for which we were only able to present our ideas through two plans. Our critics are so passionate about the work and about our pedagogical adventures that they get pretty excited in their conversations, to the point where sometimes they forget that there are sixty students standing or sitting behind them, trying to see and hear what�s going on. So much of the review looked like this. And this last picture encapsulates everything that I find wonderful and frustrating about the GSD. I�m sitting in on an class taught by Sanford Kwinter that I find pretty awesome�it�s about the last 30 years or so of architectural theory, which is really crucial to understand where we�re at today in terms of parametrics and fabrication all the software we use. But this Wednesday was Veteran�s Day, and the GSD doesn�t take a coherent stand on these kinds of minor holidays, so what ends up happening is that we all have classes but without the normal technical and logistical support�and Kwinter has to show his slides on his MacBook Air. Those of us with laptops were able to follow along on our own screens, so it wasn�t a complete loss, but still. Thanks for reading! Lian

A single tear moment

I�ll start at the beginning. I entered my thesis year in September. I started off the semester digging back through the last four years to understand what I wanted to research, trying my best to tackle issues that I investigated through my projects. I narrowed my issue down to how to provide temporary infrastructure to informal communities to further reduce their ecological footprint. My trip to the Philippines last winter had a profound effect on me. Strolling around the slums of Manila absorbing the sounds and smells of the shanties not romanticizing about what we could learn from them but just accepting the facts about their living conditions. So��the semester continues. I choose a site to tackle in the Makati district of Metro Manila. The settlement is on one of the tributaries pouring into the Pasig River, which is on the brink of being pronounced dead by the ecologist of the Philippines due to the pollution distribution of the factories and the effluent of 200k+ families living along the River. here is the site. On September 27, Monsoon Ondoy struck Manila and totally flushed my site. Here is an article about the Monsoon. A bit jarred I continue through with my material investigation. here is a picture of the site a few blocks down from the original image. I was working mainly through analog means with sketches, drafting, and physical modeling with the exception of some digital diagrams. I live about half an hour away and moving work back and forth is a bit tedious. So the bulk of my creations stay on my desk. A month and a half later Hampton Roads receives one of its own storms, a Nor�easter, flooding our campus and pouring water into our building or what I call the �Bleeding Bemis.� I arrive at the studio to find myself in a swimming pool and soaked analysis, bleeding from all the ink and soggy models. Final presentations are in two weeks. 60% of the original work is lost but I have my paper and one model. A single tear moment happened right there as I sat in the pool of water. Lesson learned, mother nature is unforgiving. At least I have a roof over my head, some trace and a laptop to continue moving along. Two weeks more, Two weeks more.

Control

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police provide quite a bit of information regarding each ward: (http://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.jp/index.htm) if anyone is interested.. (I recommend using Google Translate) The "koban" system is quite unique here. According to the website, there are close to 1,000 small police boxes carefully planned and dispersed throughout the city. If you look carefully at maps, most are concentrated 1) around JR stations and popular subway/metro stations (typically express stops) in combination with 2) major cross-sections of roads: Yamate-dori, Meiji-dori, Meguro-dori, Waseda-dori... etc. Police Box in Ginza Police Box near Kabukicho Conventional Police Box near Yaesu, Tokyo Station Some are commissioned to architects carefully designed and detailed, others blend right into the conventional landscape where you can barely even notice them. So, as I mentioned before, you can imagine what this means when someone looking suspicious rides their bike around the city. During the day, it's completely fine. But when the public transportation system shuts down at around 1pm, the kobans along and around the major roads and road intersections are on high alert.. Major crossroads koban along Nakano-dori For example, if I were to ride home (Shinjuku -> Shinagawa) around 2 or 3 pm.. there is no doubt in my mind I would be stopped by a policeman (and yes man, not woman... during my time here I have never been stopped by a policewoman) Since the distance is quite a bit, I would actually expect 2 or 3 actual halts and maybe close to 8-10 occurrences in one night. The kobans seem to work together: if one sees someone suspicious pass by, they notify the police box down the street, and next thing you know, you are being chased down by policemen on bicycles waving their flashlights and passionately ringing their bells commanding you to stop. Other times, there are stealthy policemen waiting at unconventional intersections, hidden within the shadows of small alleyways or roadside buildings. Stunningly, the police really have all areas covered at night.. Although I am a foreigner, since I LOOK Japanese, I really believe I acquire an authentic experience. I think the police would be less inclined to halt a non-Japanese looking person, saving them some time and embarrassment forced to use English... but I have heard they do stop foreigners as well so make sure your bike is registered! Usually what entails, is they ask for your information. I hand over my Gaijin card, and then they question why I am out so late. They don't fail to inform me working as a foreigner with my student status is strictly prohibitted... i'm not coming home from work am I? Or more offensively, since I'm a student, should I not be sleeping or studying in my laboratory? So I respond very bluntly, that I attend so-and-so University and that I'm researching some things about the city. I show them my University card as well, and since the school I attend is quite well-received in the eyes of Japanese, their attitude immediately changes from offensive to casual. They check my registration number on my bike (Every bike MUST have a registration number or you may find yourself in some major trouble..) but interestingly enough, they also tell the individual on the other end of the radio one's exact location as well. For a person as suspicious as me and who HATES police, I think this is just another way of keeping tabs. By now, I've probably been red-flagged... I kind of envision a whole database of bike registration numbers linked to individuals and where they have been specifically stopped. It could be my own paranoia. But I guess the more important question is.. why does Tokyo need so many Police stations and servicemen and women in the first place?? I guess you could argue that the police are making the city safe, but I think in reality, it's something more inherent within the social structure... how people perceive and treat one another, and also the general psyche, that reinforces the priority of safety in a country that has constantly had to redefine and rebuild itself after disasters (wars, fires, earthquakes... etc) I also question, what kind of impact the police are having on public spaces.. are they merely reinforcing the behaviors, and in turn, desires of Tokyo-ites? Or are they having a real, detrimental impact, thus limiting the possibilities of appropriated public space, specifically at night time? A laboratory friend's bike was recently stolen right outside his apartment. He didn't lock it to anything permanent, someone just picked it up with the lock around the wheel. The pricetag on the bike was Juuman Yen (roughly $1,000) Tokyo is safe.. but then every once in awhile a story like this comes along, and you just kind of shake your head and go what the fuck, really?

007 / This Will Be Good

***UPDATE*** Discussion topic will be "Form, Why Bother?" So, tomorrow at 4:00pm, Peter Eisenman will be making a visit to the KSA - presumably for his annual football game with Jeff Kipnis. However, before kick-off on Saturday, Peter will be in a panel discussion with KSA faculty Jeff Kipnis and John McMorrough tomorrow afternoon. No idea what the topic will be, but I can almost guarantee it will be fantastic (on multiple levels). TOMORROW Eisenman + McMorrough + Kipnis Knowlton School of Architecture Gui Gallery Discussion begins at 4:00 pm See you there!

Open House - Applications - Portfolio - Agonizing

So we had open house recently which made me think about this time last year when I was working on my portfolio and application materials. The handful of portfolios which made their way to the archinect discussion boards I found quite helpful - both in terms of ideas to emulate and those to avoid. So here is the portfolio I sent in last year, maybe those of you going through the application process will find it helpful in either way. anti-archinect-portfolio Note: I deleted all of the text, partly because it was the weakest aspect of the portfolio, partly because I don't want to reference other people/firms/projects in this forum. It loses some continuity and balance in layout, but you get the picture. All of the land arch projects are professional work from my time with EDAW (Shenzhen office), except the highline competition board. The installation work is from my time in an MFA program that I never finished. My letters of reference were a professor from undergrad, a former boss (edaw), and a professor from my MFA program. GRE scores were solid but not spectacular. Essay was very personal about what I wanted out of the profession, what I thought it was capable of. Other stuff to give you a quick snapshot of my class: I am in the MLA II program which is post-professional (my undergrad BSLA is from U. Wisconsin 2002). There are 9 of us this year. Two of us are licensed (although I hadn't passed my last LARE section by the time my application was submitted). Three of the group are straight out of school (Purdue, Berkely, Tshinghua though two of these are out of their 20s). Two are international (Korea, China) and the rest are domestic. 6 females, 3 males. A few in the 24/25 area, a few in the 30 area a couple older. Previous employers include EDAW (x2), Ken Smith, Mathews Nielson, Korean Gov't, . Ill finish with a thought from my professional practice class with Paul Nakazawa about approach to marketing and work in general: "Its all about commitment, this business runs on intensity."

Bella, Bellicosa Italia

I spend a lot of time looking at ugly buildings. You could say I'm addicted to them. US military bases are not pretty things. One base planner put it to me this way: "We build 'em like jeeps, simple and functional." And there's a certain logic to jeep aesthetics: because it looks cheap and functional, then it probably is. The same goes for a lot of military architecture. It's basic, modular, cheap (in terms of finishes), and pretty damn ugly. Well you can't quite build like that in Italy. I toured Aviano Air Base, northeast of Venice. It was a weird "architectural pilgrimage" being that one of the key books I read putting together this proposal was Mark Gillem's America Town. As a reserve Air-Force planner, he details the mocking of Palladian style: faux loggias and other such gestures at cultural assimilation. The book is more about land use and less about architecture. That's one thing that interests me in military bases (when my eyes get tired) is to think about the land use issues: who owns it, how does the treaty allow for its continued use, what happens when the land goes back to civilian use, etc.

In Italy I also met with some planners at Camp Ederle in Vicenza, where there's been a heap of protest over the new Dal Molin development. That's a whole 'nother story. But one of the planners gave me a .pdf of design guidelines for the army post derived from Palladian style. It's gold. You can just imagine the architecture being used as a beard for the military, saying "hey, this barracks has A-B-A-B proportions and square windows, see how it fits?" or "look at those doric columns at the headquarters; that means we belong here." . Right, so this post is really not about the attempt to make the ugly beautiful, but it's simply about two really, really beautiful buildings that I had the pleasure to explore. One is famous, and the other is relatively newly restored. Check 'em out: Castelvecchio was one of the first things I remember in architecture school. Someone at USC showed it in the intro to architecture lectures and it struck a deep chord. I feel like it came right when we were all neck-deep in Corb's five points, Itten's color theory, and the oppression of Mies's free plan. I thought, hey architecture isn't all about construction from a blank slate. You can do beautiful things with reworking an existing palette. So it's a bonus that I got to do this pilgrimage and chalk it up as a post-military site visit.

The "old castle" became a museum in the early 20th century but was in tatters after WWII. Enter Carlo Scarpa. The dude was obsessive, constantly working over drawings, washing them in white tempura and scribbling on them anew. His hand is in every corner of the building and, yet, it as though no hand has touched it but rather the natural, sublime forces of erosion have just shifted some planes, left some corners gaping, some stones stepping. It's an amazing feeling when you get to walk through the building of an architect you've always admired in slides and in books. That's the real Grand Tour, and the only proper way to learn architecture, I think.

The other building not to be excluded from a set of the post-military beautiful in Italy is the restoration of a tower in San Erasmo in the Venetian lagoon. The architects are Carlo Cappai and Maria Alessandra Segantini. If you can find the book Infrastrutture dello Sguardo (I bought it on the site) I recommend getting it; it's a beautiful book as well as a beautiful building.

There was an art installation as part of the Venice Biennale of Art and uncannily, one of the video works was about bunker towers in the lagoon built during WWII. That's all I have time for, I'm jumping on a plane from SFO to Manila in six hours. The last leg of the trip starts tonight!

[AA PhD] Tschumi Fireworks 1974/2009

[Image: "Surfaces", Bernard Tschumi's 'Fireworks 1974/2009'; photo by Kirk Wooller]. For 35-year-old fireworks, Tschumi�s pyrotechnic display last Friday over the rooftops of the AA was pretty damn impressive. (Thought I get the feeling this wasn�t a completely authentic restaging of his 1974 project.) The fact that both fireworks and audience were under a persistent rain shower certainly added a touch of magic to the event. Tschumi himself was pleased with the �fire and water� combination, but this enthusiasm was matched by a guarded reluctance to discuss the project. [Image: "Lines", Bernard Tschumi's 'Fireworks 1974/2009'; photo by Kirk Wooller]. �Fireworks 1974� was the project that Bernard Tschumi featured in the recent exhibition �First Works: Emerging Architectural Experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s�. At the time of its original staging, the project made a claim for the value of words and signs (as opposed to images and spaces) in architecture. It was also a fierce reaction against a rising architectural historicism. The driving concept behind the work is stated in the first two of lines of Tschumi�s Manifesto 1: �Good architecture must be conceived, erected and burned in vain. The greatest architecture of all is the fireworkers�: it perfectly shows the gratuitous consumption of pleasure.� An AA flyer, released shortly before the event, claimed in large font, �TSCHUMI. MEGAPHONE. FRONT STEPS. FIREWORKS. FIRST WORKS.� While the megaphone angle was perhaps a little presumptuous for Tschumi�s more self-effacing demeanour, it did get me wondering whether he still found in his �first work� something that continues to operate as �the basis for long-term interests, agendas and even obsessions� (as the First Work�s catalogue makes claim). I wondered whether he still felt that �the greatest architecture� should be �gratuitously consumed with indifference�, or whether his enthusiasm for such gratuity - something that sounds decidedly antiquated - was curbed in light of the recent economic and ecological climate. Fortunately, I had a chance to put this to Tschumi in the reception drinks after the fireworks. However, his guarded response of, �Oh, we�re not going to get all intellectual now�, was followed by an impromptu slideshow of the misty photos he had just taken of his own work, in which he paid particular tribute to the magical combination of �fire and water�. It seems that Tschumi�s first work holds other interests for him now. A movie of the fireworks event can be seen here

ready for a break

I have to admit that I am reaching the point of burnout this semester. This is primarily because I took 15 credits this summer which was required of all students who did not have a prior degree in architecture. That translated to class everyday from 8:30 - 6:00, May to mid August. After one week off I rolled into 18 credits for the Fall which is also required if you want to stay on track to graduate with the doctorate in 3.5 years. So I am definitely eager for the winter break to arrive. Final review week will occur starting Dec 4 so I have around a month left. One of the reasons also for my burnout has been the high number of group projects in classes. In one class in fact every single project for the semester has been a group project. While I certainly understand the benefits of knowing how to work as a part of a design team it gets old when that is the case in almost every class. It is difficult to build your own momentum and really run with ideas as they occur. Hopefully in future semesters there will not be such an emphasis on group work. As an update to an earlier post, I wanted to mention that the school has been able to open its doors once again for weekend studio use. At the beginning of the semester the university had decided to close all non-research buildings on the weekend to cut energy costs and help make up for the massive budget shortfall. An energy task force was put together at the architecture school to find a way to re-open the building on the weekends and still cut costs. A plan was drafted and submitted to the school and we were allowed to open the building on weekends. It has hardly made a noticeable difference though because students were still using the building on the weekends before because security was extremely lax in enforcing its closure. However now at least we don't have to feel like we need to hide in our studios.

First Works

My attmept at widening scope. Last friday an exhibition opened in the main gallery at the AA entitled First Works. I found it timely because I have been struggling for a while with the theme of the exhibition (outlined in the curatorial statement). The work on show in the exhibition, all done in the 60s and 70s, has an undeniable influence on the work being done today, but the question one has to ask (I think) is what exactly these influences are and how are they being expressed. Answering some of these questions would narrow add some specificity to an otherwise floating situation. Seeing all the work in one place (an amazing number of original drawings) is key in clearing up some of the confusion (my confusion). Come for a visit if you are around.

Plaster and Other Things 2

Here are the photos of some of the casts before the casting operations. The work here was done with Brendon Carlin, Kyle Chou, Carlos Piles, and Lluis Enrique Monzo.

Between the Planes - Studio Project #2

After our first studio project, Garmenture, was completed most of my class took the weekend to catch up on work for our other core courses before we were presented with our next studio project the following Monday, September 28th. This project is not quite as infamous as Garmenture but it was much more challenging. �Between the Planes� explores the problems that come with moving between 2D and 3D representation. The project also serves as a means of learning 2D drawing softwares. For the most part UBC students use Vectorworks but some people with previous exposure are using AutoCad. The project gave us the following two drawings with the measurements of 18 m long, 11.124 m wide and an assumed 18 m deep or high (depending on whether you interpreted the drawings as plans or sections.) The assignment was to infer a simple set of rules that link these drawings in order to generate a 3-dimensional space. The problem posed an incredible amount of possibilities in our interpretation and the opportunity to develop the concealed space was at times overwhelming. My studio instructor encouraged us not to worry about a program for the space and rather to focus on a conceptual idea while developing a system of consistent rules to create the space. He pushed us to think abstractly about our operations and not to be restricted by our understanding of conventional space. I chose to read the drawings as plans and stacked them directly on top of one another. I decided to angle all of the planes creating as many connection points as possible, which served to eliminate any redundant shapes. I was also interested how hidden planes could intersect with the visible ones in plan to provide structural support without creating any volumetric space. Here is a simple axonometric drawing of my idea. It was one of my first attempts with the software and I have become much more adept with it since. The feedback I got on the project was that I didn�t develop the space enough and my final model didn�t look very rich. I was also encouraged to think about user experience more and be more aware of the way a person would interact with a space of these dimensions. The critics were interested in the way a created movement using the structural planes and the way I spaced them based on predominant vertical lines created by the plan. They encouraged me to develop ideas like this further for next time. Between the Planes was at times mind blowing but I overall a really positive exercise that changed the way I think about spaces. It was also a great springboard for perfecting drawing mechanics, model building, and presentation techniques.

Don't Make Plans for Thanksgiving.

October has been an exceptionally busy month with midterms, essays and the wrapping up of the first three of our studio projects for the term. I have yet to pull any all nighters (some people in my studio are up to 7 for the term) but I haven�t been doing much other than school work and had to cancel most, if not all, of the social commitments I had for the month, including family and friends visiting from back east for thanksgiving. Our first studio project is known as Garmenture and has been going on in the school of architecture for as long as anyone can remember. The assignment is basically to conceive, construct and present a conceptual form that can be worn on your body. The purpose of the project is to help first years develop a design process, as well as to understand the importance of the body as a constant within architecture and the necessity of understanding your site. The project also served as a method of introducing us to different methods of 2D and 3D representation as well as exploring a number of different materials. My studio instructor, Oliver Neumann, encouraged us to explore a movement of our body and develop a piece that functions based on this movement. I was interested in the how the skin moves over the body in a range of motions. So I constructed a shirt that basically had long sticks poking through it. Underneath the shirt the sticks were affixed to my skin extending back out through the shirt to exaggerate any movement. With the subtle movements of my body, such as slouching my shoulders, the sticks showed the very fluid motion of the skin. They often reacted in a complementary fashion with their tips coming together on the front of the shirt and separating at the back. In addition to presenting the project in studio to our instructor and design critics we also had to show our projects to the entire student body in a Friday evening fashion show. This was a really fun way to wrap up all of our hard work and reminded us not to take it too seriously. Here are some pictures from the studio reviews and the after hours fashion show. Studio Reviews From George Wagner's studio: The Annual Garmenture Fashion Show:

Ohio City >

I have no idea what 'Loop' we are technically working on currently in this project. If I had to guess, I would say I'm in the loop where one swirls around in a confused stupor, much like a giant toilet bowl, before being deposited into a heap of disappointment and well, shit. I've pretty much lost all motivation. Yes, that excitement seen in previous posts...gone. And it's not just me. Pretty much everyone in this studio is finding it hard to care about the project....or anything at all. Which is strange because it's not simply the semester weighing on our mental tolerances...it feels different this time. Most likely the visions of Italy have us all seduced into the prospects of a less intense semester experience. Italy-itis. It is literally so close...in fact, only two months from today my plane leaves Detroit for Paris. Recently we received the final program brief for our final project, sited in Ohio City, a neighborhood of Cleveland located on the outskirts of downtown directly west of the Cuyahoga River. The project is a culinary institute of sorts and calls for a Fast Good Restaurant, El Bulli Restaurant, Kitchen, Restrooms, Business offices, Library and Reading room, Food Culture Department, Social Department, Scientific Department Laboratory, Multimedia/Conference Area, 6 apartments for visitors, a public garden, and a private kitchen garden. In addition the site requirements include 3 interconnected freshwater aquaponic fish hatchery ponds encompassing an area of � acre, feed storage, and waste disposal. Here are images from the recent site visit. fast good storefront site. the west side market, located across the street. interface between culinary institute site and west side market. boundary. boundary. downtown across the river. i have a weird obsession with surveillance cameras. We have another site as well. We were asked to investigate a formal dining event, much like the informal eating event explored at the beginning of the semester. Myself and a group from studio went to Lolita located in Tremont, Cleveland. I set up my camera and took a time-lapse video of the event and investigated the structure of the formal meal (courses, ordering, etc.) in relation to time-space and the varying perception of those time-planes. time-lapse flipbook. [meal mapping > to be completed] I don't really know where all this is going...just that 4 weeks isn't enough time.