MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Pecha Kucha Night Detroit will be held at the Atwater Block Brewery on August 21.

Pecha Kucha Night, devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham Architecture), was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers, performers and artists to meet, network, and show their work in public.

The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system -- each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds -- giving 6 minutes, 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people a chance to present.

Pecha Kucha (Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown. This is a demand that seems to be global, as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 120 cities across the world. For more information, visit www.pecha-kucha.org.

October 25, 2007: DAN ROCKHILL
Rockhill & Associates. Lecompton, Kansas.
Lecture Title: "Design & Construction: Hand & Mind. The Work of Rockhill & Assoc. and Studio 804"

November 8, 2007: SHANE & BETSY WILLIAMSON
WilliamsonWilliamson. Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Lecture Title: "Between Scale".

March 20, 2008: WILL ALSOP
Alsop Architects. London, England, Great Britain.
Lecture Title: "Progress Check"

This one is a can't miss, from www.cranbrookart.edu...


THE WIRED SPEAKER SERIES
At Cranbrook Academy of Art
Cameron Sinclair
Co-founder of Architecture for Humanity
In conversation with Melanie Cornwell, Editorial Projects Director, WIRED magazine.

Thursday, April 12 | 7:00 pm
Cranbrook Art Museum/deSalle Auditorium

$6 non-members, $4 seniors and students with id, free to ArtMembers@Cranbrook. For more information, call 248-645-3323.

Frustrated that less than two percent of the world benefits from architectural services and that one in seven people live in slum settlements, Cameron Sinclair co-founded Architecture for Humanity, a non profit that seeks architecture solutions to humanitarian crises and brings design services to communities in need. For the last six years his team has initiated and implemented a number of programs including post-Katrina disaster relief in New Orleans, housing ideas for returning refugees in Kosovo; mobile health clinics to combat HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa; mine clearance programs and playground building in the Balkans; and disaster recovery assistance in Grenada, India, Iran and Sri Lanka

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I've just come from a David Adjaye lecture at the University of Detroit Mercy. I am quite fond of Adjaye's work, though the lecture didn't live up to expectations. I first heard of Adjaye from his Idea Store in Whitechapel, London. Though this may be one of his more published persuites, I was more drawn to a couple of his other project, Dirty House in Shoreditch, London, and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway. The Dirty House is an adaptive reuse of an old masonry building. The exterior is dark and the windows on the ground floor have been covered with a mirrored tint. The upper floor hosts a large terrace with a cantilievered roof. At night, the buildings stark exterior is transformed into a beacon of sorts, glowing about the terrace and lower level windows. The Nobel Peace Center is an amazing work which I will not get into here, but I encourage you to explore this at some point.

Moving on, our midterm reviews were a few weeks ago, followed by a much needed spring break. As I mentioned before, our studio is working on a competition this semester, Preservation as Provocation, Re-designing Saarinen's Cranbrook Academy of Art. We are lucky enough to be only a few miles from the campus, and I have been visiting the site on an almost weekly basis. Below are my design boards for the midterm review. In an effort to prepair for the competition requirements, we were allowed a maximum of 4 20"x20" boards. The boards were made when my project was still in the design phase, but has now moved into development. I welcome any comments or criticism on my project. Please keep in mind that these are not intended to be final renderings or boards, and try to focus comments on the scope of the design.



This is a site plan showing the existing library and museum, as well as studio and administration buildings. The proposed addition will be comprised of two wings, one extending from the existing library to the south, flanking the triton pools, and the other extending from the existing museum to the southeast, bisecting upper and lower grotto lakes, and terminating at the greek theatre.



The library addition will be mostly below grade, folding out of the earth to allow slivers of natural light to enter the building, and creating paths between roof areas and pockets where exiting trees become nodes, or gathering areas.



The library wing will fade into the treeline and create a space of its own beyond the existing promenade. While the building itself has yet to be developed, it will have a long circulation corridor connecting it to the recent Moneo addition to the museum wing.



Above is a view of the proposed circulation corridor. The intent is to pierce the existing area with this new axis, while the library unzips from the earth. This is one of the more understated approaches in the class, but with any luck will prove to be the most successful.

Randolph R. Croxton, FAIA: Moving from "Green" to Sustainable... Overlooked Assets & Opportunities

Thursday, March 22, 2007, 7:00 pm, Architecture Auditorium, A200



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Hey. Long time no see. I've been busy lately. I'm currently designing an addition to a museum and library, trying to save another library, building houses in Detroit, moving, planning a wedding, and trying to get 8 hours a sleep a night on top of all that. Some needs are met, others are ignored. Mostly, the sleeping thing. Usually, this early in the semester, I can get away with sleeping 7 or 8 hours a night. Not so much. Lately it's been 5 or 6. I can just imagine what will happen come midterms.

In studio, we have moved past a precedent study, site analysis, and block diagraming, and have moved on to mass-modeling, which I can attribute to my lack of sleep last night. Things are progressing quite well and I feel I am ready to jump into some down and dirty design work.

In my other two courses, I just took an exam in Environmental Control Systems last week, and I have an exam in Structures 4 tomorrow. Aside from the ample homework, those two courses are going well.

I will spare you the details of my life outside of school (though I could probably cover it in few words). Things have been busy lately. You can expect me to return to my regular posting frequency in the next few weeks. Until then, here is a random picture of Bruce Lee sleeping during a long ride.

Spring semester officially began a week ago. I'm once again a full time student, taking 12 credit hours this semester, on top of working 40 hours a week. Looks like I'm going to be busy. My class line up is as follows:

Integrated Design Studio 4 - Tod Stevens/Cornell Mays
Structures 4 - Edmond Megerian
Environmental Control Systems 1 - Janice Means

In studio this semester, we will be focusing on the ACSA competition "Preservation as Provocation: Re-designing Saarinen's Cranbrook Academy of Art." The program calls for a 9,770 sq. ft. addition to the library and a 53,580 sq. ft. addition to the museum. The competition will be juried by Tod Williams, Jorge Otero-Pailos, and Marja-Ritta Norri. Originally, we had plans of doing the AISC Steel Competition, but everyone does the steel competition. I think this will work out in our favor, as Cranbrook is right in our back yard, and we can make many site visits. Althought I've been to Cranbrook many times before, I took a trip there yesterday to re-familiarize myself with the school and its buildings.

On our final day in The Athens of America, the plan was to take the T to M.I.T. to see Frank Gehry's Stata Center, Eero Saarinen's M.I.T. Chapel, Alvar Alto's Baker House, and Steven Holl's Simmons Hall, then find the Genzyme Center. Next, hop the T to Harvard to visit the G.S.D., then to Allston to see the library...

Unfortunately, most of that didn't happen. Monday was the only day of our trip that the weather didn't cooperate. It was cold, and it was rainy. We did, however, make it to M.I.T. Lindsay was miserable and I thought if I made her oogle architecture any more, she may leave me.

Our back-up plan was to visit the Museum of Fine Arts, but it took a trip there to discover that some places close on New Years Day.

The conference concluded with a keynote presentation by Brian Healy, AIA, principal of Brian Healy Architects in Boston, which may just have been the best lecture of the Forum. We capped the night off with some cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory. Tomorrow, we fly back to the Motor City. Enjoy the pictures, and I'll see you in Milwaukee next year...

We spent this morning walking around the Back Bay for a while, and then we visited the host campuses. It wasn't a well organized tour, as most of the buildings were locked. We did, however, get to see the studio spaces at Northeastern and Wentworth. The studio at Northeastern sits directly under the tracks of the T, so I can imagine it could be dificult to concentrate or to crit at times. he studios were nice, but I'll stick with LTU's...











Our keynote speaker for today was Theodore C. Landsmark, Ph. D., the recipient of the Whitney M. Young Jr. Award. Dr. Landsmark is a strong advocate of diversity within the architecture profession. We also heard from two groups, one from Notheastern, and one from the B.A.C., about their recent work in New Orleans.

After the keynote presentation concluded, the 50th Anniversary Beaux Arts Ball began. This year it was held at the Cyclorama. This years theme was dancing through the decades, and we had a wicked good time...