I guess I’ve waited long enough to post (five months or something!) so I’ll take a little time (out of studio work, oops!) for a hydra-headed update. The quarter has now been underway for two weeks (and I've 'only' had two all-nighters so far!). I think I might finally have figured out my schedule; the first week and a half was a stressful process of not getting into any critical studies seminars I tried for, despite three of them being required before graduation and that this is one of the few quarters I'll have room in my schedule for one. I'm taking the last of the core studio sequence - the Major Building Design studio - which is coordinated with the other required course, Programming. My studio prof is Kevin Daly of Daly Genik whose work I actually really like, which is always nice. I actually live a block away from his three-part charter elementary/middle/early learning schools, and mentioned his great Camino Nuevo Charter High School in one of my first posts, which I was delighted to recently discover served as the daughter’s school in the pilot of the David Duchovny show Californication. Despite the architectural product placement, I was unconvinced to watch any more episodes of the show, let alone pay for Showtime.


Teacher (concerned): He was feeling her up!
Total Creep (David Duchovny): Feeling her up? She’s 12 years old; (feels own breasts) there’s nothing to feel!



I was somewhat disappointed to discover that the studio this year has moved away from urban design (last year the site was several large blocks of Koreatown, and the year before it was a wide strip of the LA River) back to what the title implies, a single building. At least the site is kind of cool: it’s currently a post office in Koreatown with a great gold and black old Los Angeles art deco retail building that I’ve always loved when driving by it (anyone who knows me will probably know how much I love absurd gold stuff!), and which we’ll have to integrate into our plan for the site.


Not enough buildings use gold anymore

It’s also almost exactly between my old apartment in Koreatown and both of the two architecture firms I’ve worked for in LA, so I feel like I’m insider trading during site analysis; but of course formal analyses are quite different from driving by or even living in an area.

For my elective course slot, when I couldn't get into a critical studies course I signed up for another class called Programming (which has already caused several conversational confusions with the required ‘Programming’ course), though this one is for computers rather than architecture. It’s focused on Processing, which is an application/language that was developed by UCLA Design|Media Art Chair Casey Reas as a visually-based coding language for artists and designers. While my interest in Processing has waned somewhat, I feel like I should know something about computer programming, and I think the course could be useful for my fourth course, another technology seminar (my first one was with Jason Payne last fall). This quarter’s tech seminar is headed by our resident ‘nutty Finnish guy’, Kivi Sotamaa, and is titled “EMO: Emotional Object” and focuses on the production of a full-scale functioning prototype of a lighting fixture using several differing materials and production processes to form an integrated and interactive topological sensate whole. Somewhere along the way we have to “avoid cliché”, which I feel will be tougher than integrating fiber optics, sensors, ceramics, and vacuum formed surfaces (for example). Sounds like fun! Also sounds like I’ll want to kill myself at the end of the semester, like the emo teens we found out about in a (really fantastic) student case study presentation this morning, mixed in with all the presentations on waterjets and casting and steel and sensors.

In case I thought I would have a couple free hours here and there (or maybe because I enjoy torturing myself), I got a workstudy position (oh actually it’s because I love money) in the exhibition design department at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, one of the preeminent university collections of global art and culture in the world. But it’s not all African baskets (though that was the show we just put up, ha ha); I’ve just started making a mock-up of an upcoming show on Nick Cave, who’s actually really rad and very contemporary (and who’s NOT the also rad-and-contemporary Nick Cave of the Bad Seeds, which I only discovered just now when googling him).

So wish me luck in surviving the fall. At least I have two new coffee gizmos to help me through. I was known in studio last year for being the guy with the Chemex, but it broke - at probably the exact right time - after finals when I was moving out of studio. I would still recommend it, with some reservations, if you’re looking to be the wacky coffee guy (or lady, your choice) of your studio or office.

Speaking of finals, I haven’t updated since the event-and-stress-ful Rumble, UCLA’s school-wide end-of-year show. I was too worn out about it for months afterwards that I couldn’t write about it, but I was going to make a separate post before the semester started (I even had a hilarious (to me anyway…) quintuply-alliterative title - Rebellion, Reviews, Ridiculousness: Recapping RUMBLE), but since I failed at that I’ll just discuss a few anecdotes briefly. We had been told the entire semester that preparing for Rumble would be intense…


Busy hive at DAWN, several days before Rumble

...but of course few of us were prepared for the reality. It would have been pretty tough no matter what, but our class had some what I’ll call “communication snafus” between the students and the instructors that turned a nightmare into, well, a bigger nightmare. Or maybe it turned from nightmare in studio into Nightmare on Elm Street, with our studio instructors as Freddie, killing us in our sleep. “So… hard… to stay awake… for lineweights... Zzzzzzzzzzz…..” Basically, we asked our instructor a week ahead of time what the deadline the Friday before the Rumble opening actually meant, and he said something along the lines of “well it hasn’t been that serious in the past, but you should definitely be ready for me to look at your boards when I come in on Saturday.” So when Friday rolled around, we were busily polishing (or scrambling to put together a semblance of) our boards, unconcerned that the 2pm deadline went by until the first person tried to print and found that the plotters had been completely shut down. A tête-à-tête with the instructors was rapidly called and we were told that we had known about this all along, and that our only option for being lazy and not finishing by the deadline was to outsource printing (and we’re talking about two seven foot long boards here). Some people later told me that they actually had heard of the plotter shutdown thing, but I definitely hadn’t, and there was nothing about it in the syllabus, just that it was a ‘deadline’. And those are definitely not usually too firm around here (hey, some of that LA flakiness and laid-back-ness has to be true). I know the go-getter early birds of you out there probably aren’t too sympathetic to this situation, and I understand that, as I understood our instructors when they wouldn’t switch the plotters back on. Though if we hadn’t all been made incredibly crabby-but-docile by a week or two of sub-crazy amounts of sleep, I fear there could have been a coup. I actually approve of the idea that all output should be finished days before a public exhibition and well-publicized series of crits with high profile jurors, but when as drastic an action as a total shutdown of plotters that could jeopardize some students even having boards at all is taken, it should be REALLY strongly drilled into us from day one, or at least be included in the syllabus. It's kind of like Cold War nuclear deterrence by threat of mutual annihilation - the plotter thing was like how the Soviets kept the "dead hand" semi-automatic Dr Strangelove-esque Perimeter system that's been in the news recently a secret during the cold war. Especially in view that out of the 60-something students in our class, only 10 or less had actually managed to plot before the shutdown. But I appreciate that at the all-school meeting at the beginning of this year, chair Hitoshi Abe recognized that there were communication problems with Rumble and that the department would work with the students to ameliorate them for this year’s event.

At any rate, we found a pretty inspiring crowd-sourced solution to our plotting problem, and rented a plotter with tech support from a special last-minute rush rental company for the weekend, and all chipped in to pay for it. Instead of spending a collective $10,000 on weekend outsourcing, we actually ended up spending half the cost of plotting on the supposedly subsidized plotters at school. I’m still not sure how the economies of that works, but it seems like it could be a good idea for any deadline in the future. Yikes, maybe I’m a closet Libertarian! Privatize Plotting! Ha ha. It even allowed us to harmlessly exorcise our petty fantasies of rebellion at our situation.


A Plotter Of Our Own

The reviews went fine, even though our studio was squeezed into the most absurd teeny hallway around the corner in the basement.



The jury was cool, though I think my friend Joe almost exploded when a reviewer told him he “sounds like my wife”.


“I sound like WHAT?!”

Below is a screencap of my boards, which I ended up being pretty satisfied with, though yet again I was deeply unsatisfied by the model. Or lack thereof.



The official welcome to Rumble was called Warm Up, emceed by Sylvia Lavin, pictured here with roundtable participants Jesse Reiser, Enrique Walker, Jeff Kipnis, chair Hitoshi Abe, Neil Denari, Kivi Sotamaa, Heather Roberge, Hernan Diaz Alonso, among others.



Jeff Kipnis had characteristically Jeff Kipnissy quotes like "is there a pizza in that thing?" and something like "I’ve been to every school…. and Ohio State is still the best", and of course he referenced the Disney movie Up. Sylvia concluded "I don't think I've ever heard this group agree on anything, but I think tonight they've agreed." I wasn’t sure I heard them really talk about anything, let alone agree on it, but Sylvia is WAY smarter than me so I believe it. At the Conversations on Urban China talk she hosted Spring quarter, artist Doug Aitken tried to put her on the spot by asking how she could possibly relate his piece featuring a beaver in a Middle American motel bathtub to the conditions of contemporary Chinese urbanism; and in a split second and a short sentence, Sylvia convincingly did just that. She’s like a supercomputer of contemporaneity.

After that, the customary sake barrel smashing commenced, and we all got drunk.


This is something we earned


Partaking


I didn’t do much of anything productive in the long summer; just updated my website a bit (though with only midterm images of my Rumble project), started twittering (a lot), went to San Francisco a bunch, and once to New York and Connecticut for a friend’s (legal, gay) wedding. I thought it would be fun to put up some pictures of new architecturey things there for my non-east coast bros who haven’t been to NY recently.


Highline














Hi Frank



The southern end condition felt unsatisfying while on the High Line
(though I suppose it “looked cool” from the street).





The northern end condition though was even more unsatisfying, with a
chain-link fence separating the lush, landscaped southern section from
the dead basin of a future northern extension of the line, and the structural skeleton of UCLA prof Neil Denari’s HL23 (which I’ve discussed previously, in perhaps my favorite post ever).




Though the bridge that leads to the stairs to the street at this end should be a nice place to see the construction progress of the extension, whenever that will be.


HL23

The paving stones are pretty great.









Further reading on the High Line: http://nymag.com/arts/architecture/features/57176/
(with a well-illustrated downloadable pdf of recent architecture surrounding the high line, though I may have to differ with their description of Jean Nouvel’s building’s “harlequin window pattern” being “irresistible”, I still wish I had brought this as a visual aid to the High Line as I missed a few projects they mention). And here are some videos on the history and pre-Diller Scofidio High Line by my talented friend from high school days, Matt Wolf.


Ps1’s Young Architect’s Program - MOS Afterparty


























There was a nicely presented review of the entire YAP program, though I didn’t get a good picture before being shooed out at closing.


Cooper







Trevor Patt on flickr has some nice shots of the almost-finished interior, though I suppose there are probably shots of the interior after the official opening out there now too.


Anyway, I’m back, and ready to re-join the archinect community. Though you might need to airmail me stimulants stronger than those forced on me by the NoDoz brand representatives in the UCLA parking lot adjacent to the Michael Jackson UCLA Medical Center (er I mean Ronald Reagan) this summer.

OH, and I got a BONAVENTURE MUG from the rotating cocktail lounge in Jameson's favorite building, who incidentally my ex is taking a seminar from at Duke right now.


Beat this for pomo kitsch

See you in studio!

The beginning of the last few weeks before the much-hyped (both within and without Perloff) second annual all-school exhibition called “RUMBLE” were marked quite literally with an actual earthquake last night. My building shook around a bit but apparently there was no serious damage done. Physical analogs of Rumble notwithstanding, the administration and faculty have us running scared in the ramp-up to Rumble. We’ve basically been told we have to finalize our designs this week in order to meet the rigorous production schedule. I actually think it’s a good thing, because a lot of us (well mostly me) need to be ‘shaken’ out of our complacency this quarter. Wow I really need to quit it with the earthquake metaphors, sorry. Anyway, if you’re in LA on June 8th or 9th, you should stop by and check us out:

Undergrad exhibition

I went to SCI-Arc’s All School Exhibition with studio face-mate Joe last Friday. It’s basically their version of UCLA’s Rumble (also see ACfA’s pre-Rumble description from last year); or maybe Rumble is our version of their All School Exhibition. Anyway, the exhibition was somewhat weighted towards undergraduate work, probably due largely to the fact that undergrad theses were displayed, where I believe grad theses will be finished after summer. What was (perhaps undeservingly) surprising about this was that the undergrad work, even some of the non-thesis work, was kind of better than some or much of the grad work. I think that speaks to the apparently excellent undergrad curriculum and faculty more than any deficiency in the grad work, which was also largely quite well executed. I say ‘well executed‘ specifically because while the boards and models were really expressive and even beautiful, the actual design proposals were not super impressive (in my very humble opinion of course, and with many exceptions). But when the presentation is as good as it was, the actual designs are almost besides the point. Seriously - as pedagogical tools, these projects are clearly super successful, and even if they wouldn’t be great buildings, it’s not like that’s an option. The boards ran predictably for SCI-Arc to atmospheric renderings (flocks of geese in the mist, etc.), and the models were generally heavily reliant on 3d printing, which seemed to bear out what I heard about SCI-Arcoids not having to pay for 3d printing. Which would be nice, especially in light of UCLA just a week ago requiring us all to pay a $100 mid-quarter shop fee, out of which we’ll get another laser cutter, which we will continue to pay exorbitant (okay it’s not THAT bad) amounts to use. But I’d actually almost be willing to pay another $100 for yet another laser cutter, as the crunch for laser time at finals (especially with Rumble at the end of this quarter) is unfortunately a huge influence on the quality of models. Another really general thing that has historically bothered me about the production of SCI-Arc students was on display in some of the work at the exhibition - that more than most other schools it seems that students’ work is hugely influenced by their instructors. This is maybe not such a bad thing at SCI-Arc, with such accomplished and interesting faculty, but I think I generally like to see somewhat more nurturing of individual interests, even if it comes at the expense of the work looking cohesive or good (which I don’t think it has to).





I don't know why I didn't take more pictures, but these are the two I have; the first of an undergrad thesis model, and the second of a grad studio model

One thing that diminished the luster of the undergrad thesis work for me was the discovery that huge components of students’ presentations weren’t actually built or drawn by the student, but were outsourced; in the one case I was told about to a professional illustrator. I know theses are supposed to be about masturbatory extremes of personal expression, but shouldn’t that include actually doing the work you’re showing? It would be one thing if these were post-professional programs preparing students to lead their own firms, for which managing a team of designers to execute your concepts would be really helpful experience, but especially on the undergrad level this doesn’t seem quite as important. These students won’t be hiring people and delegating tasks for years; they’ll be lucky if they work as something other than cad monkeys, not to mention even getting a job in the first place. Am I naive about this, or overly attached to outdated notions of authorship or something?

On the way to get a drink (free beer! If you’ve read almost any of my other entries, you know how much I love that!), Joe and I ran into Andrew Zago, who ran the SCIFI program at SCI-Arc this year, and who I basically worked for on several projects in the year before I started school. I also went to his lecture at Otis a few months ago. He asked me how it was going at “the less exciting school”, which I was not about to argue with him about, ha ha. I mean, I was on his turf, right?


The model I think from Zago's studio was really nice

There’s definitely one thing I’ll agree with him about: SCI-Arc’s location at least is much more exciting. Fucking Westwood. But that there’s some sense of rivalry between SCI-Arc and UCLA I think is regrettable; we should be teaming up to take down those grody self-aggrandizing east coast schools, ha ha ha. But seriously, the two programs are very different, and I would argue complimentary; there should be more interaction than just faculty at crits. Anyone want to start up a cross-town student group? Maybe even invite someone from (gasp) USC? Ha ha.

‘Fucking Westwood’ notwithstanding, there was an interesting contrast to the SCI-Arc show this week at UCLA, called Awards Day. I don’t know if this happens anywhere else, or if this is a unique product of public school, but Awards Day seems to be so little-publicized that it has the aura of a dirty secret - I hadn’t heard of it from anyone until a week or so before it happened. Anyway, because UCLA doesn’t allot much money to scholarships or grants specific to student work rather than financial need, Awards Day is AUD’s way of giving money to continuing students for the best work in the school. A total of about $36,000 is given each year to a possible pool of something like 120 students (though fewer actually enter the running), which sounds paltry until you consider that most students are paying just $9000 a year in tuition and fees as California residents, so a grant of $1-2,000 would make a pretty significant dent in that figure. Each student who enters is given a chunk of corridor wall (just 40 inches wide this time due to the number of entries) in which to pin up “anonymously” (if it’s possible for anyone anyone to be anonymous at this point it probably means their work is seriously boring…). The awards are given by a system of faculty nomination. I entered with what I think is the right mindset - I don’t really expect to win any cash, but used it as an excuse to finally finish a studio project I really like, but that was definitely not completed by the final crit. I still didn’t really finish to my satisfaction, especially on the model, but I think I’ve at least gotten enough done on the drawings (including one or two that I think are some of my best ever) that I’d at least be willing to include them in my portfolio. I’d post some here, but I guess that might compromise that whole “anonymity” thing. I think a lot of the work was really great-looking; I think a lot of people took the time to polish (or actually finish) their work. I guess money is pretty motivating! Hmm, maybe thousands of dollars should be hanging in the balance for every crit… Ha ha. Anyway, if you’d like to check out a balkanized and randomized contrast to SCI-Arc’s highly polished and curated show, stop by Perloff and check out the work on the ground and basement corridors. Or just wait for our polished and curated version, Rumble, at the end of the quarter.


Awards Day corridor


A representative sample of Awards Day entries

Palm Springs! My friends’ band was playing a show at a fancy hotel in Palm Springs yesterday, and invited me along. I wasn’t TOO far behind in studio, and besides, how could I say no to an all-expenses-paid trip to the most insane town in the world! I knew the hotel we were going to was fancy, but I had no idea just how; we got there and were literally in a pool being fed frozen grapes and margaritas by models. Yeah, I was uncomfortable too. More on that later.

The drive to Palm Springs was great; my friend’s car doesn’t have air conditioning so we kept the windows down, which was probably good as it made the ramping up to desert heat gradual; and there was no traffic. There are some great sights on the way:


Le Mont Garbage

We didn’t have time to stop at the Pee Wee Herman dinosaurs in Cabazon, which are now bizarrely occupied by a creationist gift shop, but here are some pictures from my last time there:


Bront


T.Rex


Dino-urbanism siting relationship


Entry


Dino escape infrastructure


When my friend saw the gift shop's slogan, "By Chance or By Design?" on all their merch, he turned to us and said gravely and with complete seriousness, "guys, we're in a giant, creationist, dinosaur."

A lot of the way to PS is just billboards and infrastructure in unbearable heat:


Magical


Hudson


Brazen Bawdy Burlesque


The desert is even trying to swallow the mountains

Palm Springs itself is really strange. It’s a small town arranged for miles on a strip, 1-2 stories high, with an enormous desert mountain in the background. It’s got a lot of fantastic modern architecture, but most of it is private, often in gated compounds.


PS!


The Visitors Center is in a great former gas station

It’s also probably the gayest city I’ve ever been to; though I haven’t been to Provincetown MA, I bet they’re about equivalent. There’s literally a storefront with a sign that says “GAY HOME LOANS”. Really, what’s not to like.


Hamburger Mary’s!

Much of life in PS seems to be spent around various pools, but they take it a step further: any time spent as a pedestrian or not around a pool is spent under misters, as in Las Vegas; a significant amount of which are most likely supplied by the guy I sat across from at the Enric Ruiz-Geli lecture.




Palm Springs urbanism is defined by mist delivery infrastructure

My friend’s show was at the Viceroy, which seems to be a luxuriously converted motel with little bungalows, and has apparently hosted Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and FDR.


One of the Viceroy’s pools - my friends’ band is playing at the end

The scene was one of carefully engineered hedonism - there were unlimited free margaritas and beers, and women in those absurd stripper leotards (which, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think signify pretty much only female oppression?) carried endless trays of fruit, which were followed up by cups of actually very delicious fries, and later hot dogs, which I'm sure would have been officially described using the moniker "upscale".


The offending articles


Yours Truly with my best friend, Free Margarita


Freed from my middle class guilt around service, my vision of paradise was allowed to manifest itself - a bucket of beers on ice with frozen grapes by the pool


My friend was making 90210 jokes between songs but no one was getting them so he referenced The OC and everyone gave a sigh of relief


Absurd


The woman in charge of “gifting” (that’s a job, apparently) gave my friends a bunch of that disgusting Ed Hardy crap with the fake tattoos all over it - but don’t worry, they’re selling it on ebay. They even had branded scooters - ‘in this economy!’

We ended up feeling a bit sick and headed home. You’d probably say it was due to the margs, but I think it was too much absurdity; I try to defend the complexity and experimental intellectual foment of Los Angeles, but this was pretty much everything we’re attacked for… and I kind of enjoyed myself! Let’s just call it “My Little Secret In The Desert”.


A beautiful sunset guided our way back to LA, unfortunately through Coachella traffic

All of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch possessions (including even the gate, and creepy children lawn sculptures) are coming up for auction under the terms of an agreement that postpones imminent foreclosure, as the New York Times reports. My new buttmate in studio Amelia said something poignant like “If even Michael Jackson is getting foreclosed, the rest of us are fucked.” The auction exhibition includes so much crap (I mean “Jacksonia”) that it fills up the former Robinson May department store next to the Beverly Hills Hilton (coincidentally right across the street from the site of Eli Broad’s future vanity contemporary art museum, his second on Wilshire; which is also the site one of the UCLA studios is using this quarter). The Jackson auction show opens to the public today (for a $20 entry fee, of course). Despite the steep fee, this seems like a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience, so we’re organizing a “studio trip” to the exhibition.

The three items I’m most hoping an anonymous sugar daddy will step up and buy for me include:


Sweet shades

1. A golden military dictator-looking bust of MJ with aviators (note: all of the auction links have been very finicky; if you simply must view an item, keep clicking on the link until it loads correctly)




2. This amazing vitrine holding a cyber-MJ head from the Moonwalker movie, with a face that fragments and splits apart when you press a button (we want to pool our resources and buy this for Greg Lynn’s future Center for Misfit Robots - not sure there’s a more misfit robot than this one)


Cyberface...


...opens!


3. One of the more creepy (and of course amazing) items I found in the auction item list were these cast plaster hands, one painted silver, and the other with “flesh tone”, complete “with Jackson's signature white taped fingertips.”


This is a Need Not Want item


Beverly Hills has actually been redeeming its rep as a cultural destination (I still have to say that pretty tongue in cheek though - it's still Beverly Hills) for me in the past week; a few days ago I met some friends at the John Waters opening at Gagosian Gallery, which was jam-packed with hilarious people I would probably never see at the east side or even Culver City openings. As I made my way over to the bar a woman who could only have been a Bev Hills local walked up to a three foot tall plastic replica of a La Mer face cream jar and yelled over the crowd “Oh I know what THAT is” as if she was clinging to any familiar sign in Waters‘ dizzying world of smoking babies, gigantic roach traps, and a four foot long spilled poppers bottle. My art friends weren't impressed with the work, but it's John Waters - he could have just shit on the ground and I'd swoon. At one point we saw someone we knew across the room and waved, when I saw something weird out of the corner of my eye, which turned out to be Traci Lords and a blinding spotlight attached to a camera pointing past her straight at me. Amazing.


A sculptural rendition of what I assume to be Ike Turner suspending Tina with puppet strings at Waters' show

Michael Jackson and John Waters in Beverly Hills; yet another reason to love what Los Angeles has to offer - in terms of edge-of-apocalypse entertainment at least.

note: all images from Julien’s Auctions’ site, except the Ike and Tina image, by Sweet Lady Jane on Flickr.

It’s been almost a full week since the end of spring break and I’m still mourning its passing. And I know you’re probably sick of hearing me say “I went to some interesting lectures recently”, but I thought I would recap the ones I caught while on break. And yes, I am now admitting to being a total nerd, but I DID have actual fun during my break as well; I just can’t tell you about it because it would blow your mind. Well okay okay I just sat around and ate stuff. Anyway... While I was visiting my old friends/hood in NY I actually did end up making the kind-of-crazy trek by train from Brooklyn to Princeton for the Caroline Bos (UNStudio) lecture; but it was a fun diversion.

My New York aunt once drove me to our cousins’ beach house on the Jersey shore when I was a teen, and I remember thinking Jersey looked a lot prettier than it was fabled to be, bogs and all; but pretty this train ride to Princeton was not. This was largely the Jersey of my imagination: less than two minutes out of Penn station the scenery was a desolate abandoned-agrarian plain ringed with derelict-looking industrial equipment; the likes of which went on for the better part of the ride. Sewage-y bogs disturbingly featured felled electrical lines half-submerged in the muck. Some parts were nice though; there were some cool industrial buildings (as opposed to the bleak ones; it’s a fine line), and some cute little towns and suburbs. It was also nice to see some woods closer to Princeton, though they were those short, thin, nearly transparent east coast woods. Still made me realize that I haven’t seen anything very forest-y other than Griffith Park in a good while.


Princeton

The Princeton campus was quite picturesque; probably the most ‘Ivy’ of the Ivies I’ve visited. The Architecture Building was one of the few non-”Ivy League gothic” buildings on campus, and actually seems to work nicely for the school, at least as far as I could tell. I got there a little early and spent some time in the library, which is very accessible to the studios and seems like a great resource, even though it’s basically postage stamp sized. The periodical/journal area alone was a treat and well maintained; the equivalent room at UCLA is not very often used. The facilities all added up to a nice little cloistered world of architecture, one that Princetonians seem too happy with to share: where are the Princeton schoolbloggers?


Architecture Building

Anyway, the lecture itself was held in the teeny Betts auditorium, where Caroline Bos was introduced by lecture series curator Jesse Reiser, of Reiser-Umemoto/RUR, who spoke of an especially fertile period at Columbia which I assumed he brought up to suggest that they were both products of, though Bos’ bio doesn’t mention Columbia. Maybe Reiser brought Columbia up for some other reason? At any rate, there does seem to be a certain shared sensibility and genetic relation of the operations undertaken in the design process between the two firms. Bos herself was a mild-mannered, succinct but engaging speaker. Though I’m probably just being a male chauvinist again as they are clearly quite different, I picked up on strange distorted flashbacks of Billie Tsien in Bos’ talk, mainly in her attempts to tie the work of her firm together by spending a lot of time talking in a sometimes largely phenomenological way about circulatory spirals as focal points and central organizing elements in many of her projects. But the similarities in delivery are basically incidental; Bos and van Berkel seem very conceptually engaged, opposed to Tsien’s unconsidered formalism. I didn’t think Bos showed as much of the really strong UNStudio work with diagrams as I anticipated; a diagram style that I hadn’t seen from UNStudio that kept coming up took the form of a jolly rancher-colored tube floating in virtual space, representing a simplified circulation path. Perhaps most importantly, Bos also settled my uncertainty about how to pronounce their name; I had always assumed that one would say both letters separately - though I’ve heard a lot of people call them “unstudio” as in “unbelievable” - but Bos said “you en studio.”


Bos is boss

She showed a bunch of recent projects, including construction photos of a crazy concrete spiral from their new music theater in Graz that’s the product of a decade old competition but has only just been completed. The twist, which Bos presented as an evolving constant in their work, I described as “crazy” not just because of its wacky form, but because it was so difficult to build traditionally that they used self impacting concrete pushed up from below rather than poured, which I hadn’t heard of. She also talked about the now-destroyed Villa NM, mentioning in passing that it included “some ironies”, and that it was “slightly larger than life, with this gold fireplace here.” She said it burned down in the fire (rather than just being damaged) because the fire truck couldn’t reach it since a road hadn’t been built, so the truck just slid down the hill with the house in flames. Sylvia Lavin had mentioned in our theory class that there was a rumor that neighbors had set the fire because the house was too contemporary, but that that was probably too “good” to be true. Also shown were several temporary installations, like “Changing Room” at the Venice Biennale, and one that will be installed in Battery Park City in Manhattan this coming September. The installations seem to serve as experiments in purer geometry than their more complex permanent work. Bos stated that she wanted to question why the house is such a treasured zone of experimentation for architects, and that small projects like the installations are great ways for them to work out their ideas. She also said she was interested in “pure geometries”, as shown in “Changing Room”, but that she wanted to use the installations to find new ways to occupy those geometries. While I think the installations are really beautiful formal expressions, I think their permanent work, like the Mercedes Benz Museum or Villa NM (which I suppose didn’t turn out to be so permanent…) are much more interesting and relevant in their complexity.

I decided to get out of New York earlier than I had been thinking I would, I think mostly because I always idealize the city (well, Brooklyn at least) when I’ve been away and have a lot of nostalgia for my time there, but when I come back to visit I realize every time that it doesn’t meet my expectations, and that I’d rather just be in Los Angeles. I still love New York (I know, I know, just buy the ‘I heart NY’ shirt), and might even end up there again some time (as if I’d be able to afford it whenever that would be), but I now know that I appreciate it more for my friends who are still there, and otherwise pretty much only for its infrastructure (density and transit), much more than for its cultural production or “scene”.

So anyway, I wasn’t able to go to the Bernard Tschumi lecture at Columbia, but was able to go to the Elena Manferdini lecture at SCI-Arc the same night. I was pleasantly surprised by Manferdini’s presentation, because my general impression of her work was that it was overly fashion-y and not so rich. Somehow though she managed to leave a super fashion-y impression (complete with a video of a literal fashion show in her SCI-Arc installation) that was still really interesting, basically because it was successfully implementing fashion techniques in architectural production. Though I was a little dubious about some of her approaches, such as the idea that one pattern should be used as a design at all scales, from jewelry to chairs to buildings, and I cringed a bit when she said she was appropriating indigenous women’s headdresses for a tower in China, (not to mention puking a little in my mouth during the aforementioned fashion show video) but despite the approaches I thought the work was really excellent.


Manferdini - oh my god my dumb iphone obliterated her face - sorry!

There seemed to be more UCLA faculty in attendance than students (which happens consistently; come on guys!), including Sylvia Lavin and Greg Lynn, who both made interesting statements in the Q&A (I hesitate to call them questions though). Sylvia said that Manferdini’s “fixation on the body gives me the heebie jeebies”, and Lynn noted that Manferdini moves from the 2d to the 3d in her work, contrary to a lot of contemporary practitioners, and that she “fetishizes the 2d part of [her] practice”. Manferdini basically seemed to agree and said that for her there’s power in the simplicity of 2d drawing. Sylvia also brought up what I think is a good point, that there’s “a faultline worth tracking” in the split between Manferdini’s draped filigree skins and relatively ‘dumb’ cores and slabs, but Manferdini apparently didn’t want to spar anymore and didn’t say anything in response. Overall though I thought it was a really successful lecture, despite work that I wouldn’t necessarily say I fully identify with, but now definitely respect.

I went to SCI-Arc again on March 28th with a bunch of media/arts friends for the Mediascapes symposium, subtitled “Immersive and Virtual Architecture at the Edge of Physicality”. The panel included some very interesting speakers, like Ben Bratton and Manuel DeLanda, but the format didn’t allow much time for anyone to speak, so almost everyone used double their allotted time. Ben Bratton, who will also be appearing at Postopolis Saturday, talked about his formulation of the “Turing City”, and DeLanda gave a truncated version of his talk at SCI-Arc a year or so ago. While I think the symposium was only partly successful on its own, due to format and the event feeling sometimes like little more than an ad for SCI-Arc’s program, it turned to total farce for me at the end when Eric Owen Moss ranted to the whole panel that the event was a complete waste of time. My friends and I stayed long enough to watch him storm off, but left soon after. I’m hoping the next SCI-Arc event will go a bit more smoothly!


Mediascapes = Egoscapes?

Today is the start of the Postopolis! “live 5-day blogathon”. In true blogonerd fashion, I’m actually writing this from the event, on the rooftop of the Standard Downtown.


The Standard Dowtown

My roommate and I were excited to actually be able to walk to something in our neighborhood, so we took our time and dawdled on over and unfortunately missed the first talk, artist/gardener/animal architect Fritz Haeg. But the event is very exciting, despite everyone freaking out about how “cold” it is. Anyway, if you’re in the LA area you should check the schedule and come on down, there are lots of really interesting people talking. If you’re not in LA (shame on you) it’s also streaming, at the above Postopolis link. PS - there’s also free alcohol!


The "Two Davids" interviewing Yo-Ichiro Hakomori Principal of wHY Architecture, with the Bonaventure in the background - someone tell Jameson

I’m also very excited about being included on a panel of archinect schoolbloggers (with Emily from USC and Wayne from Columbia) speaking at Postopolis on Saturday at 7:40. But don’t come or I’ll be too nervous. Ha ha.

Winter quarter has come and gone, and I’m now in New York on spring break. And yes, now I realize that I’m supposed to go to Acapulco or somewhere warm for spring break; but I don’t know anyone to mooch off of in any of those places, ha ha.


"Spring" in New York, from the J train crossing the Williamsburg bridge

Final reviews for our structures studio were tough; as has become custom, I spent too many nights at school, mostly in the room we call the “skank tank” (I think I picked up pink eye) and so was probably not in the best frame of mind to represent myself to the jury, but I don’t think it went too badly. Though the jury did kind of hate one of the aspects of the project that I really liked. I’ve been working on a new scheme for the skin, which is unusual for me - usually after the crit I never want to look at the project again, but I feel like this project might deserve more attention.


Final studio review


My final model


One of my boards - they could use a lot more work too!

While in New York I’m going to try to make it to the Bernard Tschumi lecture at Columbia, though I’m told that Columbia lectures aren’t always actually open to the public by virtue of a Columbia priority line and small auditorium. I’m also considering making the trek to Princeton for the Caroline Bos lecture on Monday, which should be pretty good.


View from the New Museum roof


I went by UCLA prof Thom Mayne's project under construction at Cooper Union today

I'm looking forward to spring quarter, even though at UCLA on the UC quarter system we basically have three painful finals periods a year rather than the customary two. The additional helltime is balanced by more fodder for the portfolio... right?

I’ve been a bit slow on the posts recently, due I think to a sense of malaise in both life and school. It might be due partly to the fact that I’ve convinced myself that I got salmonella poisoning at the beginning of the quarter and I STILL feel pretty sick, almost at the end of the quarter. But don’t start thinking I’m a hypochondriac; I ate a few peanut butter Clif Bars that were later recalled by Costco, so I think I have a pretty good case for poisoning. Anyway, pretty sure you don’t want to hear more about that! So instead I’ll talk about a few of the recent lectures here, which cover kind of an interesting spread.

The first lecture of the winter quarter was Chris Bangle (former Director of design for BMW) on Feb 6. This was easily the most crowded lecture of the semester, probably due to the fact that it drew curious architects and designers as well as a bunch of car geeks, including a bunch of Art Center car design students (where Bangle went); the first group from Art Center that I’ve ever noticed at LA lectures. Our Chair, Hitoshi Abe, gave a funny intro saying there was “no taping allowed” and “no posting on YouTube” as if we were about to see a classified gov’t briefing. Bangle was a good lecturer in terms of being entertaining, and integrating media into the slideshow to make it more engaging.


Chris Bangle, whose multimedia lecture extended even to a chalkboard for a minute

He also had a very polished, sealed narrative for his work, along the same lines as Bjarke Ingels last quarter. The keystone to the lecture was Bangle’s work on ‘GINA’, a concept car sheathed in fabric rather than stamped sheet metal. The design work was very seductive, but the talk stayed almost exclusively on car surfaces, when it clearly hinted at issues outside car design. This was the major critique I heard variations on after the lecture - that Bangle didn't discuss thinking beyond fetishistic attention to surfaces; not even addressing concept car design as corporate branding, fashion techniques applied to car manufacturing, which might subvert traditional modes of factory production, much in the way of architectural implications of his research, or why it’s okay to devote so much energy to rare design cars when we aren't sure cars in general are still such a good idea economically, environmentally, or culturally. This kind of myopia in scope could be considered a weakness in having corporate types lecture in schools, no matter how interesting (and no matter that Bangle left his corporation recently); but maybe it’s also a way to look at how lecturing architects, despite being enmeshed in this weird hybrid of academia and business, are often kind of “corporate types” themselves...

Spanish architect Enric Ruiz-Geli of Cloud 9 spoke on February 23. He had a very wacky presentation style that felt pretty schizophrenic overall, making for an entertaining talk. A contrast at least to the hermetically sealed Bangle lecture. He opened by comparing Edward Scissorhands’ goth castle in the manicured suburbs to UCLA’s position in Los Angeles (not so sure about that analogy... ha ha) as a way of saying the (cultural) “hackers become part of the hacked”. Ruiz-Geli wasn’t afraid of making sweeping statements about contemporary culture like this, which I appreciate. Another example was comparing the hideous “spanish colonial style” houses in a Spanish development (so it’s not just LA!) around an artificial lagoon to the houses owners’ high tech carbon fiber speedboats, and how to solve the social split between allowing advanced technologies and forms into gadgets but not homes. I think you could make an argument that speedboats have been co-opted into a kind of kitsch consumption culture, but Geli does have a point. In statements that I have somewhat less sympathy for, he said he draws inspiration from natural phenomena like ice, bubbles, and clouds as they all deal with flows of particles and water - okay, fine, a bit ’90’s, but I can live with that - but then he tacked on that he gets inspiration not only from ice, bubbles, and clouds, but also dreams. Dreams? But I’ll forgive him for that; he IS Spanish after all. Geli is very much into fabrication and visualization technologies as a way to mimic these natural forms; don’t let him near an MRI or I’m sure he actually would try to make architecture from his dreams. But gentle jesting aside, the work is very nice looking, and I think he is working though some interesting problems with fabrication technology. He showed several projects, including Villa Nurbs, a bubbly house of aluminum, ETFE, and corian sitting on a concrete plinth; an office building hung from a giant truss, clad with ETFE pillows with their own IP addresses for controlling LED lighting, and channels that can fill with steam to provide shading; and a beachfront installation mimicking waves with spray nozzles and lighting powered by a tidal generator offshore. At the end he also demonstrated a media arts-y interactive installation that seemed to visualize in 3D the pressure participants placed on a mat. It was a little unclear.
Apparently it was also unclear to my theory professor Sylvia Lavin who Geli dragged onstage in a funny interchange to help him demonstrate - she escaped when he wasn’t looking and when he called her back she said something like “oh, I wasn’t finished? I didn’t know what was going on.” Ha ha. Maybe you had to be there.


Enric Ruiz-Geli, blowing minds with a slide of Star Wars' behind the scenes architectural infrastructure

I had never heard of Ruiz-Geli before the lecture, but entered the dinner drawing that happens before every lecture - two students are allowed to attend the dinner with the guest lecturer following their talk based on a random draw. It turned out that I got the dinner, along with a friend’s sister who’s an undergrad in the department. It was a very strange experience, and actually fun. Or am I confusing free alcohol and food with “fun” again? I do that sometimes. We had actually pretty good Indian food which was apparently from UCLA catering (who knew?) which we ate with UCLA Chair Hitoshi Abe, instructors Barton Meyers, Greg Lynn, Kivi Sotamaa, my studio professor Olivier Touraine, Dagmar Richter, Roger Sherman, new seminar instructor Michael Osman and a middle aged couple I had never seen around before, who turned out to be the guy who owns the water nozzle manufacturer behind Ruiz-Geli’s beachfront project, as well as the spray nozzles in Diller Scofidio’s Blur. Michael Osman, who I had to apologize to for getting his name wrong in an earlier post after he told me that he actually read this blog, went on to insist that I’m a very "powerful person" due to the blog, which I of course had to argue with. I guess his point was that I have a very direct channel to the outside world that is one of the few feeds the administration has little control over. In that sense I guess I agree, but maintain that it’s ultimately of pretty little consequence. Until someone starts paying me anyway! Osman introduced me to Hitoshi by saying “Have you met our very powerful school blogger, Scott?” to which Hitoshi replied in probably the most diplomatic way possible (with that intro!) with “Nice to meet you, did you enjoy the lecture?” Ha ha. A good department chair, designer, AND diplomat in one person? Our department is pretty lucky I guess! Even if Osman didn’t convince me that I have any power whatsoever (which I told him was probably part modesty but mostly TRUTH, ha ha), he did get me to think in a different way about the possible ethical/political (in a local sense of course) implications of the blog, which I had previously largely considered a hybrid of fun diversion from studio, personal journal, and hopefully a helpful tool to people trying to decide what school to apply to outside official departmental sources of information (that last being what I relied on the schoolblogs heavily for before starting school).

The next lecturer was UCLA alumna Billie Tsien, who is kind of the most wildly different architect I could imagine to follow Ruiz-Geli. Though I guess they’re actually both a bit ‘dreamy’. She spoke a week or so later on March 4. She, with her partner and husband Tod Williams run a New York office producing very earthy work with handcrafted details and an obsession with qualities of light and rusticated materials. Those aren’t usually the qualities I’m most attracted to in architecture, but I think their work is the best of the current practitioners with similar values. I would say they are pretty rooted in a Louis Kahn-ian tradition, but I think I might like Tsien/Williams’ work better. Is that sacrilege or something? Well you know us ‘millennials’ - no respect. Tsien’s presentation was engaging despite her very calm demeanor, and despite a presentation aesthetic that I can only call “Marin Mom” (Marin is the hippie-turned-hippie/yuppie San Francisco suburb that I’m from), in that a lot of value is placed on things like memory and permanence, cultural sensitivity and collecting ethnic objects, modern dance, trees and light, relationships between people, handcrafts, and a delicate appreciation of things that starts to become excruciatingly fetishistic. Maybe I liked Tsien because what she was about seemed so familiar and comforting, as if my own mom from an alternate universe was up there talking about her design practice - but now I think I’m getting a bit ‘dreamy’ (and nevermind the “excruciatingly fetishistic” part of the preceding sentence; when I bring my mom into it that’s just weird, ha ha).


Billie Tsien, Marin Mom from another dimension

Annnnyway, Tsien had all sorts of Marin Mom-y sound bites, like that she’s interested in things that last, physically and in the mind; interested in “reticence”, showing a slide of a dance performance of the same name where the performer kept her back to the audience for the whole performance; and that she conceives of architecture as beginning with spatial relationships between people, which are then expanded upon to reach the scale of a building. She showed a bunch of work, the only one of which I’ve visited was the Folk Art Museum in New York, which I really enjoyed. Other projects presented included Cranbrook Pool, an indoor swimming pool with fins on the facade allowing air to circulate through the voluminous pool area and out large, deep holes in the roof; the East Asian library at UC Berkeley, which was an orientalist/modern riff on the university’s requirement of a neoclassical building; and a large office park for Tata in Mumbai India, consisting of several fingerlike buildings with covered outdoor spaces and built into sun-shading berms weaving through existing banyan trees, and clad with hand carved stone screens. She also shared a bit of process fetishism, in that she misses the material quality of mylar drawings, so they now personalize printed drawings with whiteout and pen. In this and the obsession with regional handcrafted building materials and things like metal casting processes, Tsien/Williams seems almost like a strange analog counterpart to practitioners obsessed with parametric modeling and digitally controlled fabrication. This point was addressed by Neil Denari in the Q&A portion, where he asked if she was actively opposed to digital fabrication technologies since she appeared to be so invested in the qualities of handcrafted ones. She surprised me somewhat as I expected her to say she preferred the ‘material memory and physical traces’ of hand made processes, but she basically said they did it analog because that’s how they know how to do it, and even that her son bought a CNC router that very day.


Stan Allen

The day after, Stan Allen, Dean of the Princeton school of architecture spoke as part of Sylvia Lavin’s ‘Hi-C’ program, “a program of migrant workshops, unpredictable conversations and provocative exhibitions ... Instead of conventional academic formats, which often recall the stolid ceremonies of High Tea, Hi-C uses low level chatter and high energy content to broaden the concerns of conversations in and about architecture.” Despite its afternoon start time, High Tea this certainly was not; my poor friend Lindsay had to man the table where we were literally given ‘juice’ boxes of Hi-C, and dodgy looking bags of off-brand popcorn that I squirreled away and am actually eating now (oh and by “poor friend” I mean that she had to sit there - she isn’t poor; she went to Cooper for undergrad so she has no student loans - that’s rich in my book, ha ha). After we were high fructose corn syrup-ed up, Allen presented his work in landscape urbanism, which Sylvia had mentioned in theory class as defying Rosalind Krauss’ master narrative-y diagrid by existing in the center of all its oppositions. I had never heard landscape urbanism discussed critically, so it was nice to hear. Allen had a very clear if somewhat didactic presentation, which is appropriate for a topic that perhaps hasn’t gotten as much coverage as others in architecture schools. He spent a fair amount of time going over what he called “the seven crutches of landscape urbanism”, or weaknesses he’s identified, which seemed to be his attempt to think through possible problems with the discipline and to pre-empt the criticisms of landscape urbanism’s discipline-ness (though the discipline-ness of car design isn’t really up for debate, it would still have been interesting to hear what Chris Bangle would name as ‘the seven crutches of vehicle design’). I hadn’t really known there was a debate about landscape urbanism as a discipline, but Michael Osman brought it up in the Q&A. Sylvia responded that it succeeds almost too well as a discipline, but not well enough in material execution. Though hampered by severe non-familiarity with the issues at hand, it seems to me that situating landscape urbanism as a separate discipline rather than allowing it to be a loosely defined hybrid practice floating between broad definitions of architecture, art, landscape, and urban planning threatens to ghettoize it as has been done to landscape design itself as well as disciplines like interior design, limiting it to a narrow palette of representation and form. Sylvia seemed to situate it in this ghettoized territory by saying that landscape urbanism has a strongly defined aesthetic presentation: a set of qualities including strong contour lines, vivid colors, and a strange visual perspective - she asked “what’s between worms’ eye view and birds’ eye view?” Giraffe’s eye view perhaps? Critiques notwithstanding, the work Allen presented was interesting enough that I would like to see how the debate about the field plays out, though to me it largely didn’t seem different enough from an architect doing landscape design to merit the dangers of being canonized as a separate discipline. The work did however seem better enough than almost all landscape design that I would like to see more projects executed.

Also, and I can’t imagine this is letting any cats out of any bags that should remain in those bags, but after the Stan Allen talk I walked into the gallery where Ruiz-Geli’s work is installed and caught a glimpse of the room where the M.Arch admissions process is taking place, and saw two boxes labelled “M1 Admit” and “M1 Strong Admit” or something like that. So if you applied, rest assured that they’re working on it!

I was at the MOCA gift store today flipping through a mens magazine called Fantastic Man, which is put out by the creators of the fabulously gay Butt Magazine, when I was amazed to discover UCLA professor Neil Denari full-page staring back at me. It was apparently an ad for his under-construction HL23 (kind of a nice site actually) condo building on the High Line in Chelsea.


"Advertisement in Fantastic Man, the magazine’s first ever real estate advertisement." - Pandiscio Co - brand creation & design for Denari's HL23

They really did an ad JUST for a gay mens mag? The shot IS very Fantastic Man... Congrats on being an object of gay desire Neil! I kind of want to show this to my theory teacher Sylvia Lavin so we can deconstruct its contemporaneity in class.

Even Kanye loves it:

He even had a very erudite critique of it, even discussing the merits of the structural system. Maybe an intern wrote that.


Also, I'm going to a funny "mixer" at school tonight called "Drape Me". The description is:
"Come dressed as your favorite Rhino
command. Drape, Split, Make2d, Show
Naked Edges... Use your imagination!"
And it includes "Beer! Music! Noshes! Fun! Best Costume Contest! Pin-the-horn-on-the-Rhino! Point Cloud Twister! Draw-Curve-on-Surface Body Painting!" I'm bringing non-arch friends, so I hope it won't be TOO dorky.