So this last month (October) was the beginning of my final year at the Newschool of Architecture & Design, and I am now actually getting ready to enter my fifth week. Since I have not posted an update on this blog in a while, I have decided to give a brief update of some of the things that have happen here since the fall at Newschool. I will then follow with a brief description about my thesis project and what I hope to accomplish from this thesis exploration.

Week 1
This first week begun with everybody trying to get situated, selecting instructors, as well as introducing our topics for thesis and identifying our objectives for the year. After dealing with all the madness associated with first week thesis studio came the chance to relax and look at what Newschool has planned for the year. So we headed out to our annual convocation with this year’s ceremonies being held at the Copley Symphony Hall. This year guest speaker was AIA president Marvin J. Malecha, FAIA, who gave a great speech on the subject of architecture and the education of architecture. He encouraged us to think outside the box and look at some of the new ideas being pushed in the industry as a way to help us develop a more innovative and better informed design process. If I remember correctly he talked about embracing the ideas that revolve around performance-based design and the tools that consume them. He then finished up his speech with a reminder to us about enjoying these experiences, to have fun.


Week 2
Then the second week for many consisted of researching material for their thesis projects. While others worked on case studies as well as further identifing design rationale and goals. The end of the second week brought the first lecture presentation that featured architect Teddy Cruz on the subject of “Radicalizing the Local beyond the Politics of Style”. This lecture was sponsored by the Friends of San Diego Architecture. If I remember correctly he talked about community engagement and addressing the needs of communities as oppose to addressing needs perceived by city politics.



Week 3
The third week brought the rise of the cardboard city; the invasion of the cardboard people. These cardboard people were projects that were being constructed in the first year graduate studio. Walking past their studio you could see these students working together to create these corrugate versions of themselves. This honestly seemed like a lot of fun. These projects continued on till week 4. Mean while in the thesis studio we continued with thesis research as well as identifying potential sites for our projects



WEEK 4
This fourth week in the thesis studio consisted of more thesis research as well as site analysis and looking at program. With midterm review a few days away people (myself included) began working on editing or reworking earlier studio submittals that might have fallen short. Then midweek brought our next lecture which was presented by the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture. This lecture featured a presentation by architect Gordon Chong FAIA as well as neuroscientist Dr. Fred "Rusty" Gage. This lecture was honestly a very informative as well as interesting discussion on the ideas of evidence-based design and the connection between neuroscience and architecture. With Gordon Chong FAIA explaining how these ideas of evidence-based design can be used as a way to enhance innovation into a better informed design process. Then following Gordon Chong was Dr. Fred "Rusty" Gage who talked about the connections between environments and stimulations in the brain.
Evidence-Based Design




Thesis Project
So this year is already running quickly and with our thesis projects in full throttle. My thesis exploration will look at the idea of kinetic (dynamic) or self-organizing architecture that adapts to social as well as environmental conditions in-order to enhance experiential and performative qualities. The current conditions of finished built structures tend to be static in nature which can at times lead to limits or barriers of how people experience space as well as how buildings perform. This exploration will look at how to potentially integrate parametrics, fabrication, and performative strategies as a way to develop high performing architecture that can maximize the experiential qualities of the built environment. My goal is to be able to take the knowledge I gain during this study with me into my professional career (whether applied or not).

Some of the books that I am currently reading for my research are as follows: Performative Architecture | Beyond Instrumentality (Kolarevic), Architecture in the Digital Age | Design and manufacturing(Kloarevic), as well as a long list of many others.
until next time.

As most schools seem to be beginning their fall terms here at Newschool we are still working on our final two weeks of summer. This summer besides working on research for my thesis topic (which I will write about very soon) I had to take a light load of classes to finish lightening up my thesis year load. I took a total of 6 units, 3 classes (programming, urban history, and professional practice). Overall the classes were our typical course work of lectures, readings, and papers, but our pro practice class had a nice little twist. With a project that required our class of 20 or so students to be broken down into five teams. These five teams would later become five fictitious firms. The idea was that we were going to compete for a project that would be located near the Del Mar area. Our fictitious battle began with the request for proposal (RFP) process - then the request for qualification (RFQ) process. Finishing with the shortlisted elimination interview which was this last Thursday (every team got shortlisted of course) (lol). We had a panel interview made up of local architects as well as some adjunct instructors who were playing the roles of the client, city, and the supporting individuals. We were all given 7 minutes to sell our team and then followed by 10 minutes of Q&A.
It was pretty funny with some teams working overtime till the very end. Most teams handed out business cards, others handed out customized water bottles (with company logo). One of the teams even went as far as creating an actual website for their fictitious firm. All in all it was a lot of fun. Some of the firm names for this competition were SinArc, SPAM, and Douglas FIR (My Firm).
In the end my team did not end up winning the project. The team that did end up winning was SPAM. SPAM did a really good job of showing confidence, team work, and most of all making the panel jurors believe in them. It was a great learning experience for all of us, helping us understand a bit more about the RFP and RFQ process as well as the professional working environment.

Here are a few images of my fictitious team’s presentations boards (Douglas fir)



board one

board two

board three

These boards were made the night before our presentation using images from spaceinvading.com as well as others created from simple analysis models. These simple boards (not worried about layout) were made quickly for our fictitious presentation – all for fun.

Last week on June 20, 2009 I had the opportunity to attend the Graduation ceremony of my former classmates and friends finally complete the mission of getting through architecture school. The ceremonies where held at Louis Kahn's Salk Intitute. It was something special as I could see the happiness that filled their eyes. An even though the economy has hit the industry hard the joy of completion is still there. The ceremonies began around 9am and did not end till the late hours of the night. (some are still celebrating)

note: these image were taken from my cell phone - not a good idea






Watching my friends walk has re motivated me to keep pushing forward. With one more year to go and my two beautiful kids waiting for me I know its time to get back to work and kick some butt (my own butt of course). These last three years have not been easy working full time and going to school. Truthfully it has been a pain, difficult, stressful, and of course lots of fun! Going through architecture school can be one of the worst and best experience one can go through in their lives - at least it has been for me.

Architecture school = boot camp for architects - it rocks

Robots on Steroids no not really. I just thought the title sounded cool (haha), but as the fall approaches and thesis life arrives (for many of us) don’t be surprised to see super buff robots building models in your studio. With band aids covering cuts and metal fingers glued together. If you are wondering why robots then you either haven't started architecture school yet or you are surfing the wrong page. I am pretty excited to see thesis year right around the corner.


Image source

Anyway, here are a few images of what I have been keeping myself busy with. Just so you know this post was done by a robot drinking dr pepper late at night with not enough sleep. Don't you just hate those random late night posts (LOL).

This last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Flux workshop(s) held at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. They had a series of digital design workshops which included: Intro to Grasshopper, Advance Grasshopper, Rhinoscripting, Digital Project, as well as intro classes to Rhino and Revit. These workshops were hot selling out in as fast as three days. Lucky for me that I am what you call a Rhino Junky (Nerd); always looking out for all updates related to Rhino. I was able to get my first choice a ticket to the advance grasshopper session. The advance grasshopper class was taught by Rajaa Issa (Paneling tools, Archcut) from McNeel, Gil Akos and Ronnie Parsons from StudioMode. The workshop covered advance modeling features such as the new nested list functions as well as VB net scripting.






While I was there I was were able to see the power of Grasshopper with the exhibit installation that was on display. After the workshops - there was an exit presentation were Andy Payne got to present the involvement grasshopper had with this design and gave us a glimpse of the monster definition (22mb) used to produce this exhibit.




(Exhibit credit: Kory Bieg, Andre Caradec, Andrew Kudless, and Andy Payne) Click Here for more info on the presentation of this exhibit.

Some of the other instructors teaching at the work shops:
Marc Fornes from theverymany - Rhinoscripting
Andy Payne from Lift architects - Intro to Grasshopper
Pascal Golay from McNeel - Intro to Rhino

These workshops were great, the only thing missing was Antisthenes presentation on all things Rhino. I guess that will be next time j/k

Fabian (DF)

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Solatube office here in San Diego. I found this trip to be a good learning experience so I thought I'd share. Solatubes are used to bring natural daylight into spaces which could help in reducing energy usage from artificial lighting. They work by transferring sunlight through highly reflective surfaces found within the inner sidings of a Solatube.


The thing I did not know before and found most impressive was its ability to make radius turns into spaces that would normally seem too difficult to reach. I also had the opportunity to see a Solatube with more than a 60' run. According to the guys at Solatube a run that long might only lose about 20% of light (give or take). Which I think is still very impressive.



learning from actually seeing it in person is the best it gives you a totally better understanding of how to apply this to future projects.

This trip was pretty cool - but I am more excited about the one to follow - next stop FLUX workshops (Advance Grasshopper)

Until next time. FP

LiveArchitecture.Net

This weekend Live Architecture Network - LAN-IN-FLIGHT digital fabrication series will be stopping in San Diego. This workshop will be great - as it will give us the opportunity to see how we can utilize and integrate digital modeling with fabrication. This will also provide an opportunity to see how we can benefit from the newly added equipment to the campus (Laser cutter, and CNC).

Schedule:
5pm March 13 @ Newschool of Architecture and Design
Design Fabrication - Lecture
7-9pm
Model4Machine - 3D Modeling with Rhino
10am- 12pm @ Newschool of Architecture and Design
RhinoCam Design
2-5pm @ Heads on Fire; Fab Lab
CNC machining
6pm @ Newschool of Architecture and Design
Conclusion and preview of Spring Workshop

Acording to their website: today MARCH 10 at NOON is the Deadline to Register.

See you there

So just like everyone else around here - I have been really busy(not as much with school stuff, but more with things work related), but recently I was able to take a short break a very short break - with a trip to Seattle. This trip was so short that I really did not get a chance to explore the city. One thing I did notice is how cold it gets, I'm from southern California - so its way too cold for me.

While I was there I was able to take a few pics with my phone (which is probably not a good idea). So instead of going into details about my trip - i figure I share a few of the images that I was able to salvage from my phone.



















until next time

Recently many people at NewSchool have been asking me "How can I create a 3D topo for my project" So I figure I would post a simple Rhino tutorial here to share the steps I go through in creating 3D terrains so that other students with the same question can see how I do it. It might not be the best way - but it definitley works for me. You can click on the following image links at anytime to make them bigger

BEFORE YOU START:
You need to make sure you have installed the pointset reconstruciton tools from the Rhino Labs and that you have your CAD topography map with all it's topograpy lines placed at their correct elevation heights

STEP-ONE
Begin by entering the Delaunay (from the pointsetreconstruction tools) command.

Image 1
Rhino will then ask you to select vertices for delaunay triangulation. You will then need to chose all you topography lines.You can leave the sample interval size at its default which is one

Image 2
Once the triangulation reaches 100% you can then right click on your mouse to complete the command. You will then be able to see that you have created a very colorful triangulated surface - which is not workable at all

Image 3
STEP -TWO
This step requires you to switch to top view (will not work in other views). Once in top view you can enter the Drape command. Create a crossing window over the triangulated surface to define the area to drape. Leave all the drape options set to their defaults.

Image 4
Once the command is complete you can delete the colored triangulated surface. This will give you a very cool looking topo that you can now use.

Image 5
This model is sometime a little difficult to work with - only because of its high amout of control points that are used to give the topo a higher precision finish form.

Image 6
(The image that follows shows the high amount of control points used to create this topo)

Image 7
STEP-THREE
What I would do next is reduce the amount of control points by Using the Rebuild Command. Which will pop up the rebuild Surface control Panel

Image 8
Within the control panel you will be able to see how many control points your surface currently has by looking at the point count. You can then reduce to a smaller amount of points. You can currently see that I have chosen to reduce to the amount of 50 (U) and 50 (V) point counts. Which gives a lower precision model -but a much easier model to work with and modify.

Image 9
That concludes this tutorial on how to create 3D topos

Image 10
Some people chose to use the RhinoTerrain plugin which works the same way as the pointset reconstruction tools plugin. Instead of using the delaunay comand you use the Rhinoterrain version which is RTdelaunay. You then follow all the same steps shown here (TWO & THREE) to create a workable 3d Terrain.

I hope this helps

Last night I was going through my external hard drive trying to organize and clean out. As I was going through files after files, I started thinking about how architecture school has been for me. It has honestly been one of the best experiences and adventures of my life. Like anyone who has gone down this path, it has its ups and downs. Especially downs during deadlines, where you start working long extremist hours with little or no sleep (with thoughts of doubt in mind). During my first year studios - I always wondered if I had made the right decision of choosing architecture for my career path, but as time went by(with madness and chaos of studio life) I realize that I did not choose architecture it chose me (in my mind at least). I am in the 4+3 and I would have to say that the first year was great and horrible; it was great because it gave an opportunity to meet new people, people who were going down the same long journey (creating strong friendships). Then it was horrible, because half of the time we were all zombies working like robots with little or no break. Then there was second year, which seem a little less horrible, but still great. Less horrible because we were now past the robot stage, we were still working long hours, but we were now like machine operators at factories taking break every two hours (cappuccino addicts). Machine operators that were getting promoted with newly developed skills (graphics, presentations, modeling, and 3d). Great because architecture school is just straight out fun, especially when you are getting ready to present feeling like you’re going to past out, forgetting what you are going to talk about, or even which one is your project.

If I could go back in time....I would do it all over again


a small glimpse of my journey