I have not updated in a while. I apologize.

I had a great experience this summer. I travelled to about a dozen major European cities. I saw so much amazing architecture. Paris was my favorite city, which I might be biased to because I lived there for five of the eleven weeks I was in Europe. The city has so much beautiful architecture. I also loved the culture. Traveling was a lot of fun. Hostels provide awesome opportunities to meet great people, especially the hostels with bars in them.

The transition back to the US wasn't too difficult. I spent most of the time in NYC. I looked Columbias program. I really liked it.

Studio begun last week. I already pulled two-near all nighters (three hours of sleep). I luckily have a really good crit this semester who I can tell is going to work us hard. I'm excited. I have a high expectations this semester.

The rest of the semester will consist of me preparing for graduate school and the possibility of going to England next semester for a design studio. It will be the first semester long study abroad for studio that umd has offered. I'd go with the studio professor I had last semester, who is probably my favorite professor at the school. We find out in a few weeks if it is going to happen. People need to figure out if they can afford it and if too many people cannot, then the trip is cancelled. So I'm praying that somehow money will trickle in to help a few people out. Ah, I really hope it works.

I have to get going on my portfolio, take the GREs again (first time didn't pan out too well), narrow down the list of what schools to apply to, etc.

We have a portfolio workshop lead by Harold Linton in a few weeks which I'm looking forward to. He's supposedly the go-to guide for a good portfolio. So for twenty bucks, we'll have a 9-5 workshop with him. Not a bad deal.

Ok, I should begin my studio work, on a friday night, how lame. But I am in a cool coffee shop in DC, so that makes it a little better, not much, but enough to get me through it.

Paris. London. Normandy. Rome. Lyon. Barcelona. Prague. Crete. Santorini. Athens. Milan. Naples.

Expect many pictures.

First five cities are for a study abroad through the architecture school. We will be living there for six weeks. The course is heavy on sketching and water coloring (so excited to learn how to watercolor.) A few of us will travels during the weekends. Then afterwards, I am traveling with a friend for about three weeks to Barcelona, Prague and Greece. The last two weeks, or ten days, will be spent with my parents, brother, grandma, aunt and cousins in Italy meeting our family.

It will be a wonderful summer. I am so lucky.

I just heard an interesting fact the other day: 20% of my class is in a studio relationship. So out of 50, there are ten people dating. None of whom were dating before studio. I am lucky enough to be in that category. Who knew that studio is such a matchmaker.

Quick Update:

I am determining whether or not I am staying Europe for a few weeks after my study abroad in Paris. The program ends July 11th and my cousins and grandma are traveling to Italy to meet my extended family August 1st. My grandma hasn't seen her family in over twenty years so it would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see her in her natural environment. That would leave two weeks to fill in Europe. I am stuck because I would love to travel alone for two weeks. That would be a dream come true. But, I feel that it is a stretch since I am not in control of my monetary needs at the moment, which leaves the final say in the hands of my parents who are not as thrilled with the idea as much as I am. Well my Dad is, but my mom is not. As much as I want to push my "master plan," I feel like I am flirting with the spoiled kid syndrome where I feel entitled to any good idea out there. In that case, I just want to wait it out, see what my parents decide and hope to God they say yes.

In studio news, the quad conference went well. It was nice to see a bunch of other architecture students from other schools. I ran into a friend from Syracuse who took a summer studio course with me in high school. Its great to be able to talk about architecture now without talking out of our ass. We had our infamous Beaux-Arts Ball in the neo-classic Postal Museum down in DC. The building was beautiful but the odd thing was we ended up having the dance in the hallway. They didn't hold it in the main hall. Well, I was a hit that night, as I was called out by the DJ for showing off my sweet dance moves on crutches. There was a lot of hopping. The next day was painful. I guess you had to be there.

We just finished our urban project. I learned the perils of group work this week. One group mate got sick three days before it was due. So the work was up to me and one other girl. It was a tough week but I am happy with the result. Now for some odd reason, I am still in the architecture building without anything to do. I don't think its a good sign when I start to relax here...

I lied. there is no such thing as a quick update.

So in about a half an hour, I'm going to Baltimore to pick up Moshe Safdie! I'm so excited. We, UMD, is hosting the quad conference for AIAS and he is our keynote speaker. I am getting the privilege to pick him and his wife up with our AIAS president.

Moshe and his wife will be sitting in my car very soon. I am flipping out a little. I definitely get architecture star struck. (starchitecture struck?)

A group of my classmates are interested in redeveloping a publication by our old critics that attempts to create a dialogue for architecture. The conversations we were having were thoughtful perceptions on our take towards architecture. While we were talking, I sat back and realized that it was a friday night and there were seven of us arguing our thoughts about design when it clicked with me that I am so privileged to be in an environment that challenges us so much that we want to discuss academia in our social lives. Personally I have been dorky enough my whole life that I have been searching for an environment like this since I'm kid, so its a perfect fit for me. I sought people out growing up who would just want to sit down and discuss some theory that overanalyzes a part of society for hours and love it. I think back to when I was in high school to what I wanted college to be, and with a few slight differences, what I experienced tonight, sitting around with friends with beer and pizza, discussing the theories that we hope can actually have purpose to society, is what I desired. Previous to studio, I have felt the lack of that intellectual stimulus that is necessary. I know that this is just the beginning too.

I like conversations with purpose. Conversation is not superfluous.

The judgmental part of myself gripes about the cheesiness I am exposing to the "world" right now, but I am learning to accept that I am an architecture dork. There is no way around. I love it.

I hope to post some images of the publication we create. I know that we are far away from actually having something in print, but hopefully we'll work hard to get something in before the semester ends.

In other studio news, we are almost about to start our actual design to our urban design project. The critics gave us Chestertown, MD as our site. Its a quaint, country farm town on the Eastern Shore that the Ny Times quoted as the number one rural destination in America. It seems like a stretch to name it as number one, but the town is quite nice. At first, I was concerned at the relevance of designing in such an established historic town that didn't appear to have a dire need for an urban intervention. Yet, after listening to the presentations on the different parts of the town, I humbly detracted my disapproving comments. There are quite a few design opportunities in the area to work with. My current challenge that I plan to investigate is as a design student, when do you balance the practicality of what can actually work or when do you just introduce impossible ideas that still provide insightful, challenging ideas? I am aware that this is a large question to architecture yet despite my awareness, I have grown little in coming to an understanding. Our professor yelled at us today for being to conservative. Apparently, we were the kindergartens that never colored outside the lines. My goal is to learn how to color outside the lines, purposefully.

I really wanted to write a blog after I saw that we weren't represented. I just learned that a critic from last semester was a blogger for Maryland which was enlightening to see.

My hopes for this blog is to inform those interested about how we approach architecture at Maryland. I find it fascinating to see how other schools learn how to design.

The basic about UMD:

We are a four year school. We start design studio our junior year after two years of completing core requirements. We have an application process for studio our sophomore year that requires a portfolio and a good GPA. That was our first glimpse at the stress architecture induces.

The first two years were good for learning how to acclimate to college. I admire the students who were able to jump into architecture the first day of college because I don't think that I could have done it. I was too distracted by college life, but then I got over it after two years of it. It was also helpful to pursue other interests/classes. A few friends are heavily involved in clubs and other majors that I think would have been difficult to pursue if we didn't have the two year buffer.

The downside is that we only have two years in studio to decide if we want to pursue architecture. Well, if we are applying to grad school, we only have three semesters to decide. Not to mention we only have three semesters worth of work to create a portfolio with which is not as much as other schools.

Grad school seems daunting to most of my friends and I because of how close it is coming for us to decide what we want to focus on. Wait, I'm not getting into that now, I'm sure I'll get back to that topic later.

Let's see, Maryland architecture, its a great program. I'm proud that I go there. I'm especially proud of my class. We're fifty passionate, competitive, socially awkward, over-achieving architecture students that are giving it all we have to learn how to design well. I think I'm lucky when I look around and see such motivated people around me. i think we have a good group.

Well I think that sums up the basics of Maryland. This will hopefully be the most boring entry I write and my future updates will be a little more interesting.