Man its been a while.
I think its a symptom of the intensity of this school.
I'm taking the day after midterm review to catch up on my life including this venue.
In brief, I love it here.


The history discussions are great, the atmosphere is critical (Ryan Lovett, fellow archinect blogger is a testament to this) and Mark Wigley is correct in saying the reason we're going here is not for the professors but for our peers. At the orientation he mentioned how we would all be jealous of each other because everyone has something to contribute and I wholeheartedly agree.

I have Phillip Parker as my studio crit which means I have or rather will be obsessive about lines by the end of this semester.
So far we've had 3 projects to date, and will be starting on the last project next week, whose progress i will try to catalogue by means of youtube videos (part of the new GSAPP CLIPS section of the school's website) and will maintain a somewhat seperate vlog here as a collective studio.

The remainder of this post will be my final images for each project along with a brief summary of what the project was about. I should preface by saying that all these are loose expectations.


Brief 1: ICE
Turn 1.5 L of water into ice.
Draw at a suggested 30 min intervals the melting of the ice. Register time through drawing.




Brief II: BACKPACK
1. Through the use of section, design a water carrying device able to purify and carry 1 gal of liquid.
2. Through the use of Plan map the trajectory from the source of the water to the place of delivery.







Brief III: Cell
Using section and plan together, design a working environment of minimal size for a climatologist whose job is to measure climatic data and constantly update a global database from a given urban location.






Here are a couple of videos from the new GSAPP CLIPS project at the school.

New York City.

I've been stuck somewhere in between the Classon Ave stop on the G train in Brooklyn and the 125th St. stop on the 1 train in Manhattan these past couple of weeks.

Been moved in.
Books have been placed on shelves.
Clothes has been worn and laundered.
And it has been hot as balls.
I bought a meager fan.
I take 3-5 showers a day.

Now,
some highlights:
I visited the Highline which though not completed, stands to be one of the best experiences in this city. Diller, Scofidio, and Renfro just know what their doing and they do it well. It's interesting to see the Highline in comparison to the Lincoln Center and be able to notice some of their clever design nuances. Their fixation with "performance" or "audience" is visible in the way they devise spaces that do just that, either allow users to either be the audience or the performers. In the High Line, the street becomes the performer.



In the Lincoln center, the building, with seating turned away from the street.



The other half of our "office" arrived yesterday, Adrian, who'll be attending Pratt for graduate Architecture. It should be interesting in terms of what we both stand to gain from each other's experience. This somewhat ties in some ideas I've had about our close circle of friends who graduated from from FIU's undergraduate program. We're all gonna be learning about each other's work in completely different schools although in relatively close proximity. Or at least I hope.

I have a friend, Glen, going to Harvard.
Pancho is going to Yale for a MS in Architecture.
Another Adrian is going to Princeton
And our friend Ivan is going to SCI-Arc.

I have to say its really exciting. Not just in terms of what I'll be learning at GSAPP but also from the kind of cross-pollination you can get from peers in other schools. And really, the internet is to blame for this hope. And why not?

Since around Design 2 in Freshman year I've been near obsessive about GSAPP. I would read all the descriptions of all the classes on their website and try to see if I could produce work at that level in my classes. It was a love-affair that only the internet could facilitate. A lot of this is hyperbole of course, but exaggeratedly true!

But anyway, this tangent is just something thats been in the back of my mind.

Another thing I should note is that the Lecture Series poster for FIU was finalized and here it is.
Comments always welcome and though I can't correct them, I will keep a note of it.


(For a more detailed view go to www.cargocollective.com/fom under FIU posters)


Well school should start in a couple of weeks. So I'll keep you posted on that as well. Take care!

Where to begin?

Since my last post I worked with a local Miami firm, BEA, on a small mock-up model (1/4"). While there, I met one of the partners named Gus who graduated from Columbia in the 90's. It was a nice long chat about the nature of the profession and GSAPP back then and now, BIM, and his experiences in New York. The theme of our chat would reiterate the need for architects to learn the language of business, something that his own firm has had to learn along the way, and I suspect, most other firms do as well. Besides that talk, not much else was as memorable during my time there.

In other news, the design company my friend Adrian and I started (FOM) close to a year ago has a revamped website. No glitz and glamour, just something simple currently being hosted by the fine folks at cargocollective. Their platform was a breeze to use and would highly recommend it.
We also are working on a poster for FIU's SOA Fall Lecture Series. The collection on this site has been helpful in learning what mistakes to avoid and we hope to reveal it sometime soon.

I am also currently working on a competition with David De Cespedes and Emily Navarette sponsored by IAAC and HP. We've been recording our conversations during meetings to see if we can, post-submission, develop a way of presenting the process. It should be interesting and I'll keep you posted.

Other than that, I have my ticket ready for July 28. I move in August 4th and am ready to spend the next month before school starts in good company, exploring the city, its people, and of course its food.

Greetings Archinect!

This first post is just a way for me to get used to the system.

(I should preface everything by saying that I tend to write what I think, very "train-of-thought".)

On to the Prologue:

There are at least three anxieties I noticed that occur before grad school.

1. Taking the GRE, completing the portfolio and all the requisites for application.
2. Waiting for responses from the schools.
3. Waiting for school to start.

Considering this, I've been high strung for about a year. Haha.

Something interesting suggested by a friend, Andy Chavez, is that I use this platform to address what it is like to transition from a major sprawled out metropolis like Miami to the density of New York City. The comparison of both might be approached by means of images and a compilation of mental notes as a long term project. If it sounds good, let me know!

This blog will also act as a repository of things I find and see both online and in the city. I was initially thinking of opening another blog that would run parallel to this one but it seems better to just give this blog the full measure of my interest(s).


Keep an eye out for some Nabokov-ian fun.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------