http://archrecord.construction.com/features/0911BestArchSchools/0911BestArchSchools-2.asp

The list is out and my school ranked #10 but I always wondered how they come up with the results. Do they look at our grades? Judge us by how many get hired after graduating? Come to our reviews and compare? Ranking in the design field is just too subjective. Who should really be the ones to judge? There's architecture politics involved and there are way too many schools and student/ faculty in the U.S. involved to properly justify a school ranking. Just as we rank schools, how can we judge firms out there? We can only tell by their documentation (the print media the firms publish and get published about, the websites etc.) they put out there. But even that, we can only deem them "my" favorite or "your" favorite, there's no such thing as everybody's favorite.


On another note, the trip to SF was tons of fun
It’s nice to get out of studio once in a while...

Powell station. My home for the weekend

Favorite projects we visited:

DeYoung museum by Herzog & de Meuron


BAM (Berkley art museum)
Unhappy museum employee telling me that there were no photos allowed on the right

Finally, we are starting on our final project. We just completed our site analysis and currently we are in design mode. The project is a "lifestyle center" for a car brand. Our site is located just blocks away in downtown LA, right across from LA live. It's pretty exciting to be integrating everything we've learned this year: space/form movement/sequence and now the urban, after our last precedent study and San Francisco (which I miss so much already) trip.

(see previous post for project description)

part a
space and form object study


part b
precedent study

As you can tell from the lack of entries... it has been a hectic start. The studios this year are a lot better than the "dungeon" we had to work in last year. First year studio is dubbed the dungeon because it is basically one large space located in the basement. (cold, dark threshold included.) But I have to admit the dungeon was a good strategy to introduce "architorture" while allowing all of the first year students to bond through shared hardships. The second year studios are split into two rooms with the privilege of a view through a window we could actually look out of! (windows were luxury we didn't have while in the dungeon.) Yeah, I miss hearing the accumulated noise from the whole class but now that we have doors without "alarms that go off if kept open for longer than a minute", we still visit one another often.

I am currently working on the part b of the first project and I already feel like a cad monkey! The first part of the project consisted of analyzing and producing analytical drawings of the space and form of a single object. Objects in my studio ranged from a shoe to a head of lettuce. I felt really bad for the studios with people who chose something smelly such as onions or garlic especially since we were stuck cutting our objects into sections and drawing them for days! And now that part a of project one is over with, part b is thankfully free from rot-capable objects. We are all assigned a precedent and our task is to analyze the spatial and formal qualities through drawing plans, sections and diagrams.

Second year is awesome so far, especially with an insightful instructor. I feel that we are constantly putting our acquired knowledge to the test. At this point the curriculum is just right, not too abstract and not based on too many codes.. yet.

So today marks the last day of summer break and tomorrow will be officially the first day of "second year". Andrew Liang is our coordinator this year and my instructor as well. Since this announcement, I've been wished "good luck" a couple of times and have been warned of a challenging semester ahead. At the same time, I've heard many positive things about Andrew and how good of an instructor he is, so I'm definitely excited/ scared out of my mind for this semester! I checked out some of his work from his firm and I'm definitely digging it.

The syllabus is also up and it looks like we have 4 projects and a San Francisco Trip. San Francisco is undeniably one of my most favorite places! Can't wait!

Goodbye summer, hello first semester!
Joanna