it's been a busy start to the quarter, but more on that later.... this coming saturday marks the KSA's criticism conference "A Matter of Opinion" - A detailed description of the event can be found here but suffice to say it's a pretty exciting lineup. If you're in town it's definitely worth... View full entry

for all y'all kipnis fans: last autumn's Arch 200 Class (Introduction to Architecture) has suddenly appeared online.http://knowlton.osu.edu/open/media.asp a good place to start? windows.... View full entry

so here's an idea. don't do your own portfolio. choose a friend or colleague. trade. supply the images and text, but leave the layout up to them. if you were a barber, would you cut your own hair? a friend of mine asked me to crit her port, and we talked earlier tonight. later, needing a break... View full entry

I think this is getting somewhere.... I've been soliciting advice from all my friends (including, amazingly, some outside of architecture), and taking their comments into account... the layout hasn't changed much since sunday but I have purchased more staples for my high-capacity stapler... View full entry

So, it's spring break here at OSU, meaning I've finally got some time to catch up on GA work and to start laying out my portfolio. This is draft #2, following the general layout of my work samples pamphlet i put together quickly for the KSA career fair (and didn't show to anyone...) I'm not sure... View full entry

So this is it, my last studio project of M.Arch 1, and I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out. We're on quarters, so what you see below is 10 weeks of work. The presentation is one big board (roughly layed out on a grid of 11x17s) accompanied by 3 small booklets (1- study models and project... View full entry

5 days till pens down. View full entry

The following is a short essay I just completed for Rob Livsey's seminar. Technically, the seminar is about formalism, but I might have stretched it a little. If you do take the time to read it, let me know what you think. Believe it? Any spelling errors? This will probably reappear in my "exit... View full entry

i needed a break from studio so i decided to tackle a problem that had been bothering me for a while.... if i wanted to lasercut (or mill) a perforated pattern, normally i'd take the image in photoshop, use the color halftone filter, take it into illustrator and use live trace, export to a dwg... View full entry

so, following out midreview (which went very well for me), i've been looking into ways of introducing apertures into the surfaces of my project. our critics suggested "gills" as a method, so i've been hacking away at grasshopper and rhinoscript in an attempt to make it work... so far, i've got a... View full entry

So, tomorrow is the annual KSA Career Fair. We had our mid-review on Monday, so I hadn't had much time to put anything together until today. So, the following is the result of about an hour of work in InDesign, then half and hour of PDF-wrangling in Acrobat, and about an hour waiting for the... View full entry

today is our mid-review, it's been a busy weekend, but i managed to get a full night's sleep last night. we pin up in about an hour. Jose had us all compile a booklet containing a description of the project, images of the chronological development over the quarter so far, and a few examples of... View full entry

late last year, i was contacted by someone at Surface magazine asking if they could use some of my photos Venice Biennale for an upcoming issue of their Chinese edition. I said yes, of course, as long as I was given credit and a free copy. They agreed, and I sent them the hi-res photos. I received... View full entry

classes at OSU were officially canceled today due to weather... which means I finally got a chance to work on my project for a day without distractions... the first batch are from a paper mache model i made last week, and the following renders are from today, in order, as i built up the equivalent... View full entry

for an upcoming essay/presentation on OMA's Waterfront City, Dubai. Guess the thesis! ----- Exhibit A: ----- Exhibit B: ----- Exhibit C: View full entry

(more images here.) So, a little bit about this quarter’s studio project… Our instructor is Jose Oubrerie, notable for his Miller House (Lexington, KY), and for overseeing completion of Le Corbusier’s Eglise Sant Pierre (Firminy). He has encouraged us to shy away from... View full entry

more on this later.... View full entry

Today was the first day of classes.... this quarter's theme? Confluence. The lecture series is focused on the theme, but perhaps more pertinently, my studio project this quarter is sited on the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers in Columbus, Ohio. Our instructor is Jose Oubrerie, who... View full entry

Just got back from the xmas with the folks on St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. Here, buildings are not taxed by the territorial government until they are "complete," so it has become common practice to leave construction unfinished for years or even generations, leading to the proliferation of these... View full entry

Tomorrow is our final review... this quarter, our studio instructors were Dan & Amale of WORKac, and the project brief was taken from an international competition for the House of Arts & Culture, Beirut, Lebanon. The first few weeks of the quarter were dedicated to research on the context... View full entry

technically, i should have some plans and sections by now.... or in an hour when "pens down" goes into effect.... but after working all weekend (mostly on Grasshopper wankery), decided to go see Synecdoche, New York instead or pushing through tonight. Final review's on thursday.... meaning I've... View full entry

so, it's roughly 36 hours before I'm scheduled to lasercut my final model, and I think i've finally got something... over the course of the studio, i've been torn between two different lines of inquiry... 1) folded floor plates and 2) facade patterning. I've been trying for weeks to get the two to... View full entry

two weeks to go.... still working things out.... View full entry

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The Earth is not flat. Parallel lines are concentric circles. Perpendicular lines are vectoral forces. I present: Maison Polaire. masion polaire (Earth radius=6000km) masion polaire (Earth radius=25m) masion polaire (Earth radius=10m) Maison Polaire on several different sizes of Earth (left to... View full entry

[midreview 081029 | Studio Critics Dan Wood & Amale Andraos of WORKac, Guest Critics Zach Snyder, Nick Gelpi, John McMorrough, and Ashley Schafer of the KSA] Last wednesday, we had our Mid-quarter review with Dan & Amale, immediately before their presentation for the KSA Lecture Series... View full entry

I have midreviews this afternoon. Somewhat unprepared, so I'm cribbing a page from the Bjarke Ingels Playbook: More LENS FLARE! More FILM GRAIN! Yeah! View full entry

So, next week is the mid-review for our studio with Dan & Amale of WORKac... I'm a bit behind after playing hookey last Tuesday to drive down to see Jose Oubrerie's Miller House and the University of Cincinnati Campus, but I've got the next few days free to come up with something. So far: The... View full entry

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Last week, in his Introduction to Architecture course (I sit in just for kicks), Jeff Kipnis argued that the Leaning Tower is the precedent for all that wacky architecture we love so much. I'm beginning to agree. The tower doesn't just lean, as it would if it had been deposited fully formed on... View full entry