Archinect

Lian (Harvard GSD M.Arch.I)

I graduated in 2013, but still blog here once in a while.

  • Slow summer...slummer

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Aug 17, '11 10:52 PM EST

    Hello Archinect,

    All good things must come to an end. This summer, for me, has brought a little bit of work and a lot of rest, with plenty of time to rehab my ankle, to catch up with friends, and to neurotically develop and re-develop my five-year plan reconnect with what really matters to me. It's been good.

    I stayed in Cambridge for the summer. A trip to the beach tomorrow--courtesy of some good folks in the Yale School of Architecture M.Arch.I class of 2014--will in fact be my only venture out of the Boston area.

    This might strike you as limited and boring. All I can say is that travel is relative: when I broke my ankle, one moment I was riding my bike down the street, and the next I was immobile on the pavement. For the next four days, the only movement I made under my own power was to sit up or lean back in my hospital bed, and even that was often accomplished with the help of the bed's motorized tilt. Then I started to travel modest distances with a walker: to the restroom; up and down the hallway; up and down some stairs on crutches and under the tutelage of a physiotherapist; and back to my apartment, which is mercifully compact and stair-free. A trip to the freezer to get ice-packs was something I'd plan in advance.

    Over the next two weeks, I expanded to a radius of three blocks around my apartment, and a week after that, my crutches and a bus pass were all I needed to get to campus. Two more weeks and I was walking without crutches--which very soon extended my range because, let me tell you, we are not meant to walk on our hands and armpits. Now I can go for long walks and bicycle rides, and, with the minor inconvenience of some additional ankle swelling, could hop on a plane if I felt the urge.

    image

    But I don't feel a need to do this because, as you can maybe imagine, my sense of motion has been recalibrated. Do you remember when you took driving lessons and the teacher said to be particularly careful about your speed when you're exiting a highway, because you've adjusted to its high speeds? Same thing here, the other way around. And the lazy pace of a summer of glorious unemployment surely also helps, but a walk to the gym, to the river, or to see friends a few blocks away is enough for me at the moment. There are so many things to experience on the way--why, just today I saw this charming slug on Cambridge street.

    So I've had, as you can imagine, plenty of time to consider how motion, and mobility, enact both space and time. And how our experience of both grows directly from our ability to move, whether under our own power, assisted by mechanical advantage of a bicycle, the motor of a private vehicle, or the tedious rhythm of public transit.

    This leaves me both happy and a bit nervous about starting school again. The whiplash acceleration that will be imparted to my schedule and body by studio, courses, TA work, RA work--and what I am determined to maintain in terms of visits to the gym and some resemblance of a social schedule--will be interesting. I feel like a GSD veteran and a wide-eyed first-year student all at the same time.

    Thanks for reading!
    Lian

    P.S. Earlier in this slow summer, I spoke with Bryan Bell, Design Corps founder and 2011 AIA Latrobe Prize winner, for the Boston Society of Architects. You can check out his story here.

    View full entry



  • The long road

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Jul 9, '11 11:47 PM EST

    Hi Archinect! You may have seen from an earlier post that I broke my ankle at the end of May. Here is an update on my recovery, and also my first Archinect video blog! Thanks for watching, Lian View full entry




  • On Loyalties Divided (re: sacking of Michael Jemtrud at McGill)

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Jun 25, '11 8:18 PM EST

    Hello Archinect, This past Thursday, Michael Jemtrud was forced to resign as Director of McGill University School of Architecture. My response to this news is not unbiased. It is entirely biased because this is entirely personal. I want to tell you why this, for me, is the only possible response... View full entry



  • things of unusual beauty (x rays of my broken bones)

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Jun 16, '11 9:45 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! So, I had a bicycle accident almost three weeks ago now, in which I broke three bones and dislocated my tibia. Yesterday I had a follow-up appointment with my surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and got copies of my x-rays and the radiologist's descriptions of them. Here is... View full entry



  • Live Blog: Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    May 5, '11 4:14 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! Live-Blogging Herzog and de Meuron's lecture at the GSD this afternoon, after their directed thesis studio had their final reviews. Introduction by Dean Mohsen Mostafavi. 4:08 pm: JH: I don't believe in books on architecture; they're bound to fail and disappear even sooner than... View full entry



  • Korean Dance-Off and Cory Booker

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Apr 15, '11 7:30 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! Korea GSD hosts one of the very best Beer and Dogs* events of the year because they prepare Korean food and a dance performance. This year, the Graduate School of Education (GSE) also sent a group to perform. The GSE team. I wish I could dance. The GSD team. They did us proud... View full entry



  • In which I question David Brooks on his support of the GOP budget. Read Brooks' reply.

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Apr 12, '11 9:18 PM EST

    Hi Archinect! David Brooks, conservative columnist for the New York Times, spoke at the GSD this evening as part of the Kennedy School's 'Science and Democracy' series. The talk was called “Politics, the Brain, & Human Nature,” and covered many of the talking points from Brooks'... View full entry



  • Letter from "Harvard Design School" re: Ai Weiwei

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Apr 10, '11 5:25 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! Thanks for looking. Lian View full entry



  • Sparking Social Change (Maurice Cox, Marshall Ganz, Duarte Morais)

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Apr 6, '11 8:32 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! Last night, Bryan Bell of Design Corps (and currently in residence at the GSD as a Loeb Fellow) held a panel called ‘Sparking Social Change,’ with Maurice Cox, Marshall Ganz, and Duarte Morais. Maurice Cox—professor at University of Virginia’s School of... View full entry



  • Live Blog: Ryue Nishizawa...at MIT

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Apr 1, '11 4:27 PM EST

    Konnichiwa, Archinect! In lieu of attending the March 31 Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa lecture at the GSD, I went to the Nishizawa-only lecture tonight at MIT on April 1. Word on the street was that when Sejima and Nishizawa brought their minimal approach to the lecture format at the GSD ("this... View full entry



  • The Cognitive Science of Embodiment and the Place of Architecture Today: a conversation with Alberto Pérez-Gómez

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 30, '11 11:05 AM EST

    Hello Archinect! So I know I've been posting quite a bit lately, but I have two really important things to share: 1. My former PhD advisor, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, will be in town next weekend for Boston University's Architecture + Philosophy Conference, and will be joining us for an... View full entry



  • Live Blog: Eclipse of Beauty, vol. II

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 29, '11 6:43 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! Here we are in Piper for more blah blah blah. This, the second volume of the Eclipse of Beauty symposia, features Evan Douglis, the Dean of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Georges Teyssot, a professor from Laval University's school of architecture in Quebec City. And it is... View full entry



  • Great shame upon our family.

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 29, '11 8:18 AM EST

    Hello Archinect, I love my hometown of Edmonton, in Alberta, Canada (a.k.a. Texas of the North), but sometimes I just have to throw my hands up. Edmonton is apparently the largest city in North America to not have an architecture school. There are good architects there and a decent art scene, but... View full entry



  • GSD M.Arch.I Q+A

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 26, '11 11:40 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! Occasionally I get emails from people asking about what it's like in the GSD's M.Arch.I program, if I enjoy Harvard, if the people really are evil and competitive, or what it's like living in Cambridge/Somerville. The best way to find out all these answers is to visit our school... View full entry



  • Live Blog: Junya Ishigami in Piper

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 22, '11 6:11 PM EST

    Tonight's feast is the second installment in the series "A New Innocence: Emerging Trends in Japanese Architecture," which is sponsored by Dean Mohsen Mostafavi with the support of Harvard University Asia Center. Here's a description of the series that Mohsen emailed to us earlier today: The... View full entry



  • Nicholas Kristof Win-a-Trip finalist, UVA architecture student Hannah Silver!

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 20, '11 1:09 AM EST

    Hello Archinect! This year, Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times is picking one university student and one senior citizen to accompany him on a reporting trip in the developing world. One of the student finalists, Hannah Silver, is also an undergraduate architecture student at the University of... View full entry



  • On Fukushima

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 12, '11 11:12 PM EST

    Hello, all, I'm packing for an impromptu spring break trip to Chicago, to check out Theaster Gates' Dorchester Project and other community-building and earth-reconciling art, architecture, and urban projects that are growing there. It's a happy thing. I'm looking forward to kicking it in Chi-town... View full entry



  • They can't stop me from live blogging this one: The Eclipse of Beauty

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 9, '11 6:24 PM EST

    6:20 pm: Starting in ten minutes: Harvard GSD Symposia on Architecture / The Eclipse of Beauty: Parametric Beauty (with Mario Carpo, Michael Meredith, and Ingeborg Rocker.) Symposium co-convened by Antoine Picon and Preston Scott Cohen. Here's the short description from the GSD website: "What has... View full entry



  • Conversation with U Michigan's Architecture Program Chair

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 4, '11 10:19 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! John McMorrough, Chair of the architecture program at University of Michigan Taubman College, visited our studio this week. I sat down with him to find out about the pedagogical initiatives underway there. Here is an edited transcript of the conversation: LC: Thanks for talking... View full entry



  • Vito Acconci, again and again

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Mar 2, '11 4:27 PM EST

    Hi Archinect! Vito Acconci was in Piper tonight. Andrew Zientek, MLAII, and Krzysztof Wodiczko, the GSD's Professor in Residence of Art, Design, and the Public Domain (yes, that is his actual title), provided heartfelt introductions. Acconci himself spoke in a straightforward manner, without notes... View full entry



  • Hamlet on the Red Line

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Feb 27, '11 3:22 AM EST

    So here's the setup. I was on the red line of the T (Boston’s subway) and a guy (pictured here on his knees) starts talking to himself in a loud and agitated way. He looks borderline between hipster and crazy. But as he's talking, I realize that it's Shakespeare, and then that it's a... View full entry



  • Inflated

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Feb 12, '11 8:08 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! Elizabeth Federic and Laura Harrison's 2008 documentary, "Ant Farm," was screened last night at the GSD. Timothy Hyde provided the introduction and, inspired by the film, the Inflatables Club built an inflatable to fill the Piper floor. Unfortunately, because it is no longer the... View full entry



  • Mubarak steps down.

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Feb 11, '11 12:03 PM EST

    We don't know how the military will handle their power and how this will all play out. But can we hold on to this image, and remember it when we talk about public space, not just in Egypt, but here at home, and everywhere where we aspire to democracy? Lian View full entry



  • YESNOYESNO.net

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Feb 2, '11 11:15 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! I just wanted to tell you about a new website--something between a blog and an academic journal--called YES NO. It was started by two GSD students, Ted Baab and Jade Yang, in order to create a new public forum for GSD students and the wider community to contest and discuss... View full entry



  • Out

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Jan 31, '11 3:22 AM EST

    Hello....Archinect, So I don't know if there's a blogging equivalent to drunk dialing but, well, here goes: I want to contribute to the built environment in some direct way, and that may even be as a licensed architect at some point in my life. It's not even impossible that I might have my own... View full entry



  • Deciphering Tracks

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Jan 28, '11 2:30 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! In his (free and open to the public) lecture today at the GSD, structural engineer Guy Nordenson cited this passage from Carlo Ginzburg on "Clues." It speaks about the decoding that we do of our environment every day--but which, because we are so immersed in its methods, can be... View full entry



  • The coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Jan 26, '11 12:29 AM EST

    Hello Archinect! My studio critic read to us the code for the Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner series today, as part of a discussion about what code (which our section is going to often interpret in terms of the constraint) can mean in the context of artistic and architectural production. And this... View full entry



  • Spring 2011

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Jan 19, '11 4:41 PM EST

    Hello Archinect, I'm baaaack! The holidays were super: I investigated the, uh, sub-urbanism of Burnaby (part of metro Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada), the landscape of the ski trails of Kananaskis (in the Alberta rocky mountains), the interior architecture of West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton... View full entry



  • Not the GSD

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Dec 20, '10 3:48 PM EST

    Hello Archinect! I'm taking a course at the Kennedy School over J (January) term. So today, two weeks before the course begins, I was able to pick up my course binder--which, as you can see, looks like this: It is not the GSD. Happy holidays, and all the best for the new year! Lian View full entry



  • MB DRO ROSHI

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Dec 17, '10 1:47 AM EST

    Hello Archinect! For my class on Pynchon, we were supposed to write papers, but I got permission to do an animation instead, then I made a book. Here it is. The cut-out shape is of a V2 Rocket, which is the overarching (heh, if you excuse the pun) image in Gravity's Rainbow. Whether the rocket is... View full entry



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About this Blog

This blog was most active from 2009-2013. Writing about my experiences and life at Harvard GSD started out as a way for me to process my experiences as an M.Arch.I student, and evolved into a record of the intellectual and cultural life of the Cambridge architecture (and to a lesser extent, design/technology) community, through live-blogs. These days, I work as a data storyteller (and blogger at Littldata.com) in San Francisco, and still post here once in a while.

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