Archinect School Blog

MRPs @ mid term

It is mid term time and the energy seems to be on High. Today, the faculty was out and about, moving from one preliminary MRP presentation to the next. I fell in line to catch a few presentations and was reminded of the reasons why I like being at UF: SoA. While the MRP is going the way of the dodo in many schools, it is alive and well here; in fact, it has been getting a facelift in order to better prepare students to conduct their research. I wonder how much of this effort is simply preemptive maintenance [So when other schools ask �Why are you still driving that beat up old car?� We reply �Because it still runs like a top�]. The class that presented today is the last class to carry it out in the old fashion. The class that will be presenting in Spring 2011 will be the first to have the benefit of the new solution. The major changes to the process being more time, more check-points and more dialogue with supporting faculty members. Two projects stuck out. One was a poetic preservation project that deployed constructed mythologies on an abandoned train station to inform a detailed architectural installation. The overall narrative was supplemented by well crafted hand drawings that began to work though some more phenomenological aspects of the site and how they might be reconciled with the stories being placed within it. The other project was about developing a set of tool that would mediate the occupation of a large field in an Amish community. In this body-meets-world sort of investigation, these tools are designed for the task of dictating relative scales and sequencing an experience of seclusion in a feral and bucolic environment. What is great about the MRP is, after years of study under constraints imposed by anything outside our control, we can finally define the parameters of our own inquiries. In this way, without it resulting in something ego-centric, we get a chance to understand and synthesize ourselves, our process and our work into something personal and boundless. The connection might be tenuous but I couldn�t help but think of Full Metal Jacket. �Graduation is only a few days away, and the recruits of platoon 30-92 are salty. They are ready to eats their own guts and ask for seconds. The drill instructors are proud to see that we are growing beyond their control. The Marine Corp* does not want robots. The Marine Corp wants killers. The Marine Corp wants to build indestructible men; men without fear.� * Marine Corp = School of Architecture

The Branner Lecture

I've been absent. Both the thesis and preparing an exhibition and a lecture about my travels in 2009 have kept me pretty busy. If you are in the Bay Area, I hope you can come out to hear a talk that I will be giving this Wednesday titled "Military Atmospheres" in conjunction with the other two Branner Fellows. There will be wine and refreshments in the exhibition opening which immediately follows the lecture. Cheers!

if NAAB asks, I like it here.

This week, the NAAB team is here for Accreditation. While often, I end up working in a jaded existence; questioning the relevance (both academically, and realistically) of some of the pedagogy here, the pomp and circumstance of the NAAB visit is a really nice moment to actually reflect on what goes on here and why I�m really really glad to be here (At this point, I should also disclaim, that as a post professional student, the NAAB visit technically means nothing to me; apart from an extreme effect on the �mood� of the institution). The visit is still underway � so it�s shrouded in schedule and secrecy (things like �the team room,� closed galleries of student work, meals with various administration), but when it opens, I�m very excited to see the work that Penn�s showing to the powers that be (which we will get to see afterward). What is open right now is the faculty gallery. Walking through it the other day was a really humbling experience. It�s easy to get lost in the immediate when dealing with professors; I�ve seen the same imagery for several elective, studio, and degree presentations (usually something involving �emergence� �parametrics� or �component-based design�) and I consider myself pretty familiar with the published �work� from the faculty here (mostly paper architecture, and non-winning PS1 entries). Yet my cynicism is really what�s undeserved � amidst the sea of this familiar imagery are lots and lots of really interesting things that I didn�t know came from Penn faculty. Writings, books, collaborations, articles, (really successful) built projects, and impressive imagery. It was a nice moment for me to count my blessings that I�m at a school with a variety of compatible and diverse viewpoints, all with an equal passion for their own design direction. And, while the proudly unrealized seem to be the touting images on every publication, the realized are just as prominent, maybe just not as much within the institution. This could be an odd point of the Post Professional program. Because we�re out of the running for any necessary architectural educational requirements (building systems, methods�), without some looking, I didn�t really even notice the sea of pragmatic knowledge here amidst the foam of parametricism (which I enjoy in moderation, it just happens to be the butt of the joke in this entry). For those of you who haven�t been at a school during accreditation, it�s a really cool experience. (Kent State went through accreditation when I was there as a second year in 2006). I suppose it�s kind of nerve-wracking for faculty and administration that everything goes as planned, but while it holds the final say in whether or not your education counts (which is a really scary way to think about it), I see it as more a celebration of the educational experience. For the student, whose educational experience can seem to fall out of one�s hands and into the whim of budget/administration/etc, it�s a unique chance to voice an opinion (and likewise, hear an opinion voiced about your role as a participant in �studio culture�). There�s a closed interview with the entire student body and the NAAB board which has potential to be both an airing of grievances (regarding the administrations/pedagogy/facilities/etc) and an aptitude awareness test (to cross-reference the claimed curriculum). At the end of the several-day visit, there�s a reality-show-esque report-card reading. It�s a really interesting experience to participate in � it�s a satisfyingly democratic moment in the educational system where students and professors can take a moment to re-orient the system, bring up the elephants in the room, and generally step back and realize that despite differences in opinion (both within and between students/faculty), everybody�s interested in the same thing (architecture) and working toward a common goal (making it better). During the NAAB visit when I was at Kent, I was a second year student and remember it being �not a big deal� from the general student perspective (except for the continual put-down about how we were sure to fail), yet a pretty big deal for the faculty. It was a sheep hearding adventure where we were attending school-wide meetings instead of working in studio at our professors insistence (gasp), and there was this mystical �NAAB gallery room� that had been pad-locked off limits from students for months. In contrast to my memory of that, this week at Penn seems like less of a big deal � the student gallery sprung up this week, and we have all been informed about the schedule and where we need to be when for meetings and such � no surprises. What will be really interesting is when they open the student gallery on Wednesday and I see the work that Penn�s showing. Back at KSU, the work was largely beautifully rendered hand drawings (I don�t remember more than one or two computer generated images from 50+ drawings), and a sea of perfect basswood models (the lasercutter at KSU was installed 1 months before the NAAB visit, most of the work was hours of toil and a #11 blade). In contrast, here I expect the showing at Penn to be completely the opposite � nearly all computer-generated imagery and digitally-aided models. In a way, it�s nice when everything is digital � I�m sure it makes it easier to amass the work with a simple email and re-print things in a coherent manner, though on the other hand, I remember the inner turmoil of having something �archived� (for future accreditation) at Kent � the only copy of the drawing you had worked for hours and hours on was confiscated with no questions asked for this future date (after which everything would be unceremoniously trashed). (I�ll let you know what the gallery is like after Wednesday). Meanwhile, I�m model-building at 1:1 scale for studio. I�m in a fabrication-based studio with Jeremy Edmiston of SystemArchitects and it�s becoming quite the experience. For a school that doesn�t seem to dabble much in design-build, our outlook for this studio is refreshingly ambitious. Expect some sort of large-scale, outdoor installation come May.

Organizing HOPE

Helping get together a panel for HOPES 2010 So I'm in charge of putting together a panel on CSA's, Urban Farming and Local Food Production for this years HOPES conference. This is a conference that the Ecological Design Center at the U of O puts on every year and stands for Holistic Options for Planet Earth Sustainability. It is a great way to get people together and exchange ideas and strategies for finding solutions to our current state of affairs. So far I've managed to get Rick Valley a pretty widely recognized Permaculturist to sit on the panel and I'm still waiting to hear back from a few other people. If you happen to be in the Eugene area from April 9-11 I would certainly recommend registering and attending this great event.

Halfway Finished

Through mid-terms, now it's time to work on the ECS, and Human Context work. This semester we are working on a Arts Academy in downtown Portland Oregon. My mid-term went well and I got a lot of great suggestions and criticisms which I'll go over as soon as I get ahead of my other class work. This third quarter of our first year is incredibly hectic with 3 class, 3 labs, and then studio on top that. It's rare that have a chance to take a breath so I took advantage of finishing mid-terms and headed up to Portland to spend the weekend and have another look at the site. This is my first real entry onto this forum, so I'll keep it short until I have something to show. I don't have any pictures of my mid-term pin up yet, but I'll get them up here soon. Hopefully I'll be able to keep this updated and current as I find it really great to read all the other posts of what other students are doing.

Toilets

�Toilets in modern water closets rise up from the floor like white water lilies. The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is, and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain� And as she voided her bowels, Tereza was overcome by a feeling of infinite grief and loneliness. Nothing could be more miserable than her naked body perched on the enlarged end of a sewer pipe.� -Milan Kundera �Compared to Westerners, who regard the toilet as utterly unclean and avoid even the mention of it in polite conversation, we are far more sensible and certainly in better taste. The Japanese toilet is, I must admit, a bit inconvenient to get to in the middle of the night, set apart from the main building as it is, and in winter there is always a danger that one might catch cold. But as the poet Saito Ryoku has said, �elegance is frigid.� Better that the place be as chilly as the out-of-doors; the steamy heat of a Western-style toilet in a hotel is the most unpleasant. Anyone with a taste for traditional architecture must agree that the Japanese toilet is perfection�� -Junichiro Tanizaki

lateness live stream

I'm not sure if any of you can see the live stream from outside the building. Since the hall is full, I'll have to make do with this. For all those interested: http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/video/live.html

Parsing Cultural Values Finale

I am intrigued by the notion of empire and the role architecture plays in support of empires. Empires are historically brutal, violent and even oppressive forces yet they produce some of the most remarkable architecture of human civilization. Often built on the backs of slaves these shrines to power and excess burn themselves into the collective human psyche and remain as icons long after the empire which gave birth to them has dissolved into the history books. I don�t care about records. Man will always seek to build taller and bigger and will stand in amazement at his work until the next record is broken and the last one falls back into conventionality. I am interested in these icons of power, not because of what they have achieved structurally, but for what they tell us about those that built them. In a globalized and technology based economic world system, power structures have broader and deeper cultural impacts than ever before. Shifts in power and influence are likely to occur at a more rapid pace and consequently so will their cultural impacts. Cultural adaptability will be the most important factor which determines whether cultures thrive, survive or perish. Culture is not a static entity, instead it evolves and mutates in response to forces. Adaptability means to accommodate transitions which are essential for survivability and yet do so in way which still retains the integrity and substance of the cultural core. Cultures can no longer exist as isolated, unchanging entities. With the exception of only a few cases, such as remote Amazon tribes, it is a myth that cultures are something which can be preserved and maintained in �original� form like a living museum piece. As technology exponentially accelerates economic, social, and environmental interactions, how cultures respond and absorb these interactions will affect their ability to survive. Striking an effective balance between resistance and accommodation to forces at play defines a cultural value of adaptability which I believe will be a critical element in the evolution of cultures. After a tenuous filtering of the numerous concepts of culture which occupy my mind, I have identified those which I am most thrilled by when I encounter them in the world. Empathy, communication, eccentricity of the human hand and adaptability are the dominant cultural values I wish to advocate. However cultural values should not be perceived simply as key words, instead it is the understood and practiced substance beneath them which establishes them as values. Identification is the easiest part; enactment of the values within an often resistive system is the more difficult challenge before us as purveyors of culture.

frying brains

I was just reading Hans Moravec�s prediction/belief/fantasy(?) where human consciousness will be downloaded into a digital form where it is either given free reign to roam around in cyberspace or be restrained within the body of a robot. He writes about scientists frying human brains and then separating layers of molecules so information can be scanned layer by layer. At the end of it, your head, now that does'nt sound like fun. While this freaks me out � on many levels � I have to admit, I�ve become more and more convinced of how fragile our bodily existence is. If everything around us is fragile, from political to economic to cultural to moral to all kinds of systems, then why isn�t our anthropocentric world-view just as fragile? Sure, this wont happen tomorrow � unless it is already happening and I missed it? -, and maybe not in the next decade or so, but something along those lines is surely in the making. iPad is not exactly the move in the other direction. Anyway, If it happens, how do we as designers respond? Surely things wont be the same? I find myself dreaming of some sort of weird mixture of a Tim Burton-ish with a hint of random sci-fi tv world because of some of the questions that raise themselves while doing the research at school. This is augmented when all you experience for hours at length is an attack of psychedelic colors forming and moving on the screen trying (as a team, here's my shameless plug) to understand the potential found in (half anthropocentric/half entomologic) systems of self-organization as models of thinking and structuring the work. It�s fun though, all these colors, but this brain-frying business is confusing me.

010 / Road Trip

Recently, my undergrad home the College of Architecture & Environmental Design at Kent State University commissioned me to design their posters for the 2010 Spring Design Lecture Series. Below, I've posted graphics of all of the posters, and you can see larger views at my Flickr page. The series is full of a few very interesting lectures and will be well-worth the time to check them out. Enjoy!

A Semester of Material

This new semester has many of the second years at the architecture school rethink architecture in a new light. We have all put a pause to the ideals of poch�(space and form), movement, sequence and the urban, conditioned to us by Andrew Liang and we are now focusing on the the micro details of material and the information that belong within the poch�. The coordinator this semester is Gail Borden and my instructor is Andrew Atwood. We started off with a precedent study which gave me the opportunity to cast the details of the exterior of the Beinecke library. Let's just say casting is a bit messy and it takes more than once to get it just right.. but once perfected, all of the ruined clothes and failed attempts seems to be well worth it. Simultaneously, we were assigned a paper cube project, an assignment that sought for tectonics and exploration of paper material. We are currently working on a wooden cube and an assembly project which has each and every one of us come up with a joint given a limit of 8 cuts on a 1.5"x1.5"x12 piece of douglas fir. We are allowed up to three different units and we must assemble 27 of the pieces together. With all of the experience of wood during this past week I am surprised at the lack of splinters and the abundance of saw dust I seem to be coughing up and emptying out of my nasal cavities. Lesson Learned: Use a mask in wood shop.

A belated ending

Clearly I slacked on my blogging duties during my last month of school. So much happened that I didn�t have time to blog, and by the time I did I felt it was too late. However, the powers that be assure me that it�s never to late to end things right, so I thought I�d wrap up the story for the few people who were following along. In June, I presented my thesis, previously chronicled here, here, here, and here. It included a redesigned version of the Seattle Bicycling Guide Map, a plan for BikeStops (bus-stop sized structures that deployed the map and other navigation and physical support into neighborhoods), and a plan for new signage and path markings for the City of Seattle. Oh, and of course a fatty book explaining and detailing it all. My project was well received, and several members of the Seattle Department of Transportation attended as well. The faculty were most interested in the BikeStops; the city was most interested in the map. As a result, the project has ended up winning an AIGA (re)design Award over the summer, and earning me a contract with SDOT to work with them on a redesign of the Bicycling Guide Map based on my ideas. The city has of course added a lot of content that they wanted to include, but I think it will turn out really well. It should be available here in a few months. A sidenote though, probably the best feedback I got out of all the pieces was on the logo. I�d never thought of myself as a branding person, but maybe I should be! I also had the chance to take point on the design of the MFA Exhibit, which was a part of Design �09. It was a ton of fun to do, and was a great opportunity not only to get something designed and put up quickly, but to really see what all of my colleagues had been working on. Of course I talked with many of them about their projects throughout the year, but seeing the final results and the detail and depth of ideas presented was really amazing. We laid out the space with an intro wall, and then each MFA grad got a space in which to display their work, which was entirely up to them (though we set a couple of loose guidelines to help people coordinate). Since the six of us plus a few friends and spouses built this ourselves, it was a lot of fun; building walls, dragging other walls up stairs, painstakingly painting all those letters til the finish was right� yeah, can�t say I miss that. But it was very satisfying to see the result. So after graduation, go figure nobody was banging down my door to go work for them. I had a whole lot of emails and phone conversations that basically amounted to �Love your work, but there aren�t any jobs to be had here.� So when my lease ran out in Seattle, I drove down to spend some time with my mom in Phoenix. After some seriously lack-of-job-related depression set in, I hopped a bus to Los Angeles and stayed with some absolutely saintly friends for a month. A bit after that I finally landed work in the research department of a respected industrial design firm. I design client presentations and corporate collateral. I wish I could be more specific, but I suspect that most of my stuff is covered under non-disclosure agreements. The exciting thing is that I get to exercise all the grad school theory muscles pretty frequently. Anyway, the point is that after many very rough months, life is finally back on track for me and I can look back on the grad school adventure with fondness, and finally had time to write about it. I miss Seattle and all my classmates and students, but I think I�m where I�m supposed to be. So, I guess this is me signing out. For continued updates, see my website which should be getting a makeover in the next couple of months. I may even add a blog. : )

adds on archinect - - - SPAM ON ARCHINECT

What is up with all the spam being posted to archinect? I think someone should get on that and figure out a way to stop it. This is just going to ruin its validity (well it is a blog) and potentially drive people away.

WIN10/02 - Shoji Doors

This studio is fantastic! We are producing so much, with our heads, our hands, photographs, and any other visual and physical means. Unlike last quarter, where we had six weeks to make one "Shelter from the Storm", we now take on projects over the weekend. Efficiency, Creativity, and Production. Here's a sketch model of sliding doors for our College of Built Environment Cafe. In traditional Japanese architecture, a shōji (障子) is a door, window or room divider consisting of translucent paper over a frame of wood which holds together a sort of grid of wood or bamboo. (From Wikipedia)

question

A couple of months ago I attended a public conversation between Brett Steele and Marc Wigley which was moderated by Mark Cousins. Not surprisingly, the conversation revolved around contemporary education. Of the many things that stuck with me from that night, one statement by Mark Cousins remains strongly imprinted. He said that �if you hear someone start a sentence with the statement �architecture is...�, leave the room.� That attitude is one where architecture is not seen as a series of answers that are set in stone, but one where architecture is understood as a conceptual and material field that continuously evolves to transform the way we live. Our research has to provide an environment where new forms of teaching and learning can evolve and mature. It is through this pursuit of novel - yet relevant - forms of teaching and learning that we can foster a discourse about novel � yet relevant - ways of conceiving architecture. Design research is partly an attempt at creating and shaping ideas about buildings, and by extension, ideas about living, as opposed to mere constructions. If I want to put this in the context that I�m operating within today, then it is the 3-year agenda titled Proto-design. While the agenda is laden with significant potential as scenarios of - conceptual and material - prototyping have become accelerated, the notion of the prototype can be very misleading. There is a mistaken elasticity attached to the idea of developing a prototype and this is partly a result of the lack of finality attached to prototypes. This results in prototypes (prototypes here can also be prototypical systems) sometimes being developed in conceptual and material vacuums. If we are truly dedicated to conceiving of new ways of shaping architecture, overhauling the whole process within which our field current operates, then our prototypes need to be specific (systems), setting out to answer specific answers, notwithstanding that the process will change conceptual and material trajectories along the way. Prototypes have to be specific; they cannot operate in conceptual and material vacuums. This is not to say that the design process needs to be collapsed or flattened, and that all answers and results are known from the initial stages of the design process, and all that is left is the production of these results. This divorces the act of production from its inherent creativity. What bothers me in the notion of the prototype is that its lack of finality allows it to become a crutch. For some reason, we avoid the reality that our ideas about buildings are almost buildings in themselves, (almost) buildings that have to respond to specific concerns. A clear question needs to be tackled head-on, and as soon as possible; what is a prototype? p.s. This is a slightly edited version of a short paper submitted to the class titled Synthesis: Architectural Research, Writing and Project Documentation.

Um, hello

Hello Archinect! So I'm feeling guilty for neglecting this blog. I have the usual excuses about being busy or trying to compose my thoughts, or whatever--but suffice to say that it's not you, it's me... and I�m going to do better now that I�m on the wagon again for semester two. Apology accepted? If so, I want to tell you that our first semester is over and our spring semester started on Monday. The workload is higher, as are expectations, but so is�or at least this is the plan�my capacity to deal with it. By �capacity,� I mean software skills, drawing and model-making abilities, and familiarity with the tools and resources here, of course, but also more than this: First, knowing how to strategically organize one�s efforts is crucial, and I�m hoping that I�ll continue to get better at knowing when to invest time in open-ended exploration and when (and how) to just produce. Actually, the key is to somehow engage in open-ended exploration WHILE cranking out a whole lot of relatively polished-looking shit�but for now, it�s usually enough for me to prioritize one and hope for the other. The second factor is what Obi-Wan Kenobi called �the Force,� or perhaps what we saw in Avatar as Eywa, or to put it in more pedestrian terms, just a kind of psychological strength and resolve. On this one, everyone has their own way of motivating and managing themselves, but for me this has to do with having a pretty strong conviction that I�m here for my own reasons: my personal amusement and edification, and a piece of paper that says �Harvard� on it�that is, I�m not here to compete with my colleagues who are on the path to becoming starchitects. These being my goals, my strategy is to do the best that I can within the limits that I set (for me, this means getting three workouts and forty hours of sleep each week; if I have these things, I can be pretty much game for anything else), and to forgive and forget my shortcomings beyond this. All of this is helped by the third factor in play this semester: I feel much more in control about my own education here now. I was able to waive two modules so I�m taking as an elective Sanford Kwinter�s class, �Light and Space: Experiments in Transforming the Photosphere,� and I�m also taking a history class that serves as the prerequisite for a summer drawing course in Rome. Studio promises to be really great again�this semester, it�s on �Matter,� or materiality�and our other courses are more focused than last semester, and deal with things I want and need to know more about (building systems, construction). Can one maintain sanity by anticipating insanity? Let�s just all say yes and move on. I gotta go reinvent the brick now, so I�d better stop and just leave you with some pictures. I counted no fewer than 25 bottles of Purell in our cafeteria this morning (not all are visible here, but I promise I counted 25 in the room). Some even have touchless dispensers and their own floor stands. This was the laser sign-up line in this same space at the end of last semester. The online reservation system crashed so we had to partake in what is apparently the time-honored GSD tradition of camping out all night (sleeping bags, laptops, and many, many extension cords) for the chance to spend a couple hours of quality time with a laser cutter. Here is Sad Finger, who made an appearance during the first month of my first semester due to careless use of an x-acto knife. I hope I don't see Sad Finger (or any other Sad Body Parts) this semester. A friend at Columbia mangled his thumb on a table saw a few weeks ago and needed reconstructive surgery--a reminder to all of us to be careful! My concept model for our wood construction class. We had a day to design a little bookstore, and will spend the next five weeks working out the details for it. During our pin-up, our professor kept asking what materials we were going to use for different parts of our projects--and since most of us hadn't yet thought about what specific products we would use, we all just answered "wood." Seemed like a safe bet. Thanks for reading, and see you again soon! Dr. Lian (defended my Ph.D. during the winter break!)

Exhale: a story of teenage angst.

I slept last night because all of the big decisions have been decided. My instincts screamed that I should attend a DRL party last night for Machiavellian reasons, to make new connections, strengthen the old and feel out people�s positions on different topics. So much has politics and social awareness been embedded into my way of operating here that it only became apparent to me the moment it becomes of less urgency. Up until this point the two big questions we continuously revolved around was �who do you want to form a team with� and �who will form a team with you?� The last 4 months have felt like a political shuffle of epic proportions as we form and reform teams for every class and project. Like all political games I think, this one was played primarily in the background, in chance meetings in the hall and out on terraces. It relied heavily on luck and intuition with timing being the ultimate virtue. Over the last few weeks this scramble began to skirt out into the open, becoming ever bolder as time diminished. Just before it ended I had the sensation that this is what life must be like for the teenage girls depicted in tinnie bopper movies as one imagines how perfect life will be when you find the �right� team mates. You fantasize about what it will be like to work with them, how great your project will be and how they will bring such skill and talent into your life. Then the negotiations stumble, they say �maybe.� You stay up at night wondering if �maybe� could mean yes or if it really means �no.� You wonder how long you can wait for their decision and you think about who else they may be talking to when you are not there. More conversations occur, they keep saying �I need a night to think about it� and you find yourself telling other people �maybe, I will get back to you.� Everything is in limbo. You will never get married to your prefect team mates. Teams solidify around you and the members smile, enjoying their newly formed bliss. Eventually you reconsider your options and become a bit more realistic about what you want in a team mate. Suddenly everyone has a fault. All the coolness and laughs of the previous months turn into potential balls and chains dragging you under the surface misery for the next year. Despite the fear of commitment, you have acquired one team mate and together you are looking for number three and four. The choices are slimmer now and it is time to get bolder. Quasi interviews are scheduled, you all go out on a speed-date of a lunch to discuss priorities, agendas and tutor choices. Questions like �how do you think you will fit into our team� are asked and �would you be willing to consider working with so and so�� All the while, finals are raging, work is being produced and no one is sleeping. Avoiding the people you told �maybe� to but really meant �no� is becoming more difficult and the realization that maybe when others told you �maybe� it really meant �no� too is sinking in. Everybody is in teams of two now which should make it easier to match a team of two and a team of two and reach the magical quota of 4 geniuses all working harmoniously together. The only problem is that it doesn�t work. Two is too many. One will say �yes� and the other says �maybe.� Damn, maybe means �no� doesn�t it? �How are we going to break this team apart� you ask. Time is running out so ultimatums are made. Emails fly and phone calls are made. There is no hiding now as every second counts and delicacy is thrown out the window. You hear yourself telling someone �we need an answer by tomorrow at noon.� High noon!?! Yes, it is this dramatic. It�s a long night and you know the emails are flying. By 8am the fruits of your labor are graciously displayed by gmail: they broke and you got the piece you wanted. Success. Relief. A team of three is now safe. It is a good position to be in because you don�t technically need anyone else. You are now in control. The selection is now very slim and the strategy changes to one of personality solely. It�s all about a good fit now because one cantankerous member could ruin the nice family you worked so hard to build. Now interviews are conducted with three members standing together in the hall facing one other uncomfortable person. Everybody now wants to be on your team and so you have to set a deadline to make a decision by. �We will let you know by tomorrow night� you tell them and they know there are more people you want to talk to before you discuss their qualifications amongst yourselves. Finally, as a team the forth selection is made and someone goes out to offer them the position with good benefits and crappy hours. Your team is now full and tutor proof as they will not break up a team of 4. Teams of three are at risk. The day arrives where everyone has to choose a tutor with their team. The tutors process in and ask if everyone has a team. Nods all around. They ask if anyone is in a team larger than 4 or less than 3. Two hands go up, a team of two. This is what everyone feared. In typical DRL fashion a discussion breaks out about how to solve the problem, break a team of 3 or break the team of two? It gets messy and in a rare top-down moment of administration the tutors decide to take control. They ask for all ballots to be passed in and retire to a back room to sort the teams and distribute the team of two. It�s like the sorting hat in Harry Potter as everyone waits nervously for them to return while trying not to look nervous at all. The only distraction is to examine the teams and marvel at how it all worked out. Who found who and who compromised with who. Projections are made for how each team will fair and which ones are the obvious power houses. After 40 minuets, the tutors emerge and read the fates of each student. It is done. You can hear the exhale of weary relief.

Teaching Like I Give A Damn - Semester II

Finally had moment to come up for air to make this post on archinect. While my students from last semester were enjoying their winter break, I was jamming to get prepared for the two classes I'm teaching this semester. As a student, I was rarely are aware of all the work that goes on behind the curtain to deliver the courses. As a teacher, I'm finding that this is the part that I was least prepared for: developing the lesson plans. My colleagues at CDES have told me that the first year of teaching a course is the hardest - in the second year and beyond you will get to sit back and focus on other stuff. So this semester I'm teaching two classes that are almost polar opposites, a 2nd year MLA studio with 11 students and an intro to environmental design lecture for 180 undergrads (LA35501). Both are turning into fun topics to explore. Just wish I had more time to focus on creating the lectures and just thinking, instead of this gerbil wheel that has me teaching five days a week. At least, I'm not in this alone. Got great folks co-teaching and mentoring me for each course. This is also the first semester where I got TAs to assist me. The team on LA3501 have been great (and I'm not just saying that because...) proving to be a great resource that are really helping smooth the administrative side of dealing with 180 students. They are teaching the 6 recitation sections and grading all assignments, plus helping prepare the lectures and maintaining the course moodle site. While Environmental Design and its Biological and Physical Aspects has been taught for 16 years with a well polished set of exercises and lecture topics, I've been able to fit in my own angle. So far, I've incorporated the Haiti Earthquake and today spent 1/3rd of the lecture exploring climate change and how Environmental Design can help mitigate it. Teaching this course has been a good refresher on the earth science stuff that I last encountered in High School or the Discovery Channel. This week has been focused on the atmosphere & climate, and last week looked at the Public Land Survey System (which I've only ever used when I took the LARE). Beyond the technical glitches of having my laptop die, and discovering that the University's laptops don't have quicktime installed (so I can't use powerpoint generated on my mac at home), it's been lots of fun giving these lectures so far. Outside of teaching, I poured a ton of effort into a grant proposal back in the fall that didn't gain traction this first round. I'm trying to find time to rework the section that describes how transformative and unique the research would be, but haven't quite managed to get the chunk of time needed. I've also been busy posting to my blog and so forsaking my school blog as I develop a more permanent voice on the web. i covered the studio there last week.

"Why is there a first-aid kit in all of your studios?"

This semester started off with a bloody bang. I was told my first assignment, and excitedly I hurried off to get some Bristol to create study models. I marked out the 1" bands of Bristol strips carefully, drew my ever so light line across the sheet, placed my straight edge right next to but not too close to the line I was about to cut, and unsheathed my Olfa knife ready for action. I pulled it downward across the page. Slowly at first, carefully, the faster with purpose and confidence. The blade then sunk right into my left index finger and immediately I snapped my hand back away from the paper. We all know keeping the paper clean is the most important thing. My finger poured blood for a good 10 minutes while I attempted to bandage it up. 30 minutes later my bandage was filled again and I had to redress it. What a way to kick off the spring semester. Our first project is the oddball of the first year second semester courses. Most studios are working in "found wood" to create spatial fabrics (or so it seems). My studio, under the direction of Che-Wei Wang, is taking a different approach entirely. We were given the assignment to extract a 5-15 second clip of a kung-fu flick, and analyze the bodily relationships and they spaces they create, to develop a landscape. We began by studying it frame by frame and compiling the frames onto a sheet, splaying the bodies out according to a set of specific rules. Seen here: We then began to work with bristol (in the future moving into white oak edging), to create a language of forms based on its own set of rules. The remainder of the beginning stages of this project will be to grow these two elements together, which I assume, it hasn't quite been spelled out for us yet, through a series of tweaking and eliminating certain rules. The outcome so far is quite a mystery to all of us, but we are all very excited to jump into it with both feet. As for the previous semester's work, I will be telling you the outcome of that work here, in my first Spring semester post. I'll begin with Technics, the class I dissed with no mercy in the previous post. To be quite short, it redeemed itself. The first project was terrible; the paper plate tower. the second project was a cantilever structure made of basswood and piano wire. It was rather useless for me since I already had a feel for the basic structural forces, however I can see where one who may not have much experience might benefit. The third project was really exciting. We took the cantilever a step further, and were tasked to create a chair for one or more people that cantilevered off a stairwell. Many different chairs were created, and if you can see the Pratt Archive someday I'd say check it out, but this one was my team's (we were archived!). One of my favorite crits about this project was that it was "intriguingly recreational": Representation was a rather exciting class, although arguably was paid the least attention. Our last two drawings we were allowed to draw the cubes in motion, and distort them however we felt was appropriate to communicate our ideas. My second to last drawing was a vellum and lightly rendered drawing of the cube accelerating across the page and receiving different angles of light from different points in the day. The shades and shadows changed to illustrate that. The last drawing was again a vellum drawing, lightly rendered. For this drawing I chose to distort it by bubbling the drawing out via a personally developed technique for a ball lens. If you don't know what a ball lens is, imagine a fish eye view of a drawing. I set up a system where based on how far the midpoint of a line was from the center point of the lens, it would be arced a certain degree less than the maximum arc, which was the diameter of the lens. The process produced rather convincing drawings towards the center of the drawing, but the extreme values towards the outer edges of the lens, were skewed and incorrect. I would compare it to being the part of the drawing that is outside of the 60 degree zone of focus when drawing a perspective. Besides this major part of the drawing, the jury loved it. The drawing is here, however, it is not scanned, only a bad phone photo. I have not scanned my work yet: In design, the project we were working on, wood word joints, turned into mayhem of spatial relationships. It was really awesome to see all of my classmates projects take form. The second phase (volume of jointed tales) I will go over really quickly. We turned our 3 3"x3" cubes into a 9"x9" cube with one of the 3x3s as a 9x9, with another one at the 6x6 scale, and 3 more in the 3x3 scale all within the 9x9 volume that has one path to unlock. It took a lot of visualization to design. The next stage of the project was to take all the pieces you've just seen in the previous photo, and turn it into an 18" tall, and 18" long L-shape cantilever structure by using a series of primary, secondary and tertiary structural systems that are the same massive pieces, but stripped down to reveal spaces created by the extrusions. That is very simply put for a very complex explanation of the project. The final product was this: My critique on it was reasonable. I was told my use of skin vs. skeleton could have been better. The terminology I used was rather contradictory to the apparent relationships between said skin and skeleton. But all-in-all it was a fairly well received project that could have been simply improved. Weird Pratt: Rat balls. There is a sculpture next to the engineering building (thats weird too, because there is no engineering major.) that is of a rat. It has balls. HUGE ones. They are so big, I didn't even think it was a rat with balls for a long time.

Back to the Bay

Tonight "anarchist" urban geographer Matt Coolidge from the Center for Land Use Interpretation gave an informal talk about an ongoing work that CLUI has been invested in right here in the SF Bay. CLUI is "a research and education organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth�s surface, and in finding new meanings in the intentional and incidental forms that we individually and collectively create." They operate from locations in Los Angeles and Houston as well as Wendover, Utah, Troy, NewYork, and a Desert Research Station in the "hinterland" of the LA Basin. (The residency that they offer in Wendover sounds like a particularly appealing alternative to a job-starved market�) They do other cool stuff like bus tours to interpret desert landscapes or, most recently, oil derricks in the LA basin. On view on the 1st floor of Wurster Hall is an impressive array of photography and information focusing on deindustrialized and demilitarized space at the edge of the Bay. There are 50 sites in the study, moving from Mission Bay to Treasure Island (the long way). The exhibit is especially exciting to me because many of these spaces--Alamada Naval Station and Treasure Island chief among them--formed the inspiration for my big trip. But there's even more that gave tonight a strange feeling of a homecoming. Michael Dear gave the introduction for Coolidge. Dear has recently joined the Urban Planning faculty and is teaching a graduate course on LA this semester. He is someone whose work I have been familiar with since my USC days. His reading of Los Angeles as an expanded border zone helped to form the theory base that supported my undergraduate thesis, which was looking at the edge of East LA as it met the industrial pocket surrounding the LA River. Coolidge's work I was only indirectly aware of while at USC, but retroactively I am realizing how much his investigations into massive infrastructures like the LA River kindled my own desires to find a lens for viewing these spaces. With Dear in attendance, the whole evening had a ring of LA-River abandoned industrial edge-inspired gazing. It is encouraging, actually, that much of what excites me about Los Angeles can also be seen here in the Bay. And the ecology is simply more visible here--the intersection between man and nature, read in point form along a 400-mile-long watery edge. CLUI's work on display here in Wurster Hall is very impressive. It is completely unencumbered by fancy graphics or over-elaborate mappings. There is no gloss to the panels, literally and metaphorically. What you have in front of you is an aerial view acquired for each of the 50 sites from a Cessna airplane, a series of first-person perspectives, and a rich body of text that warrants concentrated study. For anyone who is passionate about these kinds of spaces, you couldn't ask for more. I'll finish with Matt Coolidge's words as he writes in the introduction to the booklet Back to the Bay distributed at the opening:

The Bay can be viewed as a geographic paradox: a place and a void. The collective "Bay" (composed of San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay and Suisun Bay) both unites and divides the community of the Bay Area, giving identity to a region, while separating its populace� Once intensely militarized, it is now, just as intensely, demilitarized. In a sense, the Bay is a natural entity, borne of great rivers draining the entire Central Valley of California, however, every inch of its shoreline today is the product of human activity, by either intent, or incident. If the Bay itself is a paradox, then its edges delimit the margins of contradiction.