I recently produced this video for NBBJ's Qingdao Campus Masterplan competition entry. The project was a 10,000,000 SF campus plan in Eastern China. The design team had already nearly completed concept design when I joined the team for the express purpose of creating the required "multimedia"... View full entry

Since my last entry, a lot has changed. I moved on from Fuksas in Rome and I'm back in Columbus, Ohio. I am now working at NBBJ and have taught a few parametric modeling seminars at Knowlton. I would like to share with you some of the research I have been doing at NBBJ for conceptual design tools... View full entry

I will do one more entry as a post-graduate update. The following is taken from an update for friends and family, and I'm not able to share very much information about the work I am doing, for obvious reasons, so please excuse the non-intellectual content and touristic pictures. All I can say is... View full entry

Thank you Archinect. It has been a great run. I hope I have provided some insight, inspiration, or amusement. Of course you all know how many demands are put upon the modern-day architecture student, but the great bloggers on this site have been so dedicated and diligent in their sharing with the... View full entry

At long last I have finished the new renderings of Deep Green for my portfolio. As usual, I have been shirking my duty to update on a timely basis, and as usual, I will return to post updates, reflections, writings, etc. Probably after graduation in early June.Full SizeFull SizeFull SizeFull... View full entry

It's hard to believe that this is my last quarter of studio. Maybe it's getting older or maybe it's the sheer intensity of the last 3 years, but it "seems like yesterday" that I turned to architecture bright-eyed and naive. I'm happy to say that my interest in architecture has only been refined... View full entry

Last quarter we engaged the topics of dynamic systems and architectural effects in a studio with Kivi Sotamaa. Kivi was a fantastic studio professor; he has an uncanny ability to hone in on what is successful in your project and encourage development accordingly. We were all battling a steep... View full entry

So I recently began going through my old projects for my portfolio and decided to do some new renderings. I began posting early results on my Flickr, which sparked a heated debate about the place of the photorealistic rendering in the architect's arsenal. I won't repeat it all here, but I thought... View full entry

This year started with a bang. In addition to the Kivi Sotamaa studio and the Baumer class, both of which I will discuss in detail later, we were offered the opportunity to take a seminar with K. Michael Hays of GSD fame. The class focussed on the architecture of the 60s, for the most part, which... View full entry

Last Winter we had the "Comprehensive Studio" with John McMorrough and Mike Cadwell. The project was a housing block in downtown Columbus. Each team of two had a "theme" that was to be explored in the project. My partner Zhishan Wang and I were assigned Deep Green. This of course meant exploring... View full entry

There was an exciting list of shows at the Banvard Gallery last year. Authors of Pamphlet Architecture 27: Tooling, Aranda/Lasch put together a visually arresting show comprised of slide projection, Stratasys models, folded paper models, and exquisite drawings of their research into algorithmic... View full entry

And thus it begins. The annual blast through last year's happenings. I regret not keeping up with this blog in real-time, as many of the observations and day-to-day minutia get lost in this format. However! Next quarter I will have be taking only studio and professional practice... I will have a... View full entry

Oh my god I am a complete delinquent. This embarrassing alien blob of a study model has been the only eye candy I have provided in what, like 10 months? In my defense, I finished spring quarter on June 9th and I have been out of the country since June 12th. Seven countries and 3 months later, I... View full entry

Kipnis gave us an exam on Tuesday. Or rather he asked one of the students to administer an exam for him. We were urged to think as little as possible; use any resource we wanted, including internet, chatting with classmates, and the library; and be concise (25 words or less) in our answers to... View full entry

What is an index? A quick reference? You idiot. A list of items and their locations? No, no, no. An index is evidence of a process. Now lets not get carried away. Evidence of a process does not guarantee indexicality. After all, any material construction can be said to be evidence of a process... View full entry

So we're doing parametric design, using a single parameter, and I'm absolutely stymied. I'm working with the Hair and Fur Modifier in 3DS Max. I generated density bitmaps to define areas of the density of "fur" in plan, and then I was planning to Boolean these fields with lofted splines of the... View full entry

Is anybody else disgusted by the new Dow Chemical ads, "The Human Element"? They've been playing during the World Series. As if I believed for one second that Dow Chemical Company is in awe of the beauty of nature -- the ingenuity of the human spirit, I'm sure they're in awe of that, since it's... View full entry

Remember how I said that I got too enamored with the computer last year and wanted to put renewed energy into physical modeling? Well, turns out I'll have to put that plan on hold. This quarter our studio is being taught sort of in conjunction with 630 Graphics, in which we are learning 3D Studio... View full entry

okay, okay. finally. enough with the monumental posts covering last year's news. ...on to the new. First some quick news of faculty awards... Jeff Kipnis was awarded an honorary degree by the Architectural Association of London; Jack Nasar was made a Fellow by the American Institute of Certified... View full entry

Some samples from my sketchbooks. Like I said, I learned to draw on the trip. Never really done it before. Keep that in mind! I wish I had some examples from some of my classmates. There were some incredible sketchers... View full entry

These are some of the pics I managed to salvage from my profs hard drive, along with a few assorted pics from classmates... so many things missing from this collection, I'll post a few more of the really great ones as I get them. Porto Down on the beach... The view from the hotel in S... View full entry

So, at long last, I'm catching up with everything that happened this last year. Three days after the last final exam, 40 of us packed up and headed to Europe for an INTENSE architecture road trip. It was absolutely unbelievable. I'm not sure that there is any travel opportunity like this at any... View full entry

Okay, so I was the gallery assistant last year. This year I was offered the opportunity to expand my responsibilities in the gallery, including marketing, promotion, communications, hospitality, grant writing, new initiatives, and curating (under the supervision of a highly-respected, professional... View full entry

So far I've skipped all of my commentary on all of the extracurricular activities that transpired last year. After that Ken Smith show, an intense installation that coincided with a final review, my blog became non-functional. So I haven't talked about any lectures or gallery shows. First up, a... View full entry

Okay, so I'm going to close out the summary of the first year and then try to mix things up a bit here. I've been reading other peoples' blogs all day and I'm starting to think that my blog is boring in comparison. The goal is to ramble less about my projects and to make more pithy observations... View full entry

It is now September of 2006 and it's hard to believe that year 1 is already over. It has been fantastic. It has surpassed my expectations, actually. I'm going to reflect a bit and post some pictures, since I was grossly delinquent during the school year, and in the next posts I'll talk about our... View full entry

It's been a long, rewarding year. I'm getting on a plane to Lisbon, Portugal, in about 5 hours. We're doing a 5-week whirlwind tour of over 200 architectural sites in Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. We'll sleep the night in La Tourette. We'll see the new Corb building in... View full entry

SO it's been a long time. Just finished midterms, which went smoothly. My gallery assistant position kicked off in a big way with a Ken Smith (landscape architect who did MoMA rooftop garden) installation that was nothing short of back-breaking. In an attempt to convey ordered randomness, Ken had... View full entry

So we found out last week that this year's Baumer Professor will be Peter Eisenman. As 3+ students we won't see too much of him but he will be conducting seminars for the 6th-year students and also a lecture for the whole school. I believe they will also be doing a source book on one of his works... View full entry

So that's it. Summer break is over, just like that. Here are a few pics of my and some of the other final models from our class: I moved into my new place 3 days after final crit. It's 0.8 miles from the architecture building, so that means that now I can jet home on the bike if I need to take... View full entry