Sep '06 - May '08
... 7 years come down to 14 days. i've been painfully lax on the bloggage this semester. i'll do a recap once i turn in my thesis book (the 22nd, but untill then here's really the only image that matters at this point: and here's another one that matters less, but it's a sketch render i still... View full entry
... semester that is. the one in which i confront the 800 lb gorilla looming over me since i arrived here - thesis. we have prelim reviews coming up next week, before we head into the meat of the term, so i'm busy prepping for those. Went to Mumbai to visit my site last week, had the pleasure of... View full entry
MIT Architecture Lecture Series: Global Practice Spring 2008 By now, global architectural practice has already graduated from the initial phase of being a somewhat mysterious and glorified enterprise. The jetsetters have long become tired jetlaggers. Today, global practice seems to be just another... View full entry
so as we all know, studio around finals period can be rough. the late nights, stress, and hours of staring at lines on a paper or computer screen can make even the most resolute among us, well ... more than a little loopy. here is something to hasten this. spread the studio joy. View full entry
leaving the convenience store located in MIT's student center, i ran into a colleague who asked me how my end of semester was going. I replied by showing him the contents of my purchase -- redbull aleve a kingsize bag of M&M's he laughed and simply stated "ouch." Then he told me of an instance... View full entry
last friday my ideal forms seminar took a trip to Albany to check out the New York State Capital Complex. Its basically a complex of government buildings, connected by a huge parking structure/mall. The plaza level/roof of the parking structure is about five stories above street level. The freeway... View full entry
So I've given another stab at my thesis abstract. After reading it a few more times, I was a bit wary of the title i gave it, which spun some of the argument. This isn't to say that I wiped the idea of "unwanted" urban migration as actually an essential aspect of Mumbai's economic success - i... View full entry
so after a couple of tries over the weekend to collect the research i've done so far and my personal ideas regarding them, I've written up a beta abstract that more or less gets at what I'm thinking. Its still really raw, and I still need to figure out how to better integrate my ideological... View full entry
So here at MIT, Mark Goulthorpe has spearheaded a new lecture series titled "Homegrown (with Mustard)" in which MIT Design faculty as well as practitioners from the Boston/Cambridge areas present their work; however, different from the usual lecture format most design schools may have, this series... View full entry
A friend of mine forwarded this video to me. I don't know if it reaches the same level of archi-dorkism as the Mies video i posted earlier, but hope you enjoy it all the same. View full entry
so, in an effort to put off actual productive work, I decided to make an entry for the DUSP (Department of Urban Studies and Planning) t-shirt contest. Now, I'm technically not a member of DUSP (being in the Dept of Arch) but as my specific degree is in Architecture and Urbanism, I felt I was more... View full entry
So I'm in my studio trying to go through some design iterations, in an attempt to find something concrete to work with. This is the scenario so far: Our Site: 800 HA on the outskirts of Bratislava, mostly flat (40m rise over 6km) and featureless (there is literally, one tree), save for a system of... View full entry
So I'm doing a comparative study for my Ideal Forms class comparing the Government complex at Chandigarh to FOA's Yokohama International Ferry Terminal, and was hoping to get some people's first hand impressions of it, having never been there myself. Have any of you Archinecters been there? If so... View full entry
Or so our studio TA so eloquently stated at the end of our sessions yesterday. So, a couple of weeks into the semester I've managed to accomplish a couple of things:1. Finalized my schedule, which goes something like:_Urban Design Studio—Bratislava: Design of an extension to the Capital of... View full entry
... or so i read on a shirt i saw here in a gift shop. greetings from slovakia, archinecters. right now im in an internet cafe contemplating the slovakian keyboard, among other things. My urban design studio is working in bratislava for the semester, and we will be here this week speaking with... View full entry
MIT Architecture Lecture Series: "What City?" Fall 2007 All lectures are on Tuesdays at 6:30 pm in Room 10-250. Lectures are free and open to the public. For some lectures, members of the MIT community with IDs will be admitted between 5:45-6:10 pm and the general public will be admitted as space... View full entry
So in writing the last bits of a paper for my Traumatic Urbanism class, which I've centered on new/mass media's role as both perpetrator of the traumatic act and as stage for potential catharsis (attempting to connect this all somehow with consumption and the suburban ideal), I thought I would... View full entry
I know sleep deprivation can lead to some crazy experiences, but I never had anything close to this happen to me ... at least, not yet. View full entry
so i've been very slack in updating my blog. I'm sorry. It hasn't been a design oriented semester for me, which is weird. my time is spent mostly reading, writing, and thinking somewhere in between. its both refreshing, and incredibly disorienting. Studio used to be my spine, structuring my day to... View full entry
Check out this short film my friend forwarded to me. it's promoting the "World's Most Exclusive Waterside Address." View full entry
So I've been pondering this a lot lately. Perhaps its because of my studio TA-ship, and wondering what it is I should be telling students. Maybe its just a bout of personal reflection. Maybe I'm homesick for the wild and crazy times that was my undergraduate education. Whatever it is, the question... View full entry
check out this advertisement i found on CNN.com's homepage. I hope some person here at MIT is close to finishing something like it ... View full entry
So Peter Eisenman gave a lecture today at MIT titled “Beyond the Index.” I’ll reserve my judgement of the whole thing till later (or perhaps one of my colleagues here at MIT will share their thoughts), but I thought I’d give a synopsis of the lecture, topics breached... View full entry
A friend of mine passed this link along to me. Its an eye opening video, and I'll use the author's words to describe it:"The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much... View full entry
So MIT's lecture series this spring semester is pretty bloody good. Cheers to the students and faculty here for putting together such a strong schedule. Here's the list: >>>> February 27 François Roche “MI(pi)” March 1 Peter Eisenman "Beyond the Index" March... View full entry
My favorite form of procrastination is to do so publicly on the Internet. So it took about a week, but I think i figured out my final class schedule. looking like this: >>Theory of City Form - Julian BeinartTraumatic Urbanism - Mark Jarzombeck Special Topics in Media Technology: Other... View full entry
So everybody's thought about it. I mean, i'm sure most of you out there are bored with the old, "last name acronym" typology of names for firms out there. I think I'd name my firm the same way I'd go about naming a rock band. But thats just my guess. As for a name? I know it may not bring in much... View full entry
So its been a while since I updated this thing. A real long while. I guess i kept telling myself that i needed time to "reflect over how the semester concluded" before i could get to updating, but the fact of the matter is, I'm just a lazy bastard. Oh well. So i guess this will be a two parter: 1)... View full entry
A sobering video documenting the state of Chinese citizens evicted from their homes and left homeless in the name of large scale development in China. The development industry in China has been one of the most economically successful in the world, but at what cost?watch the video As one of my... View full entry
