The other day we had an opportunity to snap some photographs of the fizzle project. Unfortunately, it is still not yet fully completed. It is about as close to complete as it can be without being complete -which is to say: soon. It would be a nice understatement for me to say this was a little more ambitious than I knew. Along with that, it is more satisfying than I previously imagined. The project has many facets and did not shy from many territories. Hence, it is difficult to try to wrap it up adequately in one or two posts. For now, lighting. As I mentioned previously, we found the equipment needed to react to people to be a bit too expensive. So, we flipped the idea of behavior on its head in an attempt to get visitors to react to the installation -as it activates a motionless cavern in Hollywood, instead of the other way around. The start: A burst of light begins from within the wall form, at the back of the lattice structure. The signal of this light generates reactions from nearby components, which in turn further incite adjacencies, and so on. Then, the initial wall glow diminishes and the surrounding lights subsequently lose their luster and fade to black. These cycles happen at five programmed zones between the two window boxes. The posted photos are of a couple close up shots and then an abridged cycle in the west window box.

-jt

For the past eighteen weeks, I (plus four other young warriors and one elder wizard) have been designing an installation for the Paul Gleason Theatre in Hollywood (California). The address: 6520 Hollywood Blvd. The site is basically two window boxes oriented perpendicular to the street... View full entry

A reason for the absence of blogging: SUPERFICIAL SUPERGLOW May 25 - May 27, 2007 RECEPTION May 25, 6 PM -9 PM LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) 6522 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles This exhibition focuses on two student designed interactive lighting environments in two Hollywood Boulevard... View full entry

Spring quarter has just started (week II) and my group's thesis proposal for the Abronigal site at the bottom of Madrid proper is slowly beginning to form. The site is a big valley, about 2km long x 1/2 km wide, and we are trying to insert dense housing (15,000 units), infrastructure (a new high... View full entry

Just a reminder to everyone to come by our big bash in the Silverlake/Koreatown area. Prototypes will be on display for our upcoming installation on Hollywood Blvd. All are invited, tell your friends. Friday, April 13th 8pm-? The Bus Depot 679 N. Berendo St. (cross street Melrose) featuring... View full entry

Those in the LA area please come party with us next Friday and check out the latest prototypes and renderings for an installation we will be doing in May. The installation is part of a Technology Seminar at UCLA School of Architecture with David Erdman of Servo. It will feature two group projects... View full entry

After Madrid and Amsterdam, I met up with two classmates in Copenhagen. In Winter, the city hibernates but we were still able to see some of the focal buildings and streets including a well-known church by Jorn Utzon. Medieval age Copenhagen was heavily fortressed and remnants such as large ponds... View full entry

Our trip to Madrid in February with the Thom Mayne Research Studio concluded with each of us dispersing to major European cities to collect photos of what they described as urban conditions. Given the examples Thom gave, these were instances where multiple systems of the city interacted and were... View full entry

I attended a faculty interview last week for a position at UCLA to head the new undergraduate program. The school is starting up the program next year and from what I understand it will not be a bachelor of architecture degree but it will draw undergrads in their third and fourth years, probably... View full entry

I thought Jtravis's post on vacuum forming was pretty interesting so I'm going to run through the same description for 3d printing. Along with the CNC mill and vacuum former the 3d printer is one of the major modeling devices here. It begins with a digital model in Rhino. Since Rhino is a surface... View full entry

Plastic continues to devour my thoughts. It is a reciprocal fascination. Here, this may be a little dry compared to other posts. I plan to briefly discuss some of the processes and techniques involved in working plastics. Okay. It should be noted, shaping plastic can be done in many different... View full entry

So aside from our Madrid and European urban explorations in Thom Mayne's studio, Superficial Superglow 02, the winter quarter, has taken a step forward with portions of a full-scale mock-up for the LACE storefront installation (opens May 25). This project is a continuation of Prof. David Erdman's... View full entry

PAU: Programa de Actuación Urbanística. In actuality, this trip to Madrid marks the middle point of this research studio's (Studio:Mayne) program schedule. Still, it feels like it is just the beginning. The first 15 weeks have been focused on researching urban design through... View full entry

Yes, our blog has been quiet lately. Three of the four members of TADS are currently scattered over Europe capturing urban conditions and system collisions for their Research Studio with Thom Mayne. I'm writing this entry from a crappy dial-up computer in my hotel lobby in Amsterdam. The entire... View full entry

3 person team with: Aaron/Scott. Professor: Jason Payne. Course: Manifold Destiny. The course involved studying Arthur Harry Church drawings of a flower, developing (vacuum formed) plastic detail techniques, and eventually a composition. Our group chose the Narcissus pseudonarcissus, or Daffodil... View full entry

For this project I teamed up with fellow TADS blogger Aaron. As jtravis explained in the previous blog this was done for the summer technology course that march II's take. The technology courses at UCLA are meant to expose students to many of the technological tools at the campus, this includes... View full entry

Here is my approach to the airtight project for Neil Denari's Fall Quarter Topics Studio. Attempting to get us to abandon common notions of what a 'building' is Denari wanted us to view the project as a piece of industrial design. He also required the the project use steel for the structure and... View full entry

First, disambiguate: This blogging is the result of an accumulated effort between four m.arch2 students here at ucla. TADS is an acronym for our first names: jTravis, Aaron, David and Scott. Each post should end in an initialing to let the audience know who's voice is in action. Right. So, I am... View full entry

My main agenda for this project was to explore compound curving surfaces as a method to structure a route and establish programmatic differences. It was by far, more complex geometrically than I typically design. Instead of the blob route, I tried to create a predominantly concave appearance... View full entry

Last quarter (fall 06), we each opted to take a design studio with Neil Denari. The quarter was split into half, with the first five weeks devoted to the exploration of fluidity and its manifestation in shape and form, performance, graphic assembly, and program. Beyond simple smooth surfaces and... View full entry

responding to jtravis' request and expanding on my first post I'll go a little more in depth with the description of our project. One of the main goals of the studio was to derive form from the forces applied to each mass. In this case, the first primitive (a representation of the boulder) was... View full entry

D/S teamed for their boulder. A couple of images of my boulder were posted in 2. I think Frank and I took a slightly different approach to the project -maybe because neither of us bothered to read the syllabus. When trying to understand the relationship between one surface and another, we... View full entry

In an attempt to make this blog as informative as possible for those considering UCLA for grad school we've decided to show our previous projects and hopefully create more of a discussion of the projects than to showcase our work. This will allow four different perspectives as up until this... View full entry

Our six week summer studio engaged the sport of bouldering. A form of rock-climbing, bouldering limits its terrain to a single boulder. The climber works without ropes and stays typically within a few feet of the ground. Individual hand and foot holds become the intense focus of the boulderer as... View full entry

Okay. The new quarter is just starting to roll. This makes it a little difficult to speak in great depth about what is going on today. For instance, I just ate some peanut butter. Which may or may not be a big surprise or interesting. Still, maybe a little look ahead and a look back is... View full entry

This blog is intended as a discussion among four post-professional M.ARCH2 students at UCLA. While we came here for different reasons, I think we have all been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the program, thus the motivation to describe our experience to others. Seeing that we are starting... View full entry