photos by Joshua White, courtesy Jason Payne In honor of its closing Sunday, I wanted to post some thoughts and reporting on the opening of Jason Payne’s (my final research studio professor) installation at SCI-Arc. The installation in SCI-Arc’s gallery was titled “Rawhide: The... View full entry

Our research studio prof Jason Payne invited us to the final review of his studio at “crosstown rival” SCI-Arc last week, and as the discussion turned out to be pretty interesting I thought I’d relate some of it here. The studio used animal hides as both site and as driver of... View full entry

I thought it would be good for me to resurrect (not too strong a word at this point!) my archinect schoolblog in order to chronicle my final year in UCLA’s M.Arch I program. The beginning of the school year, fall quarter 2010, was our second topic studio - the studios we get to choose by... View full entry

I know I’ve been a bit of a total schmuck with this blog, but this year was NUTS. I have a bunch of updates I’ve been planning for months, but school just didn’t let up. So before I post any real updates about this year I wanted to put up a quick note about UCLA’s end of... View full entry

I guess I’ve waited long enough to post (five months or something!) so I’ll take a little time (out of studio work, oops!) for a hydra-headed update. The quarter has now been underway for two weeks (and I've 'only' had two all-nighters so far!). I think I might finally have figured out... View full entry

The beginning of the last few weeks before the much-hyped (both within and without Perloff) second annual all-school exhibition called “RUMBLE” were marked quite literally with an actual earthquake last night. My building shook around a bit but apparently there was no serious damage... View full entry

Undergrad exhibition I went to SCI-Arc’s All School Exhibition with studio face-mate Joe last Friday. It’s basically their version of UCLA’s Rumble (also see ACfA’s pre-Rumble description from last year); or maybe Rumble is our version of their All School Exhibition... View full entry

Palm Springs! My friends’ band was playing a show at a fancy hotel in Palm Springs yesterday, and invited me along. I wasn’t TOO far behind in studio, and besides, how could I say no to an all-expenses-paid trip to the most insane town in the world! I knew the hotel we were going to... View full entry

All of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch possessions (including even the gate, and creepy children lawn sculptures) are coming up for auction under the terms of an agreement that postpones imminent foreclosure, as the New York Times reports. My new buttmate in studio Amelia said something... View full entry

It’s been almost a full week since the end of spring break and I’m still mourning its passing. And I know you’re probably sick of hearing me say “I went to some interesting lectures recently”, but I thought I would recap the ones I caught while on break. And yes, I am... View full entry

Today is the start of the Postopolis! “live 5-day blogathon”. In true blogonerd fashion, I’m actually writing this from the event, on the rooftop of the Standard Downtown.The Standard Dowtown My roommate and I were excited to actually be able to walk to something in our... View full entry

Winter quarter has come and gone, and I’m now in New York on spring break. And yes, now I realize that I’m supposed to go to Acapulco or somewhere warm for spring break; but I don’t know anyone to mooch off of in any of those places, ha ha. "Spring" in New York, from the J train... View full entry

I’ve been a bit slow on the posts recently, due I think to a sense of malaise in both life and school. It might be due partly to the fact that I’ve convinced myself that I got salmonella poisoning at the beginning of the quarter and I STILL feel pretty sick, almost at the end of the... View full entry

I was at the MOCA gift store today flipping through a mens magazine called Fantastic Man, which is put out by the creators of the fabulously gay Butt Magazine, when I was amazed to discover UCLA professor Neil Denari full-page staring back at me. It was apparently an ad for his under-construction... View full entry

Ooo, gold! The spring quarter lectures were added to the new poster which was released since I last posted about winter quarter lectures, so I'll post all of them together here to recap: Feb 6 - Christopher Bangle (Director of Group Design for BMW) *CANCELED* Feb 10 - Winy Maas (MVRDV) We just... View full entry

We've entered Los Angeles' rainy "season" today (last year there were like three days total of noticeable rain), and have discovered some more delightful qualities of our studio in Perloff Hall: leaks. I don't know if institutional buildings in Los Angeles are just not waterproofed (is it cheaper... View full entry

My first quarter at UCLA went by pretty fast of course, but it also feels like life before grad school is a distant memory. I guess that's what trauma does to its victims?Studio final reviews The final crit for studio didn't go so well; I vastly under-budgeted my time and presented some woefully... View full entry

Zago at Otis A few weeks ago (before the start of finals hell) I was able to catch a lecture at Otis College of Design given by Andrew Zago. This was a treat as I worked with Zago on a competition and a few as yet unrealized projects for actual clients during my time at my last job before school... View full entry

What happens when we forget how to cut things by hand:The unruly mob waiting to sign up for laser cutter time a few days before final crits In a scene tonight that would have been more funny had I not been in one of the lowest rungs on the caste-based system that governs assigning a day of time... View full entry

My Intro to Building Construction class visited two building sites on Tuesday, to illustrate our unit on steel construction techniques. One was a medium scale mixed use project in West Hollywood, and the other was the Ritz Carlton hotel and residences tower that's one of the biggest parts of the... View full entry

Please permit me a moment of indulgence: I was walking to get some food on campus a few days ago, and something about the warm November air and the way the setting sun hit a lush bed of roses made me realize again that I really do love Los Angeles. Actual moment of discovery It wasn't just framed... View full entry

Denari, Abe, Edler I went to the Jan Edler/realities:united lecture in the department on Monday. He has done and is doing currently some very interesting work, collaborating with firms like Herzog & DeMeuron and BIG. Edler's interest seems to lie in making design more communicative, and... View full entry

Philip Beesley In another lesson in how great it can be to be part of a major research university, I attended a talk last Friday given by University of Waterloo architect and designer Philip Beesley, at the California Nanosystems Institute on campus that was part of the Body Art Disease symposium... View full entry

I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I should put up another potpourri post of everything that's been going on. The vacuum former tutorial In my tech course, where we're modeling and vacuum forming 'Washbasins of the Future' (my trashy catch-phrase, not the course's), we've progressed into... View full entry

New bookGreg Lynn gave what he called a “book talk” - he went through the books he's had published so far, from Animate Form to Intricacy to the new 'non-monograph monograph' Greg Lynn Form. I did not end up buying the new book; at $55 it seemed a bit too much of a strain on my... View full entry

theorist Jasbir Puar spoke in Royce Hall on Wednesday I went to an afternoon lecture in the English department on Wednesday on recommendation from my ex, who is working on a PhD in the Rhetoric Department at Berkeley. It turned out to be a great suggestion as the lecture was incredibly engaging... View full entry

I took a little break from work-work-working today, and walked Downtown from my apartment with my roommates to go to Clifton’s Cafeteria. It’s a redwood forest-themed cafeteria style diner that’s been there since the ‘30s, and is amazing. Never in my wildest dreams did I... View full entry

I went to the Nader Tehrani (Office dA) lecture at USC tonight, but due to the twin LA curses of traffic and parking, I was about 20 minutes late. Who knows what goodies I missed! What I did catch of the lecture was an impressive array of projects with a clear thread of a similar sensibility in... View full entry

On Tuesday the first years went out on a site visit for our Building Construction course. We got a hard hat tour of a huge new ultra luxury condo tower in Century City, called “The Century” by Robert AM Stern with HKS Architects. No, we were not there to get design tips (yikes)... View full entry

I had two crits on Monday (yeah, fun weekend): the first was for my “Basins of Attraction” tech seminar, and the second was for studio. The tech seminar crit was more of a progress report, so it wasn’t as stressful as the run-up to the studio crit, which was the last for our... View full entry