So I'm a horrible blogger.

Haven't been posting as much as I want to...but in the past few months if I had some extra time I'd head straight to the bed and catch up on sleep, if you know what I mean. Plus nothing exciting was really happening.

The Penn State Arboretum (as mentioned in the post before...3 months ago.) project had been dragging on for TOO LONG...and I'm getting a little sick of it. Sometimes I wish that I can switch back to 2nd year when you get two projects to work on in one semester, instead of working on a signle one this year. But, since the theme this year is 'the building throughoutly considered', having a semester to work on it is in fact appropriate.

I studied the water flow patterns on the site and decided that the design of the building is to follow how the water flows. At the first few presentations the critics kept asking me, 'are you sure about if that's how's the water is going to flow on the site?'. Eventually I had to do a contour model, pour water over it and take pictures to show how water is going to flow. (Of course from higher elevations to lower elevations...isn't it quite self explanatory?)

And then, half way through the semester my professor told me that at that point of the semester, 'You're not passing for this class'. She was, apparently, very nice about it, trying hard not to make me feel bad. But still I couldn't help but to feel like the A bomb has landed. She told me that the stuff that I presented was graphic design, sculpture...anything but just not architecture. I asked myself, 'was I not creating architecture?' But I had to step up, obviously.

Right now my project is in a much clearer place now (wish I have time to post some plans in the future). In brief, the building took shape of two streams converging together, the program took place in each of these two 'streams'. And shortly after they converge, the building is transformed into the conservatory, which stretches towards the lake (part of the arboretum program). However, I still have lots of structural details to work out. How does a concrete building connect to a large conservatory? Can water flow on top of a glass conservatory (kind of like Hyra Pier by Asymptote)? How to detail it? Anyone knows about precedents that I can look at? Please Please Please let me know if you can help. until next time.