holy crap! I saw ween in Burlington, Vermont sunday night and it was amazing... I was in the front row, against the barricades, about four feet from Deaner! I probably could have snagged his beer if I had wanted to. it was seriously amazing. I also did a 20x20" painting of a boognish for over the couch in our apartment:


Boognish: the God/Demon that supposedly appeared to Dean and Gene Ween, commanding them to form a rock band.

then I got back to Boston just in time for studio monday afternoon, where we had our first review for the design project this semester. The project is to design a museum of sustainable construction technology on the site of Edwards/Rodgers dorms at Wentworth, and obviously employing sustainable techniques. I really like it when they have us do projects using sustainability, because I feel like particularly at this point in our education, it's critical to emphasize the importance of sustainable architecture. Beyond that the project is going well.

Terry Moor seemed to think there was a lot of potential in each of the three schemes I developed, but the one I especially like he doesn't seem to think will be challenging enough to pursue. To a certain extenet I agree, but what I like about that scheme is the simplicity of it. I like that it is clean and ordered and uncluttered. I'm not sure yet exactly. The other one I really like is sunk into the ground, which has a lot of positive aspects from a sustainability standpoint and is made up of two different triangles on grids on the surface and beneath the surface, the grids meet making a nice irregular shape, which I think fits with the idea of some cavern-like space underground. The last one is raised above the ground with a shaded garden below and a central serivce and circulation mass, but I'm not sure how I feel about that one just yet.

I used structural grids and concrete in all three schemes, which I'm a little unhappy about. I feel like I should be branching out a bit more, but god, I love concrete and the grids were just an easy way for organizing the buildings. They certainly gave them some order, especially the first one that uses only right and 45 degree angles, but I like how they created a very irregular pattern in the second scheme, which was a bit unexpected when I first started using the grids. I love concrete, though, for the raw strength it conveys, its sculptural quality and the contrast it can create between solid and void. Still, I'm not set on definitely using it any of the schemes. I've been scanning books for LK (Lora Kim) as my work/study job and one of the books was about Shigeru Ban, which really made me think more about some very different and innovative materials and structural systems. I'd like to look into those some more.

So basically I feel like I'm stuck a bit at the moment. I can't decide which scheme to pursue and when I do choose one, I'm not sure if I should ditch the grid and the concrete and try something new. I want to try something new so I can learn more, but I'm also afraid of ending up with something I'll be less happy with in the end. sort of like how I always order the same thing at the Red Arrow rather than trying something new. I'm sure I'll figure it out, but for now it's a bit of a rut.

I'm also in a rut trying to play the bootleg of the ween concert. It's in .flac files, which apparently can only be played on the mac in Mac Amp Lite X, which I've downloaded, but now they won't open. man! if anyone knows anything about this stuff, let me know, please.

other than that things are good this semester. I've been busy as shit, but nothing more than I expected. The apartment is amazing too. It's so much bigger, brighter and better than last year and
without douche bag roommates!

here are some horrible pictures of the schematic models for each of the schemes in the larger site model (I'll post much better ones when I take some new pictures and scan in some sketches):


Scheme 1


Scheme 2


Scheme 3