Ok...

I haven't posted in a while again. Everything's been so incredibly busy. It seems that we hit this stride which one could liken to the La Guardia/Newark/Kennedy holding pattern during Thanksgiving. Things just kept coming and I wasn't getting much sleep at all much less write. But I think I've wrangled everything back down to a manageable level. At first I thought I'd have to adapt to this newfound level of sleep (avg. 4 hours a night). But I think I can do better.

For a sudden moment there last week I seriously questioned my ability to be able to handle everything. It seems like a silly thing to me now, but I was horribly stressed and felt like I was coming apart at the seams. I had the thought, "Maybe I'll be sleeping 4 hours a night until this quarter ends". But I got my head back on straight last weekend. Got some perspective on things. Got some sleep. Now I'm back in business.

I haven't even talked about the second part of the previous project yet. But I'll have to get back to that retroactively. I might find a moment tomorrow. As of this moment, I am in the midst of writing a paper. Actually it's a take home midterm but I call it a paper. It's not a horrible beast and I'm glad I had the experience in undergrad to learn to write somewhat decently (at least I think). It's not a terribly difficult assignment, but I'm definitely brushing off some cobwebs when it comes to writing nuanced ideas with pleasant sounding language, all the while making sure my verb tense agrees throughout the writing.

Anyhow. Quick/long summary:

1) Finished second part of the eye chart project. It seemed a bit daunting and confusing at first to tease out the nuances of an assignment that I was somewhat befuddled by in the beginning. In the end, we had some OK drawings, but we did a damned good job (if I do say so myself) on the model. Well. Ok. The model probably would've looked nicer at twice the scale (or at least exaggerating the scale in one dimension). But it already took 3+ hours of laser cutting coming to a total of over 1100 pieces. I spent 12 continuous hours assembling it from 2am to 2pm. The fumes didn't help how cracked out I was at the presentation. But the model looked nice.

2) New assignment went a bit quickly and I didn't feel like we had enough time to really get into the nitty gritty. Had some good feedback and the crit even went a little better than I thought. I was bracing myself for tough questions but no one got roasted. (Note: I might've gotten roasted and just not realized it from lack of sleep. I did catch myself repeating what I said about 4 times in a row and promptly cut myself off.)

3) New project looks to be really fun. Very excited for it. Yup. That's right. Our first building. Architecture. I'm totally stoked as it seems like we've had all these trials and tribulations and have finally been deemed worthy to lay our hands on something. Essentially it's an exercise where our structure is essentially a given, (Domino house based) and we have to parametrically find a solution for a gallery space on a generic lot. I've got some ideas. We'll see how it goes. More details to come.

4) Apparently everyone at school (including professors) knows about this blog and reads it. So this is a big shout out to my most popular fans. (Rumor has it I got a mention from a certain prof. during a studio's crit).

5) Jesse Reiser of Reiser and Umemoto came to speak on Monday. He opened to a packed house at Decafe, which several of the delirious, sleep-deprived first-years attended. He did a simple presentation and showed 3 projects, two in Dubai, and one in Taiwan. I myself was really excited as I was hoping it could be inspiration for our current studio project. However, I have to say though the projects were interesting, it came across as somewhat dull. It was really sort of "We did this, and then we did this". Which was disappointing, to say the least, as I feel like he's among the vanguard of in prevailing theory. Maybe he wanted me to go and buy his new book instead of giving it away for free.

*WHEW*
I leave you with this little rendering I did for my computers class. I'm really not a big fan of photoreal renderings, but I decided to give it a whirl just for fun. I think the lighting looks great but the textures need a little more work. Four hour render in Maxwell, modeled in Rhino. That stucco and the concrete floor are both several orders of magnitude too big. Ooooops. Oh well. And the yellow partition looks atrocious. I need to play around with the projectors a bit more. The Rhino plugin doesn't do projectors.

Oh, the Eames plywood lounge chair is in the corner. Tasty.