OOOOOOhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! Mid-terms
So I had my mid-term last Friday and I have to admit that I was just happy to have something to pin-up. Let me take you back to earlier in the week when I had nothing done.
Monday very unproductive as far as producing work but very informative. I had some time to start to think about the direction my project was going and re-evaluate it. 8:45pm my mid-term changes and I’m feeling positive about the rest of the week.
Wednesday 2:00pm Studio starts and I was somehow elected by my instructors to finish the site model that others in my studio failed to finish. It was during this time those same students, who did not fulfill their responsibilities, sat in studio and had their desk crits and were given the remainder of the time to work on their Mid-term. That only lasted a few hours before I left to go visit our site, which is Mac Arthur Park in Downtown L.A., take photos of the site. I work on my gathering my information after returning from the site to prepare for my desk crit. As studio ends at 7:00pm our studio instructor informs the last 5 people he has for crits that he may not be able to see us and if he did it would be quickly and at the same time. About an hour and a half later he finally gets to last of us but at this point it’s just to tell what else we need to pin-up in addition to our Mid-term.
It was at this point when I was floored they had just required us to do an additional pin-up the night before our mid-term to showcase the work we have been doing throughout the semester. Like I have time for that. It begins the infamous e charrette of the architecture student, someone call star bucks and let them know mid-terms at sci-arc have started.
Thursday 8:00 pm I finish pinning up 3 photos investigating “publicness”, 3 diagrams all from different sites in L.A. analyzing “publicness”, 1 model photo abstractly representing “publicness”, and 1 photo of the site leading into our mid-term and our thesis for our midterm project.
This is when I started my Mid-tem.
Thursday 8:30 after reviewing my classmates work around studio I start to draw.
12:00 am still drawing
1:00 am rethinking what I just drew
1:30 am I hunt out some junk food and coffee, run down the hall, jump over a couple of chairs, and then realize some people have pinned up already. This reminds me to get back to work and focus.
2:30 am I finish one drawing and move onto the photos I spend about 20min finding the right photos and another 30 min. creating 3 photo montages showing the existing and my proposal in photo from my site visit earlier in the week.
3:20 am(ish) I start my final drawing and work hard and fast, oh yeah. It is at this point I realize I might actually finish.
After a few hours of cad, illustrator, photo-shop, In-design, and 4 to 5 cups of coffee out of a vending machine I finish my drawing.
6:00 am I decide to “fine tune” the drawings and spend about 20-15 min. on each one.
“Oh shit” I have to write my thesis for this project. I thought it would have taken only a few minutes because I had been replaying in my head over and over again. I was wrong it takes about an hour and a half and was more difficult than I thought. The frustration of feeling like I was done and realizing I had to write my thesis was the cause of a very frustrating 1.5 hrs of stress.
7:30 am I place my thesis on my drawing save both of them as p.d.f.s and now I can go print them.
8:00 am the first print comes out and I mount it. Soon following the second print comes out and I mount it, but wait one is smaller than the other. How did that happen? Fortunately it was only about ¼” on each side which is not bad just not perfect.
9:20 am I leave to go home to print the photo montages and shower.
9:40 am I have problems printing and spend the next 30min. adjusting printer setting and changing layouts to work better with my printer in my apartment.
10:20 am finally everything is printed out. Now I shower and maybe eat.
11:00 am a knock on my door its the facilities guy for my building and he says he is there to check the electrical. I had no idea there was a problem because I’m never there. After about an hour of him looking around and resetting the breakers he tells me he’ll be back in 15 to 20 minutes because he had to go down stairs to get some new light bulbs. Apparently I had two light bulbs burnt-out and to travel 9 floors on our elevator it take more than 15 minutes.
11:40 am I leave back to school.
11:50 am I mount the 3 photo montages.
12:30 pm It is done up on the wall and I am actually proud to say it’s my work.
1:00 pm I go through my project to myself and read my thesis a couple of times.
2:00 pm the crits start and we have 4 guess jurors and two of our studio instructor
2:45 my turn
3:00 pm I actually had pulled off a good project and had the second best critique I had ever had. I was able to explain my project well enough through my drawings and words that the jury was able to start talking about what I should do next to develop my proposal and further my ideas of public space and what is “publicness”.
Sorry for not posting any pics , I still have not figured it out.