I realize that I haven't written on archinect in a while, but really there was nothing too interesting going on write about, especially when I was consciously trying to avoid the internet all together in an attempt to enjoy the last few days left of summer. And now that I'm back in school and starting m.arch (and with so many new things to write about), I suddenly find myself SO busy with no time to sit down! I guess this is just how it works, and so I now really appreciate the effort kept by the other students bloggers.. yay archinect.

Having said that, things here at the Daniels school of architecture in Toronto had a fairly slow start as we began class only earlier this week. Everyone in 1st year is given the same schedule and so we've been keeping busy bonding and scoping out each other's backgrounds all week. It's actually cool to see how diverse everyone's expertise is at this school. I myself have a civil engineering background, but I've heard of everything from mechanical engineering to psychology to geography to english to theatre to art to economy to business to etc. Well, ex-expertise that is because we all left it to be here.

Anyway, the key events from this week was meeting our studio profs and getting our desk space in studio. I have Christos Marcopolos as my studio prof and so me and the other 9 students in his group sit together by the south side of the building. I got the seat by the window, which I am currently really enjoying with endless street watching, but I really hope I don't regret the seat choice when winter comes with the cold winds (the building is super old and kinda crappy). We have our first cube-cut-drawing assignment due next week, and so people are already circulating and procrastinating, but so far so good -it's a good atmosphere.

Also happening this week, I attended the thesis launch reviews for the 'upper' year students. The ones I saw were accompanied by Bridget Shim and Mason White. The level of representation and thorough detailing by the 4th yrs are beyond me, but I could still see the good and the bad of presentation styles and it was interesting to see the wide range in thesis topics and to be listening to it as a complete bystander. As the crits said, the first year m.arch students are like naive ferry boat riders enjoying the view from the deck, and the fourth year m.arch students are like the castaways from the ferry who has to sit on a piece of wood and paddle his/her way across the water (a body of water which which he/she must also define). I think it'd be nice to get off the ferry sometime soon, but ya, looks like tough 3.5 years coming up.