Renovation work at the Architecture Building is underway. Temporary protection is in place in the studios facing onto the atrium and demolition of the walls will begin in the next few days. New glass walls will be installed to stitch together the studios and atrium.

Let me start by being clear about one thing: I love the architecture building here at UF. I love that it looks strange from the street, and there are no clear divisions between the inside and outside. I love how it looks like the bastard child of Exeter, La Tourette and Beauborg. I love that the second floor is the first floor, and the first floor can't be found immediately by people who enter the building for the first time. I love that all the studios are organized around a big atrium and really does encourage interaction among everyone who uses the building daily. I love how the atrium is used for all sorts of architectural experiments, exhibitions and reviews. I love how light falls into the space during the day and how it offers up a lot of pockets to hangout in. I love all the views out and in, and especially how the graduate studios are up high and have big windows to look out onto the rest of campus.

Now with that said, it leaks like a sieve in many of the undergraduate studios, and doesn't shed water properly along many of the corridors. Also, most of the mechanisms to open the windows are broken. In addition to the face lift, are these problems going to be fixed? And now that each of those lower studios's primary pin-wall will now be glass, will the concrete walls flanking it on the inside be outfitted with some paneling to allow pinning-up to be displaced to them? Or should we expect tape to become the main mode of attachment.

Just wondering out loud...