I apologize for the long silence. This semester has been like no other I have ever had as I am no longer working on Architecture, per se. Currently, I am finishing up the final coarse work for the Masters of Art and Design Criticism.
What this means is that I am rarely around the school. At this point, I spend more time on campus TAing than attending class. With most of my work being done from home. Something I have never experienced.
So what am I doing with no studio, and all of that "spare time?" Well, I have kept quite busy with competitions, writing, attending events and galleries, as well as sleeping more than in previous years. I must say, my health has drastically improved.
I do have one main class, taught by Judith K. De Jong, entitled Commodity and Delight. In this small (4 students) class, we discuss the spaces of leisure, from parks to malls to stadia.
The main product of the class being a research paper. In an attempt to wrap this paper into my larger project of the influences and use of popular media in architecture (more on that later), I have been looking at the early 1960's television show The Twilight Zone.
Through out many of the episodes, plot lines revolve around the spaces of post war/pre cultural revolution. In each case the use of "normal" spaces is used to explore underlying, and sometime controversial, social and cultural themes.
The After Hours (se:1 ep:34) explores what it means to be normal in a new affluent America through the use of a department store as a protagonist character, and a confused young women in search of her place in the world.
In Stopover in a Quiet Town (se:5 ep:30) , a hip young New York couple wake up to find themselves in a seemingly abandoned small town made of faux architecture and landscape. The episode successfully highlights a growing disparity between traditional living and the fast paced, yet blase, life of young urbanites.
If you have not already, pick up a copy of CLOG:SciFi for more of my writing on the intersection of SciFi television and architecture in my piece Bigger on the Inside.
Cheers
An in-depth look at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois Chicago. The People, The Happenings, The Projects, and the Discussion.
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Is Professor De Jong's 'The New SubUrbanisms' only available as a Kindle e-Book? The description as cataloging/examining the formal/physical ways in which suburbs/cities are looking more and more alike, appeals...
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