Archinect - Cornell University (Kumar Sebastian Coors Atre)

yes and here, now, for now...

2006-08-17T19:13:21-04:00

and coming down of off three years in Ithaca, and with harder hands and darker eyes and a sharper mind and softer clothing...

i await with great anticipation the all-new
CORNELL ARCHITECTURE IN NEW YORK CITY, INNAUGURAL SESSION FALL 2006

CLUB HEALTH: HEALTH CLUBBING

2005-11-28T18:20:10-05:00

This project reexamines the typology of the Health Club by mixing it with that of the Dance Club on the site of a large-scale development at the intersection of two subway lines in Manhattan. It is a test, a question, a challenge - a proto-typology.

CLUB HEALTH: HEALTH CLUBBING

This project is a reframing of the Health Club typology. It takes the hypothesis of program mixing from the Downtown Athletic Club and formats it for operation in a contemporary setting awash with sexy images.

The Health Club is thus confronted by and united with its cousin, the Dance Club. It moves from Health Club to Club Health. (Naked men wearing boxing gloves and eating oysters are sexy, but sex has changed)

Club Health is the name chosen for the observation that seems to be on the tip of Manhattan's tongue: that there is now room for a consolidated center of image culture.

Such a facility would present - in the same space - all manifestations of the relationship between our desires, ourselves, ...

self-plaigarism: what's occupying my time

2005-09-29T05:14:09-04:00

The space under study is my bedroom, in Highland Apartments, number B31. It's on the third level of a building whose first is half sunk into the ground; that is, it's one and a half storeys up. It has one window, on the northeastern face, to the side of which is the next apartment block, shifted five feet northeast, so that it frames the window's gaze.

The primary function of the space, as a bedroom, is sleeping. The concept is simple, domestic. Very few waking hours are spent in this room; only those preceding and following the night's sleep. These brief hours consist of some occaisonal reading (before bed), and the daily change of clothes in the morning. The visual tasks - besides finding the way to the bed - are thus reading and looking for clean clothes.

The concept of daylighting, as it were, is that daylight is good - enjoyable - and that there should be as much of it as possible. The daylighting system involves one six-foot square window on the northeastern face, a b...

update

2005-09-10T14:11:53-04:00

The previous chair has left, and in her wake arrive a team of visitors from Europe and beyond. Spirits are high, it seems.

Our student body has increased ten percent, with the addition of thirty-something Tulane architecture students, ranging from first year to thesis. One was put in each existing studio - the rest in a vertical studio in CRP.

The weather is nice.

Writing as entry to the rhizome: does existentialism count?

2005-08-11T06:07:39-04:00

:Anyway, you should be typing; I've only been here a week.

:That's not an excuse. Typing is a basic skill. You- we're not going to sit around here and wait for you to figure it out, either.

:Well who's typing now?

:I don't know.

:Then who's dictating? Who's talking?

:You stop talking - and don't get cocky. There are two different kinds of work here; yours is technical. You record and regurgitate.

:So you're pretty sure you're dictating, but if you don't know who's typing, how much control can you have?

:What?

:I mean, unless you yourself are the typist. The written word - like conversation - is a subjective medium. As soon as you take the upper hand, it becomes clear that you're in control of the recording process. There's nobody else here taking minutes, no objective historical document.

:Nonsense! You are a skill. Skills are supposed to manifest the will of the conscious. You are that external observer.

:Keep saying that, if it brings you comfort, but still I ...

Parsons Product Design

2005-07-09T14:36:28-04:00

Here are some snapshots of that work which will lend itself more readily to photographic representation. The diagram is simple: tension (rubber bands) on the inside, compresion (laminated wood) on the outside, the whole assembly creating a layering of membranes with various types of openings for...
the storage of random, everyday crap!

Summer lists: exhausting leisure

2005-07-08T18:46:17-04:00

LEAVE school
HANG OUT with gutterpunks in New Orleans
DISCUSS Deleuze and Guattari's take on Semiotics
RIDE a horse in a cirlce for thirty minutes
MOVE from the LES to Union Square (gross!)
REGISTER for Parsons SIS product design the day classes start
SEE Contempt, by Goddard
GET asked by roommate if Contempt is a porno
LISTEN to Balzac (that is, Rami Sharki)
BUY a new suit
EAT mussels at Jubilee on 51st
VISIT Lever House, Seagram Building, D+S Brasserie
GET confused phone call from mother regarding Credit Card bills
SMOKE a joint in the Dakota (72nd and Park Ave. West)
DRIVE to Cape Cod for wedding
DRIVE to Ithaca for GF's graduation
INCREASE the average
GO to Urban Center bookstore (Mason White = best young architect)
SEE Coco Chanel show at the Met
SEE Smithson's retrospective at the Whitney
EAT pastries at Payard's
RESEARCH the Situationist International
READ Society of the Spectacle
GET shat on by a pigeon
ENJOY the sunset from the top of the Gansevoort
...

Final Reviews Are Nigh

2005-05-04T18:36:55-04:00

...DISTURB THE NURBZ!!!

Milk Day, or, Another Cornell Architecture Tradition Goes Sour

2005-05-02T01:59:06-04:00

Today was Milkday...

Milkday is like any other chugging competition, but... its participants are all Cornell Architects! This may be all the explanation the event needs, but for those who don't quite get it, I'll provide more explicit imagery.

First, it is important to know that all competitors are required to demonstrate the emptiness of their respective half-gallon milk containers by holding them upside-down above their heads. So, milk is all over people's heads. And with all the frantic waving and jerking, milk is all over people's EVERYTHING.

A short list of everything:

Hair, headphones, ears, shop goggles, wristwatches, skin, undergarments, friends, desk lamps, a few copies of SMLXL, the ceiling... and a number of drawings, taped - helplessly trapped - too close to the action. This last item is a first-timer on the list of Milkday collateral damage, and a sad one; students' work is over the line.

Those responsible for stepping over this holy line had thought themselves...

COOLhaas lecture

2005-04-26T21:09:33-04:00

Rem Koolhaas spoke last night. This morning, the Cornell Daily Sun ran an article so awful it inspired me to write my own...

Of course, attendance was plenary. Kennedy hall had reached maximum capacity an hour before the lecture was to start. At T minus forty minutes, it was announced that He requires that the room be empty whilst making preparations, and the room was emptied. Ten minutes later, a wave of silence washed through the sea of anxious architects”¦ with Rem's head floating steady and fierce on its surface. Rem is in the building!

In short, Koolhaas speaks as well as he writes. Inhumanly clever Ã¢â‚¬“ to the point, in fact, that I found myself jotting down offhand comments and casual statements as great pearls of wisdom. What the performance lacked was the overt brand of sarcasm seen in his most recent publication; humor, as it were, was limited to sneaky allusions and a few bawdy graphics (each a non-sequitur par excellance for those not familiar with his, um, st...

cigarrettes and european urbanists...

2005-04-05T21:21:41-04:00

...are our favorite addictions. you can never get enough.

mid-term all-school confusion

2005-04-05T21:03:03-04:00

If you can imagine the expression on the face of one of those lizards sunbathing in the Galapagos, and then imagine a room full of them criticizing student architecture, you probably understand what Cornell's midterm all-school review looked like. The attendance was lizard-like: all with wide eyes glazed over, head slightly cocked, jaw shut tight in concentration, and intensely still. Of course, I can only guess what intellectual machinations the countenance of the lizard hides. For all I know, it could be anywhere between high critical theory to simple stupor. What I do know, however, is that when lizards participate in architectural discussions, they behave themselves. They don't bicker, or beat dead horses with big hubris-sticks”¦ and (because they understand that a mid-term review is necessarily about process) they don't fuss over the artifact. At mid-semester, those blank, blinky lizard eyes see past the wall. We would do well to learn from the lizards”¦

There was some ...

Project Architect Symposium

2005-03-15T02:07:44-05:00

Saturday was the much anticipated project architect symposium. Scheduled...

to start at 9:30am and run through the day, this epic lecture marathon
boasted on its line-up members of such firms as the OMA, H+dM, Diller
Scofidio + Renfro, Morphosis, and Frank Ghery Partners. That, certainly,
was enough to get the students attention. And though the actual
celebrities themselves were not to appear Ã¢â‚¬“ but rather their first mates,
the project architects Ã¢â‚¬“ the event promised to be interesting. We have plenty of opportunities to sit and listen to grand theories, so I found it quite refreshing to be exposed to a part of architecture that remains foreign to our academic bubble: specifically, building.

Particularly interesting was the idea of having such a diverse selection
of firms represented (for this, I must point out the excelent curation and
mediation of the event, that of Mason White). Frank Ghery's office, as
you might imagine, is quite different than the OMA, a...

Common Sense - a productive culture of dissent

2005-02-14T10:01:11-05:00

The air around us has gotten a little warmer, and it seems students have tapped into this boost in energy and gotten a bit fiesty. Tomorrow there is a meeting, called by Mostafavi (new dean) with the students to discuss potential venues for change and... improvement in the school of architecture. We now have a suggestion box, like I.H.O.P, sort of.

A group of particularly fiesty students will see this as a great success, given their recent efforts to educate the general student body about a number of rather unsettling current events regarding student-faculty relations over the last few weeks, months, and years.

Full disclosure on the juicy details available Tuesday...

thus it starts

2005-02-01T11:08:07-05:00

One week into the semester, Rand Hall is brimming with half-empty coffee cups and half-full architecture students; the grey slush outside the door is spotted with cold cigarette butts; everyone is one semester older. Our new dean has painted all the doors Ã¢â‚¬“ doors that were once layered with a rich history of stenciled graffiti Ã¢â‚¬“ a calm, pale, virgin, potential-ridden, tabula raza grey.