Archinect - Harvard GSD Career Discovery Program

One week left.

2005-07-23T20:04:40-04:00

So I've been reading Koolhaas.

How's this?:

The increasing disconnectedness of the increasingly "connected" world is a result of a futile attempt to understand an increasingly complex present that becomes ever more complicated the more connected we become, i.e. the more access we have to information the more we have to process and the more obvious disconnections become.

Furthermore, our perception of the world, our own personal reality is already so heavily influeced by our past experiences and biases that it is misleading to label our senses as objective. We see the world not as it is, nor even, except for those rare moments of hyer-selfawareness, as we are, but as we used to be; in this scheme, progress=future while we=past, and the present=(a persistent and eternal attempt at) personal progress, which leaves nothing left but a sort of conscious faith in doublethink, a post-ideological age that has hollowed out faith and filled its shell with, at least partly, a conscious reve...

Week 3.1

2005-07-11T19:54:32-04:00

It is starting, just a little, to get easier for me to relate architecture to other artistic mediums, and I feel like my ideas of what is a good design and what is not a good design are slowly coming in line with the general ideas of my instructors. For example, I may create a design that I think is sufficient - good even. But it is usually inevitable that I will find one that I think is better - not because of any specific flaw in my design, but simply because the other one is better, more intriguing. I guess, ultimately, what I am saying is that I am beginning to, just barely, develop the beginnings of an educated taste in architecture, an understanding of what is easy and what is hard and what has been done and what speaks to my intuition...

Forget all that though. What I still don't understand is architecture school itself - not the specifics of what happens, but where one should go. Is there a book on this or something? I mean, I know there are rankings of architecture s...

Week 3

2005-07-10T23:03:33-04:00

11 pm on Sunday, big model and plan and sections due tommorrow at 1 pm and they're kicking us out in an hour! Thankfully I have almost 1/4 of the model completely finished...only 3/4 more to go...

The studio only seems to get busier as it gets later...and we've all done this enough now that it just seems normal, we've learned make sure we eat and drink...

Third week went by fast, probably because we had off for the fourth. We got our second of three 2 week projects on tuesday, and we've had a different model due just about everyday...

Our project is to design a residential space for two couples on one plot of land, they showed us several examples, such as MVRDV's two-family home and an intiruging two-color Koolhaas that I can't remember, among others...

Let me just say that I LOVE Gund hall...the studio here is an incredible space, its deisgn injects a great amoung of energy (and fun) into doing work...

Pictures soon!

Disclaimer

2005-07-06T13:02:10-04:00

Well, I just realized that I should probably explain the purpose of this program.

Harvard Career Discovery is a six week program for people with no design experience, intended to introduce them to the principles of design school and allow them to "discover" if a career/school in architecture, urban planning, or landscape architecture is right for them.

Anyway, so far I've enjoyed the program and the design process in general - that first post was simply my attempt at trying to voice the difficulties I was having coming from an academic background in history and adapting to the entirely alien process (to me) of learning architecture. Right! Ok, time for class...

Week 2 (catching up on the first two weeks)

2005-07-05T22:36:22-04:00

Friday (the end of week 2) was our first real, big critique. Long day, but interesting...its funny that the only way most of us students (definitely including me) know how to talk about what we're doing is in some hackneyed dialogue of form/function BS, a deceptively simple interaction that none of us really understand...which makes all of our explanation and justification for our projects seem (justifiably?) like empty pretension. My project got (pretty fairly!) hacked apart...oh well, I didn't think it was that good either...:(

There was one guy who was openly and knowingly trying to bullshit the instructors and get away with it...didn't work. As Ali (my instructor) said, “Its gone limp already...”...ha!

Our project was to design a new...design?...for an overpass on Harvard Yard. I need pictures. Hopefully I'll get that worked out soon.

Random thoughts on the first two weeks:

1. The TIME-line of this program is crazy. 3 days to develop a concept and create a finished pr...