Archinect - Harvard GSD Landscape Architecture (Andrew)

Boston: Event: October 7th - 8:30pm Join Us!

2010-10-01T13:23:23-04:00

Mist city

Imagine wandering in Mist city, where buildings are not made out of tectonic, solid, impermeable walls out of dead materials but are misty nests of water particles creating loose spatial envelopes of a varying intensity. Right at the kernels of these atmospheric clusters, resources are allocated and generously offered to cover the voracious needs and desires of this city’s inhabitants and visitors. This cloudscape consisting of meandered haze contours, render the complex city forms, its densities, colorations, patterns and odors.

Everything is embedded in the smokiness and is free for consumption with one unique condition; in order to survive, you need to inhale. What is as an alien operation in the beginning becomes your most favorite addiction; you cannot stop it. The reduced visibility in the brume activates the olfactory nerves, opens the porous of the skin, the nostrils and mouth but beyond all it weakens up memories and makes linkages, webs and networks with past, ...

Spatial Activisim Event at Olafur Eliasson's studio

2010-07-02T09:46:37-04:00

Some notes/quotes from the three day event (two of speakers/discussion and one of a experiments and walk through Berlin). Entire speaker list at bottom. Overall the event was fanfuckingtastic.

Opening comments O.E.
- space is a reality container but also a reality producer
- this conference is about bringing together both those that are different but also having a shared idea or agenda

Makrus Miessen
-participating as a tool for political legitimization. participation as forced entry.
- the political happens as soon as you instigate and move to action
- trying to understand conflict as something productive - by not designing or working toward resolution

Roundtable discussion:
(Robert Merk, parkour/skateborder) - you confine and commercialize it (parkour / skate / etc.) and you no longer just live it and thats what im unhappy about in my own work
(Olafur) - me too. In my own work.

Other..... forceful grasping of the city in their own way and thats political, space...

Architects and Nature

2010-04-01T10:00:34-04:00

This entry is a response to the Return of Nature lecture series here at Harvard, such as the Diller / Picon lecture last night that Lian touched on but also a general reaction to the relationship I observe here (Hi Lian ;):
Just Mostly About Grass

Picon had some interesting things to say about how "nature" may be the new tectonics for architecture. By which he meant it has become the thing architects now like to lie about. Just as Sullivan or Mies lied about the structure to reveal a "higher truth" about tectonics, it is common practice to fictionalize conceptions of nature in today's practice. He went on to say that architects now considered nature to be "just another building material." Last week I wrote an assignment Rosiland Krouss' expanded field and its implications for architecture and landscape architecture and reference OMA"s Parc de la Villette entry which talked about his subject: "In (OMA) treating the two elements (traditional architectural materials and natural sys...

Open House - Applications - Portfolio - Agonizing

2009-11-11T18:40:37-05:00

So we had open house recently which made me think about this time last year when I was working on my portfolio and application materials. The handful of portfolios which made their way to the archinect discussion boards I found quite helpful - both in terms of ideas to emulate and those to avoid. So here is the portfolio I sent in last year, maybe those of you going through the application process will find it helpful in either way.

anti-archinect-portfolio

Note: I deleted all of the text, partly because it was the weakest aspect of the portfolio, partly because I don't want to reference other people/firms/projects in this forum. It loses some continuity and balance in layout, but you get the picture. All of the land arch projects are professional work from my time with EDAW (Shenzhen office), except the highline competition board. The installation work is from my time in an MFA program that I never finished. My letters of reference were a professor from undergrad, a former ...

Mayne says 'fuck' at the GSD

2009-10-02T11:42:13-04:00

Lian already wrote about Thom's lecture, but there were a lot of items I wanted to elaborate on (feel free to chime in Lian).

"My work is loaded with purposeful accidents"
Thom returned to the subject of "Quasi-autogenerative" techinques in his work over and over again. He talked about how he was "interested in developing an architecture that is beyond [his] own capabiliites" - that he wasn't interested in any form or architecture that he could imagine - because if he could imagine it, it wasn't new. He talked about how this was in part a self serving agenda as he aged (he is 65) so that he didn't get caught in a style that became outdated. I think this idea of only being interested in what you can't imagine a very interesting line of thought. I recently re-watched the documentry on the painter Agnes Martin where she talks about 'painting with her back to the world' and waiting with quite mind for inspiration to come to her. Though wildly differnent both Thom and Agnes are af...

Out of context

2009-09-22T16:39:42-04:00

Collection of quotes out of context:

"Anne McGhee is critical to surviving the GSD. And critical of the GSD"

"We have very little theoretical understanding of the sea."

"Why isn't there a genre of painting called 'the weather'?"

"Termites are fascinating!"

"The general public is getting interesting."

"History is about significance which is unequally distributed."

"When in doubt, go back to the greeks."

"Neuro-constructivisim means what we are perceiving is not a received thing, it is assembled with great labor and great inaccuracy."

"The notion of landscape emerges only after we have been completely, urbanly, disassociated from nature."

"Why hasnt't the typology of nature photographs changed over the last 75 years as our understanding of ecology has changed?"

"Im much more interested in fascination."

"The defectors of OMA are in the desert doing social connectivity."

"What value are you creating and for whom?"

"Phenomenology, when it gets talked about in architecture ...

The LineUp

2009-09-19T17:10:07-04:00

I had studio in undergrad. I've worked in high-pressure work environments. I am a licensed landscape architect. None of that has mattered very much. Before arriving at the GSD I knew the reputation of the school being notorious for overworking its students (yes, I know its an across the board characteristic) - but I harbored a small hope/fantasy that I would escape without all nighters and stress. I shared this hope with previous graduates and current students prior to the start of the semester and nearly universally this idea was met with laughter. Our studio met twice (introduction and a field trip) before the university was officially in session. And since this pre-first day I have felt behind. Im not even sure how this is possible. Especially when you consider that we probably have one of the less pressured studios (so far). We are looking at the Boston Harbor and the idea of Botanical Gardens. This title is merely cover for trying to imagine new types of urbanism and ...

The Jump-Off: I had to overconversate.

2009-07-29T11:36:15-04:00

As Christian Slater once said -- Greetings and Salutations.

I have officially reached the "awwfuckit" stage at work which seems like a good reason to start this schoolblog. Last weekend a few of us rented an RV and drove from Baltimore (current home) to Ashville and Raleigh and back home. We made a pilgrimage to FoamHenge. Yes, it was everything I hoped it would be. Which is to say not much. Except for being awesome. We had a phenomenal streak of restaurant / bar luck throughout the trip. Root Bar & The Admiral in Asheville were great. Special shout out to RootBall (which we are going to steal, rebrand and release in Baltimore as ClawBall – pronounced “Crawball”). Um, yeah. So the combination of this trip and the fact that I only have two and a half weeks left of work is making it very hard to stay productive. So Up and Atom.

I will be moving to Boston in three weeks and shortly thereafter starting the MLA II program at the GSD. Im excited to think again. And be all U...