Archinect - J

Organized Spaces Exhibition

2005-08-28T23:24:31-04:00

I guess this will be my first involvement in any exhibition in New York City and I will be presenting an animation made with Processing.

It is a far cry from what I initially intended to do which was actually something more interactive with a computer and a webcam but because of the lack of funding I guess a pre-recorded animation will do for now - I hope to materialize it in full scale in future exhibitions.

It's hosted in a small modest gallery in Chinatown and here are the details for anyone interested in attending:

Organized Spaces Exhibition
August 26-September 9, 2005
Artists Reception: Thursday, September 8, 2005, 6-8pm

Guest of Honor: Singapore Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN, Mr. Vanu Gopala Menon
Venue: Asian American Art Center (26 Bowery, 3rd Floor. New York, NY 10013, USA +1.212.233.2154)
Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday 12.30 to 6.30pm, Thursday 12.30 to 7.30pm

"A group exhibition of New York-based Singaporean artists whose work explore planned...

Worst paying jobs

2005-08-19T02:16:50-04:00

Guess which profession turned up on the list of the country's worst paying jobs?

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/15/pf/training_pay/index.htm

Another WTC Disaster?

2005-07-01T10:23:31-04:00

I just saw the new WTC proposal and I'm rather disappointed with the new design which looks like a regular tower, understandably to conform to NYC's safety issues and all that. But to me the more disappointing fact is that the new proposal made the whole competition look redundant. I was hoping to see at least a landmark design or some Rem-like CCTV innovation for the new proposal - it's NYC's WTC after all! Although Libeskind's proposal wasn't my favorite, it was, at least, in some ways an interesting one. I must admit that I'm just saying this on a first impression basis without really scrutinizing the proposal to give it any merit. I am also not really surprised with the final proposal which is so typical of the profession - great designs often falls under economical and political pressures as architects try to sell an invisible commodity.

Final Review

2005-04-26T13:40:00-04:00

Final review went better than expected, at least for my project. I was still fabricating diagrams and trying to refine my thesis claim to the project the night before. My proposal for burying the Los Angeles River with 6 billion cubic feet of sand imported from the desert and using pigeons and cctv to charge the site with public program was somehow readily accepted although fraught with questions and problems.

A large part of the discussion was about my diagram (which I will try and post an updated version real soon - a simplified one was uploaded in an earlier post) and how relevant it was to use simulation and the problems of translating it into architecture... in fact the question of simulation became a discussion tangent to the discussion of my project during the review with critics taking sides on both sides ofthe fence - it's sometimes nice to see how your project can actually split the jury into two or more camps.

I'm so glad studio is over, time to get some rest and finall...

Last Lap

2005-04-02T00:50:10-05:00

And so the final jury date is set on the 25th of April; and a panel of 12 (excluding Ed Keller) has be invited to crit us. The panel members include Karl Chu, Evan Douglas, Brett Steele, Joeb Moore, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Carla Leitao, Bill Macdonald, Alisa Andrasek, Franklin Lee, Chris Perry, Urtzi Grau and Enrique Walker. The jury outnumber us 2 to 1 - We are a group of 6 students. I'm quite glad there are amongst a few who were also part of our mid-term jury - that means that they will have a rough idea of what we are doing and less explaining to do on initial studies and more time to explain the program/project proper.

Project-wise, my diagram has mutated to a somewhat non-recognizable and complex (and slightly convoluted) program dealing with architectural issues that I do not wish to even try and explain on this blog. Instead, I'll just pop some images of my current progress describing program, site, and game.

Salvation Mountain

2005-03-21T00:55:07-05:00

I just wanted to share this picture I took in the deserts of Niland on my studio trip to California.

Hype

2005-03-01T09:39:13-05:00

I attended the "press conference" launch of Volume yesternight at Columbia - a collaborative effort between ARCHIS, AMO and CLAB (Columbia Lab for Architectural Broadcasting.) You can find a description of it at www.archis.org

As usual, the auditorium was packed and the line into the auditorium extended to Fayerweather's stair core (The adjacent connecting building to Avery.) There were no answers at the press conference; only more questions. What is Volume? I have no idea except vague descriptions during the Q&A - that it is to become some sort of experimental effort to go "beyond" architecture, "an amoeba" and a "sushi box" of sorts. The protagonists - Rem Koolhaas (AMO), Ole Bouman (Archis) and Wigley (GSAPP) couldn't (or rather wouldn't in my opinion) describe what Volume is to be except that it will be a commercial venture into (quoted off the web) "Magazine, Object, Space, Event, Debate, Webcast, Consultancy, Talkshow, Travel, Surprises." I left the conference feeling vague a...

Maxwell's Demon and the Public Sphere

2005-02-23T20:18:17-05:00

Click here for the live version.

I guess it's time for a summarized update of my work.

And so, I've been scripting with Processing. - a really robust and lightweight Java program created by Ben Fry and Casey Reas that is adapted for graphics and interaction. It is still in its alpha stage pending its final release soon, according to the website. There is an interesting body of works online.

After weeks of writing code for Processing, I'm currently stuck with a diagram-like interface that is supposed to embed the performance of some of the characters in Tati's Playtime. Playtime was the movie I chose to analyze. One of the reasons for using Processing is the fact that I didn't want to do a traditional mapping of the film or fall into the trend of making a Maya model. Also, the simplicity of the program allows me to handle a large number of 'particles' which would have been a hassle to work with if I had opted for Flash or Maya.

Right now, I'm working toward some sort of a "pred...

Rule 30

2005-02-18T09:58:42-05:00

Physicist Stephen Wolfram spoke at a conference at Pratt's architecture department yesterday and presented his research - starting with cellular automata and the implications of computation on life and everything else, (mostly which can be found in his book A New Kind of Science.) His satements were bold and ambitious, often making references to his favourite "rule 30" of the cellular automata collection. At one point he even postulated that our entire universe could be governed by just one rule and our universe is just a result of computation - and even suggested means to find that rule. He supported with evidence ranging from leaves to snowflakes, particle and fluid systems that his cellular automata could compute. Of course with that claim came the questions of human existence, free will etc... and even on Architecture. To be honest, I enjoyed his work and the speech a lot - he was quite an eloquent speaker despite the very bold statements he was making. To me, he was either a re...

The Gates at Central Park

2005-02-12T23:57:39-05:00

Central Park opened to a sea of Christos' orange gates today and it was greeted with a swarm of eager New Yorkers wanting to see what this massive 21 million dollar project was all about. The event made it to the headlines of CNN on the web. Although I've seen the sketches for this project published somewhere before, I'm still not very familar with the works of Christo and Jeanne Claude. Apart from the crowd; it was nonetheless a pleasant day to spend at Central Park. The orange gates gave some colour to the otherwise dreary february sky and when the breeze came, the fabric dancing over a sea of people was a sight especially when confronted with the massive scale of the installation. What I really wanted to know is how they pulled it off - CNN claimed that the artists paid for the project - 21 million dollars in total for all 7500 gates!

Slow

2005-02-03T22:17:30-05:00

I haven't been very productive this week. I'm not even done with 10% of the books that are lying on my desk right now - the readings are supposed to help my formulate my thesis topic so that I may propose at least 3-4 topics that can be discussed tomorrow. Needless to say I'm nowhere near a coherent topic.

Reading List

2005-01-27T18:15:32-05:00

“In the broadest sense, our studio program will be to design an infrastructure, a game, buildings, or even a city within an inclusive general economy that we describe in this brief. We will look to the way that energy & information are stored in the landscapes of the world- cities, highways, airports, deserts- and attempt to inflect the paths they flow along.”

You can actually tell a lot about your studio critic from the studio brief, especially if you bother to go through the required reading list that is always present in the studio brief. Having been used to the really common hardcore Deleuze and Foucault etc”¦ or related articles that appear in many of my past studio programs and classes; I was pleasantly surprised when I started exploring Ed's list of required readings.

I started off slow with something I was familiar with: George Battaille's “The Accursed Share”, a fairly common architectural reading and it was more of a revision for me in understanding a “General Econom...

Lottery

2005-01-24T01:26:40-05:00

I had to content with my fifth choice (out of sixteen) in studio lottery. I ended up in Ed Keller's studio - not surprisingly. My first four studio choices were amongst the most popular and that meant that if I didn't get my very first choice, I would have to expect anything from my fifth choice onwards. And so as it is, the top choices included superstars and exotic destinations: Steven Holl, Hani Rashid, Lars Spuybroek and Reinhold Martin. One of the reasons why those studios topped my list (and almost the rest of 3rd year M.Arch and AAD) apart from program and celebrity status was also affected by where they were traveling to. Steven Holl's studio will be traveling to Prague and Reinhold's Studio to New Delhi, India. Ultimately, Steven Holl had 60+ students vying for a limited quota of 13 students.

Some of my friends tell me that there are all sorts of strategies in picking studios at the lottery. A classic negative example, as I discovered, is to put a really popular studio in...