Archinect - RISD (Lucas & Hannah)

INSIDE JOBS

2010-05-02T16:01:57-04:00

Our most recent lecture in our Lecture Series here at RISD was my professors Maria Guest and Mohamed Sharif of Sharif/Guest Studios (www.sharifgueststudio.com) which is located in Cambridge, MA and Santa Monica, CA. The lecture and exhibit focused on their competition entry for the redesign of the architecture building's lecture hall and their winning design for the redesign of our old library building.

It is really interesting to see your professors work. We are rarely exposed to that side of them. Now when they comment on design choices in critiques things are much more comprehensive and I know what they are talking about now.

The images are of their exhibit located in the architecture building's gallery space displaying two models and several drawings.

FES, MOROCCO

2010-05-01T15:59:04-04:00

Lucas and I have been busy, busy with midterms, but I finally got the chance to post some photos from my studio trip to Morocco.

After canceled and then delayed flights from Paris and a long, uncomfortable train ride from Casablanca to Fes, we finally arrived in the medina of Fes - one of the largest existing Islamic walled, medieval cities in the world. The medina is a maze of narrow alleys crammed with the famous leather tannery, bazaars, workshops and mosques. We were constantly stepping out of the way of donkeys and mules, the main form of transportation.

We spent most of our time surveying the existing buildings, river and public space of our site, Place Lalla Ydouna, or to the locals, Bin Lamdoune, the name of the bridge. We took all of this information back to the states with us and have been working on our designs for the competition since then.

view from the roof of the tannery

roofs of Karaouine Mosque/University

Oued Fes - river that runs through our site

Kilo ...

LOS ANGELES SITE VISIT

2010-03-25T15:45:21-04:00

My studio, of thirteen students, just got back from Los Angeles last week. We had a very productive trip there with a site visit and a tour of Los Angeles. Our site is located in Santa Monica, in a very banal section of Santa Monica Boulevard. Now our job is to create a gem for the environment.

We also had visits to the offices of Morphosis and Koning Eizenberg, where our professors, Maria Guest and Mohammed Sharif, used to work before they started their own firm. We even had a crit in one of the conference rooms of Koning Eizenberg.

We are working with hand drawings and with modeling. Our materials are limited to piano wire, string, pins, needles and any other material that is reminiscent of our line drawings that we spent the first three weeks working on.

Highlights of the trip included a visit to a Lautner House, where the owner had a private Turrell that we got to experience at sunset, Santa Monica Beach, The Getty, LACMA, a visit to the set of Mad Men, driving...

STUDIO SPACE

2010-03-22T02:06:24-04:00

Three weeks into studio...

My studio - "Within Walls" is taught by Peter Tagiuri and Stephan Rutz. I have been working on a team redesigning a foundouk which is essentially a courtyard building for craftsmen to live, work and sell their products. Our proposal is to transform the building into a space for an artists residency program. Next week we are heading to Morocco during spring break to survey and travel around the Medina as well as present our proposals.

This is our studio's 1:10 scale model of the foundouk. We each had a section of the building to construct with no restrictions on materials - hence the hodgepodge. We have slowly built it up as we learn more about the building.

Lucas just got back from a site visit in LA with professors, Maria Guest and Mohammed Sharif. The previous weeks were spent exploring space making through line drawings and now he has moved onto transforming those drawings into models using only piano wire.

Our studios are located in the Bayard ...

WELCOME

2010-03-03T18:31:16-05:00

We just got back from Wintersession and our semester has begun. At RISD, we have a unique schedule. In between semesters, during the months of January and February we have six weeks to take classes outside of our major or do study abroad. Hannah was in San Miguel, Mexico for a design/build studio. They began construction on an adobe community center. I was in Paris studying photography and print media in the digital age.

Hannah mixing mortar

Lucas at the Louvre

We just had the lottery to select our advanced studios. This is the first semester where we were able to pick which design studio we wanted to participate in. This studio is the main focus of the semester, with most time being devoted to this class.

Choices were as follows:

1. WRITING THE CITY: ISTANBUL: MAPS, STORIES & BUILDINGS

The organization of this course will operate on a model of a treasure hunt, first with maps, studying, then making, then through stories and their relationships with maps. Finally, ...