Archinect - Syracuse University (Laura)

Whew.

2006-12-15T20:04:53-05:00

My review went well. My last final was tonight. My brain is fried and I am oh so tired. Nonetheless, I'm going to be sad not being here.

I wannnttt to be LTL

2006-11-20T01:10:35-05:00

I'm trying to make my final presentation look like LTL'S style and, well, it's a lot harder than I thought it would be. This is extremely frustrating to me, especially because my life would be so much easier if my project was orthagonal. Honestly, that's all I need from life.

It's always funny when site model topography pieces look like guns

2006-11-14T14:01:47-05:00

It's always funny when site model topography pieces look like guns

It's too cold to swim.

2006-11-13T13:06:39-05:00

At the beginning of every design project, I have high hopes for a classy, simple, ordered design that's based on the interactions of orthagonal forms to convey meaning and purpose and spacial quality.

By the end of every project I have something that often looks cool, but is convoluted, my makeshift grid is discombobulated, and I have shapes that no one's ever heard of before. I honestly don't know how I manage to do it every time.

Actually, my last project was beautifully simple like I wanted it to be, but it was because is was under check by my roommate|studio partner at the time. Oh how I miss those days.

And clearly I have nothing else to say other than what I've been doing in studio, because it's that time again where I do nothing but. I can't believe that there are less than three weeks left for me to produce a final studio project. That's so terrifying.

Here's what I have so far: It's an olympic sized community swimming pool in the park by our campus. The locker rooms ar...

Pllleeaassseeeeee

2006-10-16T12:39:48-04:00

This weekend isn't the first time that a studio professor has asked us to do something that turned out to be somewhat impossible. Our professor wanted us to make a film about swimming this weekend, and it turns out that bringing cameras into the pools at the university is strictly forbidden unless we have an email from the director or something absurd.

Anyway, when we went to film it turned out that I knew the lifeguard (she's the only lifeguard I know and she happened to be on duty which was awesome) and after an obscene amount of begging she told us she'd try not to notice us breaking thousands of laws all at once. Others had to sneak their cameras in and a few got kicked out.

We edited until two in the morning and our film is awesome. It's about the strange experience that is swimming exhibited by applying pool-related situations to normative life, resulting in this really abstract effect that kicks ass. I wish I could post it but it seems like a lot of effort.

Yay for good reviews!

2006-10-10T22:44:02-04:00

My studio partner and I had an amazing revieiw yesterday, so I figured I'd post some photos from the models.

Anyway, the program is a meditation room and community center that includes a ktichen and dining area. The site is the hill in the park behind our campus.

Our project is two huge concrete slabs wedged into the side of the hill to create a space in between them for a 30 foot meditation room separated from the community area by a series of exquisitely-modeled screens. (in the overhead shot of the model, the meditation space is on the left and the kitchen is on the right.) The reviewers loved our details and our representation, and their biggest critique was that we should have inclouded the neccesary retaining walls in our drawings, which I guess is true, especially since they loved everything else about it.

Next up is a water facility on the low site of the park, which means we're going swimming as a studio once a week for three weeks. I can see this being even more awkwar...

Some things just aren't okay.

2006-10-09T12:11:51-04:00

Almost all of the second year studios have a review today. Since first year at Syracuse is all about the hand-drawing and the model building, most of us are doing plots for the first time. I've never used a large format plotter before this review, and it's one of two major reviews that my studio is having this semester.

So you can probably figure out how I feel about the plot monitor that was supposed to be there all day yesterday not showing up at all. At all.

He was supposed to work 9am to 1pm, and then again 5pm to 11pm. I noticed he wasn't there for the morning shift, but didn't think much of it because usually this guy doesn't show up for the Sunday morning shift. Annoying, but deal-withable. What I didn't notice was that he was also scheduled to work Sunday night, so when I went to start plotting at 5:20, my life pretty much ended.

My big problem was that my computer knowledge was not broad enough to give me the effect i wanted without montaging the plots onto hand drawing...

First all-nighter of the semester!

2006-10-06T03:58:02-04:00

My studio partner and I have spent the last week and a half making intricate screens for our model. We've been using baswood and an olfa knife and tweezers, and have pretty much managed to develop carpal tunnel. They're awesome though:

Anyway, we were on our last batch the other night, and suddenly my good friend remembers he has one of those choppers where you can set up a template and then chop piece after piece with almost no effort involved. He ran over to us with it all happy that he could help us. When we saw our salvation and thought about how close to the end of the torture we already were, we both burst into tears. We cried for a good ten minutes while everyone gaped at us. It was hilarious in retrospect, though. The chopper proved amazing. And we managed to finish our model, though we didn't manage to sleep. Oh well.

One thing I truly believed before I came to college was that it was impossible to fall asleep while actively doing something. This saddens me, because ther...

I'm all alone

2006-09-30T11:40:24-04:00

What's that? Oh, that's the studio being cleared out except for my entire studio section, who is toiling away at three in the morning. Yeah, that makes me feel really good. It's times like that that you wish your professor would walk in and realize that you're the only one still working.

By the way, as you can see our studios are in a warehouse that was renovated by Richard Gluckman to be used as a school of architecture. This is the second semester we've used the warehouse, and I'm pretty sure no one really knows what they think of it yet.

...and life gets busier..

2006-09-27T11:30:16-04:00

We're designing places to meditate in the park we've been analyzing, and my studio partner (who's also my roommate, and it's a miracle we haven't killed each other yet) and I are using a system of screens to separate program. This leads to tedious hours of cutting the tiniest strips of basswood imaginable and gluing them together with tweezers. All in all, extremely frustrating, but the effect is awesome.

I invented a new way to build site models with strange topography lines (like a steep, irregular hill). You cut out planes according to the topography lines on the site plan, and then you use some kind of interstitial material to float these planes on top of each other the correct distance away to be true to whatever scale you're using. People keep telling me that I did not invent this method, and it much have been around before my time, but I'm looking for some hard evidence on this.

As for my only non-studio care in the world, I got an A on my first Calculus II test. Word.

Zap a gap saves my life every day

2006-09-18T22:58:04-04:00

We had our first review-ish today. My partner and I slaved all weekend on our project. It was supposed to be a spacial/massing manifestation of some video analysis that we did of the park near campus.

Our project started about layers, and somehow ended up an abstract cube that comes apart in pieces that each make a different noise when you shake them. It's cast concrete and basswood and it's sexy.

Okay, it's not actually sexy, but considering that two girls who had never used concrete before managed to cast pieces that actually fit together, AND connected basswood pieces without any glue, it's pretty remarkable. Everyong liked it. It weighs about forty pounds, but all of the pieces come off and apart and go back together like a puzzle. That's impressive, you must admit.

Now we have our first practical project: A meditation and community center on the site that we just finished analyzing. My partner and I have done nothing for it, and will be at Cornell all day tomorrow being Koo...

Orange is the new black

2006-09-14T01:07:12-04:00

Today I decided my studio stool was too ugly for me to get attached to. The reason I need to be attached is that stools are often in short supply and people can be ruthless at times. Anyway, I took orange artist's tape and wrote my name out in Hebrew on the top of the stool.

This works for two reasons. No one knows it says my name, so if they steal it they won't bother ripping off the tape, and I'll be able to get it back. Also, it just looks cool.

While you were sleeping

2006-09-13T12:28:54-04:00

It's always during late nights at studio when there's tons of work to be done that time must be allocated for some deep thinking and discussion among peers. I think the reason for this is misery loves company, and the people who suffer through hard nights with us are people we find being able to serioiusly consider close friends. That and we like to procrastinate, especially when we're tired.

Anyway, the discussion last night (of which I was not a part, but was working near by and tuned in for) was about what thesis is really about, and what things one should be considering when doing one's thesis. It's an interesting topic for discussion, I think, because who really knows? And yet it seems to important....

Nicole and I pulled our latest night in studio so far this year, which left me four hours for sleeping before my 8 am class this morning. I wasn't pleased, but then I got on the bus with a bunch of first years and realized how much more their lives suck.

So far none of the stu...

Quikrete my ass

2006-09-10T22:46:52-04:00

We've been doing a film about Thornden park in studio, and this weekend we started this project where we have to take a clip from our movie and render it into three dimensional space in some abstract way. The biggest catch: We have to form whatever shapes we make out of concrete.

Since it's a studio project and clearly we never have nearly enough time to do anything, we're using Quikrete, not normal concrete. It works probably about the same, and it probably about the same pain in the ass.

The powder got in my nose and made it itch yesterday, which was ultimately not a big deal since I woke up with a cold this morning anyway. My partner and I are getting better at the concrete thing though. We even figured out how to cast a little box of something inside the concrete form so that it rattles when you shake it (our video was about noise so we were instructed to make our volume make noise). All the same, any advice for casting is overly appreciated.

I'm looking forward to feeling b...

Monument to Now

2006-09-06T23:35:07-04:00

Lindy Roy gave a lecture at the Warehouse today, and I was fairly inspired by her work. Actually, I was completely inspired by her as a person. First of all, her design was good.

That's a bar her team desgined to be built in an old meatpacking building that she used to work in and that was scheduled for demolition. Her use of fiber optics in the project was innovative, and she also managed to weave fiber optics, though often subtly, into the other projects she talked about.

It also made me feel good to see a woman in control of her life, designing spectacular things that I really respect, and also giving a fun, humorous, and enjoyable presentation. It often depresses me to see how many more men succeed in architecture - if so few women do well for themselves, how could I possibly think I will? Roy was such a nice breath of fresh air.

Only one's a comment on standardization

2006-09-06T11:47:57-04:00

My dorm consists of a square-ish ring of dorms with a huge, gaping courtyard in the middle. I was walking through the courtyard the other day when it stuck me that the inside of the front of the building (the wall of the courtyard that you see when you face the main entrance)

is somewhat similar to Venturi's Guild House.

I can't decide if that amuses me or depresses me. Maybe they're not the same at all, and I'm just weird.

More importantly, Rem Koolhaas is going to be at Cornell next Tuesday. He's my absolute favorite, and I REALLY hope someone will go with me.

...What grade is this?

2006-09-06T00:25:06-04:00

Second year. Notoriously demanding professor. My roommate sits across from my in studio. And we're making diaramas and videos?

No really, our professor has us doing site analysis of the park near campus (known lovingly as "The Rape Park" because of the multitude of disgusting crimes that are preformed there). We haven't been doing diagrams or relief models or anything that I'm used to/expected (and that the other studios are doing). Instead, she handed out disposable cameras (we weren't allowed to use our digitals) and told us to go shoot photos and make a presentation that analyzed the park using them.

That was fun. Then we did it again. Then we did it again. Now I'm just sort of sick of doing things that pertain to architecture only in that overly abstract way where you know deep down that it's going to pertain to something someday, but you also know you'll just have to wait to find out what the professor has in store.

Anyway, when she told us to make a video, I sort of freak...