Archinect - University of Illinois Chicago (Catlan)

The End of the Year

2014-05-14T18:24:02-04:00

Hey folks!

Finals are finally over, yay! That means the year end show happened pretty recently- a night here at uic that means we dress a little fancier, drink, congratulate our peers, and look at projects from each studio. But if you didn't go, fear not! I've collected a few that I want to show off for our school.

FOURTH YEAR UNDERGRAD-

Terrence Hector | Prof Stewart Hicks

Ivory Tower(s)- The project is a play on typical library typology, in which the usual program-driven organization is replaced with a tower "skill tree" of knowledge, with more esoteric and important books being stored on the top floors.

FIRST YEAR GRADUATE-

Danny Travis | Prof Paul Preissner

Fundamentals- Architecture may be dissected into a large but finite number of planes, corners, and perforation types, which are then stylized to create the architectural canon. After analyzing these types they are recombined to create a house that, while fundamental, is still interesting.

SECOND YEAR GRADUATE-

Samra Pecanin | P...

Halfway There

2014-03-05T13:41:01-05:00

WHAT YEAR IS IT?

Sorry, just woke up from post midterms hibernation. And speaking of which, it’s midterms week! Which means I am long due another blog post.

Obviously all of your awesome projects are going to be the main focus of this blog, but first I have a couple announcements and back of house stuff to talk about.

First of all, I’d like to congratulate the Virani sisters (Shifa and Nazifa) for BOTH getting published on SuckerPUNCH for their work in Sean Lally’s studio last semester. Congrats, girls! You can see their posts at the following links-

http://www.suckerpunchdaily.com/2014/02/10/a-new-sensorium/#more-35165

http://www.suckerpunchdaily.com/2014/01/28/simultaneous-plan/#more-34839

If you read SuckerPUNCH a lot, you may have also noticed the blurb about Sean’s new book- The Air from Other Planets. Go out and get yourself a copy! We’ve been reading pieces from it in our Tech class and it’s fascinating.

The Department of Urban Speculation is hosting a competition over the cou...

Semester II. Let's do This.

2014-01-08T14:58:21-05:00

Wow is winter break really almost over? All that spare time... Where did it go? I tried building a gingerbread house, but then started to have some flashbacks to building models for studio, so I quit and started crying instead. I TOTALLY WORKED ON MY PORTFOLIO GUYS. Really. I'm being totally honest. Let's go with that.

But really, as a reminder, our Spring portfolios are due the first Friday of class, so make it work, designers.

First off, I hope you all stayed inside and warm this past Monday. Here's hoping that I never have to experience that weather again. But today it's a balmy 13 degrees out. I swear, soon I'll be switching to shorts.

Ok what were we talking about? Architecture. Right on. With classes starting back up Monday, there's so much to do to get ready for studio. Last semester brought us fundamentals, poofs, houses designed inside out, urban farms for the undergrads, Frankenstein monsters, and lots of spirals. I have to say that my favorite class I wa...

The End of Midterms and All That Jazz

2013-10-30T09:43:04-04:00

Hey all,

Here I am, finally able to post my first blog entry on the UIC Archinect blog. Why have I not been able to post an entry yet, you may ask? After all, Catlan, you've had this up and running for a month. Get your stuff together, man!

The answer is simply that I've been horrifically, mind numbingly busy. Apparently grad school does that. Who knew?

Anyways, now that the dust of midterms has started to settle, I figured it was time I get started.

This first semester has featured a lot of really cool stuff and goings on, and I've tried to gather as much as I possibly could about the various studios and their goings-ons:

First of all, toward the beginning of the semester we had a great lecture by a good friend of the school, Greg Lynn, who was instrumental in the digital architecture revolution. He showed a ton of his body of work, but my personal favorite was a house molded out of carbon fiber (furniture included) that reconfigured itself by rotating on a large wheel. What...