Archinect - University of Pennsylvania (Jacob)

Thanks and Congratulations

2010-05-22T18:43:30-04:00

After a wild 6 years and a summer, it's time to embark...

In the liner notes of my life; infinite thanks go out to my family for their continued support of all of my decision and my colleagues and classmates throughout the years - in all actuality, it's borrowed trace from your desk upon which my projects take shape.

Doubly infinite thanks to my professors throughout the years and schools

in roughly chronological order:

Kathryn Strand
Jason Turnidge
Diane Davis
Elwin Robison
Adil Sharag Eldin
Nawari Nawari
Justin Hilton
Aaron Lobas
Charles Graves
Marcello Fantoni
Rocky Ruggerio
Andrea Ponsi
Giovanna Potesta
Charles Cecil
Greg Stroh
Steve Rugare
Sean Burkholder
Maurizio Sabini
Eric Pempas
Pat Hyland
Christopher Diehl
Roland Snooks
Cecil Balmond
Ali Rahim
Manuel Delanda
Alexandra Schmidt-Ulrich
Katrin Mueller-Russo
Matthias Hollwich
Anette Fiero
Ferda Kolatan
Jeremy Edmiston

Thanks to Archinect for hosting such a helpful site and letting me blog...

And it happened

2010-05-08T13:50:56-04:00

Photos to follow...

but for now, the video

PNG Pavilion Exhibition

2010-05-06T01:40:59-04:00

Somewhat of a commercial...

As the semester draws to a close, and you (faithful readers?) have little idea what I've been doing, I'll fill you in.

Our studio with Jeremy Edmiston has been working on a 1/2 -full scale pavilion which explores digital design and construction techniques using the program of a school in Papua New Guinea as a catalyst for design ideas. What began as 6 research projects is now one pavilion, made from 90 sheets of milled plywood, thousands of custom angled joints, and a ridiculous amount of person-hours over the last two weeks.

Tomorrow we begin moving it into the Gallery for our reception / opening on Friday. It's being built beside Meyerson in the 'yard' (yea, it's not just a sidewalk...look again); and will be moved and assembled overnight in the gallery.

think giant renaissance wood models. a means to test a model-based building technique at a very real and tangible scale and out of real and tangible material (but a bit more manageable than ac...

building things 2 (now with video)

2010-03-02T10:10:13-05:00

Two long nights.

Night 1: transcribing full sized templates onto plywood

Night 2: putting it all together (in two scales)

building things

2010-02-28T19:46:40-05:00

Whoa an update and this time it's actually about work!

Well it is.

I'm in a research studio with Jeremy Edmiston of SystemArchitects.

It's pretty awesome; I'm super glad I'm here.

The quick update though is that essentially we're scheming to build an outdoor room at the end of the semester on the patio between Meyerson and Furness; so as midterm arrives, we're building 1:1 scale building components.

I'm working on a team looking at expanding screen systems, another team is looking at 'woven' plywood wall construction. It's all starting to come together and automation is the key!

What is not automated though is the 6 hours we spent in the lab today making gusset plates.

Fabrication-studios can be the best and worst. You get really satisfying models, but the bad ideas still take days and dollars to produce.

Some eye candy!

The parts to our screen (not including hardware). Enough lasercut luaun to keep me smelling like a campfire for a day.

This is where the magic h...

if NAAB asks, I like it here.

2010-02-08T13:05:12-05:00

This week, the NAAB team is here for Accreditation.

While often, I end up working in a jaded existence; questioning the relevance (both academically, and realistically) of some of the pedagogy here, the pomp and circumstance of the NAAB visit is a really nice moment to actually reflect on what goes on here and why I’m really really glad to be here

(At this point, I should also disclaim, that as a post professional student, the NAAB visit technically means nothing to me; apart from an extreme effect on the ‘mood’ of the institution).

The visit is still underway – so it’s shrouded in schedule and secrecy (things like “the team room,” closed galleries of student work, meals with various administration), but when it opens, I’m very excited to see the work that Penn’s showing to the powers that be (which we will get to see afterward).

What is open right now is the faculty gallery. Walking through it the other day was a really humbling experience. It’s easy to get lost in the imm...

Fast / Slow

2009-09-23T12:25:31-04:00

Midway through the 3rd week of Gradschool2.0 and things seem both fast and slow.

On one hand, I'm surprised that things are moving by quickly.
My electives are going full speed ahead and they are pretty great thus far. Studio is a bit slow...I'm waiting for it to kick into high gear; we seem to be treading water.

Regarding my classes thus far:
I was apprehensive upon reading the course descriptions that all of my classes would lean heavily towards either technique or theory and disregard the other, but they've generally been pretty balanced. There's seems to be a healthy level of skepticism too for what we're doing; every time parametric design is mentioned there is the disclaimer to follow that we are still designers, and although we may let the computer make some decisions, at the end of the day, we go to school because we want to be designers (not programmers, scripting geniuses, renderers, or psuedoscientists) - parametrics (colloquially used...swap it for "scripting" "al...

Lecture #1 Tonight

2009-09-21T12:54:53-04:00

STEPHEN KIERAN
Mon. 21 September, 6:00pm - 7:00pm
Meyerson Hall Room B1

Lecture by Stephen Kieran, FAIA, of KieranTimberlake.

"Dwelling"

Hosted by the Department of Architecture

Should be cool

the day before...(or: the real old / new blog)

2009-09-08T23:07:49-04:00

This will likely mark the only time that I'll be able to blog the night before a project is due while having completed it.

Tomorrow...

Studio begins.

But now for a numbered list of thoughts:

1. It's odd to see my work in the context of my classmates - I'm so used to knowing familiar styles / fonts / colors / design tricks of my Kent-mates, that in a new setting, I'm surprised at everybody and everything (and wonder if they feel the same way). Are people stretching out of their comfort zone? Relying on old tricks?

I'm probably doing a bit of both

2. Wholly crap, free food. Two times today. Once last week. ...insert your favorite "tuition joke."

3. Coming from Kent, I'm significantly less picky than my classmates on the quality of plotter output. This is both good and bad. I could probably be a bit more critical of colors and such, but maybe that's a wonderful stress to not have discovered yet.

...From my experience at Kent, it was a minor miracle every time a p...

In a week...(the schedule blog)

2009-09-01T20:14:06-04:00

I'll be in these:

Ali Rahim's Contemporary Processes in Architecture: Experimental Design & Its Effects

The mastery of techniques, whether in design, production or both, does not necessarily yield great architecture. As we all know, the most advanced techniques can still yield average designs. Architects are becoming incressingly adept producing complexity & integrating digital design and fabrication techniquesinto their design process - yet there are few truly elegant projects. Only certain projects that are sophisticated at the level of technique achieve elegance. This seminar explores some of the instances in which designers are able to move beyond technique, by commanding them to such a degree so as to achieve elegant aesthetics within the formal development of projects.

Cecil Balmond's Form and Algorithm

This course explores a new definition, based on the proposition that architecture consists as much in the design of tools as in their department. This conceptions of design ste...

new blog | old blog

2009-08-31T16:19:31-04:00

And we're off.

I'd previously blogged on archinect during grad school 1.0 at Kent State's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborativehere

In typical blog fashion, I'm going to immediately apologize for not posting enough and resolve to do better...now that that's out of the way.

I'm at UPenn in their post-professional MArchII program. It's a 1 year program for students with a professional degree. There are about 40 students in the program.

Since it's a post-professional program and many students are coming from odd backgrounds (different schools, work, countries,) we start the year off with a week long "intensive digital methods" class to bring the class to a generally equal level. This class is/was taught by Justin Diles. I expected this to be a general technique class regarding rhinoceros, grasshopper, maya, and generally hit all of the typical areas of parametricism. On the contrary, it was pretty much a week long Maya tutorial, focusing on the parametric capabilities of the pr...