Archinect - University of Pennsylvania (Phillip)

Finally...

2009-02-20T11:01:11-05:00

OK, so I’ve been slacking on the blogging so far this semester. I actually just got some great news this week. My wife, who has been searching for a job since before we moved to Philly in August, finally got a job this week. So we no longer have to scrimp by on my stipend, our savings, and credit cards. This should also help me get into a better routine for my research since I’ll get up with her at 6am everyday.

Anyways, on to my classes for the semester:

ARCH 812 - Architectural Theory: Premises on the City (David Leatherbarrow):
The basic question to be addressed in this course concerns the role that architecture plays in the accommodation, articulation, and renewal of public culture. Were there no threats to public culture in our time, a historical and philosophical study such as this would be unnecessary, but in a time when market economy means market culture and private alternatives to shared culture keep us off the streets and apart from one another, the importance an...

Advance Registration for Spring Classes

2008-11-12T13:40:09-05:00

The advance registration period here at Penn closes on Sunday, so I thought that I'd share with you the classes that I'm hoping to take in the Spring. This "advance registration" process is new to me so here's a quick blurb from the explanatory email:

"All continuing PennDesign students are required to request courses during the advance registration period.

During this two week period you will be entering requests for the courses you would like to enroll. Enter your course preferences in priority order anytime during the advanced registration period. This is not a first come first served process, so there is no advantage to registering early and no guarantee that students will be enrolled in all their requested courses.

At the end of advance registration period, the system will then schedule all students requests based on availability. Depending on course demand, the system may not be able to enroll you in all the courses you requested. On Thursday, November 27, you may view your ...

[LIVE BLOG] Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil

2008-11-07T08:19:58-05:00

Preface: I just want to warn potential readers that this is very long. It is also not really a narrative. It is essentially my notes from the conference. I hope that you can make some sense of it. I might eventually get around to translating it into a narrative of the day. Anyways, it was a very interesting day and I hope that you may get some information out of it.

One more thing, if you want to follow the day from beginning to end, then start at the bottom and work your way up.

10:00pm: Home after a long day. After this evening's lecture there was the official opening of the accompanying exhibition. Here's a few pictures.

The lights for the exhibition are being powered by a PV cell in Meyerson Plaza

Neal Pierce Lecture: "The Century of the City: No Time to Lose"

The new book of the same name as the lecture emerged out of a month long series of conferences on the city, The Rockefeller Center Global Urban Summit. How will we accommodate the next 100 million Americans ...

A conference, a paper and a research proposal

2008-11-05T14:14:36-05:00

Things have been busy since my last post.

On October 16th, I flew down to Miami for the AIA Florida Emerging Professional’s Conference. I actually helped organize this conference for the past two years. I’m still good friends with this year’s organizers and they invited me down to sit on a panel discussion. It was sorta the last gasp of my professional life before returning to school since I was not talking about any of my research but rather about marketing yourself and building a resume/CV for the career that you want. Originally I was supposed to be on a panel with Meg Brown, the national director of human resources for Perkins + Will. Unfortunately, Meg had to cancel at the last minute, so a good friend, Andy Hayes of Hayes Cumming Architects filled in. Andy and I have a pretty interesting history in that we first met through the AIA, then I was his client when I worked for the City of St. Petersburg, and then I worked for him as an independent contractor for about 9 mont...

Pictures from Home Delivery at MoMA

2008-10-11T23:22:16-04:00

This week's assignment for Witold's writing class was to write a review of an architecture exhibit, so I took Friday off to take a day trip up to New York to see the current show at the Museum of Modern Art. I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures here. If you want to read my somewhat critical review of the exhibit, you can read it here.

The sixth floor lobby.

Marble Fairbanks' wall prototype.

Ali Rahim & Hina Jamelle's wall prototype.

The sign outside.

Burst*008

The ribs of Burst*008 are inscribed with identifying marks.

A 2x4 crutch was added to the main staircase to stabilize it.

The other houses as seen from Burst*008's front porch.

The Micro Compact Home

The System3 House

The rear corner of the Instant House was done in plexi to reveal the construction system.

Instant House front stair.

The front porch of the Instant House

The Cellophane House

Floor detail of the Cellophane House.

Me, hanging out in Bryant Park after a long day at the museum.

Also, as part...

Rockin’ in a Furness with Black Kids & Virgins

2008-10-03T11:12:49-04:00

I can’t seem to escape Frank Furness these days. He, of course, designed the Fisher Fine Arts Library where I spend a good deal of my time, but he also designed the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia where I saw Black Kids, The Virgins, and The Magic Wands on Monday night. The show was pretty good, but it was really cool to see an indie rock show in the basement “rec room” of an active church in a building that is a national historic landmark. My only question, why do hipsters look like epileptics when they dance?

Black Kids

The Virgins

The Magic Wands

On Tuesday, we had our first writing assignment due in Witold Rybcynski’s Writing on Architecture class. It was a 500 word essay on “Why does architecture matter?” It was a bit nerve-racking for several reasons. First, we were supposed to be using a very different style of writing than I’m used to. I’m typically a very academic writer. I am a PhD student after all. This essay was supposed to be written for the laype...

PennDesign Lecture Series & Two Urban Design Conferences

2008-09-27T16:14:09-04:00

Alright, so I'm finally getting around to posting this semester's lecture series. I haven't been able to find a jpg of the poster, so I'll have to type it all in.

KATHRYN GUSTAFSON
Landscape Design in a Changing Environment
Thursday, October 2
6:00 pm
B1 Meyerson Hall

BARRY BERGDOLL
The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, MoMA
Delivered Home
Thursday, October 2
6:30 pm
Logan Hall

MARILYN TAYLOR & JERRY SWEENEY
City Building in the 21st Century
Monday, October 13
6:00 pm
Meyerson Hall, B1

JOAO NUNES
New Landscapes
Thursday, October 16
6:00 pm
B3 Meyerson Hall

MARK ALAN HUGHES & SANDY WIGGINS
Sustainable Philadelphia: The Road Ahead
Thursday, October 30
6:00 pm
Meyerson Hall, B1

JEANNE GANG
Recent Work
Thursday, November 13
6:30 pm
B-1 Meyerson Hall

CHARLES WALDHEIM
Planning, Ecology, and the Emergence of Landscapes
Monday, November 17
6:00 pm
B3 Meyerson Hall

There are actually a few more lectures that I haven't listed...

via:Occupation Book Launch(es)

2008-09-18T00:18:56-04:00

via Occupation, 187-page full-color volume, investigates the macro- and micro-scales that inform how we read, claim, and intervene in our evolving territories. These tactics—not strategies—are covert, clandestine, make shift, contingent, and on the fly, small subterfuges, ruses, and appropriations. They are the multitude of competing experiments, ideas, innovations, inventions, developments and proposals that make up a map of the evolving and emerging design disciplines at any given moment. These practices are occupations of their disciplines, but ones fully aware of their fragile hold.

via is funded by PennDesign and its books are edited, designed, and marketed by the graduate students at PennDesign. via Occupation will be available at Amazon.com and design-oriented bookstores early September. Forthcoming: via Dirt, (2009).

Thursday, September 18
7:00pm
Upper Gallery, Meyerson Hall

Please join us the next night in New York for a second launch at the Center for Architecture Fo...

Week 2: Reading, Lots of Reading

2008-09-13T13:24:29-04:00

My first full week at school is now wrapping up. If you remember, I had one class that began last Thursday, with my other three classes kicking off this Tuesday. After being out of school for five years, Tuesday was at least a little bit overwhelming. Here's a (relatively) brief recap...

Tuesday
7:00am: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze.
7:09am: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze again.
7:18am: Alarm goes off. Actually get out of bed and into the shower.
7:45am: Walk the dogs.
8:00am: Breakfast. Watch some SportsCenter
8:30am: Out the door. Walk to El station.
8:55am: Walk onto campus. Sit at bench and log onto wireless network.
9:00am: Check email, read morning headlines and Archinect.

10:00am-1:00pm: Writing on Architecture (Rybcynksi)
This class seems like it should be pretty interesting. We're going to be looking at a variety of different styles of writing including polemical, critical, professional, literary, and academic. There will be a series of short writings throughou...

A Selection of Studios

2008-09-07T10:45:52-04:00

As a PhD student I don’t get to take a studio, but I thought that some of you might be interested in hearing about some of the studios on offer at UPenn this semester. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but these are the syllabi that I’ve been able to snag throughout the past week.

Graduate Architecture Studios:

ARCH 601 - BIOME-Riverview: Novel Housing Prototypes along the Delaware River
Critic: Ferda Kolatan
Visual Studies Instructor: James Kerestes

Program: “A 100,000SF housing complex with integrated parking, gymnasium and other leisure facilities. An emphasis will be placed on the site’s immediate adjacency to the river’s edge and how the geographical characteristics of this place can inform new visions for an ecologically responsible approach towards an innovative, contemporary design...The students will be encouraged to develop novel live/work/leisure relationships within the building, which respond to our current and future lifestyles rather than working with conventional h...

The First Week... Sorta...

2008-09-06T14:21:17-04:00

Classes here at UPenn started this week.

Tuesday was the last day of orientation. It started out at 9:00am with a coffee/breakfast gathering of all of the new PennDesign students in the basement of Meyerson. Then at 10:00am each of the departments split off for their own departmental welcome. The PhD and MS students met with David Leatherbarrow in a seminar room in the Fisher Fine Arts Library (designed by Frank Furness in 1890).

Including myself, there are 3 new PhD students and 4 new MS students. David started out by giving us a brief history of the program. It is the oldest (or one of the oldest, depending on who you ask) architecture PhD program in the country. He encouraged us to look beyond the boundaries of our program and to take advantage of all of the resources that are available to us across the university and the city. He also mentioned that there are several openings for TA and RA positions. Normally, he wouldn't ask us first years to get fill any of the slots...

West Philadelphia Urban Farming

2008-09-01T21:57:00-04:00

Yet another orientation entry...

On Saturday we were invited to participate in one of several tours of Philadelphia. The tour that I chose was given by City Planning professor Domenic Vitiello. Domenic's current research involves community gardening and urban farming. We started out from Meyerson Hall and caught the #10 trolley out through West Philly. From the trolley stop we walked down through a Hope VI housing project. The new townhouses of the Lucien E. Blackwell Homes replace Mill Creek Apartments, a mix of low-rise and high-rise buildings that were designed by Louis Kahn in 1950.

Pictures Above (L to R): 1) a mural in West Philly, 2-4) the Lucien E. Blackwell Homes 5) a dilapidated building and some rowhouses across from the Mill Creek Farm.

The main destination of the tour was the Mill Creek Farm. This urban farm was started about 3 years ago. The farm uses a West Philly lot that had been vacant for 30 years. Part of the site is occupied by a thriving community ga...

Orientation: Continued

2008-09-01T20:27:25-04:00

The rest of last week was pretty uneventful. I had several orientation events scattered over Tuesday and Wednesday (computer orientation, fabrication lab safety training, and digital fabrication lab orientation). The highlight of the orientation related stuff was probably attending the Phillies game on Wednesday evening. They were playing the Mets in a battle for first place in the NL east. Unfortunately the Phillies lost, but I was able to meet several fellow new PennDesign students.

On Friday afternoon, there was a PennDesign happy hour in Meyerson Hall. There was a variety of beers, wines, and foods on offer. I was hoping that at least a few members of the faculty would be around, but no such look. However, I was able to meet several more fellow students including a fellow UF grad.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the end of orientation. It starts off with coffee and check in, followed by departmental orientation, lunch with the dean, and then financial aid and academic advising. ...

Orientation: Day 1

2008-08-25T16:52:40-04:00

This morning I had the first of my orientation activities, the obligatory campus tour. This morning I headed over to the Graduate Student Center where the tour began. Below are a few pictures from the tour.

Pictures from L to R and down: 1) Harnwell College House (undergrad dorm), 2) The Castle (a frat house), 3) one of the main pedestrian paths through campus--which was formerly a trolley line--and a Robert Indiana LOVE sculpture, 4) Locust Walk, another major pedestrian path, and Claes Oldenburg's "Broken Button", 5) Big Ben, 6) the Fisher Fine Arts Library by Frank Furness, 7) Meyerson Hall, the home of PennDesign, 8) Wynn Commons, 9) the law school, 10) Starbucks, strategically located right across the street from Meyerson Hall, 11) the Institute of Contemporary Art, 12) The Quadrangle (undergrad dorms), 13) one of the food trucks along Spruce Street.

After the tour, I stopped by Meyerson to pick up my ticket for the Phillies game on Wednesday night. Then I headed back towa...

Philadelphia Freedom

2008-08-23T17:26:35-04:00

Hello Archinect!

Warning: This first entry is going to be long and rambling.

I’m currently in the midst of a major life change and I’m looking forward to documenting it here on the school blog project. I have always enjoyed reading everyone else’s school blogs, and now that I have my own I feel like I have been admitted to the cool kids club.

First, a little bit about my background. I grew up as a Navy brat in Jacksonville, Florida (the largest city by land mass in the USA). From there, I started my long journey into architecture at the University of Florida. After graduating with a B.Des. in 2000, I moved to St. Petersburg, Florida and worked for a firm in Tampa for about a year. Then I went Georgia Tech and finished with my M.Arch. in 2003. After graduating I returned to St. Petersburg where I have been practicing professionally ever since. From graduation until March of 2005 I worked for Lyman Davidson Dooley, the same firm that I worked with prior to graduate school...