2024-04-23T12:07:31-04:00 https://archinect.com/blog/article/21453134/fml-architecture-edition-vol-1 Erica 2009-07-12T21:37:00-04:00 >2023-12-22T13:31:08-05:00 <p>I'm sure by now, anyone who's wasted a respectable amount of time on the internet knows about this site:</p><p> I, for one, know for sure that I've spent at least a day or two collectively on this site, reading about the crappy things that happen to other people. And don't say that you wouldn't either--it's comforting and therapeutic to read about the daily traumas of strangers. It's a universal guilty pleasure. <br><br> The other day, it occurred to me that "FML" is a phrase that is often tearfully declared in studio during deadline. And noting that it was our deadline last Thursday, I thought it would be an amusing exercise to compile all of them into a list for Archinect. So here it is, a collection of all the sad and infuriating things that happen in studio culture. I'm sure everyone who's reading this has had at least one or three of these things happen to them. Group hug. <br><br> Today, I fell asleep hot glue gunning my model only to wake up with my hand glued to the floor. I had to ask my studioma...</p> https://archinect.com/blog/article/21453114/to-be-or-not-to-be-the-badass Erica 2009-06-09T23:26:24-04:00 >2022-12-14T12:46:07-05:00 <p>I'm always fond of the first project of every term. I suppose the intent is to ease all of us back into the swing of studio life with a, hm, <i>free-spirited</i> project and then to obliterate the cheer by throwing a high rise office building at us. But no matter, let's go back to the cheer. This term, we were to go frolicking through the local forest with a sketchbook and camera and capture a phenomenon to analyze, dissect, reiterate, and capture into ultimately five drawings and a spatial construct. It was essentially a practice of lateral thinking but, considering that all of us had just come back from four months of office work, it was a rather lofty task than not. <br><br> My phenomenon was a tent caterpillar web: <br><br><img src="http://files.archinect.com/uploads/ai/aiu_silk.jpg" alt="image" name="image"><br><br> I was initially interested in the varying opacity that the webs created through different densities and tightness but eventually ended up broadening my scope to the relationship between the webbing and the tree limbs--that is, the relationship between the thing and its armature, ...</p> https://archinect.com/blog/article/21453065/help-my-macbook-has-insomnia Erica 2009-05-07T21:43:41-04:00 >2023-03-03T11:01:09-05:00 <p>I suppose this is a bad blog post to follow the <a href="http://www.archinect.com/schoolblog/entry.php?id=88556_0_39_0_C" target="_blank">last</a> one where I promised to do more serious school blogging, but I thought maybe the two people who read this might have some helpful suggestions. <br><br> A few weeks back, my macbook suddenly failed to fall asleep. Well, not completely. It still falls asleep when I close it but, as I have to keep it open overnight for my morning alarm to work, it's been causing me grief. I manually put it to sleep but as soon as the fans slow down completely, it just wakes itself up again. At first, I thought it was because I put the computer down on the floor roughly and somehow cajoled it back to power, but even when I put it down as gingerly as possible, it wakes up. Sometimes, it manages to stay asleep for a couple minutes--and then I hear it whirling again. I've grown to sleep in constant fear that I will wake up in the middle of the night to the room illuminated by it's blueish radiance. <br><br> While this has been an effective (and unsettling) dry run of ...</p> https://archinect.com/blog/article/21453060/it-s-that-time-of-the-year-again Erica 2009-05-06T17:43:34-04:00 >2024-03-11T11:31:09-04:00 <p>So.<br> No one has to say anything; my blogging on archinect has been nothing but abysmal of late. So for that, I apologize. The truth of the matter is, I am not a very interesting person and I find it a bit of a challenge to think that anyone would have a remote interest in what I am up to. For the past four months, I've moved twice, sewed two-headed teddy bears, read Cormac McCarthy's The Road at an unhealthy pace, caught up on all the shows I've missed during school (Dexter is fantastic) and listened to too many Bruce Springsteen covers for my own good. <br><br><img src="http://files.archinect.com/uploads/ai/aiu_n535585128_2448668_9127.jpg" alt="image" name="image"><br><br> As mentioned sometime previous, Waterloo is a co-op school, requiring a total of 20 months of work to graduate. So after our first twelve months of school, we were rather forcefully pushed out of our nest to plunge to the ground trying to find work with our rather pitiful portfolios. And, of course, with the economy as it was/is, a great deal of offices turtled up on the idea of interns or recuritment in general. So that was a bit ...</p> https://archinect.com/blog/article/21452767/in-retrospect Erica 2008-12-05T02:23:17-05:00 >2024-01-23T15:16:08-05:00 <p>...this will seem like a lot of fun. But right now, deadlines are my frenemies. <br><br> (oh, and an update on the Da Vinci/Kramer sleep soon! Sorry for the delay)<br><br><img src="http://files.archinect.com/uploads/ai/aiu_sleeeeeep.JPG" alt="image" name="image"></p> https://archinect.com/blog/article/21452718/i-woke-up-in-the-hudson-river-in-a-sack Erica 2008-11-14T16:20:11-05:00 >2023-01-26T21:16:08-05:00 <p>I guess this is SORT of about architecture school. Sort of. <br><br> For those of you who didn't immediately recognize that Seinfeld quote, it's from the Friar's Club episode where, among other things, Kramer decides to polyphase. This is the sleep cycle that Da Vinci, Lord Byron, and Thomas Edison were on. There are many variations to it, but the one that is most familiar (and also the most ballsy) is one where you take a thirty minute nap every 4 hours, which amounts to 3 hours of collective sleep in 24 hours. Watching this episode was a dangerous thing for me because I'm known to have a rather potent case of curiosity. You can tell me to not touch something because it's hot and that it'll burn me; I'll have to find out for myself. I'm the kid that stuck a wet finger in a socket. <br><br> In my first month of architecture school, I found myself--much like everyone else--needing more hours in a day to really get something done. So I started to polyphase. Most everyone were rather supportive over...</p> https://archinect.com/blog/article/21452354/rule-32-make-everything-green Erica 2008-11-09T00:59:43-05:00 >2023-10-13T10:46:09-04:00 <p>Well.<br><br> You know that awkward, gelatinous time between projects where you haven't quite rebooted to start a completely new project? I'm currently suspended in it; I still have a mild hangover from the last project and, as eager as I am to start clean-slate on a new project, I can't help but obsess over irrelevant questions like, Is the milk in the fridge bad? Where have all my socks and dirty laundry gone? How have I managed to cut my ankle in three different places? <br><br> Anyway. <br><br> As a bit of a closure, I'll briefly talk about the studio project that I did with my very talented mate, Mark, which was also an entry into a competition held by Spacing Magazine. <br><br> The brief asked us to consider and evaluate existing urban infrastructures of a city to further challenge or test their possibilities. We were to then investigate what these typologies offered to the city and look into additional existing opportunities. <br><br> In layman's term, we were asked to redesign either a bus stop or a subway en...</p> https://archinect.com/blog/article/21452615/what-did-i-just-get-a-weekend-off Erica 2008-10-18T13:28:30-04:00 >2023-06-08T10:31:08-04:00 <p>Well--technically, no. I really should be working on my portfolio since it's due on Monday for the co-op term, but I've put it off again and again as I am prone to with any kind of daunting amount of work. And--for the sake of consistency--I'll put it off for just a bit longer and post some pictures from India! <br><br> I took the majority of my pictures on my old Holga, but I haven't had the time to get all of them developed before I left for Cambridge. So the pictures of the step wells will have to wait, but I do have a fair smattering of pictures from here and there on my powershot. <br><br> (I suppose since this IS an architecture blog, I will try to refrain myself from posting pictures and pictures of myself feeding the cows on the street)<br><br> Janter Manter, Jaipur. A crazy, crazy collection of giant astronomical instruments. The largest sundial in the world stands here--it's shadow visibly moves at 1mm per second (!!!). This one was my favorite. It was a half dome, dug into the ground that tra...</p> https://archinect.com/blog/article/21452277/older-sibling-syndrome-and-quotes Erica 2008-10-16T22:58:53-04:00 >2024-02-06T18:16:08-05:00 <p>After four days of jetlagging like no other (Panjim &gt; Delhi &gt; Singapore &gt; Hong Kong &gt; Seoul &gt; Seattle &gt; Calgary &gt; Toronto &gt; Cambridge), a week of being homeless, two weeks of studio for a competition in Toronto, and then 5 days in Montreal, I am finally together (enough) to write my second post (!!!). Apologies in advance; it might get a bit squirrely.<br><br> The new freshmen have moved into our old studio, which is also the best studio in the building. Some schools have their studios arranged into a sort of spatial hierarchy where the higher years get the better location. My school's layout is the inverse of this, where the fresh-faced high school graduates get the bright studio and the good lecture hall. I am personally okay with this, but the pill that's really hard to swallow is the fact that we are no longer the centre of attention. The faculty and profs coo and cah over the new potential as they would over a new chia pet and we are shoved to the side like last year's toys. Call it t...</p> https://archinect.com/blog/article/21452421/so-then-this-monkey-comes-out-of-nowhere-and-bites-me-in-the-leg Erica 2008-09-02T02:19:28-04:00 >2023-12-18T18:46:08-05:00 <p>Namaste from India! Though it really should be from Canada. <br><br> After concluding my first year at Waterloo, I decided to reboot and recharge by treating myself to a little travelling. It is important to note that this summer will be my very last summer (the youthful kind with frolicking through sprinklers and not worrying about a job) because Waterloo is a co-op school which means that I will be put through cyclic rounds of a term in school and a term in an office until it eventually culminates to a term in Rome (!!!) and a B.Arch. <br><br> Choosing to go to India was the easy part: I am a deep appreciator of Louis Kahn and wanted to see his IIM in Ahmedabad; there is also a fair smattering of Corb buildings in and around the area; the stepwells of India have always interested me to no end; and I'd be lying if I said that this trip had nothing to do with the sun and beaches of Goa. But, if I must defend myself, it was our school's director who once said, "A good architect has to know how to ...</p>