Archinect - Wentworth Institute of Technology

graphic content

2006-09-09T20:40:46-04:00

It's been quite awhile since I've put anything up on here. I had a great summer working for a small office out in Newton and I met this great gal, and now I'm back in school, off to what seems so far to be a very good semester. I decided to post some images here, mostly signs and posters I've done for student government andf other things, but sort of my amateur (and sometimes not very good) graphic design. Some of these I'm more proud of than others, but I figured I'd just throw them up here to contribute and to see if anyone has any feedback.. this is something I'd like to improve on.

a potential web banner for Wentworth Student Government's recycling campaign

a 24x36" poster for Wentworth Student Government's recycling campaign

another 24x36" poster for Wentworth Student Government's recycling campaign

a potential Wentworth Student Government poster protesting the administrations recent implimentation of increasing draconian (and intentional exaggeration) regulations about drinking a...

so long, frank lloyd wright

2006-04-29T14:20:44-04:00

We just had our final crits wednesday, so other than tying up a few loose ends for classes and one final next week, I'm done for the semester. I feel pretty good about my project and how my crit went, but I almost shit my pants monday when my VectorWorks file with all my digital model and drawing information crashed. I guess that'll teach me for never backing anything up. I was able to use the floor plans I had just printed in Illustrator to get enough information back into VectorWorks to make a quick model for an axon drawing, so that saved me big time, but I was unable to get new elevations and some perspectives from the digital model that I really wanted. It also set me back as far as the work I was able to get done on the physical models because of all the catch up, but it could have been much worse.

anyway, about the project:
At the beginning of the semester we all had to find a pool somewhere in the city and go for a swim and reflect on it and all this to orient us in how we ...

trees swaying in the summer breeze, showing off their silver leaves

2006-04-24T11:10:52-04:00

well the semester's really winding down.. today begins the last day of classes followed by finals next week, then the summer begins in earnest. I'm pretty excited for it. I enjoyed my studio this semester, but most of my other classes were not what I expected, except for my American Architecture elective, which reinfornced my convictions that America has a rich architectural (and cultural) heritage that we're squandering and invalidating by allowing corporate prowress to dictate our culture to us as Big Macs, Targets and brick-faced pseudo-colonial houses. This will also be the first summer I'll be spending in Boston. I'll miss New Hampshire, and though I spent four summers working in Maine, city living yearround will be new to me. Hopefully, I'll have my car and can make weekend excursions north. I also feel like there are a number of personal things (one or two in particular) that I'd like to get taken care of before the semester ends, but I'm not sure it'll end up happening.

summ...

On a bed of California stars I'd like to lay my weary bones tonight

2006-04-05T03:07:51-04:00

Last semester I met this girl who was named after a Bob Dylan song, which I must say was quite appealing, and she was one of the most interesting people I've met since coming to Boston, as well as one of the beautiful, which she knows, and I saw her for the first time in a long time tonight and based on a discussion we had decided to put this up here. Without saying anything more, it was great to see her again, and I hope she stays in Boston past this semester and adds some interest to the vast blandness of some of the people all around. (I chose the title because I love using lyrics as subject lines and I love Woody Guthrie and Wilco, and so I love this song and she also happens to be from California, so it seems to fit. Again without saying anything that should be read into).

The weight of water

2006-03-04T17:54:12-05:00

I just finished my first project of the semester, a pool pavilion in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. It was a shorter project intended to be a precursor to the upcoming much larger natatorium project that we're just beginning work on for the same site. I approached the project initially with the idea of "weightlessness," as experienced in water, in mind, but quickly moved on to something else.

The program called only for an olympic size competitive swimming pool, diving pool and the accompanying support spaces. I remembered something I reaad in "A Pattern Language" about access to water, however, and after reading it over again decided to add more of a communal purpose to the facility in the tradition of communal swimming/bathing spaces that existed in any urban area prior to recent centuries when water has been diverted, covered up, filled in and pushed away. In addition to this, I wanted to reinterpret what I consider to be the natural progression to a body of water, i...

A Silent Sigh

2006-01-08T22:46:28-05:00

I've been back home in New Hampshire for the past three weeks, relaxing and working at the office where I interned this summer. I've been doing a lot of thinking as well. I feel somewhat torn with regard to architecture these days. I see two very different--perhaps opposing aspects of architecture--the more artistic side that is concerned with space-making and so on, and the more directly social/humanitarian side that is concerned with directly improving (or at least changing) the world. I know this is a bit of simplification as the matter is quite complex, but this is the easiest way I can think of to explain it.

I think in a way my two design professors from last year could be a good example of these opposing interests. My professor first semester was focused on developing a rigorous design philosophy, one concerned with the design of spaces and the employment of form to fulfill the objective of the design. Everything was driven by the design concept in a very metaphoric way. It ...

I've been known to walk at night where streetlights end and dark begins

2005-12-16T01:36:07-05:00

well the semester is finally over and as an assignment for my computers in architecture class, I've developed an online portfolio. I hope to keep updating it from time to time, as well as filling in some blank spaces there currently.

here are some (somewhat random) images too:

my Nana gave me some old photos of the family farm on Joppa Hill that burnt down about 1941, so I did a quick photoshop job to put a few together

and after the fire

and this is just to celebrate that the school year is now half way to summer

also, the title line is from a song by the native New Hampshire band, Unbunny, who I've just started listening to, but like very much. Another fine product of the Granite State.

Come on up to the house

2005-11-27T23:21:05-05:00

My grandfather passed early Saturday morning, and thinking of the ordeal he was about to experience with liver cancer and his already weak state, it might have been for the better at least. I'm obviously sad, but last night the whole family went out for dinner at the Athens Restaurant, some leftover from an era when the nicest restaurants in town where brightly lit with tacky decor and banquet-style chairs. Apparently it was one of Nana and Grampa's favorite places "back in the day." It was good to be with everyone, joking and remembering how much Grampa always loved times out like with everyone. All the grandkids will also be the pallbearers at the funeral. It seems fitting that all of us who Grampa always helped out so much would help him out in his last journey, so to speak. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for metaphors and romance like that. This loss is especially hard to deal with since I know longer really believe in the traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of an afterlife. I...

Tell me why.

2005-11-25T22:20:11-05:00

I've decided I don't like November. First, last November 2nd Kerry lost and our country continued to march backwards until 2008 at least. Then a week later, my maternal grandfather passed away. And now, yesterday--on Thanksgiving no less--my paternal grandfather had to go to the hospital, where he is still with an infection that his doctors can't seem to pinpoint. It looks like I'll lose another grandfather this November, and it's just plain shitty. I wish there was something more to say, but that's basically it. I know this isn't architecture related, but it's on my mind for sure. He was on morphine when I went to visit today, but even as he lay there essentially dying, he asked each one of us how we were doing, and in his delirium wanted to find a more comfortable chair for my grandmother while she was there. We found out that he had liver cancer about a month ago and wouldn't have much time left, but one of my cousins is going to have a baby, which would be his first great-grandc...

Finally some new construction in Manchester not clad in brick!

2005-11-16T22:18:14-05:00

I was home a couple of weekends ago for a memorial service and decided to go downtown one night to get a coffee and take some pictures. In addition to photographing some of Manchester's numerous municipal parking garages (why can't Boston have any of those?), which were great for studying concrete structures, I ended up on Amherst Street, scoping out the recently completed New Hampshire Institute of Art studios. The office where I worked this summer did the design for the addition and renovation of a two-story masonry building, formerly home of Stan's Masury Shop, into a classroom studio building with a public art supply/book store and gallery on the first floor. I'm fairly confident in saying that it's the boldest building to be built in downtown Manchester in the past decade (except maybe the glass staircase addition to one of FIRST Center). NHIA had worked with the office Dennis Mires before in dorm renovations at the local YMCA building, so they pretty much gave him free range d...

The leaves that are green turn to brown

2005-10-27T15:36:18-04:00

I went home briefly last weekend took this pictures of the Bedford Center Cemetery in Bedford, New Hampshire. It's a really beautiful old cemetery in the town center that was done over in the garden cemetery style sometime in the 19th century. It's the only rural garden cemetery I know of.

another brick in the (urban) wall

2005-10-27T12:56:52-04:00

I just wanted to respond to Steven Ward and Pixelwhore's posts, which I do appreciate. It's interesting that none of the four professors I've got now thanks to this ridiculous rotating thing have really brought up the urban wall topic. One of my past professors was very big on the urban wall and street edge though, so it was on my mind a bit. However, the "overt crits" were definitely helpful and brought up some things that as I said my professors haven't brought up yet anyway, and some things that I have neglected to address or consider.

As far as the urban wall and orientation of the building on the site, as of yesterday, it has changed and returned more or less to how I had originally. I had to change this after we realized that the folks who built the site model, which I based my initial site plan on, had cut out the site in the wrong shape. This caused me to change the angle of the building on the site to not align as closely on a north-south axis and caused a larger front pl...

powder blue

2005-10-25T13:56:15-04:00

Here, finally, are some images of my project. There are some photos of a partially complete basswood model I built of it, some images of the model with the vertical circulation band--which is still pretty conceptual at this point--done in Photoshop, and some images of the computer model I built. The facade with the solid wall is the "front"and the more open facade is the "rear."

I'll get more into that later and want to comment on what Steven Ward posted, which I think is really interesting. I actually live on a small lake back home and the house is very much oriented to the lakefront, which my grandparents who used to live in the house always refer to as the front, as opposed to the streetfront. The front of the house looks sort of like a small, typical ranch with double-hung windows while the back is much more open with much larger windows. It's an interesting difference, which I don't think is what Steven Ward was talking about exactly and it's obviously on a much smaller scale...

crazy little mama come knockin at my front door

2005-10-21T19:05:19-04:00

I talked with my old professor, Sue, on wednesday about my design for this museum of sustainable construction technology and of course the first thing she asked me was what my concept was. Suddenly I realized that I didn't have a cohesive concept. I had a lot of things I wanted to accomplish with the building and I knew that the dichotomy of public and private spaces and facades was a key part of the overall theme, but I didn't know how to articulate it exactly at that point. Anyway, I talked to Prof. Macphail about it and decided to come up with a better concept statement (hopefully like the "poetry" that Sue said was missing) and adjust my project accordingly. So I did that and feel much better about the whole process now. I've adjusted my design where it needs to be and will continue to develop it based on my concept statement, which was influenced largely by the book "Architecture and the American Dream" by Craig Whitaker, which is an amazing book. I referenced the chapter, "Fr...

heroes and villains

2005-10-15T18:35:52-04:00

I just thought I'd post a letter-to-the-editor that I submitted to the Bedford (NH) Journal a few weeks ago as a response to a number of responses to an earlier letter. The initial letter was submitted by a local couple, the Zitos. Mrs. Zito is a prominent community activist and a rare Democrat in Bedford, as well as being a well-known and highly respected social studies teacher. She and her husband wrote a letter calling for more outrage at the president's inaction following Hurricane Katrina, even calling his actions worthy of impeachment. One conservative responder wrote that there must be something wrong with the air in the Zitos' home; another wrote that because Mrs. Zito is a local teacher she should not have written the letter. The basis of my letter was that these two responders were wrong, arrogant.. and recklessly stupid.

To the editor:

The recent responses to the “Hurricane Bush” letter by Mr. and Mrs. Zito demonstrate about as much constructive dialogue as President B...

old projects 002: Boston Book Archives + wsgBLT

2005-10-12T22:52:43-04:00

wsgBLT
One of the clubs I'm involved with at school is the student government, WSG, which is considering putting a freestanding bulleting board in the lobby of Beatty Hall on campus. The idea for a freestanding board is based on the fact that few students take the time to look at the existing bulletin boards in the lobby, which are often blocked by folding tables anyway. A freestanding bulletin board would draw attention, and the desire to make it inviting resulted in us coming up with a curved shape. We're still looking for a name for it, but someone referred to it as the "Beatty lobby thing." I shortened it to BLT. Here's an early rendering:

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Boston Book Archives
The next old project I wanted to post is the Boston Book Archives, a facade-based design project from last year for a renovation and expansion of the end of the State Street Block in front of the Custom House Tower in downtown Boston. The building would house ...

old projects 001: Mass Ave Bus Shelter

2005-10-05T22:00:19-04:00

since I've got some free time tonight and to make up for making new posts so infrequently, I've decided to put up an old project every week or so. A lot of these are pretty sketchy, especially as far as anything using VectorWorks or Photoshop is concerned since I was really just getting to understand the programs at the time.

The first project I'm putting up is one of my favorites, a bus shelter for the Mass Ave bridge over I-90 between Newbury and Boylston Streets. My main focus in this project was to create a sense of motion in the bus shelters and to alter pedestrian traffic patterns to mimic those of a bus (forcing them to move around the shelter, not past it the way a bus changes lanes). I wanted to emphasize that this shelter was not a destination, but part of a journey.

Here is the concept statement I wrote for this project:
The bus shelter on the Mass Ave overpass of I-90 is rather poetic in its situation on a bridge. The buses that service the shelter are a bridge in thei...

tried and true

2005-10-05T14:09:47-04:00

holy crap! I saw ween in Burlington, Vermont sunday night and it was amazing... I was in the front row, against the barricades, about four feet from Deaner! I probably could have snagged his beer if I had wanted to. it was seriously amazing. I also did a 20x20" painting of a boognish for over the couch in our apartment:

Boognish: the God/Demon that supposedly appeared to Dean and Gene Ween, commanding them to form a rock band.

then I got back to Boston just in time for studio monday afternoon, where we had our first review for the design project this semester. The project is to design a museum of sustainable construction technology on the site of Edwards/Rodgers dorms at Wentworth, and obviously employing sustainable techniques. I really like it when they have us do projects using sustainability, because I feel like particularly at this point in our education, it's critical to emphasize the importance of sustainable architecture. Beyond that the project is going well.

Terry Moor se...

some projects from work this summer.

2005-08-25T10:41:35-04:00

well today is my second to last day working at a small office in Manchester, NH.. Dennis Mires, PA. It's been a lot of fun and my first experience working in the field. They've all been great here and I've learned a lot. I've even had a few small things built (notably, a canopy at St Paul's School that I drew up and a garage addition that I actually was able to have a big hand in designing, so that was great). I thought I'd just post some images of some of the projects going on here, past and present...

The entrance to Dennis Mires, PA The Architects, Manchester.

Rendering of additions and renovations to the Amherst St studios for the New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester

Canopy for Coit-Snow Hall at St Paul's School, Concord. This was the first project I drew up entirely and had some minor decisions in the design. It's obviously still under construction

Model of a proposed addition for the West Manchester Community Center. Unfortunately, the city went with the same layout but a mu...

some recent posts on the forums pages...

2005-08-24T09:24:48-04:00

Well, I always forget to make new entries here, but I love to post on the forum pages when I'm "working," so here are a few posts. Check out the actual discussions to get the context and other points of view. I'd love to get some feedback too...

on the state of politics from Cindy "I don't respsect my son's decisions" Sheehan post:

Pasha, I agree with you that conservatives are in the middle. however, the people who call themselves conservatives today are not true conservatives. for a few years, I tried to call myself conservative, but gave up after having to explain the differences between my view of conservativism and that of the "Christian Right" and those currently in power in the US.

True conservatives would favor individual freedom, limited government (but government where necessary, which usually means helping those most in need), and restrictions on businesses when such is necessary to protect the common good. Just look at a true conservative (who was also a progressive), ...

Life's been good to me so far.

2005-06-10T10:03:46-04:00

Well this summer has been real good to me so far. I got into the 5-year BArch program, so I'm really quite psyched about that. And as I expected, my two roommates also got in, so that's great as well. I also got a fellowship from PlanNH, a multi-professional organization whose mission is to positively influence the built environment in New Hampshire. The group sounds great, I get some sort of support from them, and of course there is a monetary scholarship, which will be a huge help. Also, I'm working for the summer at the office of Dennis Mires, a local architect in Manchester. The folks here are wicked nice and they've got some really great little projects, most right in or around Manchester... a great addition to an old building downtown for the NH Institute of Art, but unfortunately the city thought the concept he had for the senior center on the West Side was just a little too bold... oh and I've got a great apartment with an amazing view lined up for the fall. The sun is out, ...

portfolios done, semester winding down

2005-04-05T13:17:23-04:00

Well, my portfolio and second of three major design projects for the semester are done. The semester is winding down real quickly now and it's finally getting warm out. I can't wait for the summer and to get back to New Hampshire. The city is great and all (especially for school), but it's really just not for me year-round, I don't think. I'm really looking forward to some peace and quiet and relaxation beginning the first week of May. Then, hopefully (knock on wood) I'll finally have some studio space next year to do work in. I'm pretty sure I'll be damn nervous when the letter comes this summer about the five-year.

Portfolios for 5-year due March 18

2005-02-27T11:39:03-05:00

In just a few short weeks, my (and 75-150 other applicants') portfolios for entry into the five-year BArch program will be due. It's a little intimidating thinking about how much rests on this one design project basically, I'm not gonna lie. That having been said, I'm really quite excited about it. I've decided to put off the actual process of putting it together for over Spring Break when I'll have a lot more time, but I've got some ideas of what I'd like to do. I do appreciate that they've left it so open-ended so that it shows a bit more about the person creating it. As I said it's a bit intimidating, but it's also very exciting--this is my chance to really become an architect, which is what I've always wanted. All in all, I feel pretty good about it. Good luck to everyone else applying (or to 49 of you at least). :-)

Finally, a good lecture

2005-02-09T23:02:17-05:00

The Materials and Methods II lecture this semester has made me think that perhaps Wentworth has finally nailed down the lecture thing. The past three lectures I've had have been less than informative or interesting. It's good to see that a good lecture does exist at Wentworth.

Classes cancelled, design charette

2005-01-24T13:33:44-05:00

Well, Wentworth has cancelled classes for the first time since 1978 (according to legend). It's provided a nice extension on the deisgn charette which was due today. I'm curious as to how other classes are handling this and what amout of attention they're paying to it. I know for my group the day off will let us finish up some details that would otherwise be pretty minimally dealt with. In any event, I think this is a great project--not only would second year studios enhance the program, but the idea of allowing the students to actually design the space is an entirely new thing at Wentworth.