Archinect - Woodbury University (Jason King)

See You in the Archives!

2007-04-09T02:38:57-04:00

I have, admittedly, completely neglected my Archinect Blog "responsibilities". As is everyone reading this, I am busy. I just finished portfolio review; I am at the midpoint of a competition; I am TA-ing two design communication classes (teaching the Rhino portion of the class); teaching my own Rhino classes to the 3rd, 4th and 5th year students who were not taught Rhino in Design Comm; doing a couple of freelance jobs; and maintaining my own blog.

Portfolio review went well, anyone interested can see a preview here. I will have the entire pdf on my site soon.

I am preparing for study abroad in Beijing/Nanjing/Berlin. I leave in a month and still have a shitload to do in preparation, but at least visas and vaccinations have been taken care of.

Upon return, I begin degree project and grad school applications.

So. With all of that being said, this will be my last post on Archinect. I have enjoyed keeping a record of my education, albeit sporadically, and sharing it with ...

three fourths.

2006-10-28T01:29:33-04:00

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The semester is more than half way over. Amazing. I have hardly blinked and we have finished three projects. Time goes really, really fast when there is constantly a deadline.

I will post images from the 1st 3 projects soon. I need to photograph the models and compile all of the process and production for my portfolio and will then share it here.

My school is in quite a metamorphosis right now. We are without a Dean, we have a new assistant chair, all of the staff that were on sabbatical have returned, and our campus is completely under (re)construction. We have several new buildings that will house a lot more students/give students more space which is good, but the design for the architecture building kind of sucks. Which is a bit of a letdown because it is a missed oppurtunity for us to have an ...

3.1

2006-09-03T00:35:59-04:00

School has begun again. I am beginning to get in the swing of things. This is the first semester I have had a steady job + school, so we'll see how it goes. So far, so good. I actually like all of my classes (physics, structures, studio & arch. theory). Studio this semester is focused on House+Housing, and to give credit where credit is due, John Southern so far has impressed me as a studio coordinator. LA is a veritable architectural housing mecca and the world's greatest lab for an architectural student. The first project is a great ease-back-into-studio / explore LA project. We have to go on a "House Hunt" in groups. Each group has 15 houses to find, photograph, sketch and study. We will then compile our findings and each create a book of sketches/photographs/essays. Today we made it to 6 of our houses. I had previously visited about half of them and had seen the rest in photographs. As an architecture student in 2006 it is kind of easy to discount Frank Lloyd Wright...

Summer

2006-05-06T04:13:23-04:00

My semester is officially over. I turned in a set of drawings for Professional Practice today and that was the end. Two years of architecture school officially done. I can't believe it has already been two years.

The above image of the exhibit that I helped to design/build/curate doesn't do justice to how good the space looked. I was already well drunk at this point and the lighting is hard to photograph with a point and shoot camera. It will be professionally photographed soon and I will get copies to post here. When we began, our Hollywood Studio was a dingy old white space with a yellow tile floor. We completely transformed it and I was very pleased with the outcome.

Highlights of The Show:

-The surprise and excitement of most of the faculty upon seeing the space.

-The introduction of the Woodbury University/Julius Shulman Fellowship. (Have I told you about the Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury? Probably not, because I still don't know much about it, but he ha...

LA People

2006-04-29T02:44:08-04:00

All are invited to a show that I am designing, building and curating. It is to showcase the faculty work from my school. Blah, Blah Blah...free drinks.

May 3rd 6PM-9PM
6518 Hollywood Blvd (Hollywood & Wilcox)
Hollywood, CA

Spectacle

2006-01-22T22:27:15-05:00

Most people's entries on here begin with the phrase, "it's been a long time since my last post", and this entry is no different.

So to catch up:

1. Last semesters final project ended up with me in the ER. Lack of sleep + Lack of food + Red Bull x4 + Coffe x2= an EKG and some strong relaxation drugs pumped into me through an IV.

2. Relaxing over winter break in Texas reading Architecture and Dysjunction and Content

3. A drive from Texas to California and then studio started and here we are 2 weeks into school.

My schedule for the semester:

Studio 2B: Site Orders
History of Contemporary Art
Physics
Professional Practice
Hollywood Confidential

The class Hollywood Confidential has started out as the frontrunner for my Favorite Class of the Semester. It is taught by Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter and the synopsis of it is this: we are planning a party.

The AIA convention is in LA this year and we are making "maps" to be included in their convention guidebook. The "maps" wil...

Walking in LA

2005-11-06T21:10:44-05:00

Today I took a walk through downtown Los Angeles. I started at Union Station, made my way up through Olvera Street to Bunker Hill to Grand to the Cathedral and back to Union Station. I needed to stare at something that wasn't a computer screen and see people who weren't staring at computer screens. Here are some images with captions when applicable:

The Bradbury Building is one of the greatest spaces in LA, and you would never know it walking by the unassuming exterior.

This public art Sculpture is baffling. How it got built I will never know or understand. It appears to be four men choking one another filled with bullet holes. It is in front of a federal building and within viewing range of the prison. Hmm.

Some building by a little known architect.

Olvera Street is the origin point of LA, and still the best place in town to buy a wrestling mask.

A tree bursting out of its container and growing however it pleases. Photo-metaphor of LA.

And Then A Chicken Strolls into Studio.

2005-10-30T01:46:59-05:00

So last week we all hadn't slept and were working on getting our projects ready for presentation. My desk is directly perpendicular to one of the two main doors in studio. As I was cutting basswood, I did my first actual doubletake in several years. I looked over at the door and a chicken nonchalantly walked through the door. My response was, of course, "Holy shit, a rooster just walked through the door". (Rooster. Chicken. Hen. Who can tell at first glance? It should also be noted that Woodbury is in an urban setting. Think NBC, Disney etc., etc.) As more people noticed the chicken, the chicken certainly noticed more people and got frightened. It began to fly (chickens fly?) from 3/4 walltop to desk to 3/4 walltop to desk; crushing 1/4 scale models in its ravaging wake. It was like watching a fowl reinterpretation of Godzilla as 1/4 scale buildings were being crushed beneath the apparently huge chicken feet. It was one of the most odd/funny things I have seen in a lon...

Fake Plastic Trees

2005-10-04T22:20:37-04:00

This is the site model for Project Two, that is already well underway.

For this project we were given one of three sites that are right here on campus. I was given the site that is in between our library (that was a church when our campus was some sort of all-girls catholic school. i think.) and the library annex. It is currently wasted space on a campus crying out for more space. The neat thing about having this site is that there is going to be a competition at the end of the semester to design and build something here. I don't know much about it yet but I will update when I do.

Anyhow, the program I was given is Taste, We are to incorporate a primary and secondary material into a cohesive design. I am sticking with plywood as my primary material and adding some sort of plastic cloud structure to it. I think. I was excited to have this site, but it is turning out to be more difficult than I expected. Both existing elevations are the asses of the buildings and I am ha...

Project One

2005-09-21T20:25:15-04:00

As soon as the wifi signal in my studio is fixed, I will be able to post on a regular basis. Posts might be sporadic until then.

Here are some images from my project. Briefly Explained:

We chose (randomly, from a hat or something shaped like a hat) a material, a methodology and a case study(ies). We then had to explore the chosen material and document 20 explorations with the object and an exploration in an accompanying book. After the explorations, we had to use the knowledge we had gained from the experiments and construct an object occuppying three cubic feet of space (as always, three cubic feet is kind of a loose number that can extend to, say, 20)

My material was wood composites, my methodology was laminating and my case studies were Alvar Aalto, the Spruce Goose and Renzo Piano. I took the Aalto and Spruce Goose route and began bending and laminating 1/8" bendable poplar plywood, truly an amazing material. I experimented a lot with simple bending and then went more...

People Making Things.

2005-09-11T03:08:05-04:00

Week Two Day Three

2005-09-08T05:26:12-04:00

This evening, Woodbury hosted a lecture by the quite brilliant William McDonough. He was incredibly informative; my first-thought description of him is that he has delusions of grandeur, only he isn't delusional. His ecological design ideas make sense, nothing seemed half-baked. China has adopted his book Cradle to Cradle as national policy and the work he is doing in China is nothing short of revolutionary. Did you know it is now illegal to build with brick in China?

Mr. McDonough seemed to have a thoughtful solution to every question given to him in the hour long post-lecture Q&A. Many of the questions were on the topic of New Orleans, and what do we do now. An area the size of Colorado is toxified; should we rebuild. He admitted that he hadn't had much time to think about the New Orleans problems, but then spoke for 15 minutes, in that very intriguing manner of someone who is figuring things out in their head as they are saying them. He proposed to rebuild the areas t...

Week Two Day Two

2005-09-06T23:11:44-04:00

Our first project of the semester (Studio 2A) is a material exploration. We were assigned, at random, a material, a method of working and case studies.

My material is wood composites. My method of working is laminating and my case studies are Eames and Aalto furniture and The Spruce Goose. We have to have at least 20 material experiments, a final construct (on which I am still not 100% clear of the details) and a book. So far I have several bending/laminating experiments and a few pages of the book.

It's been a relatively mellow first week; the calm before the storm.

Week One Day Four

2005-09-02T03:05:46-04:00

I woke up today in a foul mood; one of those moods that I am not quite sure why I am in. Have I mentioned that I quit smoking 6 weeks ago? That may have something to do with the mood.

I arrived at school at around 9:00AM and the parking lot was 140% full. I had to park with others in a Tow Away Fire Zone. I don't remember the exact numbers that our Chair told us in our annual First Day Of Studio All Years Get Together, but enrollment is larger than ever. And it is showing. Nowhere more than the parking lot. Between our campus and the San Diego campus, we are a pretty large Dept. of Architecture.

As I mentioned previously, the faculty/powers that be are handling the growing pains well, but the parking situation is going to be problematic because it seems that our campus is pretty landlocked. Maybe we can enact Eminent Domain [

Week One Day One

2005-08-29T22:33:30-04:00

Back to school. My schedule this semester is as follows:

World Architecture 2
Trigonometry
Design Studio 2A: Program and Space
Materials & Methods
Digital Fabrication Mini Studio

Today I had World Arch. 2 and Trig. The World Arch class seems like it is going to be quite interesting. The instructor, Dr. Paulette Singley, appears to be as interestingly nuanced as she is intelligent. One of the projects for the semester is to read Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas and write/produce our own book Delirious Los Angeles. I'm looking forward to this. They have also restructured the format of the class to be more modeled on the studio/applied learning concept. One meeting a week is lecture and the other meeting is seminar/discussion. This is great. Even though I love history classes, it can get a little boring to have someone talking at you at 9:00AM for 15 weeks straight.

I also had my Trig class. I have been in College for about 10 years now and have somehow avoided all things mat...

Hitting the Links

2005-07-31T12:43:14-04:00

School resumes in less than a month now. I am more than ready to get back. The Summer has felt a little long. I've read a few books, drank a few beers, traveled to Austin; but now I am ready to get back to school. I also quit smoking this Summer. It's been exactly 2 weeks today.

I thought that I would post a few of the architecture-related sites that I read the daily RSS feeds of:

Archinect

City Comforts

Design Observer

The Gutter

Inhabitat

Terra Non Firma

Veritas et Venustas

Also, my personal site is here

This is not a comprehensive list of the feeds I read, but a sample. I hate being bombarded by 100 links, and I won't bombard you with them. But if you have any sites that you read and would recommend, please leave them n the comments.

Cheers. Hope everyone is having a good Summer.

Texas Is Hot

2005-06-30T17:42:20-04:00

I am kind of enjoying the break from school, but getting anxious to return. I have had a few jobs for the architect that I work for in LA. I have been doing them remotely via (and viva) the internet.

I have been watching a few urban developments around town while I am here, and will upadate soon with some links. Even Summer is busy.

And. Scene.

2005-05-08T21:24:17-04:00

I actually finished finals/final reviews about a week ago, but have been decompressing and haven't even felt like typing. I have been trying to decide what to do with my summer. I haven't been a student in a long time, so my summers have always come and gone, hardly noticing from the office I was in.

I have decided to spend the next few (v.v. hot) months with my family in Texas. My dad had just purchased a boat, and I have some wonderful parents, a sister and brother-in-law, nephews and a niece that I don't get to see quite enough. I am lucky enough to have been offered work by 2 architects; work that I can do in Texas and upload to servers and not have to sit in a stuffy office. I may also try to get a job working a couple of days in a bookstore or something to get out and meet people.

A few of my studiomates and I are doing some renderings for "fun" and to further develop our skills. We are giving ourselves three weeks per project and we rotate on who chooses the building ...

No Guns In This One

2005-04-23T22:53:46-04:00

Studio is done. Almost. Crit of our last project was Friday. Mine was so-so. I think that this was my first project on which I kinda dropped the ball. Which is odd because I put more hours, by far, into this project than any previous project. I think that my program was sort of off and was impossible to fix, no matter how much work I put into it. I am going to redo it over the summer and come up with something that works better.

We have presentation of all work on Wednesday. Anyone in the LA area who would like to see our work is certainly invited. It will be in the Wedge Gallery and surrounding rooms between 1:00-5:00PM. I am not sure if it will be food (and more importantly, drinks) but it should be an interesting display. There are some fantastic projects from this semester and I will post images of some of them after Wednesday.

Good luck to everyone with their final projects and enjoy your summer break.

Ciao and Cheers.

Studio Gangsters

2005-04-20T04:00:09-04:00

The Map

2005-04-18T19:03:27-04:00

Last Friday was our annual Grand Critique. Three fourth-year students were chosen (one by their peers, one by the faculty and one by GPA) to exhibit their work from their first year to the present. Due to a memory card error, I don't have any images. But if I were to describe the work verbally I would say, “some was good, some was interesting, some was both and some was neither.”
Following the student presentations, the room became a forum of open discussion between faculty and student body to talk about the goods, bads and interestings of the architecture department (etc”¦) here at Woodbury. I didn't feel it appropriate for a first-year student to be too critical, as I am just getting acclimated and learning the ropes. I tend to speak my mind, so it was a little tough to bite my tongue a couple of times.
Therefore this becomes my forum. Some of the things that were discussed:

The Architecture Faculty. [I need to preface this with the fact that I have become aware that se...

Final Project or: Damn This Semester (Year) Went by Quickly

2005-04-12T21:42:42-04:00

Fourth project was presented last week. Presentation went pretty well. I kind of plugged my fascination with The Five Obstructions into my process. I made myself stick to a kind of rigid Kahn-ian geometry. I also chose to fight my addiction to computer graphics. My presentation board was composed completely by hand, which is something that I thought I wasn't really all that competent in doing. And actually I came very close to mucking up several hours worth of hand drawings.

I was going to acetone transfer (note: fingernail polish remover works better) a pattern of repeated images of Kahn's work onto my drawing wherever the section was cut. The image was the triangle that you see when you look up in the stairway of Kahn's Yale Art Gallery. I had transferred probably 100 of them onto my paper when I noticed something. I asked studiomate Danny, "Umm, what does this look like to you?" After he finished laughing he said, "Leopard Print." "Yeah, that's what I thought also," I...

I've Been to the Mountaintop

2005-04-11T18:26:07-04:00

So. I was up rendering Saturday night until 4:30 Sunday morning. I knew that I needed to be in Pasadena by 7:00AM. We were meeting Vic Liptak, a Studio Instructor, to hike and look at some hotel ruins atop Mount Echo in the San Gabriel Mountains. Our final studio site is similiar to the location. Anyway. I, along with six studiomates, arrived 15 minutes late. Vic and other studiomates were already en route up the mountain. [keep in mind that I am a 31 year old smoker. my usual hikes are at runyan canyon, which is less of a hike and more of a runway show] As the seven of us are 1/2 mile up the mountain, we hear voices screaming at us telling us that we are on the "wrong side of the mountain". Oops. We retreat and start up the "right" mountain. We are walking quickly to try to catch up with the group. Danny, Collin and Juliette pull out into the lead. Brice and I are together in the middle. Greg and Biayana are trailing behind. The site is 2-and-one-fucking-half-mile u...

Some Thoughts Post-Spring Break Loosely Related to Architecture

2005-03-30T01:15:41-05:00

-To the Airport Ticket Lady: Just beacause a guy has a beard and fashionably messy hair does not mean he smokes/smuggles drugs. My bags were ransacked by the screening people. It was almost worth it watching them open my LARGE suitcase filled with model-making tools. I thought that I was going to Guantanamo when they saw how many different cutting tools were in my possesion. (In Australia they confiscated my Pelikan 4001 Ink. I guess they thought I might hijack the plane with poetry.) I had a book in my bag on the Salk Institute and while I was watching the screener he was flipping through the book and seemed to be interested in more than just looking for drugs. Damn that Khan is good.
After my three bags were checked, I was then stopped at the security checkpoint because the Ticket Lady had stamped my passport with the code "SSSS", which means, roughly, "Check this guy". I barely made my flight.

-Circling Los Angeles in an airplane on a clear night is mesmerizing and a...

More From Dallas

2005-03-25T14:03:27-05:00

Looking up inside a Serra Sculpture.

The Kimbell

Light in the Kimbell.

Dan Flavin Retrospective at the Modern.

Warhol at a Modern museum? Well, I never...

Dallas has a lot of freeways.

And they are building more...

and they look kinda awesome when they converge.

A forgettable building that looked cool from Reunion Tower.

The Serra Sculpture in front of the Modern again.

Yee-haw From a Texas Spring Break

2005-03-24T23:04:20-05:00

Project Three

2005-03-15T16:06:13-05:00

Another one done. We followed the same basic criteria on this one as we did on the previous two. Our site was a 40ft deep ravine, 10' wide at the top and 20' wide at the base. We had to build a structure that in some way spanned the gap. My "mentor" for this one was Plasma Studio, my element was Water, my attribute is still Purification and my human tendency was Secular Atonement. Here are the images:

2x8 at the A+D Museum

2005-03-08T06:22:48-05:00

Saturday night was the opening of the 2x8 exhibit at the a+d museum. To my knowledge, the exhibit was to show the work of two students from 8 area architecture schools; hence the name 2x8. However, there were 12 schools and some had very large groups of students representing, so go figure. Either way, the projects were pretty good and the turnout was incredible.

By 8:00PM, the place was PACKED. The open bar helped keep people there, no doubt. It was seriously like a night at a popular club, there were people shoulder to shoulder to model to rendering.

Because of said open bar and a new camera, the pictures do the work less justice than deserved.

Enjoy.

Identities

2005-02-28T19:46:32-05:00

AdMEIERed

2005-02-28T19:01:07-05:00

In my Design Communication class, we are modeling and rendering Meier's MACBA. I really enjoy computer modeling, but holy shit how time consuming. This is literally 30 hours of work over the weekend. And this is practice for modeling the Baths of Caracalla; not the ruins, as they were c. 250 AD. If there is one thing I know about the Baths of Caracalla it is this: they look like a lot of kilobytes.

Pics of The Still Unfinished MACBA: