I would just call. As a matter of fact, thats how I got my first archi-job. I just called once a week or so, and they finally relented. They will remember you if youcall. Heck, arecruiter told me to just go down in person.
hmmm... maybe I should look into it - I used to be really on top of all things internet but lately I'm getting a little worn out by everything that is out there. I'm trying to pair down how much stuff I pay attention to.
yeh, i think that it is generally good to follow up a resume (whether hardcopy or sent via email) with a phone call after a week or so... i don't think that you can really go wrong with that... there are really only a few ways that they might reply...
1) "yes, we received your resume but the position has already been filled"
2) "yes, we received your resume and we will start interviewing candidates in the next week or so"
3) "yes, we received your resume and would like to set up a meeting"
4) "no, i haven't seen your resume. would you please email it to me directly?"
either way you're gonna end up with more information instead of just sitting around and waiting to be strung along.
sarah, this was just posted by smokety mc smoke smoke on facebook... the wright auction house is auctioning a bunch of eames stuff in april and the estimates for the lounge chair/ottomans are $3000-$5000...
LB if I've never said it before, although I'm sure I have, you are fantastic mother - singing Lady Gaga songs with your 6 year old son, how awesome is that. I have a thing for Bad Romance... and I have to consciously stop myself from randomly dancing when I hear it. We had a student in their recent project drop Lady Gaga in her sphere in his renderings. I thought that was cool.
while i'm fully supportive and understand the reason behind it, it's still disconcerting to me when i post on the news feed and get a 'approved by moderator' message.
well done LIG. It is great to hear that things are moving along in the right direction after all those years of planning.
that is a cool fish barry.
most certainly not newsworthy but I have started up our blog again after sporadic posting for quite awhile. The whole thing was begun to document construction of our work in Tokyo and we finally have something worth looking at, and possibly even talking about if i ever get around to using the grey matter between my ears to write something interesting ;-)
jump the photo with the piles really resonates with me. Often times in places I have worked entire footprints are excavated if the soil is too weak and replaced with rock or other suitable material to allow for a more traditional foundation. I find this inspiring, although I am led to ask if this is typical using fixed dimensioned piles and that close together. As well you mentioned that holes where drilled - is that common in Japan? Anyway I sound like all ahh gee whiz <- glad your blog is active again jump
yea pretty common archi. in other projects we mixed in concrete slurry with soil to reinforce the site, but in this case there used to be a house on the site and when they removed it to make a parking lot they didn't really compact things enough (possibly). in any case the soil was not enough to take the loads we are going to put on it and we needed to go deep so we had to put in the piles. drilling is cheapest and quietest way to do the job. hammering piles down would have been possible but noisy and too much cost.
to be fair, the soil probably would have taken a conventional house pretty easily but we went with crazy (for japan) cantilevers again which means there are some serious loads coming down to the ground and they are not really distributed around the site but really local. so we had to go this way...
me, i am looking forward to seeing the structure go up. it is pretty darned cool, if i say so myself. the house itself is just nice, but the structure is much cooler. as always.
cheers LB. no holz we didn't think of that. we did look into using heatpumps but couldn't get the sizing right for the cost. the weather is pretty mild anyway so it isn't like energy costs are high in any case...
blogs are such an amazing amount of work. i am always impressed by folks like archi and bldgblog and so on who do it for realsies.
yeah i always feel inadequate because my blog is just short off the cuff ramblings or linkings.. And then you have people like the ones you mentioned and more that actually work on pieces for some time and develop great things..
I guess maybe it is just a question of discipline or lack thereof on my part....
Hey TC. Another rfuller spotting here. Thought I would drop in and tell everyone the awesome news. Looks like there's going to be a little rfuller in the relatively near future.
Hey TC. Another rfuller spotting here. Thought I would drop in and tell everyone the awesome news. Looks like there's going to be a little rfuller in the relatively near future.
jump, glad that you're getting the blog up and running again... just went through some of the older posting that were new since the last time that i looked... good stuff... congrats on the continued publications and the exhibition...
i'm working on a rant for my long dormant blog... i've been having an interesting/troubling experience with my students (in my history/theory recitation) and their studio projects... we've set up our h/t class assignments to have some crossover with the studio and i was also on a few midterm reviews two weeks ago... my problem has been that the studio's site is very close to my apartment, so i know it pretty well (for those that know philly, i live a block south of girard on the fringe of northern liberties and the site is a few blocks north of girard in south kensington)... anyways, what has been bothering me is reading/listening to a lot of the students describe their site like it is something out of south central los angeles in the early 90's... in reality, its not a ghetto, its just a blue collar working class neighborhood with a few problems that are endemic to much of philly... hearing some of these students talk about their "research" and what it "proves" has just been rubbing me the wrong way and just embodies some of the things that i find to be wrong with architecture... plus there is also a lot of naivete about the causes of problems like litter... i keep hearing students say that the litter is the result of people in the neighborhood not caring about the neighborhood but there is no discussion/understanding of the fact that we live in a city with a $2 billion budget deficit that only has trash pickup once a week and even that is frequently delayed or canceled altogether as a result of weather (not to mention that they visited their site right after the blizzard, so the trash in the neighborhood hadn't be picked up for three weeks straight, so of course there was a bunch of crap in open lots and such)... argh... rant over, for now... more to come once i write something intelligible.
i hear ya, phil. i was on an affordable housing review last week and there was a lot of 'these people'-this and 'these people'-that talk coming from the students.
architphil - thats interesting. As you may know I'm familar with the Philly area. So did you actually have an open discussion about this at the time? I don't think it is uncommon for some people (not just students of architecture) to react in that manner, not that it is justified or "wrong". I've given up in expecting people to understand things not in their socio-economic background, and I wouldn't necessarily expect more out of students of architecture. That is a personal matter, although it is interesting to be able to discuss that in an academic setting, and is a factor. So I think it is more important that it is something to be discussed, not necessarily that they must see things a certain way.
slat... i'm planning on talking about it a bit in recitation tomorrow morning...
another example of the socioeconomic disparity came up this week in another one of my classes which is probably 3/4's students from the planning department... {background: it seems that here at upenn that the planning students, even more so than the architecture and landscape architecture students, come from privileged backgrounds} so, this one guy in the class, who definitely comes from a wealthy background, was presenting his idea for a research project in which the main idea was to convert military bases that are being closed through BRAC into nuclear power facilities... his central idea was that military bases tend to be in "not very populated areas" so that NIMBYism wouldn't be a problem... now, i grew up in a navy family (and went to public schools from kindergarten through grad school) and i mentioned that at least in my experience the idea that military bases were isolated was just plain silly... he was just sorta dumbfounded... i think that his working definition of "not very populated areas" was anything outside NYC, LA, and chicago...
just another reason why i was reticent about doing my phd at an ivy...
I remember in my GIS glass when I stepped on all of the toes of my classmates because I didn't do my project in ArcGIS.
I did my project in Google Maps. Considering it was a GIS class (Computers + Universal Coordinates) and not an ArcGIS class... I don't see what the problem was.
My whole idea was to put in a front end "low tech" way of establishing data points within a GIS database so that citizens could complain about planning problems. Matching up a complaint with a coordinate and a photo of said complaint almost completely validates it. So, when it came time to do inspections or surveys... planners would know where exactly to look.
And then everyone got even more pissed when I was the one with my google map dot points about clover patterns and ant nests on a soccer field GIS project was invited to be demonstrated at some state conference.
I think the idea I had was patented like a year later anyways.
But I got a lot of questionss relating to why I think it is/was important to make it easier for people to complain to the government. *GASP*
And I'll just throw out what my thesis project was "Super-fast methanogenesis in negative pressure sewage systems: an argument for density and sustainability." The day I was presenting two people did planning presentations on the same butterfly garden and someone else did a GIS presentation on haunted buildings.
about your students, seems like your job has to be to teach them to be rigorous and keep their opinions to themselves.
it is a hard haul especially for architecture students but my advisor for phd really beat me over the head with what kinds of statements can be made and not made and wouldn't take any rubbish - which was great. i didn't get it for a while but finally figured it out. until students can substantiate their ideas students should be hit over the head with their muddy thinking. it will make them better designers and thinkers whatever they end up doing later on...
i wish i had had that kind of teaching in archi-school because it was a real step up to get my head in right place to write phd. my professor must have thought i was a moron when in fact i was just trained as an architect.
Would you have a copy of that wicked sounding "Super-fast methanogenesis in negative pressure sewage systems: an argument for density and sustainability." thesis montagneux?
I don't allow any BS from my students. Either they provide citations and the calculations regarding anything sustainable, or they get called out. I do try to push them to be greener then turf grass, but I'm also trying to give them the foundation to make good decisions and not just put lipstick on a pig.
While at Penn, I never encountered any blue blood ignorance, as most of the LARP students were very grounded. Okay, there were a bunch of Korean students who didn't know what cheese was at one of the receptions (I'm talking about good stinky imported cheeses from DiBruno's). But we were never asked to solve poverty either.
- now that has got to be one of the best lines I've heard in a while. I guess it could be a popular saying amongst scrapers. Yea having students be rigorous about not just there work (output) but also the input (research) that gives them the jumping point. We've tried and still I think they are missing the point. But some get it, some get it later on. And realise that it's not that we are against, ideas or even assumptions just don't pass them off as factual or even baseful data.
Hi all I have work to do and my machine keeps crashing - and I just want to sleep. It's been a rough week of work and I can't wait for the weekend... need a bottle of wine, rum, and respite.
most of the kids are doing good "research" and mapping stats and stuff from the census, policymap, socialexplorer, or other sources of data... they just think that because they overlay a map of property values and a map of crime rates (just as an example) that just because there is some vague overlap that suddenly they have solved the problem... its the naivete about the complexities of the city that is bothering me... btw, i'm commenting about this stuff in my markups of their papers and trying to get them to think harder about this stuff rather than assuming that a few pretty maps are enough to completely understand a complex site in a changing urban fringe area...
Maybe you should try introducing them to ethnographic research techniques? Getting them to do qualitative research, even through rapid techniques (some of which can be done online, which I'm sure will increase the odds of use), could maybe help ground them and get them to look beyond the numbers and maps.
techno, in light of your department head's comments about the lack of urbanity of louisville, i'd say your challenge to fight non-rigorous thinking and entrenched attitudes may go farther than your students.
while steven holl may have gone too far in saying that every project is an urban design problem, i'd at least say that our midwestern cities have some unique urban issues to explore - especially having to do with transit and fringe development. sounds like she has a particular kind of 'urban' typology in mind and doesn't want to muddy her preconceptions by exploring different urban conditions.
that is actually still my one (and hence) main computer so i do. But if you wouldn't mind throwing a couple of sentences together re: the project and emailing me I would be fascinated to read it.
re: the student or others discussion re: research and urban complexity. Copper's suggestion is a good one.
Also, perhaps they need a refresher re: the basic difference between Correlation and Causation?
Steven I so agree. I thought the urban issues midwest were the right scale and with a rate of development that still allowed investigation. It felt very urban, and I was warmed by Louisville and how it balanced old with new, intervention with fringe development, personal and more public transportation - issues that are relevant to the design in an urban context portion of the M.Arch degree. Alas... but to be fair it was not the graduate coordinator but the head of the studio - we've been having an internal fight of sorts, the rigor seems to be matched with archaic thoughts
Thread Central
Speaks is twittering? Aw hell.
I would just call. As a matter of fact, thats how I got my first archi-job. I just called once a week or so, and they finally relented. They will remember you if youcall. Heck, arecruiter told me to just go down in person.
It does certainly feel like dating... or the days before dating. There is this one firm that is being such a tease...
hmmm... maybe I should look into it - I used to be really on top of all things internet but lately I'm getting a little worn out by everything that is out there. I'm trying to pair down how much stuff I pay attention to.
yeh, i think that it is generally good to follow up a resume (whether hardcopy or sent via email) with a phone call after a week or so... i don't think that you can really go wrong with that... there are really only a few ways that they might reply...
1) "yes, we received your resume but the position has already been filled"
2) "yes, we received your resume and we will start interviewing candidates in the next week or so"
3) "yes, we received your resume and would like to set up a meeting"
4) "no, i haven't seen your resume. would you please email it to me directly?"
either way you're gonna end up with more information instead of just sitting around and waiting to be strung along.
Houston traffic blows, but my iPhone rocks!
No, I'm not driving.
sarah, this was just posted by smokety mc smoke smoke on facebook... the wright auction house is auctioning a bunch of eames stuff in april and the estimates for the lounge chair/ottomans are $3000-$5000...
LB if I've never said it before, although I'm sure I have, you are fantastic mother - singing Lady Gaga songs with your 6 year old son, how awesome is that. I have a thing for Bad Romance... and I have to consciously stop myself from randomly dancing when I hear it. We had a student in their recent project drop Lady Gaga in her sphere in his renderings. I thought that was cool.
while i'm fully supportive and understand the reason behind it, it's still disconcerting to me when i post on the news feed and get a 'approved by moderator' message.
is this archinect newsworthy?
barry why not? and i kind of like it better as bones. although, the lead as shingle(s) is nice play with the material.
night all
Thanks for the congrats, everybody... It feels great to no longer be living in limbo!
For what it's worth, I decided to go ahead and enroll at UC, and dropped off my tuition deposit at DAAP this afternoon. I'm officially a Bearcat!
Seriously, barry?! Sprinklers in that little thing? That is ridiculous. I am dead serious about fire safety as we all are, but come the fuck on.
well done LIG. It is great to hear that things are moving along in the right direction after all those years of planning.
that is a cool fish barry.
most certainly not newsworthy but I have started up our blog again after sporadic posting for quite awhile. The whole thing was begun to document construction of our work in Tokyo and we finally have something worth looking at, and possibly even talking about if i ever get around to using the grey matter between my ears to write something interesting ;-)
jump the photo with the piles really resonates with me. Often times in places I have worked entire footprints are excavated if the soil is too weak and replaced with rock or other suitable material to allow for a more traditional foundation. I find this inspiring, although I am led to ask if this is typical using fixed dimensioned piles and that close together. As well you mentioned that holes where drilled - is that common in Japan? Anyway I sound like all ahh gee whiz <- glad your blog is active again jump
yea pretty common archi. in other projects we mixed in concrete slurry with soil to reinforce the site, but in this case there used to be a house on the site and when they removed it to make a parking lot they didn't really compact things enough (possibly). in any case the soil was not enough to take the loads we are going to put on it and we needed to go deep so we had to put in the piles. drilling is cheapest and quietest way to do the job. hammering piles down would have been possible but noisy and too much cost.
to be fair, the soil probably would have taken a conventional house pretty easily but we went with crazy (for japan) cantilevers again which means there are some serious loads coming down to the ground and they are not really distributed around the site but really local. so we had to go this way...
me, i am looking forward to seeing the structure go up. it is pretty darned cool, if i say so myself. the house itself is just nice, but the structure is much cooler. as always.
yay blogs. i'm constantly amazed how much time it takes to post something worthwhile.
jump, did you guys look at having the piles pull double duty? (e.g. for seasonal thermal storage or geothermal?)
It IS really nice to see another project going up and being blogged, jump!
archi, thanks - I'm not really a cool mom, but we do some fun things together.
And LiG I said it on FB but here too - congrats!
bummer about alex chilton. he was too young.
morning all,
jump, looks good.
cheers LB. no holz we didn't think of that. we did look into using heatpumps but couldn't get the sizing right for the cost. the weather is pretty mild anyway so it isn't like energy costs are high in any case...
blogs are such an amazing amount of work. i am always impressed by folks like archi and bldgblog and so on who do it for realsies.
jump - that's exciting - looking forward to seeing construction progress.
Deciding whether to call at 10:30 or 2:30.
yeah i always feel inadequate because my blog is just short off the cuff ramblings or linkings.. And then you have people like the ones you mentioned and more that actually work on pieces for some time and develop great things..
I guess maybe it is just a question of discipline or lack thereof on my part....
barry - fully sprinkled? I love it paired with the other image of gehry sitting in the middle of a fire trap. oh, how our priorities have changed.
Hey TC. Another rfuller spotting here. Thought I would drop in and tell everyone the awesome news. Looks like there's going to be a little rfuller in the relatively near future.
<img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4050/4443764580_49deb21f83.jpg" width="400" height="306" alt="Randall Fuller Makes Babies" />
Hey TC. Another rfuller spotting here. Thought I would drop in and tell everyone the awesome news. Looks like there's going to be a little rfuller in the relatively near future.
rfuller,
holy shit congrats!
Congrats!
rfuller, congrats...
jump, glad that you're getting the blog up and running again... just went through some of the older posting that were new since the last time that i looked... good stuff... congrats on the continued publications and the exhibition...
i'm working on a rant for my long dormant blog... i've been having an interesting/troubling experience with my students (in my history/theory recitation) and their studio projects... we've set up our h/t class assignments to have some crossover with the studio and i was also on a few midterm reviews two weeks ago... my problem has been that the studio's site is very close to my apartment, so i know it pretty well (for those that know philly, i live a block south of girard on the fringe of northern liberties and the site is a few blocks north of girard in south kensington)... anyways, what has been bothering me is reading/listening to a lot of the students describe their site like it is something out of south central los angeles in the early 90's... in reality, its not a ghetto, its just a blue collar working class neighborhood with a few problems that are endemic to much of philly... hearing some of these students talk about their "research" and what it "proves" has just been rubbing me the wrong way and just embodies some of the things that i find to be wrong with architecture... plus there is also a lot of naivete about the causes of problems like litter... i keep hearing students say that the litter is the result of people in the neighborhood not caring about the neighborhood but there is no discussion/understanding of the fact that we live in a city with a $2 billion budget deficit that only has trash pickup once a week and even that is frequently delayed or canceled altogether as a result of weather (not to mention that they visited their site right after the blizzard, so the trash in the neighborhood hadn't be picked up for three weeks straight, so of course there was a bunch of crap in open lots and such)... argh... rant over, for now... more to come once i write something intelligible.
i hear ya, phil. i was on an affordable housing review last week and there was a lot of 'these people'-this and 'these people'-that talk coming from the students.
rfuller, congrats.
having a little alien on the way has been uber crazy.
holz,
you expecting? Or should I say your lady.
Not just students think that way...
anyway - they probably didn't grow up or spend much time in the city.
Aww, the job has been filled! That was quick! Less than 20 days.
Should I even bother asking what my strengths and weaknesses are? Or why the other candidate was hired?
architphil - thats interesting. As you may know I'm familar with the Philly area. So did you actually have an open discussion about this at the time? I don't think it is uncommon for some people (not just students of architecture) to react in that manner, not that it is justified or "wrong". I've given up in expecting people to understand things not in their socio-economic background, and I wouldn't necessarily expect more out of students of architecture. That is a personal matter, although it is interesting to be able to discuss that in an academic setting, and is a factor. So I think it is more important that it is something to be discussed, not necessarily that they must see things a certain way.
slat... i'm planning on talking about it a bit in recitation tomorrow morning...
another example of the socioeconomic disparity came up this week in another one of my classes which is probably 3/4's students from the planning department... {background: it seems that here at upenn that the planning students, even more so than the architecture and landscape architecture students, come from privileged backgrounds} so, this one guy in the class, who definitely comes from a wealthy background, was presenting his idea for a research project in which the main idea was to convert military bases that are being closed through BRAC into nuclear power facilities... his central idea was that military bases tend to be in "not very populated areas" so that NIMBYism wouldn't be a problem... now, i grew up in a navy family (and went to public schools from kindergarten through grad school) and i mentioned that at least in my experience the idea that military bases were isolated was just plain silly... he was just sorta dumbfounded... i think that his working definition of "not very populated areas" was anything outside NYC, LA, and chicago...
just another reason why i was reticent about doing my phd at an ivy...
ok, end rant #2...
Archphil. I totally got your point.
I remember in my GIS glass when I stepped on all of the toes of my classmates because I didn't do my project in ArcGIS.
I did my project in Google Maps. Considering it was a GIS class (Computers + Universal Coordinates) and not an ArcGIS class... I don't see what the problem was.
My whole idea was to put in a front end "low tech" way of establishing data points within a GIS database so that citizens could complain about planning problems. Matching up a complaint with a coordinate and a photo of said complaint almost completely validates it. So, when it came time to do inspections or surveys... planners would know where exactly to look.
And then everyone got even more pissed when I was the one with my google map dot points about clover patterns and ant nests on a soccer field GIS project was invited to be demonstrated at some state conference.
I think the idea I had was patented like a year later anyways.
But I got a lot of questionss relating to why I think it is/was important to make it easier for people to complain to the government. *GASP*
And I'll just throw out what my thesis project was "Super-fast methanogenesis in negative pressure sewage systems: an argument for density and sustainability." The day I was presenting two people did planning presentations on the same butterfly garden and someone else did a GIS presentation on haunted buildings.
thanks, architphil.
about your students, seems like your job has to be to teach them to be rigorous and keep their opinions to themselves.
it is a hard haul especially for architecture students but my advisor for phd really beat me over the head with what kinds of statements can be made and not made and wouldn't take any rubbish - which was great. i didn't get it for a while but finally figured it out. until students can substantiate their ideas students should be hit over the head with their muddy thinking. it will make them better designers and thinkers whatever they end up doing later on...
i wish i had had that kind of teaching in archi-school because it was a real step up to get my head in right place to write phd. my professor must have thought i was a moron when in fact i was just trained as an architect.
Would you have a copy of that wicked sounding "Super-fast methanogenesis in negative pressure sewage systems: an argument for density and sustainability." thesis montagneux?
Anybody elkse drinking some wine?
If you have a powercord to an powerbook g4 alum, I do.
I could probably write up a relatively quick abstract in an hour or two.
I don't allow any BS from my students. Either they provide citations and the calculations regarding anything sustainable, or they get called out. I do try to push them to be greener then turf grass, but I'm also trying to give them the foundation to make good decisions and not just put lipstick on a pig.
While at Penn, I never encountered any blue blood ignorance, as most of the LARP students were very grounded. Okay, there were a bunch of Korean students who didn't know what cheese was at one of the receptions (I'm talking about good stinky imported cheeses from DiBruno's). But we were never asked to solve poverty either.
- now that has got to be one of the best lines I've heard in a while. I guess it could be a popular saying amongst scrapers. Yea having students be rigorous about not just there work (output) but also the input (research) that gives them the jumping point. We've tried and still I think they are missing the point. But some get it, some get it later on. And realise that it's not that we are against, ideas or even assumptions just don't pass them off as factual or even baseful data.
Hi all I have work to do and my machine keeps crashing - and I just want to sleep. It's been a rough week of work and I can't wait for the weekend... need a bottle of wine, rum, and respite.
most of the kids are doing good "research" and mapping stats and stuff from the census, policymap, socialexplorer, or other sources of data... they just think that because they overlay a map of property values and a map of crime rates (just as an example) that just because there is some vague overlap that suddenly they have solved the problem... its the naivete about the complexities of the city that is bothering me... btw, i'm commenting about this stuff in my markups of their papers and trying to get them to think harder about this stuff rather than assuming that a few pretty maps are enough to completely understand a complex site in a changing urban fringe area...
Maybe you should try introducing them to ethnographic research techniques? Getting them to do qualitative research, even through rapid techniques (some of which can be done online, which I'm sure will increase the odds of use), could maybe help ground them and get them to look beyond the numbers and maps.
nam, i hinted at it a few months ago, but yes... we've got a holz boxchen on the way.
(-chen is german diminutive for little)
techno, in light of your department head's comments about the lack of urbanity of louisville, i'd say your challenge to fight non-rigorous thinking and entrenched attitudes may go farther than your students.
while steven holl may have gone too far in saying that every project is an urban design problem, i'd at least say that our midwestern cities have some unique urban issues to explore - especially having to do with transit and fringe development. sounds like she has a particular kind of 'urban' typology in mind and doesn't want to muddy her preconceptions by exploring different urban conditions.
montagneux,
that is actually still my one (and hence) main computer so i do. But if you wouldn't mind throwing a couple of sentences together re: the project and emailing me I would be fascinated to read it.
re: the student or others discussion re: research and urban complexity. Copper's suggestion is a good one.
Also, perhaps they need a refresher re: the basic difference between Correlation and Causation?
hey techno are you looking for a studio site? we've got plenty of screwed up (more traditionally) urban sites in philly!
Steven I so agree. I thought the urban issues midwest were the right scale and with a rate of development that still allowed investigation. It felt very urban, and I was warmed by Louisville and how it balanced old with new, intervention with fringe development, personal and more public transportation - issues that are relevant to the design in an urban context portion of the M.Arch degree. Alas... but to be fair it was not the graduate coordinator but the head of the studio - we've been having an internal fight of sorts, the rigor seems to be matched with archaic thoughts
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