Ooh, there's something strange about posting other peoples photos. I mean, sure it could happen to us all, but it seems intimate to me for some reason. Wierd.

sarah - that's exciting! our tomatoes are just starting to flower...

first CSA share of the year! inaugural dish was a quick hot and sour napa cabbage with spring garlic and scallions ... over rice... mmmm...

I've got to make some pie tomorrow night - we have a ton of rhubarb (from a Detroit farm!) and local strawberries (picked by my sister-in-law).

Ship some pie over this way toaster. Now I'm craving pie.

And the fireplace is AWESOME, Donna. And so is the apron.

Whew, I went on an Archinect posting binge just now.

sarah, it is a picture that i had just posted on FB earlier in the day... somehow i hadn't made the connection to the 'big ball of hair' comment that i made here or i would have posted it myself!

Did someone say pie? Man I love pie. Strawberry Rhubarb is one of the top on my list.

Phillip I hotlinked to Facebook. The image was in my brain already and when you said big ball of hair...

btw i am in louisiana.

You helping with the cleanup, vado?

A co-worker just forwarded this link to everyone. I thought it was rather brilliant.

Very funny, melt. I have a pretty cool cardboard box fort in Angus' play room right now (recently moved from the living room so that my Projectione kids had workspace). I should send him a picture.

gossip of the week is that D&S are splitsville - anyone else hear this?

hilarious link with the cardboard architecture. My earliest architecture was blankets draped over the clothesline, pinned at the top and held down at the bottom by bricks.

Working at the clothing boutique all weekend. It is rainy out, so been moderately busy. Not much of an outdoorsy weekend.

I want some rhubarb pie! It doesn't seem to be something you can get down south.

i pulled my neck fri morning. so i took the day off and lounged. Then went in for a few very productive hours today.

Lars, being crative when numbed by work is hard. I am trying to get over that myself. Currently am devoting a lot of time to work though. Yet, getting involved with the community boards etc has been fun. And i am enjoying building my cabinet. I find i just have to try and make time.

I imagine painting might require even more of a "clear head" as it were, though.

Vado, a co worker just came back from a visit. I would like to get there with the missus this year. Although some friends who live there were telling us that the spill is causing quite a bit of vapors. At least near the waters.

Nite all.

we were watching indi-jones today and my daughter suggested i should be in movies...but that my character shouldn't be killed....very seriously. too funny.

off to yokohama to a wedding! my first real japanese traditional wedding, believe it or not. am quite curious to see how it goes.

so I spent the morning battling the summer school schedule just in time for the start of the football (yes it's football) match US vs England. I must say that the US has traditionally had a strong defensive team (possibly because they don't have any true strikers) but to come back from a quick goal against a balanced England team speaks volumes. Well done

In other news I'm tired and going to sleep - more football tomorrow

robert green, poor lad eh? usa is gettin better but that was not a natural goal ;-)

so wedding was fun. not religious, no gods and no oaths, just a fantastic party with fantastic people. two performances featuring naked men which was rather funny, and lots of maguro sushi which was awesome. it turns out a japanese wedding is like a western one but with fewer fistfights and no priest. oh, and more raw fish...

I love weddings. Not for the romantic sinement, but for the free alchohol and dancing. South Texas weddings are the best. We floated 7 kegs at my cousin's nuptuals. I've never seen a fight at one, though.

jump performance ft naked men? is that traditional?

I don't think I've ever been to a wedding where they served beer. It's always wine and spirits but always plenty of the latter. We do have some beer drinkers amongst our friends and are considering serving their beer in champagne flutes for our wedding... but we'll see

SH, have you ever eaten here? seems like it's worth a drive (and somewhere the boys would enjoy)....

No I have not, but it sounds like fun.

my brother always reminds me that the first time he had been to a party without a fist-fight breaking out was when he came to japan.


naked people are not traditional as far as i know. one of my best friends is an artist and he married a lady who organizes events for the city...so they have lots of interesting friends, including two who run around naked on weekends. it was surreal to be in a seriously high end hotel in toyko with serious people, professors and owners of companies in kimonos and suits, and then this guy in red things starts dancing all over the room, between courses. and even more surreal to see these serious people standing up ans applauding. just goes to show...

drinks at weddings are great. beer is popular here too, but i stuck to the wine selection. very good stuff!

so summer studio starts tomorrow. The project is design a small reading room for the university campus that is to connect visually to some silos, and functionally to a day care. But because I'm mentally on summer vacation (sun, fun, etc) I'm having a hard time coming up with 7 precedent studies. So far I have the following;

Exeter Library
Stockholm Library
Seattle Public Library
Pontifical Latern Library
Soane Library

help

What about the Library Alexandria, the Biblioteque Nationale de France, and/or l'Institute du Monde Arab?

Has anyone kept working on a project (hopefully personally or academically) that they knew dead down is was actually pretty ugly and or just a plain bad idea?

I'm on that right now. U thought I should add some more portfolio fluff... so I took an idea and just rant with it. Encountered a huge mistake on my part, tried to smooth it over to not necessarily look like a mistake... kind of liked it... ran with it again...

And now am in a basically horrible position!

I'll post it when I'm done, I think.

ATP
i hear you on summer!! alas, the days start getting shorter in just over a week. i don't understand why we celebrate this day...

here are a few libraries that may be of some use...

calatrava's library in zuerich (ETH law school, i think)
max dudler's phenomenal reading room in berlin
botta's lesesaal (reading room) for a monastery in lugano
cottbus library, h&dem
bibliotheque nationale, dominique perrault
usera library, abalos & herreros
UNAM library, juan o'gorman
black diamond, SHL
halmstad library, SHL
utrecht library, weil arets
FU berlin library, norman foster
TU delft library, mecanoo
turku library, JKMM
dresden library, ortner + ortner

there's aalto's viipuri (aka vyborg), otaniemi tech university, and mt angel libraries.

and then scharoun's berlin library.

pelli's recent minneapolis library isn't bad.

several good ones recently in the phoenix area, and not just by bruder.

and i can think of two that were completed over the last couple of years by machado/silvetti, one the allston near boston, the other i can't remember the location. both exquisite.

designlab was working on the grosse point expansion and had some previous library work that looked nice.

phoenix - richard + bauer. they've done several now.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenmccown/4675201350/in/photostream/

morning all,
there is a big strategic announcement at work this morning, that i am skipping to work through.

what about Toyo Ito's Sendai Mediatheque or Tama Art University Library

bruder's phoenix library?

there's also the staatsbibliothek zu berlin where the angels would hang out in "der himmel uber berlin."

Unicorn—I totally have. It was an academic project and I just ran with it for the semester... I still think that my concept was strong, but it landed in the wrong spot on the unity/variety continuum and made me uncomfortable. It's actually a great story in interviews, people really seem to dig that I can admit that I once made something ugly, and that it bothered me enough to keep trying to figure out why/how it got ugly. It's not a portfolio piece, though.

Steven, I started noticing back in high school that the libraries in Phx (even the no-name ones) weren't half bad. I'd actually be kind of interested to do a precedent study on them as a program and see what came out of that.

oops - SW already mentioned the berlin library.

another one: Michelangelo's Laurentian Library.

did anyone mention the boston public library in copley square? original designed by mckim mead and white and the addition by philip johnson. copley square..my first encounter with four acclaimed architects within a city square (trinity church and im pei's hancock tower as well as his christian science buildings just behind)

nam-
i've tried to paint without a clear head and typically i'm disappointed with the result and it puts me in more of a funk... there are also of course the times that it elates me to the highest levels of self satisfaction though too which is always nice when it's unexpected.

i'm also trying to do some furniture as well...just built some drawers for a set of shelving units that i designed previously. always nice to work with your hands.

lars, when you create, do you often get to a "space" where all sense of time and space is lost on you? it happens to me, and i wonder; is that okay, should i be more structured and planned??

right now, i'd give anything, anything to be in some other space. the more distance i get, the more resigned i've become, yet the more resigned i become, the closer i get to hope? does that even make sense?

i can't drink, but i sure could go for a toke.

lars,
yeah nothing beats the satisfaction of working with your hands and seeing the end result.

The only time work ever came close for me was when i was teaching.

beta -
i def have had those sessions where i've painted/drew/made furniture or whatever where i've lost some sense of time...specially while in school i could def work for hours and have thought only minutes went by...or just work sort of tirelessly

i understand about wanting to be in a different space. i went through a breakup recently that felt awful and such...felt great about the decision at first, then went through regret and such, then went through the whole reminiscing doubt thing, and then all of a sudden i just snapped out of it one day. i'd been stressed for weeks about the whole situation and one night it just went away and hasn't returned. everyone told me it takes time and i know from the past that it's true..but there's nothing you want to wait for less and hear as advice. i hope you're space continues to improve though...from personal experience i realize that drinking isn't the right answer for sure...it is a depressant after all.

nam-
i've been very lucky in my career..and i typically can't complain..it's just that it feels like government agencies are attempting to take all creativity out of architecture and it's become more of a career of trying to make sure you meet all the rules and creative solutions are hard to come by.

i did work on three projects for three years each..all of which produced a satisfying result... 3com corporate headquarters buildings 1-4 right out of school, brandeis university's campus center and parson's renovation at 12th and 5th ave. and a few others along the way... i'm also just old enough where i'm ready to try and do my own ideas and not continue to produce the ideas for other people.. OR just work for even more interesting firms with possibly less dominating design figures...i've been working for small firms for about 9 years now...maybe i need a good 40 person firm..anyway now i'm just rambling.

make sure the reading room has wifi,otherwise, the students might have to look at books.

you spend most time painting now lars?

Checking in... had a super rough day, seems I forgot everything I learned in my training over the last few weeks and I let my students down by not being on top of things. They have enough frustrations as it is, they don't need to see me frustrated too, but I'm afraid they did. I guess every day can't be my best.

Hi everyone.

techno, i don't think anyone has mentioned Maya Lin's Langston Hughes Library. It's the first one i thought of when you said "reading room" as it's a tiny little building, perfectly pitched of course.

I very nearly had a complete breakdown today due to what turned out to be a small mistake by 3Form. Mantaray, I nearly called you in tears because I recalled you saying 3Form is really difficult to work with and today I felt I had stepped right into a nightmare!! They quoted a job a year ago, then when I had them requote it for today's pricing (due to long delays by the City - this is for my bus shelter project) they came back saying it was structurally impossible to do what I wanted and I'd have to make all my panels half the size they quoted originally! Well I had a total hissy fit and thankfully they were patient with me - when I got to talk to 3Form's engineer he explained the issues, and as we spoke we found the mistake - somehow the thickness had been switched to 1/2" instead of the originally spec'd 1". So at the thicker size my stresses are acceptable, yay! I'm having my structural engineer re-check wind loads just in case, and added a couple more support points.

It's been a busy time as I'm prepping for Kentucky and the weekend was filled with Angus' sleepover birthday party. We had fun.

beta: a couple weekends ago I had that thing you mentioned wanting, and it wasn't nearly as fun as I remembered it being from college. Better to stick with the healthy pursuits, IMO.

phew, glad it turned out to be nothing big, donna!

My experience with 3Form was negative in 2 ways:

1) inadequate explanation of technical limitations at the outside of the project (after the first few limitations cropped up unexpectedly when we were much farther along than I would have liked, I had to start gently and consistently probing over and over again to make absolutely sure I was getting every piece of information that might affect my detaiing. It felt like pulling teeth to find out the limits of what we could do with the material - and we weren't even doing anything out of the ordinary!!) I was very grateful the client decided to spring for a full-scale (and very expensive) mockup, because during the mockup (months and months into the design! if not a year in!) we discovered point two:

2) the colors vary WIDELY even within batches, and the material we had done all our detailing for, and had gone over in minute detail over and over again with the tech reps, turned out to be completely not at all the color we wanted when it was installed in the mockup. Like, we asked for white and it was either purple or grey, depending on the batch. At *that* point we were told, "oh yeah, that material varies a lot because it's recycled - you'll never get a true white with it. If you want a TRUE white you need to go with this other product." Like, WHAT? Really?!?! After all the conversations we've had about how this product is going to be used, and how it looks?

I can't tell you how many times we had to calm down our client over this material. We explored many other options as backups, out of necessity. It looks great in the end though.

'"outside" of the project' should be "outset"...

thanks everyone for the great selections but after all of that only 5 students have registered so only 5 libraries were needed. Not to worry I've added them to my increasingly long list of precedents.

oh 3Form kept getting our order wrong, too. I would ask for a certain sample and they would send a different one, and then not know what I was talking about when I called, etc...

I do still like the product, for what it's worth - just a word to the wise if you're thinking of spec'ing them. My hope is that they've gotten their act together since then.

jump-
i don't really spend most of my time doing any one thing...i am slowly trying to paint a lot more though.

Donna and straw, sorry you ladies had a rough day. Last week was like that for me. I am hoping this week goes better. Seems to be so far.

Straw I know when I was teaching the part that i was worst at and the part that made things go easiest in class was to be fully prepared. As true when dealing one on one or a whole class. Plus, it would always lead to a frustrated me (because i knew better) which made it worse.

morning all!

Jump - I went to a wedding this weekend too. No fist fights, but plenty of drinking. There was wine, spirits AND beer. Thank God as it was probably the hottest and muggiest day we've had so far. UGH!!! And it's not even summer yet.

Donna and Straw - hope today goes much better.

i'm down in looziana and i kinda like it. cept its 98 degrees and the humidity is the same. it seems that every other person down here is in the lawncare business. as i see and hear dozens of four door pickup trucks hauling mowers and weed whackers.

lb that trouble must have happened after we talked? glad it was worked out okay.