spent the evening pushing the stroller round the hood, posting signs for our yard sale on friday. it will be nice to take a day off from the office and maybe make a few bucks unloading un-needed stuff.
actually i have a question for some of you educators out there.
i sat in as a guest juror yesterday to see the work of students from a very good school from abroad that is having a studio here in tokyo. the work was ok, but i was really surprised that the students work was pretty much the same as what all the students who come here do. same "new" concepts, same "new" ideas, same building typologies, same everything....i wanted to scream a little bit because not a single student came up with something i haven't seen before.
and you know i kind of had this idea like in the fuksas interview in the news section that the students would be able to show me something, teach me to see something i can't see because i am too old and decrepit to step out of my comfort zone...but that wasn't the case. instead the students were in fact rather timid. much more so than i would be, and i have to be careful of real issues like budgets and clients.
so i wonder what is going on? maybe some of you have an insight?
because school is a place to learn how to be an architect there is bound to be some repitition as students all are going through the process of learning to solve the basic issues, but does that mean there is no room for more advanced issues too? does that mean there is nothing for the teacher to learn, or is it always the teacher giving the knowledge? the reason i ask is because i always have in my mind the idea that architectural education is a partnership between students and professors and everyone is learning. it is kind of uncomfortable for me to think the master vs. apprentice role maybe is the only viable way to go....surely that cannot be the case?
the studio in question was for students from 3rd yr to 5th year, btw.
Ahhh, Rabbit Hash, KY. Not far from the Queen City. The only place I know of that elected a dog for a mayor. This past Spring he died and now they are voting for a new one. No joke, it made the local news here.
hello tc!!!! ok i really want to vote for travis but they're asking for a paypal donation and my love of cats and cooky stories does not exceed my tight budget. so ok. but i'm really into the cat mayor.
how is everybody doing? i saw the great pics of architechno's trip, fantastic!! i am well, having fun and basically reading a lot. a loooot.
lb/tuna, I have a love-hate relationship with the state of my birth. The rolling hills, the charm, and the George Clooney vs. the bigots, the rednecks, and the ignorants. It's a toss up.
I've just discovered that we have the "Planet Green" channel on our digital cable network and I'm currently watching a show called "Living with Ed" about rabid environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. It's great. I love this guy. He's such a huge nerd. His wife just got an outfit made up of recycled plastic bags that she's wearing to events. Bradley Whitford bought him a new desk chair because he's had the same one since the 70's. My people!!!
*I want to clarify that Steven Ward and the good people of Louisville are largely exempt from that KY comment I made above. There are some scary people in other parts of the state though.
vado -- there are some places in which actual citizens own shares in their local utilities -- I can't remember but I think Alaska is actually one, somehow, which is why they get dividends from oil exports. (?) Don't quote me on that.
I'm in the same boat... I grew up in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, which is a place that seems forever stuck in the year 1953... And they'll do everything they can to keep it that way. Cincinnati is probably a bastion of liberalism by comparison. I love the Cincinnati area and sometimes I get very homesick for the place. There's a chance I'll move back there either for grad school, or whenever I've had my fill of NYC, but if anything keeps me away permanently, it would be the neofascist political culture of that area.
yeay! I'm getting to do my favorite task for the office today - writing about sustainability. Not that anybody is going to ever hire us to do what I'm trying to market and lay the ground work to do, but its very gratifying to lay down my values. of course I'll have to get the CEO's sign-off and his dilution of my radical/ahead of the curve aspirations, but it's still fun.
WonderKitty seems to be doing a lot better. She's stopped peeing on everything, she's eating and drinking normally, and she has a relatively good amount of energy. But I found out at the vet that she lost 4 pounds. She was only 10 pounds to begin with. She's so fluffy I didn't even notice! So I'm a bit worried. I find out her test results today. Her very expensive test results. :o(
the Airstream is an interresting beast. It is so well (efficently) designed that once it fails, the whole thing fails. Essentially the trailer is an aluminium tube that gains its strength from its shape (a shell structure in a ways). If any of the shell fails (rivets), the whole shell will fail. Their is very little redundancy, hence the fact that the trailer was so efficent in its weight.
The changes that I am going to make to the trailer are going to sacrfice the weight and the inherent efficencies of the trailer
Dang mdler, if I'd only known about those skillet guys when I worked in Belltown... anyway, it sounds like a really fun project. Though I know I would have gotten attached to that original efficient spirit of the Airstream, I'm sure whatever you do will end up looking great since they other stuff we've seen has been good.
WonderK, I hope the WonderKitty is all right!
nam, the debate seemed almost (dare I say?) boring in its lack of a Palin faceplant. I know I tuned in to see the train wreck. Palinbingo did make it slightly more amusing, but halfway through I realized that if I'd just taken a shot for every time she said "nuke-u-lar" I would be an extremely drunk person, and probably much more tolerant of that grating habit.
jump, i don't know exactly how to answer your question except to expand on it. i've never been one of those architects interested in - now that he has the chance - finally getting the cool stuff i did in school 20 years ago built now. i'm more interested in what the interns can show me, what their relative youth will bring to the design process.
what i'm learning is that - given a fairly open-ended challenge - what they give me back is often fairly boring. like you, i'm expecting to be shown something that may not have occurred to me, that i may not have thought of because of my age and responsibility for spec writing, drawing checking, business hustling, committee meeting sitting, construction admin, etc.
where's the fun?! where's the idea?! it's like they've internalized that school was then and this is now and that they have to think differently when i'm actually encouraging them to think like they learned in school. maybe this crop didn't learn it? maybe this crop has been taught that soberness and responsibility is now their agenda.
there is, conversely, a tendency to short-circuit: a nugget of an idea will be pursued to a point but then - when a different challenge is met - it'll be forgotten, given up on, or undermined by a different decision. no rigor, no consistency, just a series of independent decisions adding up to.....?
Well, since I am fresh out of school (yeah its been two years, but so!) maybe I can help.
When I am asked, or even just take the inicitive (sp?) to design the elevations of some of our buildings, I get completely shot down. Often its because our clients are very conservative, and I am not given all the info from the client meeting to properly incorporate all their desires. After a while, you get molded into making the same crap that the boss makes just to keep them and the clients happy.
But then again, it could just be here.
Good morning. Husband is at home baby-sitting today - Sitter's Husband has to have his toe amputated (fun, huh!) - and I'm nervous. Its not that Husband is incompetent or anything, but I don't want Abe to be a pain for him. Is that really so crazy? I don't want our kid to inconvenience his own dad. I really am nuts. Just the same, I hope he is easy and well behaved today.
Oh, and we are leaving Abe with a 14 y.o. for the first time tonight. I'm a bit nervous, but he should be asleep the whole time we're gone, really.
Steven- maybe they've got in their heads that you design a certain way and won't approve anything else. I know that I stopped going all-out in my last arch. job because whenever I did it wouldn't get approved. So eventually I started only presenting 'boss-friendly' versions.
i don't know. we've got one guy who gave a great effort on the last two jobs and we're building what he proposed. i AM getting some recycled versions of that from other people but nothing that comes from them.
these guys don't know how i design because, to be honest, i have tried to spread around the design responsibility since i got here 3+ years ago. i direct and i set agendas, only really pulling my weight when i see that things aren't going anywhere. unfortunately that's become more common in the past year...
there are some preconceptions about what i might like. one guy made a comment of surprise that i admired a un studio project, thinking it was too 'wild' for me. [sigh.] maybe they just think i'm old.
Still alive... Sort of. I'm home sick with an upset stomach, which I suppose is what I get for watching Palin on TV for 90 minutes last night. Normally I'd be sleeping, but there's a construction site next door and they've been doing excavation work with jackhammers outside my window since 7 AM. Maybe it's a union job, and they'll call it a day and go home after a couple more hours.
I've been obsessed all day with VP debate info, reading commentary here and wherever I can find it.
Then I was driving back from my contractor's office and came upon a traffic jam. Lots of shouting, could barely see people carrying banners, etc. I'm in such a revolutionary frame of mind that I was certain, absolutely certain I was seeing a protest march.
What it actually was: high school football prep rally. We're all American here in the heartland, I tall ya!
Happy weekend, all. I'm going on an AIA home tour tomorrow - the highlight of which will be a historic mansion redone by a local trophy wife who has decided she's a "designer". Oops, did I say highlight? I meant highlight for snark opportunities, lowlight for actual design.
I have to get into the design mode this weekend....cause come Wednesday I have to submitt 16 sets of conceptual drawings to a Planning and Zoning Board...Been doing the Goff thing on this one....alot of thinking and no drawing. Guess we will have to see where the next couple of days take me.
I might have picked up another job this week.....it might be a fun one it is an organization who work for the good of kids. Kids who need daycare, kids who need dental work or medical attention. The director seems like a real together Woman. Lots of energy and a very well respected program.
I also had another project come alive but was told I have to do all the billing for the job before the end of the year.
Then I have the house the ever changing house.....we just got the news the geothermal system....$400,000 or in the neighborhood.
Which I blame on the Gucci Plumber.....damn he is always looking for a buck. This week I will be doing a little research on my own, see if we can bring this back in line. I think there is someone local who can bring the price back alot....I just don't want to step on toes.
Wonder.....I always forget.....our birthdays are days apart....I be getting older next week.
Wonder what Saturday Night Live is cooking up this weekend for entertainment?
Have a great Fall Weekend! The leaves be a turning here in New England.
the thing was i didn't know what to say to the students as a juror and ended up with generalities. their prof is a friend of mine and i was worried that it wasn't my job to teach the students to step out of the box (maybe my friend was teaching them the opposite, after all). but still i was surprised at how boringly "stupid" the work was. derivative, all of it. copying moriyama house by nishizawa or similar. they were all so timid i wanted to yell at them for squandering their time at school.
that is a bit harsh, but still, these thoughts kept leaping though my mind. luckily i had to leave for work and a meeting so i was able to escape before giving them too honest an opinion.
i have spent the last 5 years or so at juries here in tokyo where the work is inventive in superficial way but lacks depth and had expected a foreign group of students to be at least as inventive as BIG or JDS, if not OMA and H+DeM. instead it was worse. unclear pish, really. and this was from a world class school.
i like teaching but i wonder if it is necessary to allow students to go through a phase of mediocrity while they find their own voices, and maybe that was all i was seeing. they were after all clearly learning important things in the process of copying the japanese masters...its just that they had nothing of their own to say, and that really really bothered me. is there no way around that situation?
--
sarah, about getting cut down, well it is maybe just your office. i still get over-ruled by my partner as well as by the collaborators we bring in. i have no problem with that. design is a group project after all. but even when i first started out much of what i designed was built. a fair amount was not, too, but i think that is sort of normal. if its all the time then you should start wondering what is going on....
TGIF TC!
I've spent the last couple of days working on exterior elevations of a three story building. I'm surprised my eyes didn't fall out in the process.
Wish I were there for your party DubK. Hope you have a marvelous time. Glad to hear WonderKitty is doing well.
snook - funny enough I always seem to come up with my best design ideas/concepts in bed right before falling asleep. No idea why or how.
jump - how disappointing, especially coming from what sounds like a potentially bright and talented group of students.
Alas - my eyes are so strained. Am off to bed. Sweet dreams.
W/EK its your birthday? If it is have a great one...have a drink (or two) on me.
Steven, et al re: young grads/students. I must say that more and more conservative designs being submitted, almost without agenda, without aganst, no polemic to say - it needs to be this, or even that. Rather almost copycat thing from what they expect us to like or expect to be accepted and possibly built. I know I'm somewhere in the middle (2001 completed grad school) and I do get tenative with design - caught between being unsure of my own voice, rejection, paying the bills etc. But I accept the challenge and throw things out there. Others just seem to be playing ball whatever that means. As if knowing all the right steps to make, because they were taught or encouraged so, but afraid or unable to make them. Perhaps it is a result of this post-theory pro-environment/pro-whatever period we are going through - but it seems like a global thing...like architects of a certain bracket are all just...well looking, no one is really doing. I recall looking at David Adjaye's work for the first time and feeling simultaneous excited and disappointed. The former because he was a diasporic brit producing intelligent work, the latter because the said work was a bit of an anti-climax. Atecho points finger at his monograph on public buildings (all three of them)
Anyway I must be babbling - my tummy is filled to the bring with paella and fresh mussells from Mallorca (the restaurant not the province, unfortunately) and my mind won't allow me to easily rest as I know this is my last weekend in Cleveland (sniff sniff). It's been fun, and I'm gearing up for the next trip...maybe in february we'll see.
Ahh heard a funny one about Clooney/Pitt in Burn after Reading, that it should be dubbed Burn before Watching. It was a bad film, with stellar performances from the boys - Oscar worthy if I should so add. But the direction and story telling got in the way, both sloppy and overdone in many instances.
Okay time for me to sip the last of the rum, and head to bed. I have a closet to transform in the morning.
jump another point before bed - sometimes students find themselves not in school, but after. I remember a design tutor reminding me of how I told them that I know how to make a design work, but I was more concerned in school to challenge myself (insert PE "make no easy drawings"). I was humbled, yet embarassed that I might of lost my way a little.
Hi tc! almost 2 days of no web time as we yard sale'd our way to $82.20 and a few less boxes to move.
glad to see everybody is doing well.
snook, find a well drilling contractor and get estimates directly from them for the holes - this tends to be the most $$ part of a geothermal system. also increasing the $ is limited access/small lot. it's worth getting a second estimate - at that price the payback period would be several centuries. look at some of the new dual stage air-air heat pumps for half-decent energy use and a lot simpler/cheaper install.
Happy Sunday TC-
My weekend went by in a flash, but I guess that's what happens when it is full of plans. I think the highlight of the weekend though was walking through the American Sign Museum.
The sign museum looks pretty cool... I may have to check it out when I'm in town in a couple weeks. I'm a sucker for the big, elaborate signs like they used to have for Holiday Inn.
One of my favorites in Cincinnati is at the Frisch's Mainliner on Wooster Pike, where my grandmother has been going for her Sunday brunch every week without fail since before dirt was invented.
we went to the science museum yesterday (sunday) maybe for the 20th time or so. the girls love it. they had a new show at the 360 degree theatre, which was superdee cool. the bridge in the 8 story high space is made 50% of glass, so can look straight down, straight up, straight out. amazing experience.
kind of quiet in tokyo for us now i finished school and our clients are waiting to see if the world has ended or not. so i bin working on updating projects for portfolio and web...turns out this is an undertaking done best one at a time rather than all at once. i forgot how much i hate doing this stuff ;-)
you think its really gonna go all grapes of wraith betadine?
amerika is so bloated and grotesquely wealthy now even a recession seems likely to have such an effect. the caricature of poverty back then was a skinny malnourished feller lolling about. today poverty seems to be connected more to obesity and TV. how would the poor unemployed folk looking for jobs even fit onto the hobo cars? and where would the tv go?
nah, its difrent days we face. dont make things any easier, mind...
Thread Central
spent the evening pushing the stroller round the hood, posting signs for our yard sale on friday. it will be nice to take a day off from the office and maybe make a few bucks unloading un-needed stuff.
actually i have a question for some of you educators out there.
i sat in as a guest juror yesterday to see the work of students from a very good school from abroad that is having a studio here in tokyo. the work was ok, but i was really surprised that the students work was pretty much the same as what all the students who come here do. same "new" concepts, same "new" ideas, same building typologies, same everything....i wanted to scream a little bit because not a single student came up with something i haven't seen before.
and you know i kind of had this idea like in the fuksas interview in the news section that the students would be able to show me something, teach me to see something i can't see because i am too old and decrepit to step out of my comfort zone...but that wasn't the case. instead the students were in fact rather timid. much more so than i would be, and i have to be careful of real issues like budgets and clients.
so i wonder what is going on? maybe some of you have an insight?
because school is a place to learn how to be an architect there is bound to be some repitition as students all are going through the process of learning to solve the basic issues, but does that mean there is no room for more advanced issues too? does that mean there is nothing for the teacher to learn, or is it always the teacher giving the knowledge? the reason i ask is because i always have in my mind the idea that architectural education is a partnership between students and professors and everyone is learning. it is kind of uncomfortable for me to think the master vs. apprentice role maybe is the only viable way to go....surely that cannot be the case?
the studio in question was for students from 3rd yr to 5th year, btw.
Ahhh, Rabbit Hash, KY. Not far from the Queen City. The only place I know of that elected a dog for a mayor. This past Spring he died and now they are voting for a new one. No joke, it made the local news here.
I think we should all vote for Travis
I love Kentucky. I seriously love every single thing I know about Kentucky. Rabbit Hash makes it all the more adorable.
Also the shape of the page numbers at the bottom now is reminding me of something - a Gropius building?
The page numbers remind me of the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, VA...
hello tc!!!! ok i really want to vote for travis but they're asking for a paypal donation and my love of cats and cooky stories does not exceed my tight budget. so ok. but i'm really into the cat mayor.
how is everybody doing? i saw the great pics of architechno's trip, fantastic!! i am well, having fun and basically reading a lot. a loooot.
no joke i had sex on the balcony of that hotel. it was at a librarian's conference!!!
What a way to start off a page!
lb/tuna, I have a love-hate relationship with the state of my birth. The rolling hills, the charm, and the George Clooney vs. the bigots, the rednecks, and the ignorants. It's a toss up.
I've just discovered that we have the "Planet Green" channel on our digital cable network and I'm currently watching a show called "Living with Ed" about rabid environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. It's great. I love this guy. He's such a huge nerd. His wife just got an outfit made up of recycled plastic bags that she's wearing to events. Bradley Whitford bought him a new desk chair because he's had the same one since the 70's. My people!!!
*I want to clarify that Steven Ward and the good people of Louisville are largely exempt from that KY comment I made above. There are some scary people in other parts of the state though.
dubK i have seen a lot of "living with ed" lately ... he is zealous and strange, but very endearing.
having a non-architectural significant other, there's something very familiar with his wife always thinking he's crazy, and i love his toaster bike!
Strange, I think the numbers look like one of those pipes in the early Mario Bros. Wish I could jump down and collect loads of coin!
vado -- there are some places in which actual citizens own shares in their local utilities -- I can't remember but I think Alaska is actually one, somehow, which is why they get dividends from oil exports. (?) Don't quote me on that.
DubK - I have a love/hate relationship with whole the Tri-State area, if you know what I mean ;o)
How's WonderKitty doing?
I'm in the same boat... I grew up in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, which is a place that seems forever stuck in the year 1953... And they'll do everything they can to keep it that way. Cincinnati is probably a bastion of liberalism by comparison. I love the Cincinnati area and sometimes I get very homesick for the place. There's a chance I'll move back there either for grad school, or whenever I've had my fill of NYC, but if anything keeps me away permanently, it would be the neofascist political culture of that area.
yeay! I'm getting to do my favorite task for the office today - writing about sustainability. Not that anybody is going to ever hire us to do what I'm trying to market and lay the ground work to do, but its very gratifying to lay down my values. of course I'll have to get the CEO's sign-off and his dilution of my radical/ahead of the curve aspirations, but it's still fun.
yay tk!
WonderKitty seems to be doing a lot better. She's stopped peeing on everything, she's eating and drinking normally, and she has a relatively good amount of energy. But I found out at the vet that she lost 4 pounds. She was only 10 pounds to begin with. She's so fluffy I didn't even notice! So I'm a bit worried. I find out her test results today. Her very expensive test results. :o(
hi yalls!
well, I have a new project...and I dont mean a lady!
I am turning a 26' Airstream trailer into a gourmet kitchen for Skillet
these are some pics of the trailer as is...I will keep you updated
oops!!! I forgot my picture link
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdler/sets/72157607648349494/
Yeah Airstreams. PBS aired an awesome documentary on the history of Airstreams and Cold War era mobile housing design a few months ago.
Also, what about that debate huh? I guess it is the beauty of low expectations but i honestly expected worse..
Hey all,
First of my 'get out the vote' campaigns -- http://72.2.118.90/index.html?videoID=cameron_sinclair
Second comes out Oct 16th.
c
the Airstream is an interresting beast. It is so well (efficently) designed that once it fails, the whole thing fails. Essentially the trailer is an aluminium tube that gains its strength from its shape (a shell structure in a ways). If any of the shell fails (rivets), the whole shell will fail. Their is very little redundancy, hence the fact that the trailer was so efficent in its weight.
The changes that I am going to make to the trailer are going to sacrfice the weight and the inherent efficencies of the trailer
Dang mdler, if I'd only known about those skillet guys when I worked in Belltown... anyway, it sounds like a really fun project. Though I know I would have gotten attached to that original efficient spirit of the Airstream, I'm sure whatever you do will end up looking great since they other stuff we've seen has been good.
WonderK, I hope the WonderKitty is all right!
nam, the debate seemed almost (dare I say?) boring in its lack of a Palin faceplant. I know I tuned in to see the train wreck. Palinbingo did make it slightly more amusing, but halfway through I realized that if I'd just taken a shot for every time she said "nuke-u-lar" I would be an extremely drunk person, and probably much more tolerant of that grating habit.
jump, i don't know exactly how to answer your question except to expand on it. i've never been one of those architects interested in - now that he has the chance - finally getting the cool stuff i did in school 20 years ago built now. i'm more interested in what the interns can show me, what their relative youth will bring to the design process.
what i'm learning is that - given a fairly open-ended challenge - what they give me back is often fairly boring. like you, i'm expecting to be shown something that may not have occurred to me, that i may not have thought of because of my age and responsibility for spec writing, drawing checking, business hustling, committee meeting sitting, construction admin, etc.
where's the fun?! where's the idea?! it's like they've internalized that school was then and this is now and that they have to think differently when i'm actually encouraging them to think like they learned in school. maybe this crop didn't learn it? maybe this crop has been taught that soberness and responsibility is now their agenda.
there is, conversely, a tendency to short-circuit: a nugget of an idea will be pursued to a point but then - when a different challenge is met - it'll be forgotten, given up on, or undermined by a different decision. no rigor, no consistency, just a series of independent decisions adding up to.....?
i don't know.
Well, since I am fresh out of school (yeah its been two years, but so!) maybe I can help.
When I am asked, or even just take the inicitive (sp?) to design the elevations of some of our buildings, I get completely shot down. Often its because our clients are very conservative, and I am not given all the info from the client meeting to properly incorporate all their desires. After a while, you get molded into making the same crap that the boss makes just to keep them and the clients happy.
But then again, it could just be here.
Good morning. Husband is at home baby-sitting today - Sitter's Husband has to have his toe amputated (fun, huh!) - and I'm nervous. Its not that Husband is incompetent or anything, but I don't want Abe to be a pain for him. Is that really so crazy? I don't want our kid to inconvenience his own dad. I really am nuts. Just the same, I hope he is easy and well behaved today.
Oh, and we are leaving Abe with a 14 y.o. for the first time tonight. I'm a bit nervous, but he should be asleep the whole time we're gone, really.
Steven- maybe they've got in their heads that you design a certain way and won't approve anything else. I know that I stopped going all-out in my last arch. job because whenever I did it wouldn't get approved. So eventually I started only presenting 'boss-friendly' versions.
still alive
i don't know. we've got one guy who gave a great effort on the last two jobs and we're building what he proposed. i AM getting some recycled versions of that from other people but nothing that comes from them.
these guys don't know how i design because, to be honest, i have tried to spread around the design responsibility since i got here 3+ years ago. i direct and i set agendas, only really pulling my weight when i see that things aren't going anywhere. unfortunately that's become more common in the past year...
there are some preconceptions about what i might like. one guy made a comment of surprise that i admired a un studio project, thinking it was too 'wild' for me. [sigh.] maybe they just think i'm old.
Still alive... Sort of. I'm home sick with an upset stomach, which I suppose is what I get for watching Palin on TV for 90 minutes last night. Normally I'd be sleeping, but there's a construction site next door and they've been doing excavation work with jackhammers outside my window since 7 AM. Maybe it's a union job, and they'll call it a day and go home after a couple more hours.
still alive and posting from my iPhone. Here, the page numbers are starting to resemble a skyscraper.
WonderKitty was eating like a horse this morning. I think she'll be ok.
My nerd-arific birthday party is tonight! And my DAD is coming! Should be hilarious...
happy nerdday!
I've been obsessed all day with VP debate info, reading commentary here and wherever I can find it.
Then I was driving back from my contractor's office and came upon a traffic jam. Lots of shouting, could barely see people carrying banners, etc. I'm in such a revolutionary frame of mind that I was certain, absolutely certain I was seeing a protest march.
What it actually was: high school football prep rally. We're all American here in the heartland, I tall ya!
Happy weekend, all. I'm going on an AIA home tour tomorrow - the highlight of which will be a historic mansion redone by a local trophy wife who has decided she's a "designer". Oops, did I say highlight? I meant highlight for snark opportunities, lowlight for actual design.
Stay safe out there!
I have to get into the design mode this weekend....cause come Wednesday I have to submitt 16 sets of conceptual drawings to a Planning and Zoning Board...Been doing the Goff thing on this one....alot of thinking and no drawing. Guess we will have to see where the next couple of days take me.
I might have picked up another job this week.....it might be a fun one it is an organization who work for the good of kids. Kids who need daycare, kids who need dental work or medical attention. The director seems like a real together Woman. Lots of energy and a very well respected program.
I also had another project come alive but was told I have to do all the billing for the job before the end of the year.
Then I have the house the ever changing house.....we just got the news the geothermal system....$400,000 or in the neighborhood.
Which I blame on the Gucci Plumber.....damn he is always looking for a buck. This week I will be doing a little research on my own, see if we can bring this back in line. I think there is someone local who can bring the price back alot....I just don't want to step on toes.
Wonder.....I always forget.....our birthdays are days apart....I be getting older next week.
Wonder what Saturday Night Live is cooking up this weekend for entertainment?
Have a great Fall Weekend! The leaves be a turning here in New England.
thanks for answering steven and sarah and
the thing was i didn't know what to say to the students as a juror and ended up with generalities. their prof is a friend of mine and i was worried that it wasn't my job to teach the students to step out of the box (maybe my friend was teaching them the opposite, after all). but still i was surprised at how boringly "stupid" the work was. derivative, all of it. copying moriyama house by nishizawa or similar. they were all so timid i wanted to yell at them for squandering their time at school.
that is a bit harsh, but still, these thoughts kept leaping though my mind. luckily i had to leave for work and a meeting so i was able to escape before giving them too honest an opinion.
i have spent the last 5 years or so at juries here in tokyo where the work is inventive in superficial way but lacks depth and had expected a foreign group of students to be at least as inventive as BIG or JDS, if not OMA and H+DeM. instead it was worse. unclear pish, really. and this was from a world class school.
i like teaching but i wonder if it is necessary to allow students to go through a phase of mediocrity while they find their own voices, and maybe that was all i was seeing. they were after all clearly learning important things in the process of copying the japanese masters...its just that they had nothing of their own to say, and that really really bothered me. is there no way around that situation?
--
sarah, about getting cut down, well it is maybe just your office. i still get over-ruled by my partner as well as by the collaborators we bring in. i have no problem with that. design is a group project after all. but even when i first started out much of what i designed was built. a fair amount was not, too, but i think that is sort of normal. if its all the time then you should start wondering what is going on....
TGIF TC!
I've spent the last couple of days working on exterior elevations of a three story building. I'm surprised my eyes didn't fall out in the process.
Wish I were there for your party DubK. Hope you have a marvelous time. Glad to hear WonderKitty is doing well.
snook - funny enough I always seem to come up with my best design ideas/concepts in bed right before falling asleep. No idea why or how.
jump - how disappointing, especially coming from what sounds like a potentially bright and talented group of students.
Alas - my eyes are so strained. Am off to bed. Sweet dreams.
W/EK its your birthday? If it is have a great one...have a drink (or two) on me.
Steven, et al re: young grads/students. I must say that more and more conservative designs being submitted, almost without agenda, without aganst, no polemic to say - it needs to be this, or even that. Rather almost copycat thing from what they expect us to like or expect to be accepted and possibly built. I know I'm somewhere in the middle (2001 completed grad school) and I do get tenative with design - caught between being unsure of my own voice, rejection, paying the bills etc. But I accept the challenge and throw things out there. Others just seem to be playing ball whatever that means. As if knowing all the right steps to make, because they were taught or encouraged so, but afraid or unable to make them. Perhaps it is a result of this post-theory pro-environment/pro-whatever period we are going through - but it seems like a global thing...like architects of a certain bracket are all just...well looking, no one is really doing. I recall looking at David Adjaye's work for the first time and feeling simultaneous excited and disappointed. The former because he was a diasporic brit producing intelligent work, the latter because the said work was a bit of an anti-climax. Atecho points finger at his monograph on public buildings (all three of them)
Anyway I must be babbling - my tummy is filled to the bring with paella and fresh mussells from Mallorca (the restaurant not the province, unfortunately) and my mind won't allow me to easily rest as I know this is my last weekend in Cleveland (sniff sniff). It's been fun, and I'm gearing up for the next trip...maybe in february we'll see.
Ahh heard a funny one about Clooney/Pitt in Burn after Reading, that it should be dubbed Burn before Watching. It was a bad film, with stellar performances from the boys - Oscar worthy if I should so add. But the direction and story telling got in the way, both sloppy and overdone in many instances.
Okay time for me to sip the last of the rum, and head to bed. I have a closet to transform in the morning.
jump another point before bed - sometimes students find themselves not in school, but after. I remember a design tutor reminding me of how I told them that I know how to make a design work, but I was more concerned in school to challenge myself (insert PE "make no easy drawings"). I was humbled, yet embarassed that I might of lost my way a little.
Hi tuna...how's mountainmelt?
yeah i getya archi. i am more worried that they are just not looking. ;-)
students are influenced by what they look at, not by what they see.
vado
is that some kind of Eastern shit????
Hi tc! almost 2 days of no web time as we yard sale'd our way to $82.20 and a few less boxes to move.
glad to see everybody is doing well.
snook, find a well drilling contractor and get estimates directly from them for the holes - this tends to be the most $$ part of a geothermal system. also increasing the $ is limited access/small lot. it's worth getting a second estimate - at that price the payback period would be several centuries. look at some of the new dual stage air-air heat pumps for half-decent energy use and a lot simpler/cheaper install.
Hi all,
A pretty slow weekend was had by myself. What about you all?
Only 2.5 weeks until i leave for my trip to India...
So much to do.
Happy Sunday TC-
My weekend went by in a flash, but I guess that's what happens when it is full of plans. I think the highlight of the weekend though was walking through the American Sign Museum.
The sign museum looks pretty cool... I may have to check it out when I'm in town in a couple weeks. I'm a sucker for the big, elaborate signs like they used to have for Holiday Inn.
One of my favorites in Cincinnati is at the Frisch's Mainliner on Wooster Pike, where my grandmother has been going for her Sunday brunch every week without fail since before dirt was invented.
(and yes, the propellers on the airplane actually rotate.)
we went to the science museum yesterday (sunday) maybe for the 20th time or so. the girls love it. they had a new show at the 360 degree theatre, which was superdee cool. the bridge in the 8 story high space is made 50% of glass, so can look straight down, straight up, straight out. amazing experience.
kind of quiet in tokyo for us now i finished school and our clients are waiting to see if the world has ended or not. so i bin working on updating projects for portfolio and web...turns out this is an undertaking done best one at a time rather than all at once. i forgot how much i hate doing this stuff ;-)
you know what sucks? all my grandparents are dead, and now i have no one to ask, how did you make it through the Great Depression?
you think its really gonna go all grapes of wraith betadine?
amerika is so bloated and grotesquely wealthy now even a recession seems likely to have such an effect. the caricature of poverty back then was a skinny malnourished feller lolling about. today poverty seems to be connected more to obesity and TV. how would the poor unemployed folk looking for jobs even fit onto the hobo cars? and where would the tv go?
nah, its difrent days we face. dont make things any easier, mind...
put together my by buddy Matt Owens on cost of the war - very cool graphic style.
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