self portrait via Orhan. anybody else on their Friday martini's?
Near the sight of this park are some historic Hughes Aircraft hangars now film studio structures. In front of me was a neat little cafeteria designed by one of hughes staff engineers if I remember the sign correctly.
had fun scouted sites for my grad students today with the shrub, and found a cool paint ball field on the San Gabriel River flood plane - lots of rocks, sage brush, berms, and holes, plus a big concrete pipe and a bunch of plywood well splatted for them to map. Gonna have fun leading the field trip in two weeks. I'll post a few pics on my blog soon. Here's goggle aerial (you can see the concrete pipe and other obstacles): http://g.co/maps/zsaj5
looking forward to it barry. are you going to mix your blog with school content from now on?
totally unrelated to anything at all ... a project we are working on was posted on arch-daily recently and we didn't even notice. only found it by accident. i remain amazed at how much content that site is able to put up everyday. aren't we supposed to be in a recession with nothing being built?
infrascapedesign will continue to be a venue for personal/scholarly exploration of interesting topics. if teaching topics come up (like sharing great student work), they will be posted - but I won't be writing from the perspective of 'teaching like I give a damn' about the experience of being a junior faculty. Just don't have time, too busy teaching.
makes sense. i've been having a bi if a time figuring out how to manage student projects with our blog and am happy to have the new blogs here to do it in. but activities seem to be heading to more intertwined rather than less.
your blog remains a favorite by the way. very nice content. it would be cool if you could turn it into a book like bldgblog.
I never imagined that a coat hanger was such an expensive item. The cheapest that I found so far is $98. I do have a wood old fashioned one, that I found on the side of the road couple years ago, but the pegs are now falling apart. I think I'm gonna put one together from a fraction of the price.
$98 coat-hanger is abortion grade. If you just want to hang shit, don't pay more than $0.98 each.
jump, I really dig the HA Tower project. Love everything about it. My only knock is that surroundings are extremely gray, which you have decided to carry in your own design (makes for super convincing renderings!) I think one of the shishkabob pieces should be hot pink. And another one frog green. Gotta have some veggies in your diet!
Rusty, I can't believe you said that! Well, I can, but still, wow! Don't worry, I'm smiling.
And that is a bit high for a coat hanger. Maybe you could clue us in, Purpurina.
I've determined, albeit too late that the next time I build a platform with a visible underside, I will stain the belly before I mount it. Yuck! At least I'm done.
Lol! Perhaps he's just angry with the price. Well, I used the heck of mine and now is broken. I like to have one around, especially during the winter, people in and out appreciate it.
Oh, I'm going to Flor tomorrow to check out carpet tiles. Any body ever used them? Will they hold up well over time? Are the cheaper ones comfortable to sit on?
me too. i am waaay too dumm to understand all of rusty's comments.
thanks for the comments on the tower project though. agree the greyness is a tricky thing. we made two versions of the renderings one that matches the surrounding and one that doesn't. it's kind of a weird thing to base presentation on, whether we want it to look convincing or something...else. i like both ways really. but anyway it is about the ideas. now let's see if we are going to be able to get/keep the financial side alive now that the economy is heading down the kooky ladder again.
man, i don't look forward to another couple of years of watching the financial situation in other parts of the world deciding our work load again. sheesh.
"i am waaay too dumm to understand all of rusty's comments"
Nah. English is not even my second language. Technically third, maybe fourth. At this point I can barely speak any of them (including English). I'm a modern caveman in a way. If I went over your head, you are not alone. It made sense to me at some point...
I really hope your project gets built. I would love to see the colorful version of the project as well. Is the global recession going to affect Japan? You guys need a #occupygreenteahouse movement. Stat!
yeah we will be affected. the yen is incredibly expensive right now so exports are not going to lead the economy here anymore. banks are still pretty cautious after all fallout from lehman closing, AND we need to spend how many billions to recover from the damage of the earthquake and tsunami, and all the financial services people who moved to singapore and hong kong because of the radiation fears ( can't believe I am writing this!) . it's kind of still up in the air how it all falls down.
jump was there really a big exodus post Fukushima of finance types? plus whether Japan or America the whole European "rescue" business could easily drive the whole world economy further down the "kooky ladder"
lots of the westerners left nam, especially the ones with cash.
to be fair the companies were not taking chances and governments like germany went really wild. they created a massive panic (which may have been justified). quite a few have come back since then. whether they will stay or not is a big question. my brother in kobe (southwest of tokyo) says a lot of financial folks have moved to his neck of the woods, and many more have just set up shop in other parts of asia. i know people who left and will not return as well. so yeah it is bound to have an effect. all these flats for rent at c $15000/ month are empty, tax revenues from the industry will be gone etc. in long term maybe is ok, but really hard to say right now. someone probably knows but i still haven't heard any kind of definitive opinion...add to that the tumroil in the markets and who knows.
am sure many of the traders will make money either way. but still....
Best wishes to you Jump with everything.... any late news about the radiation?
A true cat story...partner always said that cats love buildings more than people. So I recently moved, didn't leave the cat inside the new house long enough as recommended, so he disappeared. Two weeks later, I gave a try on the old house, (couple miles away), with consent of my old next door neighbor, went to her backyard, and thanks to his kitty built in magnetic gps, he was back to the old house. He is from now on an inside-only cat.
phillip sucks. I wish I had that kind of money.... good luck.
I haven't seen Steven Ward around in at least a few days but thought I would throw this out there. Steven or any other Louisville necters ever heard of this band from your fair city Silver Tongues. Seem pretty good.
Sarah we love our Flor and it holds up very well. I've never sat on it as it's under the dining table and I sadly don't hang out under there much. Maybe today Angus and I will build a fort under there as I haven't seen him in a week and want some quality time.
Back from SF. Wish I had attended Berkeley for undergrad. Shed a physical tear when heard the Steve Jobs died. Saw a great urban garden built on a collapsed freeway overpass (Hayes Organic Farm, I think). Love the Federal Building by Morphosis/Thom Mayne aka even sexier version of Jobs. Nervi's St. Mary's was literally breathtaking - one of best buildings I've seen. Enjoyed a few beers with great students last night prior to redeye flight and now am deliriously tired but invigorated. One mroe note: every "trash" can in SF is labeled "Landfill" and it is very, very effective at making one think twice.
Phillip, don't aim so low. ask for more or you're contributing to salary deflation. A dissertation should be worth at least $100k.
(non-sequitor) just learned that Mr. Jobs widow is a Penn alumna.
Back from my site visit with my 25 undergrads - 3 of them got stopped by Long Beach PD and frisked because they looked like drug dealers - give me a break! they look like college students. I was expecting official paranoia because we were wandering near energy and transportation infrastructure, but not racial profiling.
Thanks, Donna. You really should hang out under there more often. And I ordered 4 tiles that had a full loop sort of pile. They seemed comfortable enough for a child's bum, and durable. Sucks that they won't get here until Tuesday.
Barry, $25k just happens to be the amount that most of the "dissertation completion fellowships" tend to be. If you factor in my funding from Penn over the past 3 years, the total is well over $100k, actually probably over $200k. I'm now trying to find funding to allow me to take a year off from teaching so that my dissertation doesn't take forever.
Also, one of the winning teams of the Sukkah City STL competition is two of my former students from my recitation section of one of the history/theory courses that I TAed for at Penn.
Hi all, long time no see, again! Thanks again for your critique on the sign I was working on. I took your comments to heart, made some revisions, and the thing got a LOT better with only some minor tweaks. So that was an invaluable part of the process, and I'm thankful for all of your help. I'll have to post the in-progress pictures soon.
Meanwhile, I thought I'd give y'all a life update, and maybe solicit your thoughts in the process.
I've been an architecture refugee for the past couple of years - while (finally) finishing my exams, doing some small side projects and pro bono / non-arch volunteer work, and working 9-5 in an unrelated industry (which pays much better than arch, thank god). I'm at the point now where I'd like to (soft)"launch" my own firm - starting with it as an "on the side" biz of course - so I'm poring over all the old threads about best practices, and mean to visit the AIA soon and their collection of fantastic "how to start your own firm" booklets.
Meanwhile... a friend - an actual close friend - called me up the other day with a small office renovation in NYC. I do not live in NYC, so I would have to fly in for this one. It's your basic carpet / lighting / paint / minor non-struc demo / new FFE renovation, and the space is tiny - I haven't calculated the square footage yet but it doesn't look like more than 1,000. She wants my proposal this coming week.
And I'm terrified. I can't remember all my old "go-to" brands. I did soooo much office lighting research back in the day - but my memory is horrible, and I can no longer even remember the brand name of my fave, let alone features and price-point. I remember spec'ing a lot of Interface tiles but can't remember the right backing specs or anything like that. I know I used to have a "new project proposal" checklist - all the things to check off when writing a proposal - but it's probably buried on a hard drive somewhere, and I'm terrified that I'll forget something. Also, deep down, I'm worried that with only a few site visits here and there, I won't be able to do a good job for her, and we'll realize that I should have advised her to get a NYC local architect. Also, I've never worked in NYC and don't know the code. Goodness gracious, I suppose I'm just suffering from some anxiety. Any tips on where to start, or how to make sure I don't ruin a friendship?
myriam, these days you can't install a door-knob in NYC without requiring a professional stamp.
Where's elinor? She's licensed there and does these kinds of projects. Partner up! Don't sweat the small stuff. When time comes to select carpet tile, you'll be on top of it.
Having a project in your portfolio that you did in partnership sure beats not having the project at all. Unless it's a horrible project, of course.
Well, I thought of partnering up, but that isn't really a good answer for this particular project. Either it works for me to do it all or I recommend it go to local arch. Reason being that fees will be very low and if using someone in NYC to be the eyes and the ears is necessary, then it will simply be a better option for my client to simply hire someone there right from the get-go. This client is a friend and I'd rather not take the project at all if that is the most appropriate route. So right now I just have to figure out what kind of CA they'll really need (and really be willing to budget for) b/c that is really the only part I wouldn't be able to handle. I can do the requisite (minimal per contract) 2 trips per CA, and if that's all this tiny project really needs, then that will be fine.
Still not sure on the NYC code stuff - need to do some research today - but I sincerely doubt they will need a NY license for interior finishes only, & non-structural demo.
It's more just nervousness at being rusty at all this (no pun intended).
Thread Central
Near the sight of this park are some historic Hughes Aircraft hangars now film studio structures. In front of me was a neat little cafeteria designed by one of hughes staff engineers if I remember the sign correctly.
An older view of the bldg I found via Google
nam, I must be the only person unable to view your California Dreaming Trip...Flicker will not let me in via Archinect...sigh!
snook, click the 'X' in the black bar to turn of the archinect frame. does that help?
Thanks Barry....I would be lost without you!
I'm in SF for school - we brought 23 grad students here to see some actual architecture in a real city!
So your Baby sitting Donna...nice gig..
had fun scouted sites for my grad students today with the shrub, and found a cool paint ball field on the San Gabriel River flood plane - lots of rocks, sage brush, berms, and holes, plus a big concrete pipe and a bunch of plywood well splatted for them to map. Gonna have fun leading the field trip in two weeks. I'll post a few pics on my blog soon. Here's goggle aerial (you can see the concrete pipe and other obstacles): http://g.co/maps/zsaj5
looking forward to it barry. are you going to mix your blog with school content from now on?
totally unrelated to anything at all ... a project we are working on was posted on arch-daily recently and we didn't even notice. only found it by accident. i remain amazed at how much content that site is able to put up everyday. aren't we supposed to be in a recession with nothing being built?
more to the point we barely get to crow about it at all. in the blogosphere we don't even get 15 seconds of fame !
Jump,
infrascapedesign will continue to be a venue for personal/scholarly exploration of interesting topics. if teaching topics come up (like sharing great student work), they will be posted - but I won't be writing from the perspective of 'teaching like I give a damn' about the experience of being a junior faculty. Just don't have time, too busy teaching.
makes sense. i've been having a bi if a time figuring out how to manage student projects with our blog and am happy to have the new blogs here to do it in. but activities seem to be heading to more intertwined rather than less.
your blog remains a favorite by the way. very nice content. it would be cool if you could turn it into a book like bldgblog.
killing ants has become my new hobby at work. just a downside to having an outside door to my office. so hope the borax does the deed.
I never imagined that a coat hanger was such an expensive item. The cheapest that I found so far is $98. I do have a wood old fashioned one, that I found on the side of the road couple years ago, but the pegs are now falling apart. I think I'm gonna put one together from a fraction of the price.
$98 coat-hanger is abortion grade. If you just want to hang shit, don't pay more than $0.98 each.
jump, I really dig the HA Tower project. Love everything about it. My only knock is that surroundings are extremely gray, which you have decided to carry in your own design (makes for super convincing renderings!) I think one of the shishkabob pieces should be hot pink. And another one frog green. Gotta have some veggies in your diet!
Rusty, I can't believe you said that! Well, I can, but still, wow! Don't worry, I'm smiling.
And that is a bit high for a coat hanger. Maybe you could clue us in, Purpurina.
I've determined, albeit too late that the next time I build a platform with a visible underside, I will stain the belly before I mount it. Yuck! At least I'm done.
Lol! Perhaps he's just angry with the price. Well, I used the heck of mine and now is broken. I like to have one around, especially during the winter, people in and out appreciate it.
...a lot of shit to hang ya know?
when purpurina said coat-hanger
he/she/it meant coat-rack
I would gladly pay $98 for the later.
capiche
See, I so didn't get that. That tree is nice. Although, I'd be hard-pressed not to hang a bird or two in it.
Oh, I'm going to Flor tomorrow to check out carpet tiles. Any body ever used them? Will they hold up well over time? Are the cheaper ones comfortable to sit on?
" I'd be hard-pressed not to hang a bird or two in it"
If it's the latter, I think that abortion would be considered a war crime.
the coat-hangar-coat rack thing threw me too...
me too. i am waaay too dumm to understand all of rusty's comments.
thanks for the comments on the tower project though. agree the greyness is a tricky thing. we made two versions of the renderings one that matches the surrounding and one that doesn't. it's kind of a weird thing to base presentation on, whether we want it to look convincing or something...else. i like both ways really. but anyway it is about the ideas. now let's see if we are going to be able to get/keep the financial side alive now that the economy is heading down the kooky ladder again.
man, i don't look forward to another couple of years of watching the financial situation in other parts of the world deciding our work load again. sheesh.
"i am waaay too dumm to understand all of rusty's comments"
Nah. English is not even my second language. Technically third, maybe fourth. At this point I can barely speak any of them (including English). I'm a modern caveman in a way. If I went over your head, you are not alone. It made sense to me at some point...
I really hope your project gets built. I would love to see the colorful version of the project as well. Is the global recession going to affect Japan? You guys need a #occupygreenteahouse movement. Stat!
lol.
yeah we will be affected. the yen is incredibly expensive right now so exports are not going to lead the economy here anymore. banks are still pretty cautious after all fallout from lehman closing, AND we need to spend how many billions to recover from the damage of the earthquake and tsunami, and all the financial services people who moved to singapore and hong kong because of the radiation fears ( can't believe I am writing this!) . it's kind of still up in the air how it all falls down.
jump was there really a big exodus post Fukushima of finance types? plus whether Japan or America the whole European "rescue" business could easily drive the whole world economy further down the "kooky ladder"
morning all
Good morning.
lots of the westerners left nam, especially the ones with cash.
to be fair the companies were not taking chances and governments like germany went really wild. they created a massive panic (which may have been justified). quite a few have come back since then. whether they will stay or not is a big question. my brother in kobe (southwest of tokyo) says a lot of financial folks have moved to his neck of the woods, and many more have just set up shop in other parts of asia. i know people who left and will not return as well. so yeah it is bound to have an effect. all these flats for rent at c $15000/ month are empty, tax revenues from the industry will be gone etc. in long term maybe is ok, but really hard to say right now. someone probably knows but i still haven't heard any kind of definitive opinion...add to that the tumroil in the markets and who knows.
am sure many of the traders will make money either way. but still....
Best wishes to you Jump with everything.... any late news about the radiation?
A true cat story...partner always said that cats love buildings more than people. So I recently moved, didn't leave the cat inside the new house long enough as recommended, so he disappeared. Two weeks later, I gave a try on the old house, (couple miles away), with consent of my old next door neighbor, went to her backyard, and thanks to his kitty built in magnetic gps, he was back to the old house. He is from now on an inside-only cat.
It was such a movie happy ending moment...
RIP steve jobs
Off to the iCloud!
sent from my iPhone
That's why he quit. I was wondering then what was coming next. Sad outcome.
I just wrote my congresswoman. What a rush. Does that make me a lobbyist?
or a hobby-ist?
Hobbyist lobbyist.
HFS, the Sherwin Williams add just got bigger and more glitchy in chrome... wtf.
i'm working on fellowship applications... grovelling for money to fund writing my dissertation is depressing... anyone have $25K they wanna give me?
phillip sucks. I wish I had that kind of money.... good luck.
I haven't seen Steven Ward around in at least a few days but thought I would throw this out there. Steven or any other Louisville necters ever heard of this band from your fair city Silver Tongues. Seem pretty good.
Sarah we love our Flor and it holds up very well. I've never sat on it as it's under the dining table and I sadly don't hang out under there much. Maybe today Angus and I will build a fort under there as I haven't seen him in a week and want some quality time.
Back from SF. Wish I had attended Berkeley for undergrad. Shed a physical tear when heard the Steve Jobs died. Saw a great urban garden built on a collapsed freeway overpass (Hayes Organic Farm, I think). Love the Federal Building by Morphosis/Thom Mayne aka even sexier version of Jobs. Nervi's St. Mary's was literally breathtaking - one of best buildings I've seen. Enjoyed a few beers with great students last night prior to redeye flight and now am deliriously tired but invigorated. One mroe note: every "trash" can in SF is labeled "Landfill" and it is very, very effective at making one think twice.
Phillip, don't aim so low. ask for more or you're contributing to salary deflation. A dissertation should be worth at least $100k.
(non-sequitor) just learned that Mr. Jobs widow is a Penn alumna.
Back from my site visit with my 25 undergrads - 3 of them got stopped by Long Beach PD and frisked because they looked like drug dealers - give me a break! they look like college students. I was expecting official paranoia because we were wandering near energy and transportation infrastructure, but not racial profiling.
Thanks, Donna. You really should hang out under there more often. And I ordered 4 tiles that had a full loop sort of pile. They seemed comfortable enough for a child's bum, and durable. Sucks that they won't get here until Tuesday.
Barry, $25k just happens to be the amount that most of the "dissertation completion fellowships" tend to be. If you factor in my funding from Penn over the past 3 years, the total is well over $100k, actually probably over $200k. I'm now trying to find funding to allow me to take a year off from teaching so that my dissertation doesn't take forever.
Also, one of the winning teams of the Sukkah City STL competition is two of my former students from my recitation section of one of the history/theory courses that I TAed for at Penn.
Hi all, long time no see, again! Thanks again for your critique on the sign I was working on. I took your comments to heart, made some revisions, and the thing got a LOT better with only some minor tweaks. So that was an invaluable part of the process, and I'm thankful for all of your help. I'll have to post the in-progress pictures soon.
Meanwhile, I thought I'd give y'all a life update, and maybe solicit your thoughts in the process.
I've been an architecture refugee for the past couple of years - while (finally) finishing my exams, doing some small side projects and pro bono / non-arch volunteer work, and working 9-5 in an unrelated industry (which pays much better than arch, thank god). I'm at the point now where I'd like to (soft)"launch" my own firm - starting with it as an "on the side" biz of course - so I'm poring over all the old threads about best practices, and mean to visit the AIA soon and their collection of fantastic "how to start your own firm" booklets.
Meanwhile... a friend - an actual close friend - called me up the other day with a small office renovation in NYC. I do not live in NYC, so I would have to fly in for this one. It's your basic carpet / lighting / paint / minor non-struc demo / new FFE renovation, and the space is tiny - I haven't calculated the square footage yet but it doesn't look like more than 1,000. She wants my proposal this coming week.
And I'm terrified. I can't remember all my old "go-to" brands. I did soooo much office lighting research back in the day - but my memory is horrible, and I can no longer even remember the brand name of my fave, let alone features and price-point. I remember spec'ing a lot of Interface tiles but can't remember the right backing specs or anything like that. I know I used to have a "new project proposal" checklist - all the things to check off when writing a proposal - but it's probably buried on a hard drive somewhere, and I'm terrified that I'll forget something. Also, deep down, I'm worried that with only a few site visits here and there, I won't be able to do a good job for her, and we'll realize that I should have advised her to get a NYC local architect. Also, I've never worked in NYC and don't know the code. Goodness gracious, I suppose I'm just suffering from some anxiety. Any tips on where to start, or how to make sure I don't ruin a friendship?
Maybe there is a NYC 'nector that you could work with to be your eyes on the site?
myriam, these days you can't install a door-knob in NYC without requiring a professional stamp.
Where's elinor? She's licensed there and does these kinds of projects. Partner up! Don't sweat the small stuff. When time comes to select carpet tile, you'll be on top of it.
Having a project in your portfolio that you did in partnership sure beats not having the project at all. Unless it's a horrible project, of course.
Well, I thought of partnering up, but that isn't really a good answer for this particular project. Either it works for me to do it all or I recommend it go to local arch. Reason being that fees will be very low and if using someone in NYC to be the eyes and the ears is necessary, then it will simply be a better option for my client to simply hire someone there right from the get-go. This client is a friend and I'd rather not take the project at all if that is the most appropriate route. So right now I just have to figure out what kind of CA they'll really need (and really be willing to budget for) b/c that is really the only part I wouldn't be able to handle. I can do the requisite (minimal per contract) 2 trips per CA, and if that's all this tiny project really needs, then that will be fine.
Still not sure on the NYC code stuff - need to do some research today - but I sincerely doubt they will need a NY license for interior finishes only, & non-structural demo.
It's more just nervousness at being rusty at all this (no pun intended).
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