I mean, I adore these guys, and they're all great workers and super knowledgeable of their own stuff, but...I think the role of the architect is to look at the bigger picture, right?
Donna, I'm sorry, but when you say lady eyes, I think you read it correctly. Men have a problem with acknowledging weakness, I should know, and he owes an apology.
Also, beta, it wasn't just one guy, this was a conversation with three of them. I guess *my* testosterone hits when I can show them that I know what the hell I'm talking about, even though I'm a lady, and feel proud of it.
I got my copy of "Archibet" last night courtesy of Archinect, thank you so much! Although, I would have to say that those at the Archinect mail room should reconsider the envelope in which they send out books. The sharp edge of the book cut right through the packaging to where I'm sure it probably fell out during shipping. It is a delightful book though, the illustrations are great!
On a somewhat less elevated plane of design: my middle school was in a building with no windows. Not exaggerating - only the main entrances had glazing. It was an innovative concept by a local firm who thought it would be a great way to make the building efficient and perhaps reduce classroom distractions. Plus it was cheap to build.
It actually looked good in late Brutalist kind of way, dressed up with imitation pink granite. But those classrooms were miserable! Not long after I was there the town gave in to common sense (or maybe building codes) and cut out windows on each classroom. Still pretty gloomy in the inner spaces.
Midlander, my high school had no windows in the classrooms, and the windows in the library just faced into the hallways. It was great for tornados and severe storms, except now that I think about it, during drills we went into the hallways, and those had glass doors on the end. Seems it would've been quite the wind tunnel..... Shluuuurrrppppp!
So yesterday, just for fun, I took the architecture teachers's "Rule of Thumbs - Architectural Design" test. I only got about 60% correct. Kind of a bummer. I agree that I totally missed the question on bedroom window minimums for egress, but some of the questions were dumb. Things like "Minimum and maximum size of a master bedroom." I said minimum was 10' x 10' (big enough for a double bed, really) and that maximum there wasn't any. The teacher explained to me that BANKS were determining room sizes nowadays. Did I miss something? Why are banks involved in architectural design? Is this for real? It just irked me, I suppose.
I guess all the garbage that was produced during the ‘60’s isn’t so bad after all. Visited my grandsons school yesterday (First time, he is just starting middle school) and was struck by walls and walls of glass, a lot of use of courtyard glass and corridors lined with glass with rooms borrowing light. Run of the mill school brought alive by glass….follow Mies….even if your design fails glass will save the day.
My high school and the first college I attended both had minimal windows in the classrooms. In both instances the spaces were miserable and dreary. This is still how educational buildings are built in this area.
hehe... my high school also had very few windows. Actually though, I appreciated the architecture. Sort of like a bunker: Cast in place concrete, waffle slabs, etc. Inside, it was pretty open, with lots of overlooks and bridges where the classrooms often had windows facing inwards to all these various 'courtyards' (also concrete). The whole thing was pretty cool like someone had taken a solid block and carved out all these spaces, nooks, depressions, etc. ... and long since filled in and butchered by unsympathetic architects expanding classrooms and stuff. Very nice 70's... for whatever reason, it reminded me of the movie architecture from Logan's Run. :) He also did the local community college, also butchered over time, shown below.
Can architecture make people crazy? I met an ecopsychologist last fall who studies such things. As a former architect who now works for a psychologist, we had a lot of good stuff to talk about. We were at an event for a group trying to start a classroom-less school, ha!
My high school was the same brutal bunker style, didn't even think about it until the conversation was brought up. It was three windowless circles of classroom with a library in the center. Even a the few windows in the portables were covered up with paper or something typically. God forbid children be exposed to natural light. I don't think it affected my education at all, but then again I was usually sitting in the back and drawing.
The year after I graduated they tore it down and replaced it with some cookie cutter design that the whole county uses for all school buildings.
My high school was built in 1918, it had huge windows and tall ceilings. They tore it down the year after I graduated and replaced it with a concrete block bunker-like cookie cutter plan that was plopped onto the site.
I find it odd that you have the option of posting as your real name and profile or just as your username, but the post history for the two options aren't linked. So if you have any trolling to do you could just keep it under the username. It's a case of Dr. Boyle and Mr. Shivuy, just blame it on your alter ego.
lol. that's a panopticon. your highschool was literally a prison.
That would be pretty great if the center was the principle's office.
As much as I wish it was that bad, the layout was more like a Venn diagram of classrooms with the overlap being the library. What it created was three identical and connected circular hallways of windowless classrooms that made it nearly impossible to navigate for a bunch of dumb high school students.
here's where i'm from. lots of uninsulated glass, back in the days when we wore bread bags over our socks (note, not over our shoes like some politicians would have you think. that wouldn't work because they would tear and you would slip.)
"I find it odd that you have the option of posting as your real name and profile or just as your username, but the post history for the two options aren't linked. So if you have any trolling to do you could just keep it under the username. It's a case of Dr. Boyle and Mr. Shivuy, just blame it on your alter ego."
All posts come up under your real name's history. I could give you an example, but I won't out of respect for other members.
Actually, back in the early 80's they believed that windows in classrooms led kids to daydream, think about the weather, etc. instead of focusing. So... they wiped out the windows or used glass block or some semi-transparent material. Some of my earliest projects as an intern were wiping out those terrible single pane steel windows and replacing it with a calwall translucent panel system in schools. It's still a somewhat common theme to avoid direct views outside like in churches so the 'glitz' is focused on just the pulpit. Yet you don't spend all day in the church versus a school.
Some architects handle it well like Corbusier, Tado Ando, etc. Not much outside glass, but more focused daylight. I personally can't stand the glass box stuff. It'd probably make a interesting thesis rather than what we see folks posting here particularly given the changes in the efficient building envelope technologies and neurosciences.
what's even more sad is that there's a giant parking lot where the playing fields and playgrounds used to be, and now there's a tiny playground where the parking used to be. priorities, i guess...
mightyaa, the error there is that they assumed learning comes from controlling and force feeding students, but learning comes from sensory experiences, of which school is pretty weak in doing. The psychologist I work for specializes in learning and learning disabilities. I have studied the neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of learning too, learning requires dopamine for one.
Ugh, toast, that is awful. No doubt a contractor came up with that solution, probably a brother-in-law of a School Board member or something. Tragic.
Welcome, Christopher and Trevor! I'm terrible at remembering names so if you go back to using anon identities please don't be offended if I forget who you are! I found the real profile was better for me, it makes me a little nicer, and I've gotten a few opportunities because of it - I'm giving a talk at Tuskegee University next week, for example, due in part to my posts here being read by someone.
Also, yesterday I got a call from someone at a VERY prominent US museum asking me about a code question relevant to Museums about which I had started a thread. That was funny - this person had the same question about AAM standards as I had and wanted to know if I'd found the answer.
Tint, wasn't saying the right or wrong of it. To me personally, it is a balance which is neither absence nor abundance.
The neuroscience stuff fascinates me about how our brains choose what to notice and what to discard. Special needs are particularly tricky because they aren't wired the same, or like my semi-deaf kid, absorbs differently due to the lack of input like sound. Sort of like she needs to be able to see the lips to fill in those blanks she only partially heard, so visual distractions or even multiple audial sources compound everything. Oddly enough, why we picked her school is that she is integrated in with regular students instead of set aside in the Island of Misfit Toys. Sort of figured she'd have to deal in the real world without a lot of help to fit into society.
So keep using the real name or the nick? Any major downsides to allowing folks to see my real name? (Besides my wife freaking out about revealing "personal stuff" to strangers, but oh well,.. :P) Sort of thought about using the real name since I'm in the job market again and finish filling out the profile stuff.
The "seeking feedback" thread is perfect Friday afternoon fun. Go comment, you guys. You don't have to be mean, just very helpfully point out the ways in which you can't be helpful.
Christopher, I don't regret being non-anonymous here, at all. It makes me keep things at least somewhat professional. Friday-afternoon-beer-on-the-drafting-table professional, but professional nonetheless.
Christopher/mightyaa, I'm in the Denver area too and have worked with kids with auditory processing disorders. The most important thing is your daughter learning to advocate for herself.
so last night i met Dyanna Taylor who is an award winning documentary filmmaker. She wrote, directed and produced the film Grab a Hunk of Lightening which is about her grandmother Dorothea Lange. I have seen the film on American Masters and you should too. It is an informative and inspiring film about a woman artist who married an artist who was becoming less prolific as her star rose. she later married an economist who worked on farm issues. She took many of her most famous photos while working as a staff photographer for the farm security administration. we didn't talk about art or photography. we talked about dogs and mountains. have a great weekend, tc.
Thread Central
Don't even get me started on facilities guys in the education world. Grrrrrrr.
I mean, I adore these guys, and they're all great workers and super knowledgeable of their own stuff, but...I think the role of the architect is to look at the bigger picture, right?
donna that's awesome. good job. I rely on my contractors too, but yeah, they often have to be guided...
Stupid testosterone. Not that it doesn't have its benefits.
Also, beta, it wasn't just one guy, this was a conversation with three of them. I guess *my* testosterone hits when I can show them that I know what the hell I'm talking about, even though I'm a lady, and feel proud of it.
Beta, I always thought Donna was more of one to "fuss and dissect" her beer...
My wife is right even when she's wrong.
Men's Bathroom to the Left Women's Bathroom to the right "Cause women are always Right"
eh - no one wants to be wrong.
Funny, the bathroom in this building is on the left....
I got my copy of "Archibet" last night courtesy of Archinect, thank you so much! Although, I would have to say that those at the Archinect mail room should reconsider the envelope in which they send out books. The sharp edge of the book cut right through the packaging to where I'm sure it probably fell out during shipping. It is a delightful book though, the illustrations are great!
yOU GUYS! oops cadding
You Guys! Better Call Saul premiers on Sunday wooohooo!!!
Wow, this is a building I haven't thought about in a long time. Glad to see it's still obscene and fresh. Somehow less dated than more sedate buildings of that period.
Which raises the question:
Can architecture make people crazy?
^Yes.
On a somewhat less elevated plane of design: my middle school was in a building with no windows. Not exaggerating - only the main entrances had glazing. It was an innovative concept by a local firm who thought it would be a great way to make the building efficient and perhaps reduce classroom distractions. Plus it was cheap to build.
It actually looked good in late Brutalist kind of way, dressed up with imitation pink granite. But those classrooms were miserable! Not long after I was there the town gave in to common sense (or maybe building codes) and cut out windows on each classroom. Still pretty gloomy in the inner spaces.
Midlander, my high school had no windows in the classrooms, and the windows in the library just faced into the hallways. It was great for tornados and severe storms, except now that I think about it, during drills we went into the hallways, and those had glass doors on the end. Seems it would've been quite the wind tunnel..... Shluuuurrrppppp!
So yesterday, just for fun, I took the architecture teachers's "Rule of Thumbs - Architectural Design" test. I only got about 60% correct. Kind of a bummer. I agree that I totally missed the question on bedroom window minimums for egress, but some of the questions were dumb. Things like "Minimum and maximum size of a master bedroom." I said minimum was 10' x 10' (big enough for a double bed, really) and that maximum there wasn't any. The teacher explained to me that BANKS were determining room sizes nowadays. Did I miss something? Why are banks involved in architectural design? Is this for real? It just irked me, I suppose.
I guess all the garbage that was produced during the ‘60’s isn’t so bad after all. Visited my grandsons school yesterday (First time, he is just starting middle school) and was struck by walls and walls of glass, a lot of use of courtyard glass and corridors lined with glass with rooms borrowing light. Run of the mill school brought alive by glass….follow Mies….even if your design fails glass will save the day.
Carrera, Except now that glass needs to be bullet proof.
My high school and the first college I attended both had minimal windows in the classrooms. In both instances the spaces were miserable and dreary. This is still how educational buildings are built in this area.
My high school had no windows, elementary had 18" high strip windows placed at the very top of the wall.
The school projects I've been involved in are no longer like that - daylight and view is seen as very important to a good learning environment.
hehe... my high school also had very few windows. Actually though, I appreciated the architecture. Sort of like a bunker: Cast in place concrete, waffle slabs, etc. Inside, it was pretty open, with lots of overlooks and bridges where the classrooms often had windows facing inwards to all these various 'courtyards' (also concrete). The whole thing was pretty cool like someone had taken a solid block and carved out all these spaces, nooks, depressions, etc. ... and long since filled in and butchered by unsympathetic architects expanding classrooms and stuff. Very nice 70's... for whatever reason, it reminded me of the movie architecture from Logan's Run. :) He also did the local community college, also butchered over time, shown below.
Can architecture make people crazy? I met an ecopsychologist last fall who studies such things. As a former architect who now works for a psychologist, we had a lot of good stuff to talk about. We were at an event for a group trying to start a classroom-less school, ha!
My high school was the same brutal bunker style, didn't even think about it until the conversation was brought up. It was three windowless circles of classroom with a library in the center. Even a the few windows in the portables were covered up with paper or something typically. God forbid children be exposed to natural light. I don't think it affected my education at all, but then again I was usually sitting in the back and drawing.
The year after I graduated they tore it down and replaced it with some cookie cutter design that the whole county uses for all school buildings.
It was three windowless circles of classroom with a library in the center.
lol. that's a panopticon. your highschool was literally a prison.
My high school was built in 1918, it had huge windows and tall ceilings. They tore it down the year after I graduated and replaced it with a concrete block bunker-like cookie cutter plan that was plopped onto the site.
I find it odd that you have the option of posting as your real name and profile or just as your username, but the post history for the two options aren't linked. So if you have any trolling to do you could just keep it under the username. It's a case of Dr. Boyle and Mr. Shivuy, just blame it on your alter ego.
lol. that's a panopticon. your highschool was literally a prison.
That would be pretty great if the center was the principle's office.
As much as I wish it was that bad, the layout was more like a Venn diagram of classrooms with the overlap being the library. What it created was three identical and connected circular hallways of windowless classrooms that made it nearly impossible to navigate for a bunch of dumb high school students.
here's where i'm from. lots of uninsulated glass, back in the days when we wore bread bags over our socks (note, not over our shoes like some politicians would have you think. that wouldn't work because they would tear and you would slip.)
"I find it odd that you have the option of posting as your real name and profile or just as your username, but the post history for the two options aren't linked. So if you have any trolling to do you could just keep it under the username. It's a case of Dr. Boyle and Mr. Shivuy, just blame it on your alter ego."
All posts come up under your real name's history. I could give you an example, but I won't out of respect for other members.
Actually, back in the early 80's they believed that windows in classrooms led kids to daydream, think about the weather, etc. instead of focusing. So... they wiped out the windows or used glass block or some semi-transparent material. Some of my earliest projects as an intern were wiping out those terrible single pane steel windows and replacing it with a calwall translucent panel system in schools. It's still a somewhat common theme to avoid direct views outside like in churches so the 'glitz' is focused on just the pulpit. Yet you don't spend all day in the church versus a school.
Some architects handle it well like Corbusier, Tado Ando, etc. Not much outside glass, but more focused daylight. I personally can't stand the glass box stuff. It'd probably make a interesting thesis rather than what we see folks posting here particularly given the changes in the efficient building envelope technologies and neurosciences.
Testing the real name thing :P
edit; History just shows the threads I started under my nick.
Maybe it's just certain accounts, then, but I'd be careful.
looked up my old elementary school - holy crap - look what they did to the windows!
That's terrible!
what's even more sad is that there's a giant parking lot where the playing fields and playgrounds used to be, and now there's a tiny playground where the parking used to be. priorities, i guess...
mightyaa, the error there is that they assumed learning comes from controlling and force feeding students, but learning comes from sensory experiences, of which school is pretty weak in doing. The psychologist I work for specializes in learning and learning disabilities. I have studied the neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of learning too, learning requires dopamine for one.
Ugh, toast, that is awful. No doubt a contractor came up with that solution, probably a brother-in-law of a School Board member or something. Tragic.
Welcome, Christopher and Trevor! I'm terrible at remembering names so if you go back to using anon identities please don't be offended if I forget who you are! I found the real profile was better for me, it makes me a little nicer, and I've gotten a few opportunities because of it - I'm giving a talk at Tuskegee University next week, for example, due in part to my posts here being read by someone.
Also, yesterday I got a call from someone at a VERY prominent US museum asking me about a code question relevant to Museums about which I had started a thread. That was funny - this person had the same question about AAM standards as I had and wanted to know if I'd found the answer.
Tint, wasn't saying the right or wrong of it. To me personally, it is a balance which is neither absence nor abundance.
The neuroscience stuff fascinates me about how our brains choose what to notice and what to discard. Special needs are particularly tricky because they aren't wired the same, or like my semi-deaf kid, absorbs differently due to the lack of input like sound. Sort of like she needs to be able to see the lips to fill in those blanks she only partially heard, so visual distractions or even multiple audial sources compound everything. Oddly enough, why we picked her school is that she is integrated in with regular students instead of set aside in the Island of Misfit Toys. Sort of figured she'd have to deal in the real world without a lot of help to fit into society.
So keep using the real name or the nick? Any major downsides to allowing folks to see my real name? (Besides my wife freaking out about revealing "personal stuff" to strangers, but oh well,.. :P) Sort of thought about using the real name since I'm in the job market again and finish filling out the profile stuff.
The "seeking feedback" thread is perfect Friday afternoon fun. Go comment, you guys. You don't have to be mean, just very helpfully point out the ways in which you can't be helpful.
Christopher, I don't regret being non-anonymous here, at all. It makes me keep things at least somewhat professional. Friday-afternoon-beer-on-the-drafting-table professional, but professional nonetheless.
Christopher/mightyaa, I'm in the Denver area too and have worked with kids with auditory processing disorders. The most important thing is your daughter learning to advocate for herself.
Man. What a week.
The house I own had a frozen pipe burst and flood the walls and ceiling of the first floor.
I live 3,000 miles away.
*sigh*
I find that real names tend to make people more responsible - and more careful - about what they write.
what if you're in the gray space between real names and anonymous pseudonyms?
It's OK, Mark. We still like you.
so last night i met Dyanna Taylor who is an award winning documentary filmmaker. She wrote, directed and produced the film Grab a Hunk of Lightening which is about her grandmother Dorothea Lange. I have seen the film on American Masters and you should too. It is an informative and inspiring film about a woman artist who married an artist who was becoming less prolific as her star rose. she later married an economist who worked on farm issues. She took many of her most famous photos while working as a staff photographer for the farm security administration. we didn't talk about art or photography. we talked about dogs and mountains. have a great weekend, tc.
Ok, watching it now Vado.
Wow.
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