project 1: how can the new construction, through simple, inexpensive means, be made to appear as light and thin as possible in order to allow the existing (masonry/"heavy") historic chapel to remain the primary figure in the assemblage of buildings.
how does this make the world of architecture better?
hey, man, it's just a project. we don't have to change the whole world every time, just try to make one little piece of it better.
project 2: how can 30k sf worth of necessary school program be fit into a 20k sf addition to a mid60s elementary school? how can this be done in such a way that it doesn't have to be a box w/4 corners (since the administration has been convinced that 4 corners are cheaper than a building with any "bumps"? how can daylighting, open space, and views remain important in such a scheme?
how does this make the world of architecture better?
lighten up. kids deserve education. education these days has thin budgets. kids deserve humane spaces. sometimes what we do just comes down to problem solving....
project 3: how do you make a project "about" something? in this case: accessibility. how do you go beyond ada and make a place intentionally about access without being theme-y or in-your-face about it? how do you communicate - and know that you're communicating effectively - without junking a place up with signs and signals that you're communicating?
what is your hypothesis?
schematic design is a hypothesis. design development and construction documents and, ultimately, construction and occupation are the proofs. but schematic design gives you something with which you can discuss what you're thinking with others, get their take on it, and go back and work on it some more. it doesn't have to be removed from design and it doesn't have to be theoretical. it just has to be intentional and defensible.
TRICKS, it's obvious that you're frustrated. you've spread it over multiple threads now. you owe it to yourself to quit blaming architecture and figure out for yourself what's been wrong with YOUR experience in particular. if you're in school, i'm sure there are faculty to whom you can talk that will be different from what you've had. find someone you admire, someone who sounds to you like they talk sense, and latch onto him/her.
or find someone here willing to talk/email with you to help you out. you've become convinced that it's all b.s. architecture CAN be b.s., because it CAN be anything. it's a vast field with a lot of potential paths. figure out what it's going to take to find yours or figure out that you need to do something different.
I do agree with some of the nuts and bolts of the process that Steven has exampled for you, Tricks -- but I'm not so sure anything is necessarily wrong with your experience, Tricks. What you are struggling with is everything you should struggle with and be frustrated with and question every day. I respect your struggle and frustrations. And it's a struggle first with yourself, then architecture. Architecture is not itself a religion or a set of values. Maybe your expectations are backwards. Maybe much of the ultimate meaning that you are expecting architecture to provide you are the things you need to yourself provide to your architecture.
Architecture to me is a balance of two opposites (although it does not always need to be)... Art and Science. Scientists have the luxury of absolute truth, and artists or course do not. You can sit on one side and throw rocks at the other, or you can find your place in this balance and be happy.
The practice desperatly needs the academy to drive change and advance as experimentation in academic settings is rewarded.
The academy desperatly needs the practice to analyze and develop these seemingly absurd ideas into future solutions.
chaos and order
but, people seldom ask my opinion. and i am only commenting because I was where you are a few months ago.
Good question tricks...keep asking those sort of questions. I dont think that it makes you "frustrated" (as steve puts it) to pose these sort of issues.
To be honest, steve's viewpoint of architecture bores me. And im sure it bores you as well. The truth is we need it, and we need thinkers like him. But im not, and im sure youre not, interested in that.
anyways...I think a good thing to explore in ANY project parallels mack's "balance" idea. He hit the nail on the head. That balance between two opposites extends beyond our makeup as architects to the projects we design. Every project i've ever approached has some sort of dichotomy between two things. Structure v. Skin. Old v. New. Circulation v. Occupation. Lightness v. Heaviness. Etc. etc.
I find starting with extrapolating at least one interesting dichotomy leads to, at the very least, an interesting diagram to start from.
pretty dismissive, asbuckeye. i wasn't exactly presenting a point of view of architecture so much as attempting to show that each project could be a different thing...which shouldn't exactly be boring.
it wasn't exactly meant to be about me at all but a response to the poison that TRICKS seems to be spreading through several threads because of how disillusioned he/she seems to be with architecture and the way it's taught. i understand exploration and questioning -but i want to challenge that questioning to continue. it's stopping too soon that i have a problem with. deciding that it all comes down to how well you sell your b.s. is a copout.
so i was maybe suggesting a look back to first principles. architecture does have a body of knowledge, a legacy that gets passed forward. it's not b.s. it's useful stuff on which both TRICKS and you can build a foundation for questioning and exploration that can amount to something.
oh, and, yeah, the dichotomy thing as a trigger for exploration is a great tool. one of many. yin yan: basic principles, natch.
The problem is how to create an attached series of row houses in a dense urban setting that provides the street all the surface variety of the century old italienate facades without falling into the historical reference trap. Brick veneers will never be the same as solid masonry walls no mater how many fake arches, limestone headers. No one will ever pay for 1/8" butter joints - so dont go there. 3/8" just aint the same. So Im exploring simple material interactions of wood, brick and depth variation with the wall plane to create a rhythm of ever so slight shadow lines to keep the pattern established by the old timers. They have such understated sophistication and refinement - much like my divided satin aluminum window wall frames with exposed jambs. trompe l'oeil - Voilà !
What are you exploring?
This is for research.
What are you exploring in your current project?
What is your hypothesis?
How does this make the world of architecture (norm) better?
project 1: how can the new construction, through simple, inexpensive means, be made to appear as light and thin as possible in order to allow the existing (masonry/"heavy") historic chapel to remain the primary figure in the assemblage of buildings.
how does this make the world of architecture better?
hey, man, it's just a project. we don't have to change the whole world every time, just try to make one little piece of it better.
project 2: how can 30k sf worth of necessary school program be fit into a 20k sf addition to a mid60s elementary school? how can this be done in such a way that it doesn't have to be a box w/4 corners (since the administration has been convinced that 4 corners are cheaper than a building with any "bumps"? how can daylighting, open space, and views remain important in such a scheme?
how does this make the world of architecture better?
lighten up. kids deserve education. education these days has thin budgets. kids deserve humane spaces. sometimes what we do just comes down to problem solving....
project 3: how do you make a project "about" something? in this case: accessibility. how do you go beyond ada and make a place intentionally about access without being theme-y or in-your-face about it? how do you communicate - and know that you're communicating effectively - without junking a place up with signs and signals that you're communicating?
what is your hypothesis?
schematic design is a hypothesis. design development and construction documents and, ultimately, construction and occupation are the proofs. but schematic design gives you something with which you can discuss what you're thinking with others, get their take on it, and go back and work on it some more. it doesn't have to be removed from design and it doesn't have to be theoretical. it just has to be intentional and defensible.
TRICKS, it's obvious that you're frustrated. you've spread it over multiple threads now. you owe it to yourself to quit blaming architecture and figure out for yourself what's been wrong with YOUR experience in particular. if you're in school, i'm sure there are faculty to whom you can talk that will be different from what you've had. find someone you admire, someone who sounds to you like they talk sense, and latch onto him/her.
or find someone here willing to talk/email with you to help you out. you've become convinced that it's all b.s. architecture CAN be b.s., because it CAN be anything. it's a vast field with a lot of potential paths. figure out what it's going to take to find yours or figure out that you need to do something different.
I do agree with some of the nuts and bolts of the process that Steven has exampled for you, Tricks -- but I'm not so sure anything is necessarily wrong with your experience, Tricks. What you are struggling with is everything you should struggle with and be frustrated with and question every day. I respect your struggle and frustrations. And it's a struggle first with yourself, then architecture. Architecture is not itself a religion or a set of values. Maybe your expectations are backwards. Maybe much of the ultimate meaning that you are expecting architecture to provide you are the things you need to yourself provide to your architecture.
Or I could be wrong and I often am.
here is how i frame it up...
Architecture to me is a balance of two opposites (although it does not always need to be)... Art and Science. Scientists have the luxury of absolute truth, and artists or course do not. You can sit on one side and throw rocks at the other, or you can find your place in this balance and be happy.
The practice desperatly needs the academy to drive change and advance as experimentation in academic settings is rewarded.
The academy desperatly needs the practice to analyze and develop these seemingly absurd ideas into future solutions.
chaos and order
but, people seldom ask my opinion. and i am only commenting because I was where you are a few months ago.
Good question tricks...keep asking those sort of questions. I dont think that it makes you "frustrated" (as steve puts it) to pose these sort of issues.
To be honest, steve's viewpoint of architecture bores me. And im sure it bores you as well. The truth is we need it, and we need thinkers like him. But im not, and im sure youre not, interested in that.
anyways...I think a good thing to explore in ANY project parallels mack's "balance" idea. He hit the nail on the head. That balance between two opposites extends beyond our makeup as architects to the projects we design. Every project i've ever approached has some sort of dichotomy between two things. Structure v. Skin. Old v. New. Circulation v. Occupation. Lightness v. Heaviness. Etc. etc.
I find starting with extrapolating at least one interesting dichotomy leads to, at the very least, an interesting diagram to start from.
mack you forgot economics...it is one fricking big factor.
good point. where would economics go?
Center?
artistic/aesthetic is sometimes value added?
maybe its on the science side? as a reality of design and construction?
maybe the whole metaphor is a triangle?
science is overrated
dialectics is so 2-dimensional.
i always assumed architecture was at least 3-d.
droll, dlb... very droll.
just ask per corell
design/detail lexicons, e.g. Diderot's Encyclopedia
design/detail lexicons, e.g. Diderot's Encyclopedia
pretty dismissive, asbuckeye. i wasn't exactly presenting a point of view of architecture so much as attempting to show that each project could be a different thing...which shouldn't exactly be boring.
it wasn't exactly meant to be about me at all but a response to the poison that TRICKS seems to be spreading through several threads because of how disillusioned he/she seems to be with architecture and the way it's taught. i understand exploration and questioning -but i want to challenge that questioning to continue. it's stopping too soon that i have a problem with. deciding that it all comes down to how well you sell your b.s. is a copout.
so i was maybe suggesting a look back to first principles. architecture does have a body of knowledge, a legacy that gets passed forward. it's not b.s. it's useful stuff on which both TRICKS and you can build a foundation for questioning and exploration that can amount to something.
oh, and, yeah, the dichotomy thing as a trigger for exploration is a great tool. one of many. yin yan: basic principles, natch.
The problem is how to create an attached series of row houses in a dense urban setting that provides the street all the surface variety of the century old italienate facades without falling into the historical reference trap. Brick veneers will never be the same as solid masonry walls no mater how many fake arches, limestone headers. No one will ever pay for 1/8" butter joints - so dont go there. 3/8" just aint the same. So Im exploring simple material interactions of wood, brick and depth variation with the wall plane to create a rhythm of ever so slight shadow lines to keep the pattern established by the old timers. They have such understated sophistication and refinement - much like my divided satin aluminum window wall frames with exposed jambs. trompe l'oeil - Voilà !
i'm exploring ancient pattern, arabesque and mesopotamia. want to design a series of wall paper.
Sure S W,
I guess i just dont understand the context of your perspective...or TRICK's "poison"...was just calling it as I saw it...
anal sex
hi mdler ;)
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