We had a big one last Friday (Nov., 4th). Bill moved his regular Thursday public crit to that day, proceeded by a visit by Jana Cephas, our Critical Studies Fellow.

I signed up for Jana session. Knowing her background and interest, I decided to retell the same old story—about how I got the notion about open-source architectural practice—but telling it a different way.

I started with influences: individuals that has touched me & my sensibilities over time. Be it through personal or professional collaborations. Projects from Cecil Mariani, Andi RHARHARHA, AhmettSalina, and MG Pringgotono I showed.

Works by Cecil Mariani, 2004 & 2009

A piece by Andi RHARHARHA, 2011, photograph by me (originally published in Karbon Journal)

A press coverage on AhmettSalina's UrbanPLAY!

I intend to carry on this open-ended, culturally sensitive, playful, participatory, & collaborative mode of working by planning a new studio project, here in Cranbrook.

Jodie Cooper, a transfer from Metalsmithing Dept., presented his work two weeks ago. Comparing with a chair idea I had back in 2009, I couldn't help but ask him to collaborate on something. Anything at all.

Work in progress, Jodie Cooper, 2011

Tatai built-in bench, farid rakun, 2009

A chair was what we agreed upon. Following are diagrams of what we are planning to built this week (PVC pipes we have, additional steel plates & tubes were ordered earlier today):

DIY Chair, working diagrams, Jodie Cooper & farid rakun, 2011

A Rhino screen cap, showing geometry derived out of the silhouette of an Eames chair

In my head, the chair will be a prototype of a system, of which future users can play & interact with, creating swirling geometries they imagine themselves.

Wish us luck, will keep you guys updated! Stay tune.

I finished configuring the main elements of my construction a couple of days ago. I found a better way to butt-join my frames, and after that everything else were painless. I spent my time staring at it for a while, maybe like the myth, in which Louis Kahn asking, “Hey, brick. What do you... View full entry

“Conquest” by White Stripes, 2007

Sorry for the lack of post. I've been bombarded with readings, and behind-the-screen legwork that I have to put in order to put my proposal sustainable. Let me start to update you with an exciting news. Cranbrook Art Museum is re-opening. It has been the talk for everyone around campus for a... View full entry

Cranbrook is about building—not the noun, but the verb; not the object, but the action. Even if you're into Arduino, Processing, Kinect, and openFrameworks, you still need to build upon your ideas. It is believed to be the path to reality. Whose reality? Mostly yours, of course. In the case... View full entry

Latest iteration: I asked my four friends from Kandura Keramik, in Bandung, Indonesia, to play with my modules. Resulting configurations then made their way to the Pop-Up Store challenge, posted in designbymany. Here are my panels:     Read my complete description (and if you could... View full entry

Bill Massie, our department's Artist-in-Residence (AIR) is lecturing on his body of works this Saturday. Being extremely guarded about his web-presence, this one has been the one we are looking forward to (on his AIR presentation last month, unlike the others, he showed—tortured?—the... View full entry

This is the second competition we are doing as warm-ups (my post on the first can be found here). I was not so interested in doing this one at first, but life has its own way to prove how wrong I was, since it turned out to be the idea whose path is more challenging and fun to follow. It began... View full entry

As our warm up projects, Bill gave us two competitions with real clients. The first one is for a sun shade structure in a McMansion tennis lawn in Bloomfield Hills township area. How the class is structured is we pretty much do our own things, with scheduled individual desk crits by Bill, that we... View full entry

The great thing about Cranbrook is its loose structure. I'm loving it, just so I don't have to deal with classes that I care nothing about. Being not exactly young to get into a grad school, I also have my own agenda already. Taking their place, classes are replaced by lectures. Here's how this... View full entry

Please let me introduce myself. My name is farid rakun, a student of Architecture Dept. at Cranbrook Academy of Art. I'm originally from Indonesia. In this blog I will share my musings, blurb, thoughts, + progress relating to my agenda here in Cranbrook. School started on Sep. 12th, the day I... View full entry