Almost every afternoon recently has been a heavenly gift from God! The weather in Ames has been sublime!!! Pity I have been busier than the authorities during New Years... I do have a gorgeous view of the woods North of ISU... When you walk around in the area it doesn't look like there are so many trees, but there really are! And every single one of them is contributing to a majestic tapestry of fall color. My group and I are currently working on concept models for redesigning our performance hall. We are starting almost over and taking what we learned with our old model and replacing it with new fully formed ideas of what the performance halls are. From there we are working the rest of our building around that concept... Kind of disheartening to start fresh, but we have a better concept of what we want and how to achieve it.
A progression of seating arrangements in a posable performance area. The seating and sound would change with each alteration of the space. The walls also need to change but that is another animal all together. Acoustics is hard!!!
I am no longer pursuing a minor in Spanish. I dropped both classes Wednesday. I simply do not have the time for them and studio as the semester progresses. Over the next few weeks I have 3 more reviews for more than 50% of my studio grade and that time correlates with 2 papers and 3 tests in Spanish... Not gonna happen. I need to do well in studio and pass this class to graduate!!!
In other news, my entire weekend is planned. We are finishing our Homecoming banner this weekend and lawn display a week after that. On Sunday I have to paint Victory lane and a storefront window for our Homecoming pairing... And I have to do it with girls... Darn... I am truly blighted by this predicament. Oh me! We are enacting the designs I drew out my first week of school that follow the Dr. Seuss theme chosen for this year... Pretty simple and very fun to draw in terms of characters. I am loving it!!!
Nothing that dramatic has happened since I last posted, despite the overly dramatic title to this post. I finished my webpage and submitted it. Plus I finished reading a course book at 2am last night and took the test 6 hrs later... And I think I did really well. It is okay if I didn't though because our teacher handed out a course packet worth half of the test grade in extra credit. Now I am back in studio hashing out rough floor plans for tomorrow and the massive work weekend. (WOOT ALL WEEKEND IN STUDIO!!!) Our schematic design is due (albeit in an operable and changeable state to a "certain degree") on Monday and we have only really hashed out a building form and urban plan for our site. I think the urban planning idea we have cooked up actually legitimizes our construction of the symphony center on the big dig project. More on that later, after we format some drawings into real presentable things beyond our messy sketches.
Last night I got a free dinner courtesy our sorority pairing for Homecoming. The bought pizza to foster a better working atmosphere for the beginning of blitz build days for Homecoming. I got there and ate early then went to Lowes to get staples and started on the banner I designed earlier this year. I am pretty much moving it along to the color assignment phase then handing it off to kids who have more time to work on it. It is pretty nice to have people want my opinion on stuff and to have people rely on me for something. Plus it is a great time to socialize with cute sorority girls...
The prints of the architectural journal that I contribute to just arrived... I don't think I got printed (because I could not find an ending to my topic article) but I did help a lot of people edit their essays. So I am super excited to read what did get printed out and what student works were included in the journal.
That's pretty much it. Enjoying this fantastic summer weather!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The studio projects we are working on are going very slowly... In the last couple of days (since Saturday) I have been a humanized example of productivity and work output. Upon typing this I realize that it is hypocritical because I am not being productive right now.... But I digress. I have done several Spanish assignments, redone my entire website to turn in today, made 1 physical model and 3 digital models of our prospective building, and read several chapters of a book that I need to finish before Thursday... Plus I have been working on the digital files for our site (2 in fact) one of an entire building and the other piece being a part of the site that we "finished." Quite the laundry list right? That and I need to do laundry... That is essentially my life, sans cooking food and sleeping a little bit.
I do appreciate that I was visited by my wonderful family this weekend. It was to see all of you and to catch a football game, even though it was not really a game... A special thanks to Grandma Charin for a new world record care package! It was so large I actually did not have the ability to fit everything into my cupboards and fridge!!!
Ye Schedule for the rest of the week is as follows:
- Studio!!! Make models, plans and basic schematic plans...
- Read a book for a test Thursday
- Dinner with Sorority on Wednesday
- Create site for digital media class
- Spanish HW
- Laundry
- Lasercut everything
- Sleep?
- Fraternity HC ritual
Thats about it from me. Once again "Un mil gracias para mi familia que viajaron a visitarme el ultima fin de semana!!!
sketchup screenshot of my building concept idea. change acted upon a modular piece to create volumes necessary for our required building program.
It's that time of year everyone!!! Free time is nearly gone. Truly the last of it shalt be squandered here in mere days before the crazy mess of studio work overtakes my life. Enough of the future, it is not determined by any sort of ballyhoo-ery that I make at this instance.
Fall has hit the gorgeous ISU campus!!! Trees are changing colors and my favorite time of year is upon us!!! FALLLL!!! (with four llll's) I am improving greatly in each of my Spanish classes, probably due to a greater degree of immersion than in years past. This is one thing I learned in Italy. You learn a new language real quick once you are forced to use it, and it is difficult and embarrassing to make mistakes in common situations. The other day I answered a question right, but later in class could not understand what my teacher was asking me whilst checking for homework. He was just asking my last name... Yeah...
We have one of our site models done and dusted, but it is only the smaller of the two pieces that we need to make for our final presentation in December. Lots more laser cutting and assembly and glueing to go. My group is just starting to make conceptual models about our site and we are slightly behind where I want us to be, which is ahead of the other groups in the class.
In more disheartening news I have to redo my student website because my teacher neglected to tell us that we needed to use HTML coding instead of Flash coding while making it. Guess which one I chose? I spent a lot of time on it making a rather handsome and well thought out page that is now useless because ISU's computer labs can't handle the file. So now I have to redo it all by next Tuesday... And he just told me that today. (Various explitives here...) Good thing is that I am living with Drew and he is an HTML wizard, so I already have some bones to flesh out. Unfortunately I still need to get some more coding in to make the site work more efficiently and look good too, because the things we were taught in class look like websites did back when Clinton was still President (long time ago in the Internet years.)
Anyways, I have two models I want to make tonight plus two poems to read and analyze in another language... So long for now! There shalt be more on Thursday!!!
Long time, no talk... Things have been busy as all get out here. I am in studio now pumping out schematic design ideas for the 'ole Symphony Orchestra hall in Boston (Jazz only, to a degree). My what a brutal list of conceptual necessities it has. We are starting slower than I expected, but I really need to get something going, but our teacher and class model (the one we are building) are really getting in the way. Look for updates on pictures of these things in the next week, as they will be really sweet. But back to Boston!
The first night in town I went around to the three sites with two of my professors (one is my studio professor the other teaches my graduate level class). It was actually nice to hear their input on the sites as we visited them for the first time together. My group ended up choosing a site near the Rose Kennedy Greenway (the Big Dig) right downtown in Boston. After visiting said sights we went and got food at the Quincy Market. I ate a bowl of Chowda' with a kosher kielbasa chili dog. My one professor went upstairs for a pint and bar food whilst we dined on the cheaper fare of the market. When we went looking for him we stumbled upon him at the New England Patriots Cheerleaders Calender release party... Pretty dang lucky but awesome (and a terrible night to have left my camera back at the hotel... Damn)! After much jaw dropping and stuttering conversations with gorgeous women, we booked it back to our hotel stopping on the way for a pint of Samuel Adams (the most prominent and Bostonian thing imaginable, an actual identity to the city that people have massive pride in.)
The next day I toured the ICA art Museum on the waterfront for its collection and architecture, followed by dinner at the nearby Barking Crab and a tour of two Arch firms that afternoon. In between I tried to make it to MIT, but caught up with Steve Jobs speaking on the street. Drew and I would later go back to that campus and even meander through the campus of some school called Harvard. I really can say that I liked MIT and its similar sort of identity to ISU (at least the engineering and sciences portion of the campus that really felt like an ISU transmuted as infill into the Boston Harbor). I hated my trip to Harvard. If a person could make a collegiate university into a Disneyland-esque park where you walk around and gawk at buildings and placards of famous people... That is what Harvard is. There is also a preening arrogance to the students we saw sitting out enjoying the masses of Asian tourists photographing them as they "studied and read and chatted" in the Yard. It just left a bad impression on me, even though I dearly hope it was just a portion of the student population. I did thoroughly enjoy the brutalist architecture present at both campuses (ala CY Stephens and Fisher Theatre). Stark, severe and brutally effiecent buildings by Kahn and Pei (plus a Vander Rohe set that could count in this context...) that truly made the trip worth it.
On Sunday I went to a bookstore near the Boston Green and ate at the infamous Union Oyster House. I got the plate of fried seafood (scallops, clams, oysters, cod, shrimp, kalamari and octopus) smothered in fries... That was pricy and greasy but amazing to taste seafood that amazingly fresh and good. The rest of the trip was walking around, a Red Sox game and documentation of the site we chose... Things that are rather less interesting to write about, but here are some pictures and videos!!! (More pictures to come later again...)
