Black Hole

We're entering the midterm crunch. This bears striking similarity to the approach to a black hole in space. As one approaches the event horizon, time becomes distorted. However time moves more slowly as one approaches a black hole and the opposite is true of an academic event horizon. In a black hole approach, the gravity differences between your head and feet stretch you out in an effect astrophysicists call "spagettification." Projects, papers, and schoolwork, combined with time for sleep and eating, also cause a "spagettification" of the body. At the moment of greatest proximity to the events, the laws of physics break down. Sleep is no longer even necessary, but in fact, makes one tired. Copy centers pop in and out of existance in the Rymann-curved quantum surface. Beyond the black hole and academic event horizon, there is only darkness. At least twelve to sixteen hours of it to catch up. No light escapes into my bedroom.

I met with my architecture teacher this morning before class and we talked a bit. He's adamantly against using form as the main departure point for this project. He's trying to teach us how to extrapolate an entire project from a few select moments or qualities of a space. This is very bottom-up processing. We and me in particular, are used to working top-down. We develop a concept about the project as an overarching guide, and develop a floor plan and formwork from there.

While I am happy that we've not had any busywork to do like the other two studios, I must confess they are farther along than we are. Today, we figured out collectively, what scale the site topo was at. Their class have already created chipboard site models with thier tiny library model in place. Looking at what they had, and looking at what I had, I felt like quite the lousy student.
The meeting this morning didn't help much. He basically took a look at my floorplan and decided I was focusing too much on forms. I showed him a diagram of sun angles overlaid with scenic directions, and the converseation turned to using the sun in the site. He gave me a crash course in SketchUp, an awesome 3d modeling program anyone can use, really intuitive and simple. It's not as accurate as AutoCAD or make the buildings look as good as FormZ, but its really quick easy for playing with ideas. For example. I can draw a square, either by clicking and dragging or typing 2 coordinates. Then I can extrude it a distance to make a cube. Then I can draw on it, and wherever I draw across the surface, or enclose a shape, I can then pull or push that shape out or in. Another benefit is it has a really cool sun modeling program which lets you look at how the shadows will be during any time of day, any day of the year, for any city. My favorite feature, though, is that you can create pages of what you're looking at. So I can set up one page to show the shadows in the morning, and another in the late afternoon. When I click back on the first page tab, the shadow moves across the project as it transitions. I'm going to use it to help figure out orientation of the building on the site. The architecture computer lab has it on thier machines, but I'm considering getting it for my laptop as its only $50 a year for student licences.

Got some more work back today. I'm very happy to report a 91% on our first architecture history exam, although I realize we have another one next Thursday. AGHHHH!!! We also have our critical review papers to work on, a 5 page autobiography thats coming up at the beginning of november, and of course a massive project due two weeks from today.

Headache headache headache. This one is either stress, eye strain, or dehydration. I need to remember to bring my nalgene to school with me. The weather is appropriately somber, with the cool winds begining to make themselves felt and the overcast skies overhead. I've started wearing sweatshirts to school, mostly since its so cold in the library.

I reorganized and cleaned my room. I think it will stay clean this time.