Done!

Sunday I came back to studio after sleeping for four hours. I worked there until 3 AM monday morning and biked back home where I took a shower and fell asleep. I got up again at 7 AM (its surprisingly cold in the mornings, I forget how cold it is when I usually get up at around 9), and went back to studio to do a building section on AutoCAD. I did that, printed it in our handy plotter, and sketched in people, bookshelves, plants, etc. Then I headed BACK home again to do some quick sketches to render in photoshop. These turned out pretty cool. I sketched a quick perspective in pen in my notebook, took a picture with my digital camera, then took it into photoshop. There I took the color out, added layers of materials and colors, and added people and furnature. I'll post a few pictures when I get home. I also printed out some shadow studies, and views of the mountains from the library.

I got back to class a little past 1 pm. People were running around finishing stuff up. The way the reviews were arranged, there were two different reviews going on at once in different rooms. They divided the three studios into six sections. Each section got half of the studio time, separated by a short break, so that monday, there were four sections reviewed, two per room. The other two sections will go wednesday. Anyway, our class was mostly in the second half of presentations, so the first two hours or so we sat in on reviews, added finishing touches, and looked at the different projects (I added a compass point to all my drawings at this time).

After the break, ten people from our class set up for our review. I called in sick because I knew that after averaging four hours of sleep a night for the past few nights, I was in no shape to work. It was a challenge staying awake in the reviews. I pinned alll my stuff up and I must say I was surprised by the quantity of material I had. My presentation materials:

1/8" scale model on a site with topography
1/8" scale floor plan
1/16" scale site plan with landscaping/parking ideas
two 1/4" scale sections taken throught the building
a large scale topo map with lines of sight extending to the mountain peaks
interior and exterior perspectives
and my shadow diagrams

During the process work leading up to the reviews, I would go around to the other studios and admire really sexy and futuristic models. Thier forms were really cool and interesting, and it made me feel stupid and inadequate as a designer. Thier classes were worked a lot harder than ours, and so they had a larger body of material to draw from. However, we both invested the same amount of time, and looking at thier floor plans, I could only conclude that the functionality of the building was not up to what our class had done with it.

Our professor puts extremely heavy emphasis on simplicity, and our studio's models tended to be much less complicated and much more boxy, simple forms. We were encouraged to use more simple materials like chipboard and cardboard, and avoid what our professor called "the basswood fashion parade." Basswood models, as a rule, look a lot more ritzy than cardboard or chipboard. He must have been on to something.

The other two studios were ripped to shreds at thier reviews. Everyone looked annoyed and upset. Apparently, the reviewers didn't like what they were seeing. One review I sat in on, the guy had a bunch of curvaceous linked circles. He said that the form in plan was in the shape of a cactus and we all collectively slapped our heads. Our review went swimmingly. There were a few issues, but on the whole it went a lot better for us. Our reviewers consisted of a guy from Leo Daly who dressed like Phillip Johnson with oversized round tortisshell glasses, a facutly professor, Max Underwood, and our studio professor. They liked my design, and how I laid the library out. The only problems were very minor- some American Disabilities Act problems with a door, a bathroom stall facing the entry door, and rainwater issues with my flat roof.

Anyway, it is good to be done and to have everything turn out all right. I went home and slept for a few hours before waking up and finishing my autobiography for my Finding Purpose class.
Its been a long day today. I'm still pretty tired. Everyone here is. Our teachers cant understand why we're so lethargic today but at least they let us out early. Now I'm just working in the library. Tonight, I'm going to head home and get twelve hours of sleep.