"Pungently Optimistic Green"

Today was an improvement over yesterday. First thing I called the pizza place; they had my card. So I biked down and picked it up. In studio, we listend to a lecture on good library design and asked questions to an ASU professor who also has a practice.

We also got our laundry list of things we need to have two weeks from next monday. Our library project, phase I, is due on Halloween. Phase II of the same project will take the rest of the semeseter. Cemeteries last year, libraries this year. I'm not complaining though. Library over a cemetary any day. Anyway, its a ton of work and they're finally turning us loose. Our studio teacher though was commenting on how the moment of greatest insight into what your project is about and what it needs to be occurs at the moment of least resources, right before you present your project.

I thought this was interesting and plotted it like a quantiy-price economic graph, with time instead of price. Insight became the supply line and Resources fit the demand curve. At the beginning of a project, you have literally all your resources in front of you including time, but generally no idea or insight into your project. Halfway, I suppose, you reach a peak efficiancy zone where you have equal insight and resources. The end, unfortunatly, is the reverse of the beginning, where you have neither time nor resources for your high insight.

Anyway, tons of work ahead. I'm not even quite sure where to begin, besides a simple floor plan which will get me to a model. Then I can start reacting more to the site.

I realized yesterday that Will Bruder was going to be giving a lecture tonight at 6 PM, the time I start work. I asked a few poeple if they wanted to cover for me, but found no takers. So I came to work as usual, beating myself up for not having the foresight to check the date Bruder was going to come in and speak so I could find a replacement.

For those non-architecture people out there, Will Bruder is THE architect in Phoenix, and is establishing himself on a national and international level. A lecture by him on architecture is comparable to a lecture on international affairs by Henry Kissenger.

Our library supervisor who was absolutely worn out from a hectic time of being four people during the busiest time its ever been, went home surprisingly early at 6:15. There is almost always two students working nights, and I knew the person I was working with wouldn't mind if I slipped out for a bit. I found myself in a bit of a moral dillemia.

This was the one lecture out of the entire year I didn't want to miss. Should I have missed it as a punishment and reminder to keep all my dates straight and plan better? The student I work with almost every time takes off for fifteen to fourty-five minutes to get something to eat. However, the lecture would probably be an hour or more. As anyone proactive enough in architecture to be at the library after school would be at the lecture, there wasn't going to be a lot of work to do. And, in this case, work refers to shelving books, something I could do when I got back. On the other hand, no matter how one colors it, it is deceit. My supervisor expects me to be at work, and is paying me for my time. Granted, she herself is bending the rules and paying me for two hours on thursdays when I only work for an hour and a half, out of gratitude for my flexibility on previous dates. When I took this job, I recognized that this was for supplementary income and that school comes before everything else. I only work 15 hours a week, and I get homework done while I'm working. The library staff consider me an incredible asset and every evening, my supervisor thanks me for repairing the damage done to the library during the day.

I looked at my priorities. The moral infringement I incur by violating my responsibility to my job, (though it's just sitting at the desk), did not outweigh the responsibility to myself to gain the widest and best architectural education possible.
So I went to the lecture, and I'm content with my decision.

The lecture was packed. They had it in the huge lecture hall downstairs and there was stading room only in the back. Even the side asiles were full. I missed the first ten-fifteen minutes of it, where he talked about his background and introduced the first building. Jen went to the lecture to take notes for me and actually offered to take my place at the desk so I could go see it. She also thought the lecture was amazing.

It was a great lecture. Will talked about a few of his projects here in the valley, what was built, what inspired him, how he worked. It was funny because a few of buildings I recognized from traveling around, and in fact, when Jen and I stumbled upon his new downtown scottsdale apartments I stopped the car and we both started talking about it excitedly, not knowing who had built it. It had a striking lime green accents to counterbalance perforated rust panels, and this color caused a dispute with the city of scottsdale for about two months. When Bruder went before a special planning comission to talk to them, when they asked what color they were fighting over, he blurted out "pungenly optimistic green." The board laughed and eventually Bruder was able to keep the color.

ASU is financing the construction of a Gateway center. This will put an entrance to the ASU campus and a strong direct link to Mill Avenue. Will Bruder called up his "friends in the field," the incomparable Sir Norman Foster (on par with Tadao Ando and Frank Gehry) and another architect and they designed the project togather. It was hilarious seeing Norman Foster's studio in the center of London, huge steel and glass tower loft with hundreds of employees and Will Bruder and Norman Foster working on a table with an ASU pennant behind them. The project is going to be amazing, like nothing Phoenix has ever seen before. The Gateway center combines retail, apartment housing, a hotel, the ASU visitors center, and extentions of the art museum, architecture building, college of business, and college of art. It's going to be amazing. Unfortunately, it will probably only be complete after I graduate from grad school.