Well it looks like I've gone a week without blogging. It's been a pretty busy week.
Studio is different from the typical studio, but then, its all typical. As I might have mentioned, the focus of this studio is on the transformational power of infrastructure, particularly water infrastructure, in New Orleans. So we're really being asked to look at infrastructure as architecture, or architecture through the lens of infrastructure. We're at the tail end of a larger effort called "gutter to gulf" which is a series of studios studying the problems of New Orleans and particularly why Katrina was so devastating, and how architectural interventions can help the city. This is, at least, going beyond the proverbial "Katrina Studio" designing disaster relief housing. This studio is in conjunction with the "Dutch Dialogues" which were a series of workshops in the years after Katrina which brought in Dutch experts and representatives to present how the Netherlands have dealt with issues of flooding, subsidence, and living productively with the same water that could quite literally wipe them off the map. There have been six studios leading up to this, so believe you me that there is a serious quantity of work already done for us. We are the studio that supposedly are going to be the ones to tie everything up.
As an interesting side note, post Katrina, the US didn't stoop to actually ask anyone for help or advice from any nation who had successfully dealt with the same issues. However, the Dutch Ambassador immediately came knocking and offered assistance and expertise in the days after the disaster struck. It was it seems, in repayment of an old debt: the invention of the screw pumps by a New Orleans civil engineer which made the lake swamps drain-able and habitable were sent to Amsterdam and Rotterdam and essentially created the physical ground of much of the Netherlands.
Anyway, our studio is also working in conjunction with some architects in New Orleans and also a masters of Landscape architecture from the University of Toronto. One of those students, a woman, is apparently very skilled at working with GIS, or global information systems, a sophisticated mapping technology. When her name was brought up in studio in the discussions of accomodations in New Orleans, I commented to the group including the instructor, "oh, she must be the GIS wizard." Of course, when you pronounce the acronym, it came out sounding something completely different, and I believe I turned bright red after I realized what I had just said. The instructor waved it off.
Anyway, that was part of today. My wednesday classes begin at 9 am and pretty much run until 9 pm. Let's just say its a pretty long day. A very theory intensive 3 hour session on the AA followed by that light and fancy-free class called architectural studio, followed by structures II, which ran over today. So by the end of the day today, I was ready for a little pizza and beer. No classes tomorrow.
I'm actually already a little behind, which is not the best way to end the second week of school. I didn't finish my structures homework, and I didn't finish my studio readings either. My excuse of having a hundred pages of AA theory to read notwithstanding, so I'll get the overdue stuff done tomorrow.
Last weekend, or last friday I should say, we went out with some friends to an ok mexican restaurant on Cherokee Street, which is an interesting old part of St.Louis called Soulard. Afterwards, a much smaller group of us had a pint at Stable, which is a brewhouse in the old stables of the closed Lemp brewery, which was right across the street.
Studio is different from the typical studio, but then, its all typical. As I might have mentioned, the focus of this studio is on the transformational power of infrastructure, particularly water infrastructure, in New Orleans. So we're really being asked to look at infrastructure as architecture, or architecture through the lens of infrastructure. We're at the tail end of a larger effort called "gutter to gulf" which is a series of studios studying the problems of New Orleans and particularly why Katrina was so devastating, and how architectural interventions can help the city. This is, at least, going beyond the proverbial "Katrina Studio" designing disaster relief housing. This studio is in conjunction with the "Dutch Dialogues" which were a series of workshops in the years after Katrina which brought in Dutch experts and representatives to present how the Netherlands have dealt with issues of flooding, subsidence, and living productively with the same water that could quite literally wipe them off the map. There have been six studios leading up to this, so believe you me that there is a serious quantity of work already done for us. We are the studio that supposedly are going to be the ones to tie everything up.
As an interesting side note, post Katrina, the US didn't stoop to actually ask anyone for help or advice from any nation who had successfully dealt with the same issues. However, the Dutch Ambassador immediately came knocking and offered assistance and expertise in the days after the disaster struck. It was it seems, in repayment of an old debt: the invention of the screw pumps by a New Orleans civil engineer which made the lake swamps drain-able and habitable were sent to Amsterdam and Rotterdam and essentially created the physical ground of much of the Netherlands.
Anyway, our studio is also working in conjunction with some architects in New Orleans and also a masters of Landscape architecture from the University of Toronto. One of those students, a woman, is apparently very skilled at working with GIS, or global information systems, a sophisticated mapping technology. When her name was brought up in studio in the discussions of accomodations in New Orleans, I commented to the group including the instructor, "oh, she must be the GIS wizard." Of course, when you pronounce the acronym, it came out sounding something completely different, and I believe I turned bright red after I realized what I had just said. The instructor waved it off.
Anyway, that was part of today. My wednesday classes begin at 9 am and pretty much run until 9 pm. Let's just say its a pretty long day. A very theory intensive 3 hour session on the AA followed by that light and fancy-free class called architectural studio, followed by structures II, which ran over today. So by the end of the day today, I was ready for a little pizza and beer. No classes tomorrow.
I'm actually already a little behind, which is not the best way to end the second week of school. I didn't finish my structures homework, and I didn't finish my studio readings either. My excuse of having a hundred pages of AA theory to read notwithstanding, so I'll get the overdue stuff done tomorrow.
Last weekend, or last friday I should say, we went out with some friends to an ok mexican restaurant on Cherokee Street, which is an interesting old part of St.Louis called Soulard. Afterwards, a much smaller group of us had a pint at Stable, which is a brewhouse in the old stables of the closed Lemp brewery, which was right across the street.
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