Between 1 and 2 people

Last night, Saori and I used a groupon to check out Flaco's Cocina, which had surprisingly decent Mexicanish food. I got a grilled mahi mahi baked burrito ($11) and Saori got the Chili Rellenos ($9) and the portions were pretty decent. Place was cozy, more like an old diner or cantina, although the feel was colder rather than warmer or more textured. 

Today we had a studio pin up of ideas and it was quickly apparent that we need to focus on programming the site and letting that program drive the rest of the design. In the middle of the review, it began to snow heavily, and over the course of two hours, we got a few inches  of snow blanketing the city. 

Tonight, we had a lecture by architect Monica Ponce de Leon, who spoke on themes of adaptive reuse and negotiating with historicity. It's a subject I'm very much interested in, given that the buildings which will transform the way we live and consume in the future are already around today. Anyway, he take on building in historically sensitive contexts is kind of a middle road a la the Byrds: there is a time to speak, there is a time to stay silent, there is a time to be respectful, there is a time to be rude. 

For the habitable objects she designs for her projects, she follows the SHoP architects method of components which are computer fabricated and then assembled via IKEA style assembly manuals. More IKEA than SHoP, actually. 

There was an interesting moment in the lecture when she asked the audience to raise their hands if they knew what Universal Design was, and only me and a few other hands went up. I'm kind of surprised, actually. Universal design, which was framed as a critique of ADA, is a way of thinking inclusively about design. In contrast to ADA which has a distinction between able and disabled people, Universal Design seeks to accommodate the range of human abilities. OXO Good Grips tools is often cited as an example- they were originally designed to make life easier for suffers of rheumatoid arthritis, but the easier to grasp handles made life easier for everyone. Anyway, Ponce de Leon designed a series of desk carrels for a library, and each one is a little different in size, seat, height, desk height, etc.

I was vastly bemused when she described the width of the carrel ranging from "two people to one lonely person," which made me wonder precisely how many steps there were between 1 and 2 people. Actually the more I thought about it:

1 lonely person
   1 person + 1 fish
      1 person + 1 cat
          1 person + 1 dog

            1 person + 1 person obnoxiously leaning into the carrel to disturb the 1 person

               1 person + 1 child

                  1 person + 1 orangutan

                     2 people romantically intertwined

                        1 obese person

                           2 people

I was not impressed with the work she showed us, frankly. Where there were things I really admired about the approach and certain details, overall, I was underwhelmed and I didn't think that the RISD library insertion was as successful as her methodology would suggest. Perhaps I didn't see it in the right angle, but it seemed very much like the architecture inserted simply disregarded the context rather than respond to it in any particular way. The two things really fought each other for supremacy, and the art installation in the hotel atrium looked fantastic in renderings, but came off looking just like some wavy loops hung with some string. 

Of course, I must add, as always, that the position of the critic is easy, and getting anything built is very difficult- anything reasonably interesting, historic, or challenging, doubly so.