status report

1.5 hours of sleep last night. Halfway done with my roof. Sections done, and plan done but needs to be printed. FormZ model mostly done, so I can just take those sections.

welcome to the crunch

Jonathan had donated the use 0f his moutain bike- with a kevlar bike lock, so I no longer need to to rollerblade to school. My project is due thursday. I have my model about halfway done. My drawings are on autocad, but I still need to update, print, and watercolor the site plan. I've got some very nice interior shots and some really nice exterior shots with sketchup and form Z. It's going to be a very long week.

It got cold here. Saturday it was sunny and 70 degrees. Monday, I was shocked to find it 20 degrees cooler. I've started wearing my wool coat, and broke out my feather comforter. Not that I'll be using it much this week.

I picked Jen up at the airport late sunday night. They're really changing Sky Harbor, I can hardly recognize it anymore. Mixed feelings about it- I get nostalgic about the old look coming back and departing on all our early travels. Jen also brought me back some chocolate covered expresso beans! Ok back to work. I've had my laptop in studio for the past week almost. Wireless means I get all me emails, although I cant send any.

Not the best day I've ever had

Yesterday will not make the top 10 best days I've had this semester. I covered a shift of a coworker Saturday from noon-5, and it just felt like I'd lost the entire day. I got some good work done, and by the end of the night I'd finished a model in sketchup complete with cars, people, stop signs, and plants and succussfully exported it to google earth so I can use it in my presentation. However, I was only able to make one wall of my model. These things take so much time and energy. What's worse is that I ended up building my model in not one, not two, but three CAD programs, first autocad from the alst project, then roughly in sketchup, then completely from scratch in formZ becasue I needed the better detail and interior shots, then after I found I could export to google earth, back to finish the rough model in sketchup. My computer has also been freezing up every time I launch google earth and acting wierd when I use openGL functions in my cad programs. Updating the driver from ATI didn't help, so I had to hunt around until I figured out what the problem was: Dell requests special drivers for all the technology they install at thier facotory, so if you have an ATI card which was installed for you by dell, none of the ati updates work, you have to go back to Dell to get thier drivers. SO I figured that out, and downloaded the driver, and that solved all my graphics problems. So that was good, although it was unbeleivably frustrating. I decided to call it a night a little after 11 as I wasn't making any progress, and I feel terrible with anything less than seven hours of sleep. My bike was gone. In the spot it occupied, I found my cable bike lock, neatly cut. I walked home and watched some monty python before going to bed. I should have used my u-bar lock. The bike was only $60 used, but it was the best bike I'd ever had. I guess I have something new to add to my christmas list.

Thanful for You

I really have so much to be thankful for, I truly am blessed. I'm thankful for my family in Moscow, who keep sending me money, and supporting me in everything I do. I'm thankful for all my grandparents, that I have been able to know them so well for so long, and that they were willing and happy to have flown me out to spend thanksgiving with them. I'm thankful for Jen, who also offered to have me over for thanksgiving, and for pushing me to be even better. I'm thankful for Sally and Jonathan, who not only invited me to thier family reunion/thanksgiving, but also got mom's mallow pie recipie and made it just for me. I'm thankful for all of everyone's love.
I'm thankful for all the opportinities I've had, and thankful that I've been able to capitalize on so many of them. I'm thankful that I live in a place where on thanksgiving, it was a sunny 70 degrees. I'm thankful for Suki for her undying adoration.

Thanksgiving day, I stopped by the local liquour store and picked up an Austrailian Merlot before heading over to Sally's. Both of Sally's brothers and her father were there. This was a special occasion, as they hadn't all been togather under one roof for a long time. Tons of food; Jonathan carved up the turkey with his new electric knife, there was sweet potato pie, mashed potatos, fresh rolls, deviled eggs, green beans, and cranberry sauce. For dessert, there was the option of cherry, blueberry, or pumpkin pie, and banana bread. Lots of wine too, my reserve merlot turned out great with the turkey.

Well, back to work. I finished my base for the final model wednesday night, and today I need to get started on the "steel" frame construction before I start adding the walls. Project due in six days!!!

culture jamming

I was browsing an online architecture and desgin journal, and they had a snippet about this site, the Coca-Cola World Chill Map. This allows visitors to select thier current mood: either "Freakin", "Buggin", "Uptight", "Calm", or "Chill", then zoom in to where they are to put a peg in with the color of thier mood. This theoretically gives us a global picture of who's chillin'. California and the East Coast, unsurprisingly, are all chillin' and so is most of the UK. Someone with a sense of humor has realized the litebrite potential and has created a giant happy face in the middle of Siberia. The website also offers a screensaver so you can get a feel for how chill the world is in realtime. Personally, I think this is just ridiculous and hilarious, especially as the website thinks that this information is on par with global stock indicies. Coca Cola is trying way too hard. However, this does provide an interesting concept. Instead of "how are you feeling today?", what if the US government did "how safe do you feel today?" or "how many of you are planning on voting?" there's huge potential as a polling device. However, the usual problems, like the giant happy face in siberia, need to be rectified.

I finished my paper last night and turned it in this morning. It's a pretty good paper. Last night, there were still people coming into the library to check out the articles and books that they needed to compare. Today in architecture history after we turned our papers in we split into ten groups. The scenario was that we were a religious sect on a mediterranian island, and we needed a religious structure to serve as our model. Five religious buildings were presented: Byzantine, Islamic, Gothic, Romanesuqe, and one other. One group would act for each building and one group against. My group got the Islamic building, the Dome of the Rock. As I was the only one in the group who had covered Islam in the paper we had just turned in, it fell to me to be the spokesman for the group. So we talked about its strenghts and what I should say, and finally, I had to get up in front of the 150 students and talk. It's an intimidating experiance, and without my notes I would have been lost. Even though it was only two minutes or so of talking, its still a little unsettling. It helps to think of myself as a different person, as Brother Alexander, talking to the Fellows. I think I did a good job. I was complimented a few times throughout the day.

On a sadder note, Jen left for home today. She'll be gone until Sunday night. It's good that she can go home and spend time with her family; even if I didn't have so much work to get done, its 24 hours of travel just to get to my family's apartment in Moscow!

Making my mark on Google Earth

Today I was looking around on google earth on my laptop, and I remembered seeing someone's 3d model of a mountain in there. It was very basic, just two blocks stacked on top of one another, but the significance was that it was someone's model. I wondered if I could also do this. Then I discovered something really cool. Synergsticool. The developers of two programs I've been raving about, Google Earth and Sketchup, have been talking and created a free plugin. Basically it lets you import google earth topographical maps and arial images into sketchup, then you can build your model on them, and then plug that BACK in to google earth as an overlay. So today I stuck a basic model of my library on the site.

You can see it too (if you have Google Earth installed). Just click here to download the overlay. Save the file, and then you can go into google earth, and go file: open to find the file again. This is just too cool. I'm going to build a better model and then use this in my final presentation.

I finished writing my paper last night and Jen and I swapped to critique and edit each other's paper. I need to finish one last revision tonight and I'm good to print. Also need to go grocery shopping. I'm down to a slice of pizza and spagetti and chili ingreediants.

Christmas List

My family and friends have been more than generous to me, and so there's nothing really missing that I desperately need.

The one big ticket item I would really like is an air filter and purifier for the apartment to cut down on the cat hair and odors. Ben, who has slight allergies to cats, would appreciate it even more.

For some reason my mp3 player is acting funky and won't read the SDcard anymore. I'm not sure if its the card or the player. At any rate, I've been eyeing the much lighter and smaller ipod shuffle, which you can stick on a lanyard.

A subscription to Conde Nast Traveller would be much appreciated. I picked up a copy a while back and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it and reminded me of travel.

the DVD of the Blues Brothers (the original, not Blues Brothers 2000)

Heavy Words Lightly Thrown by Chris Roberts

Desert Works by Rick Joy

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Cambell

The Gashleycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey

As always, home baked goods are very welcome gifts.

Wall scones and race considerations in kitchen design

This morning I picked up my new glasses. A few people commented on them that they liked them. They look pretty good on, although maybe a little large. We got our tests back from the second exam. I got a 91%, so I'm in pretty good shape for this final paper and the final exam. In finding purpose we talked about interviewing and resumes. He gave us advice as what the most important places on the page were, to de-emphasize dates, and to remember that the sole job of a resume is to get you an interview. We also talked a bit about interview questions and what to expect from behavioral interiviews, where the companies try to find out more about your personality type.

In my human factors class, the teacher didn't even show up for the student presentations.

Instead, he had his student aide set up the computer stuff and a tape recorder. The powerpoint presentations are mediocre, but there are little bits which make it worth watching.

One presentation, discussing lighting, talked about how dramatic uplighting can be created through the use of wall scones. And he said "scones" too.
One presenter had no idea what he was talking about when presenting a point about how flourescent lighting worked.
Another group mentioned race as a factor in kitchen desgin. I suppose if you are a Pueblo, then a built-in corn grinder might be desired, or adding a tandoori oven to an Indian kitchen, but these are cultural factors, not racial. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

CSI: Tempe, and Alec The Welding Wonder

This weekend it was amazingly difficult to stay focused and motivated to get work done. Maybe it was the goregous weather, maybe it was the fact that I have things to do that don't really have defined dates or times, who knows. I went over to Molly's house to work on our human factors project on generation attitudes towards automatic and manual systems. It took us three hours to put togather fifteen pages of material we'd already researched. We knew what we had to do, but it was a severe effort to make my mouth say the words I needed to say, and like thinking through a brick wall. I gave up and took a nap when I got home. Later Sunday evening, I went to Jen's condo and I worked there on my computer while Jen did her marker renderings for her project.

About midnight, Jen's car alarm went off. She was parked right in front of her condo, so we ran outside. Her passenger side window was completely shattered in. A neighbor who had been smoking on the patio came over. He said he saw two guys walk over and then he heard the alarm go off. The two men jumped in a car "which was pretty much identical to hers" and took off. The only thing that had been taken was a CD folder clipped to the visor, and the cds were mostly burned.

Jen called the police and they sent two cars out. The talked to Jen and the neighbor, and dusted her car for fingerprints. The only ones they could find were Jen's on the back trunk. The cop was really surprised by how clean it was. Apparently the dodge stratuses are the hot car to steal. My minivan, parked right across the street, was apparently cool enought to bother. The police told her to get a club for her car. Its good advice, as she always parks on the street. I spent a good half an hour cleaning the granulated safety glass out of the front seat. Anyway, she drove her car over to my apartment and we covered with a car cover. In the morning I drove her back to her car. The repair people are coming today to fix the car at her place, so that's pretty good.

Today, I got a quick introduction to MIG welding. MIG stands for metal inert gas. Basically it provides a copper wire as the diode, and it blows inert gasses to protect the weld from oxygen. The shop guy demonstrated, and we took turns making welds. We were given a full safety briefing and we all got welding masks. My first weld was too far away and too fast. You have to get 1/32" close to the surface for an ideal weld. To maintain this kind of distance, you have to use one hand as a support, resting on the surface. We used thick leather gloves. My second weld was much better, working closer to the surface. What's really interesting is that you really weld by sound. By listening to the sound of the weld, you know how close you are to the surface. What you want is a nice buzz. Anyway, that was a little scary at first, but fun. I need to go down and practice some more before I start making models out of metal.

An Infadel in Dar al-Harb

The architectural history class I'm taking is taught by a professor Morton, a new teacher this semseter I've mentioned a few times. Here is his asu credentials page. I've never seen a teacher, especially a teacher of architectural history, galvenize students like this guy. We attend his lectures. We study for his exams. His exams are the most physcally demanding, in terms of writing, that I've taken in college. And he grades really really hard. What's really captivating about the course is that he is incredibly knowlegeable and enthusiastic about what he's talking about (which is, I suppose, the difference between a professor of architecture and an architectural historian). He gets so excited sometimes he can hardly contain himself. I've never seen someone use such gesturing in discussing something so old. He gets dewy-eyed at the discussion of the fall of Rome.

Anyway, I mention him because we have another paper to write for him, and unlike all of our other classes people are actually doing research far in advance and working hard on this project, me included. We had a choice of four topics, and I, knowing nothing about Islamic architecture, choose that paper.

The paper is actually a comparison and analysis of two chapters on Islamic architecture in two different books. We have to decide which one is better, and why, and moreover, form a thesis on some salient point or theme shared bythe chapters and discuss that as well. This means I had to check out six books on Islamic architecture to be able to better evaluate the exploratory chapters. In my readings, the history of Islam is also discussed, as it forms an integral part of the architecture. How would one be able to understand a gothic cathedral without knowlege of Christianity?

It's a facinating and ferice history on an incredible timetable. In 622 AD, Mohammad (the man who started the whole thing) was forced to flee Mecca for trying to propagate his new religion. In 661, less than 40 years later, the armies of Islam had taken the entire middle east. By 711, they were halted outside of France, having taken almost all Spain and north Africa.

A religion was founded, converted millions, and unified the nomadic warring tribes and the eastern city-dwellers. The armies of not one but two major global powers were beaten. Constantinople, the last breath of ancient Rome, was taken. Europe was forced away the Mediterranian, and moved north where its new centers flourished. All this was done within 100 years. How?

Mohammad was a clever man. In Medina, he began a small community based on a constitution (undoutbly derived from the Koran) which was revolutionary for the time and location. He preached in the courtyard of his house. As his religion spread, he adopted older religious customs such as the Ka'ba (allegedly built by Adam and later by Abraham) and the pilgrimage to Mecca. He appealed to the Jews who ran the city by making his adherants pray to Jerusalem (another site holy to many religions) in the early years. After he died without naming a sucessor, his adherants split into two factions: one which favored a near relative, and one which favored Mohammad's aide-de-camp. These became the sunni and shiite. They are the only division within Islam.

One reason why Islam stayed so strong was probaby a result of that strict unity. In fact, Islam means submission (to allah). One submits in every way, praying five times a day, fighting holy wars, making the religiosity near total in everyday life. Theres simply no room for arguing over how one should pray, whether or not saints should be recognized, or deciding who should be in the clergy. There is no religious heirarchy in Islam.

Conversion became the major focus. How major? They divided the world into two parts: dar al-Islam (the seat of Islam) and dar al-Harb (the seat of War).

Anyway, the middle east was a major nexus of the global trade route, the Byzantine and Sassarian officials had a booming buisiness, and the nomadic middle eastern tribes were kept in check by fighting each other all the time. Islam unified the tribes under a common banner. The residents of the desert outpost towns were more than happy to welcome the conquering armies as 1) they were sick of the corruption of the local Byzantine rulers and 2) they were happy to see historical kinship take power from the Contstantinople-based Byzantines.

The occupational strategey was good: As the Arabs had no political or governing structure for urban cities, they left all the Christian government officials in place. In terms of religion, you could either convert or pay a tax. Given that Islam holds the merchant as the highest social ideal, many powerful people converted.

That's another really interesting comparison between the two religions. While Christ said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven, Mohammad commented that a coin is worth more when it's earned by a merchant.

Anyway, enough of history for tonight. Chase (the guy I hiked through Europe with) has finally broken down and started a blog documenting his adventure sports start-up in Boulder, CO. His blog is here.

Mr. Woodland Creature

Yesterday morning I called the Nationwide Vision by my apartment and they said they could take me immediately. I went in and looked at frames while I waited for them to finish with a 92 year old man. I had them give me a full eye check-up including pupil dialation. The news is good: my eyes look fine, and my vision has finally stabilized. There's almost no change from my last perscription. One more good thing about being 21 is that you stop physically changing. Anyway, I took about half an hour looking at frames. In the end, I narrowed down my choices between a thick tortoushell frame with kind of copper side peices and a frameless one similiar to a pair of glasses I'd had before. Jen really liked my thick framed black glasses, and disliked the frameless, and the saleswoman also liked the thicker frames much better. She said that the frameless just dissapeared. So I went with the thicker frames.

Following mom's adage, I asked about discounts. Since I had a cigna card they knocked off $50. Very nice. I went ahead and got the polycarbonate scratch resistant coating and since it was only 9 dollars more, got a 1 year warrenty against BREAKAGE. The lenses, exam, frames, coatings, etc came out to $240. Ouch. I'd forgotten how expensive glasses are.

The other problem is that my eyes stayed dialated like a woodland creature's until the early evening. I had a really hard time biking home since it was so bright outside, even though I had sunglasses. Since my lenses were also paralyzed I couldn't focus close, so I couldn't read or work on the computer. This pretty much killed my day. I went into studio late in the afternoon, wearing a huge brimmed hat and sunglasses. The one positive is that I think I've got my roof structure figured out for my project.

Busy week

Let's see: monday I struggled with figuring roofing options for my library project in architecture studio. Tuesday in our human factors class, our teacher asked us to write reviews of the class. The evalutations we write at the end of the semeseter actually get back to the teachers for a year. Normally, people hurry through evaluations, and almost nobody writes anything in the comments section. Now that we had his undivided attention, nearly everyone in the class wrote half a page of scathing comments. That is really saying something.

Wednesday morning I woke up at 6:3o and drove into Phoenix to meet with my mentor Jeremy Jones at DWL architects. I wasn't impressed with the office exterior, as it was built back in the 1960's, but the inside was very modern. I got the office tour, took a look around. DWL is a firm of about 30 architects, so it is pretty large by industry standards. My mentor, Jeremy Jones, is the head of design there. Historically, DWL has done a lot of arizona infrastructure, college, library, hospital projects, but Mr. Jones was brought on board a few years ago to refocus the company on adding interest and more modern design.

I sat in on a design charette with about six or seven other architects. DWL is responsible for redeveloping a large tract of land adjoining ASU (can't tell where) and I saw a presentation on site considerations, limitations, square footages, programing requirements etc. Then we got out our trace paper and pens and started sketching possible site layouts. After about 45 minutes, we compared designs and discussed them. Afterwards, in Mr. Jones office, he told me that I spoke way to rapidly, and that when explaining projects, I need to slow. my. speech. down. which. adds. emphasis. and. conveys. confidence. He also said that one of the strongest skills architects need is negotiation. He's going to help me develop it.

I drove back home and went to ANOTHER meeting, this time with the honors college along with the other honors students in the college of design. Although I havn't taken an honors course in three semesters, I promised to attend the meeting. I'm really glad I haven't wasted my time with extra honors work. There were only three other students in upper division in the honors college. They talked about how honors work just added weight to thier workload, and not richness, and how the honors thesis is a living nightmare with no architecture faculty support.

Today I was lucky to have two classes cancelled. I took my test in human factors. I feel pretty good about it, a B+, minimum.

One really amazing thing I've found online is that google is offering its Google Earth product free. This is a really cool little program which connects to google's mapping servers. It's hard to describe. Imagine an arial photo. Make it high resolution to be able to pick out individual people and make it zoomable. Add topographical data and a tilt feature to show the landscape in 3d with the map overlaid on top. Add a layer of Yellow Pages, a world atlas, and a road map. Make it searchable for a certain coffee shop to a certain city.

Now imagine it covers the entire world. That's essentially google earth. What's really cool is you can save location marks and 'fly' between them. The server runs fast enough that it looks like you're falling straight down at very high speed. There's also an online community layer you can turn on which shows higher res images, like the burj al-dubai, that mega hotel off of dubai, or military buffs point out locations of certain planes or weapons on military bases.

So far I've logged every place I've slept in europe and flying between them its like doing my tour again. It's really surprising how small the world really is. So anyway, I highly recommend it. Go see the pyramids and the grand canyon. And my apartment. Below, this the site our library project is on. Those are the mcdowells in the distance, and taylor's middle school is at below right off of Thompson Peak Pkwy.

Weekend summary

Friday I took the van in to the Honda care place to get the tires rotated and aligned. Unfortunately, this didn't solve the slight pull problem. With the rotation, now the van pulls in the opposite direction. The guy I talked to said it was a matter of wear on the front tire treads. Anyway, it took longer than expected, so I got halfway throuhg the book on emotional design we're supposed to have read for a quiz this thursday.

That class, human factors in design, is a huge waste of time. At this point, the teacher has become so self-depeciating that he's bitter, and we're all falling asleep in class. He's not even coming up with his own material anymore, just outlining chapters in the book on powerpoint. I wouldn't even come to class if not for the fact that he passes around an attendance sheet.

Friday night, we went to first fridays in downtown phoenix and wandered around for awhile. It's become a massive event, such to the extent that land and housing prices are rising which is threatening the poorer artists in the artists community. We met with a bunch of people from Molly and Jen's studio and decided to go camping.

Saturday morning, I threw all my camping essentials in the car and went to Molly's house. I was hte only one to bring a water purifyer, camp stove, sleeping pad etc. I actually let loaned out a sleeping bag and mom and dad's massive tent. We moved stuff around in the different cars. With a bunch of college poeple our departure time of ten AM was moved to noon. After stopping at the new In-n-out burger near campus, the twelve of us took four cars out to the campsite near Camp Verde. The last three miles were on a dirt road, which the audi convertable and the VW bug took very slowly. We camped beside a little watering hole with a very cold creek running through it. It was pretty, as the leaves were beginning to turn in the fall colors.

It was a fun trip, we got a fire going, roasted hot dogs and made smores. My cell phone fell out of my pocket while I was gathering firewood that night, and it took me three hours to find it again the following morning. Unfortantely, my eyeglasses weren't that lucky. One of the arms got bent down. As I slowly straightened it, it snapped off. I'd bent the arm down once before, in europe, when I accidently stepped on it, and so the metal was too brittle to be re-adjusted a second time. Time to start looking for new classes. Until then its the one-armed glasses look.

Got back sunday afternoon and I spent the rest of the day reading history of architecture notes and more Emotional Design.

Recovery day

Today it was my pleasure to sleep in past noon. I'm really glad our studio starts at 1:15. Today all I did was go in and watch other people present thier projects. This round of projects were really good. I was really impressed. It's really a driving force for me to see the quality of work other people are doing. Sometimes I feel like I've reached a plataeu, that my level of design has reached a certain stagnant point. Maybe it was just this project, or the half-way method I designed it. I started working from the teachers suggestion that we build it up from the certain moments we wanted within the space, but when I saw it led me to a design I disliked, I abandoned that approach and went back to working down from an overall concept about the space. This sort of compromise I think limited the quality of my design. Anyway, we have three weeks to improve it.
I need to read "House of Leaves" its sounds like a facinating book, and its been recommended to me twice.

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.

Paying dues

Last night got to bed at 1 AM. This morning got up at seven and went in to studio. Coffee and waffles at a little place I sumbled on nearby, pretty good. Still working at 12: 30 AM. I'll fit my four hour minimum sleep in at 2 I think, or when I get really tired. Jen brought me some cookies she made on her way to a haloween party. I really hate that this project is now. Halloween is my second favorite holiday. Anyway, more work. Still have a day to finish everything. This is the tradeoff for fun classes and few textbooks. Got to pay dues now. Just wis i wasn't so tired of this project. I hate the feeling of not being able to do anything but work. At least it will be over monday and I can recouperate.

reading is only worth 10%

Worked in studio until 3 last night. Got up at 9 to meet my studio professor this morning. I always seem to get shafted when it comes to desk crits. You'd think he'd be able to talk to 15 poeple in the five hours we have studio. Ah well. He liked the project, although he thought the roof was too low, for structural and aesthetic reasons. The layout works, landscaping is coming togather, just need to do it. I finished drawing the floorplan in autocad and printed it out with the furnature inside. I'm still going to draft it by hand though. Autocad is great for accuracy, but terriblely difficult and cumbersome to use. The printed lines don't have much in the way of true linewieghts either. There's really nothing with quite the appeal of a hand drawing. At least I've become faster at them. I should be able to knock out the drawing tonight, before three AM.

Then I get to start on the model. Actually, then I need to get back to studying for my history of archtiecture test which is this thursday. I'm not going to memorize the dates, because the percentage of points I lose for not knowing the dates is not worth the amount of time it takes for me to memorize them. I'm just not good at rote memorization.

In structures we learned the last new thing: bending moments and deflection in beams. Now, with our tables and equations, we can calculate how much any beam will sag in the center, or how much a cantilever will bend, and combining that with code minimums, reverse the equations to find the depth of beam and type of beam one needs. The rest of the semester will be problem solving and applications to drill this stuff into us.

In human factors we talked about affirmations. It reminded me of mom, with her affirmations. What she may not have realized though, is that reading it out loud only effects a 10% retention rate/effectiveness (according to my teacher, although he also took What the Bleep do we Know? way too seriously). However, I do admit I'd agree with him that in order to be really effective, one must visualize yourself DOING the affirmation, which brings it up to 55%.
There were also a set of guidelines for tenses, action words, and examples he showed us.

I was notified of my mentor today: the head of design for DWL Architects (www.dwlarchitects.com). The firm is local and dates back from the 1950's. They did a lot of phoenix infrastructure work, from sky harbor airport, to the two biggest libraries on campus. In fact, my brother Taylor was born in one of their hospitals, Good Samaritian. I'm really looking forward to corresponding and meeting with him. So that was good news.

I also pre-registered for classes in the spring. I can't beleive we're at midterms already. It's insane. I just got back from Europe. I signed up for three manitory classes for the major, all of them extentions of the classes I'm taking now with the same professors. I also signed up for photography (although I'll need to find a decent used camera somewhere) and latin american design. The photography class will help me develop compositional design and appreciate lighting better, and the latin american design class will bring me three credit hours away from a minor in design. That class is also taught by a very highly regarded and experianced teacher.

time gets crunchy

Had a busy weekend. Saturday afternoon, I took a break and went to the desert botanical garden with Jen for thier Pumpkin Festival. It was so packed, we had to park in Papago park and hike for about fifteen minutes. While we didn;t see much in the way of pumpkins, there were country folk singers, and we walked through an enclousure packed with monarch butterflies. We decided to pass on the hayride in the back of the truck.

Worked past midnight saturday night, sunday night, and will definately tonight. Can't stay up too late though, since I dont have any down time during the day. Test tomorrow in human factors. The last one was screamingly easy, and I managed to keep abreast of the readings. His lecture material is all based on the readings anyway.

This morning Jen took me to an exotic wood shop, where I found beautiful peices of african hardwood, rosewood, ebony, teak, maple, oak, lacewood etc. It made me wish I could carve. Jen needed to pick up some oak plywood. This plywood isn't the stuff you get at Home Depot. This plywood is made with multiple veneers, and is used in cabinet making. Her class project is to make conceptual "frames for a dream" for kids with cancer. Her child's dream was "to not be sick anymore." Its impossible to discuss the projects without her begining to tear up.

Anyway. Quiz tomorrow, Exam thursday, project due monday. Yow.

3d model animation

I put this together in less than three hours from scratch. I did this one to look at how the shadows will look on my building when its in the site. SketchUp has a feature where you select your city, then you can adjust the time of day and the date to get accurate shadow fall. I did another one with color that looks at sections too, but not going to upload it today. To look at my animation, you can click on the link and either click OPEN or SAVE TO DISK. Enjoy!

http://members.cox.net/alecperkins/librarymodel.avi

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.