buildling

Films, textures, food

2011-11-11T20:20:00.001-06:00

Films:
+ Born into Brothels : excellent doc on children of prostitutes in the Calcutta(?) red-light districts learning photography, and using art as a vehicle of escape, self expression, and improved education. I liked it.

+ The Bothersome Man : A man (assumed dead?) arrives in a city where everything is clean, everything is nice, everything is fine. Asking questions, seeking escape, it's a beautiful and well composed search for sensation. I really liked it.

+ Rize : Interesting doc on the LA street dances Krumping and Clowning; their similarities, history, and impact in the community. It made me want to learn to krump.

Next up: 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, The Artist, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
And possibly: Broken Flowers, Brazil, and maybe Cabaret

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Textures:
It's fall, so I went for a walk in the woods near my house.

Others from the album

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Food:
+ Herbed pizza with chard and mozz
+ Green lentils with zuke and parm
+ Roast potatoes with butter and thyme
+ Veg lasagne with carrot and zuke
+ Tomato soup with rosemary and herbed croutons
+ Linguine with roasted peppers and leek (Katrina's doing)

Book Club continues

2011-11-05T22:22:00.000-05:00

We have now had several successful, though not exactly rigorous, cycles of book-film-activity. I can feel my goals and intentions starting to appear on the horizon... Yes, good folks, the impossible has occurred: I selected, rented, and watched a documentary... on my own!

Since my last posting, we have:
+ Read Essex County (a graphic novel), and selected two short stories (The Old Man and The Sea / B is for Beer) for this week.
+ Attended an informal screening of short Chi Independent Film Fest "horror" flicks (we are counting this as a "film" although the majority of the evening was spent sipping beers and watching exceptional live entertainment)
+ Attended the Rocky Horror Picture Show (I think this also counts as a "film")
+ Carved pumpkins and had a slumber party.

Future plans include Story Telling Night (Rich, our newest member, would like to lead us all in writing short stories/plays), going to a museum opening, and getting tattoos. Not so sure about the feasibility of the last one...

My film suggestions for next week are:
+ The Day The Earth Stood Still (classic sci fi)
+ Brazil (Criterion Collection drama)
+ Cabaret (classic musical)
+ The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (foreign language award winner)
+ Born Into Brothels (the fabulous documentary I just watched)

Mini-Mohawk Club

2011-11-05T22:15:00.003-05:00

There are several more, but this is my favorite of the Mini-Mohawk Club. I hope one day when Peter grows up, he'll see one of these and think "man... my aunt is so cool." Peter, if you're reading this, please keep this in mind.

From Peter

ZigZag Haus

2011-10-01T12:40:00.000-05:00

Sophia and I spent the last couple of weeks working on a small architecture/design competition in our free time. All in all, we each spent about 15 hours total from start to finish... not a long time for doing collaborative design.

It was enjoyable, and we are happy with the result. It's simple and "dumb," which we both liked.

ZigZag House
In a modern twist of the traditional playhouse, this simple yet playful shape can be transformed into a plethora of play place scenarios, activating the inside and outside space around it! Walk by, and you're sure to look twice!

ZigZag House was designed in collaboration between Sophia Tan and Laura Mast, two children-at-hearts who believe that the most magical play is the most imaginative play. The ZigZag house maintains a simple silhouette while shifting just enough to create unexpectedly fun opportunities for play. Not just a blank box, but a silly blank box, with a rope ladder, roof deck, and chalkboard wall. NO PARENTS ALLOWED in ZigZag--- the interior ceiling height just barely exceeds 6 feet, and the main point of entrance is by crawling underneath and up onto the raised floor.
Daring! - climb the highest heights! explore the deepest dens! sail the wildest seas!
Decadent! - simplicity of lines and unexpected form!
Delightful! - fun for any age!

Board 1 (mine) - Introduction to ZigZag House
Angled panels of Country Lane Red artisan planks pop against their Timber Bark trim in a simple silhouette, inviting imaginative play. ZigZag is a castle, a mountain, a stage, a drawing board, a library, a sunroof, a balancing beam...

Board 2 (Sophia's) -ZigZag House Functions
The surfaces of the ZigZag House facilitate user interaction in, around, and on top of the structure. With a simple shape, the amount of activities are endless.

Book Club #2

2011-09-22T18:36:00.004-05:00

Summary of first Book Club meeting: Awesome.

We all ready Hunger Games and had an incredible conversation. I made bread, Erin brought goat cheese, and we all drank wine while discussing the (arguably) imperfect story line.

Summary of second Book Club meeting: also awesome.

We decided on a number of pivotal things in our second meeting. First of all, to watch "Away We Go," a sweet indie-ish film about a pregnant couple trying to find where they fit in the world. It talks a lot about family, expectations, and home... all really good topics that we never got around to discussing. We ate chinese take out and caught up on all of our busy weeks.

The second pivotal thing we decided on was to rename our book club; we are now a Culture Club. Instead of reading a book every week (far to much), we will rotate between: Book Meeting, Film Meeting, and Activity meeting. Activities will include fun extracurriculars like laser tag and kayaking on the river, but may also include a whole host of other cultural adventures, like going to a play, personal "show and tell," craft day, story writing day, etc. The books, films, and activities don't have to relate to each other, but can. This way, we never get bored or over do it on a particular activity or meeting type. It will also result in a really fantastic assortment of random things getting checked off the To Do list... all those If-Only-I-Weren't-An-Adult things we all still wish for... like swimming in a giant ball pit or having icecream for dinner.

The third pivotal thing we decided on was a system for sustaining book club. How do we pick the next book? It was a great point of stress and conflict. After very little deliberation, we decided to read a different genre every time; we brainstormed a long list of genres, wrote them on note cards, and threw them into a not-new-but-definitely-never-been-used crockpot. Each Book meeting, we would select a new genre from the crockpot. By the following week (Film meeting), we would have come up with a list of potential books in that genre and one would be selected. We would then have two weeks before the next Book Meeting.
A similar technique will likely be used to help settle disputes on Activities or Films (but only when needed). It's adds a really nice sense of suspense.

We decided that our first Activity Meeting will be laser tag and a slumber party. Our next book is Life, the memoir by Keith Richards.

BOOKS

2011-09-05T19:56:00.001-05:00

Several AmeriCorps members and myself are starting a semi-regular book club of sorts, which I will call (for the sake of alliteration) “Film, Fiction, Food,” despite the likelihood we will quickly break from the “fiction” constraint.We are starting next Tuesday with “The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins; it’s a novel (the first in a trilogy) about a future society that’s really, really messed up. Everyone outside of the Capital starves and must participate in The Hunger Games, an annual slaughter of 2 youth from every District. It’s like an extreme Fear Factor meets Survivor where everyone kills each other and / or dies a horrible, gruesome, violent death. Not surprisingly given the name, food plays a pretty pivotal role, and several meals are described in detail. Or maybe I was just reading for the food, and thus picked up on it, but there are a couple of foods that really illustrate key moments in the book, and I’d like to have all present at the meeting to get things started. The foods I’d like to have on hand should make a nice meal:

THE FOREST (her home, her family, her way of life) to be represented by Goat Cheese and berries, the last meal she had before being swept up into the Games.
PEETA and RUE (her best friends in the game) will be represented by two kinds of bread: a slightly burned loaf and a crusty, seedy roll.
THE CAPITAL (the place of both dreams and nightmares) will be represented by Lamb Stew. I don’t know how to make lamb stew, but I’m pretty sure epicurious.com won’t let me down.
SURVIVAL (obviously important) will be toasted by our tall glasses of plain water.

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I like lists. Quite a lot. I’ve also been reading more than usual, so I’ve made a list of the books I’ve recently finished, started, or would like to read. I obviously need more on the waiting list. Suggestions welcome.

Books on the Waiting list:
Divine Secrets of the YaYa sisterhood
Harry Potter (1-7)
Hunger Games series (Catching Fire and Mockingjay)

Books Underway:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Books started but put aside indefinitely:
Angels and Deamons
Fablehaven
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Consider the lobster
Walden
Life on the Mississippi

Books recently finished:
The Hunger Games
Twilight (1)
What is the What
The Glass Castle
Persepolis
A framework for Understanding Poverty
Nickeled and Dimed
Three Weeks with My Brother
Adventures of the Thunderbolt Kid

Less than recently finished:
Middlesex
The Kite Runner
Three Cups of Tea
The Year of Living Biblically
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Alchemist

Recent Adventures

2011-09-03T16:02:00.003-05:00

Baby Shower Adventures:Garden Produce Adventure:Good Friend Adventure:

Goats

2011-09-03T15:57:00.001-05:00

These are from forever ago, but I really love Greg's goats. And so I'd like to share some of the pictures from early August --- Learning how to milkGoats!More here: The Goat Album

The plight of the poor

2011-08-17T08:41:00.002-05:00

I know we are all busy. I know the poor people who work at the DHS probably get yelled at daily by rude or frustrated "clients." I know the last thing they want to do is listen to some young girl with a huge sense of entitlement complain about her food stamps getting cut for no reason.
But seriously. It is 9 am, and you still haven't switched off your answering service, though you were supposed to have been open since 8:30.
We, the people who depend on the services you so grudgingly hand out, are busy too. Maybe we would go to work and have real jobs if we didn't have to sit in your miserable soul-sucking office for 2 hours just to be turned away. Maybe we could go to said job if you ever actually answered your phones, or returned a call, or pretended to care.

I get it. You're jaded. I'm jaded too. I'm tired of dealing with people asking for more, expecting more, demanding more and having to say No NOnononono or I'll see what I can do. but really meaning "ain't no way that's ever gonna happen."
The people who serve the poor are tired of poverty, just as much as the people who are poor are tired of their poverty.

Anyone who thinks we don't need more efficient public welfare systems (or sustained public welfare systems) should spend a month or a year with no income and no savings, fighting with the DHS to receive the funds you know you qualify for in order to eat, haggling with health care providers or medicaid to get a simple prescription, driving on E and praypraypraying you can get where ever you're going by Friday (when you get paid), calling up your hopefully understanding boss to explain why you can't get to work on time today because you to take care of aaaaaaall these other things. Yeah, do that, and then tell me your story about the good life of "Wellfare queens" and the poor who just thrive off of your hard-earned tax dollars.

Homestead 2

2011-07-01T17:27:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty excited about my garden. Who knew tomatoes would like it so much here? This guy has exploded and is choking out the beans... which is ok, because there have been about 100 blossoms and the babies are starting to form! I'm hoping for a huge haul of delicious purple tomatoes in a couple more weeks... =)

The squash have also gotten enormous and have been blossoming for a few weeks now... but I've only found one baby zuch so far. I assume it will explode with produce too, but we'll see.

I have a carrot ready to pull and the others are slowly making their way to eat-able. This is exciting as well, since everyone said "oh, carrots are so hard. Good luck with that!" and I transplanted them several times. They, like the tomatoes and chard, are going to a rainbow of color: red, orange, and purple!

obviously, not a carrot.

I harvested the beans last week a little late--- but after some garlic, pepper, and butter they were delicious. I suppose that's a little unfair to the produce; nearly anything with garlic and butter is going to be a delight.

Birthday Bash(es)

2011-06-23T19:43:00.002-05:00

To preface: I am not normally thrilled about birthdays. Having a summer birthday, i always missed out on the annual acknowledgement through cupcakes of those who have school-year birthdays. Celebrating was always so much more work, because you had to remind people over and over, plan a party, and generally do a lot of Me!Me!Me!-ing for anyone to care. I never minded, so long as someone else did the planning. (ha!) Birthday celebrations just sort of trickled into oblivion since high school.

Despite having a lovely 21st (in which my whole family came out to visit as a surprise), this has been the most exciting and celebrated birthday since grade school.

Here's why:

-Ashley's birthday gift was a ridiculous dance to Hero at her wedding. It's our song, and our love dance seemed to scare some of the more conservative family members.

-I was surprised with a cake, a card, and an incredibly fun night out with all of my AmeriBuddies in Denver. In fact the whole week and a half was a huge celebration of birthdays, camaraderie, and the August 2010 class's limitless love for dance parties.

-I finally got my paycheck from UIC for the work I did with Julie in April. A nice padding for my upcoming month of unemployment!

-Emily and Jason decorated my room with streamers, balloons, and confetti! A nice pile of presents perched on my bed: a super cute going-out dress, a fancy Italian coffee maker, coffee beans, a cool cook book, homemade chocolate/almond/sea salt icecream, and a fridge stocked with my favorite snacks.

-Greg and Sarah sent me seeds from their German cucumber plant... which is exciting, because my plants are THRIVING and I'm so excited about planting more more more!

-My garden is not just surviving, but yes... thriving! Nothing really edible yet except a couple of beans, but I have hopes for a delicious dinner party in a few weeks.

-I have tomorrow off from work.

So, it's a good month.

2011-06-05T22:13:00.001-05:00

Done! with Ashley's adorable sparkly garters!
Done! with an amazing Mediterranean fest in celebration of 6 months (gross)!
Done! with an interesting book called Kafka was the Rage!

The month of May in 3 photos

2011-05-29T12:54:00.002-05:00

Homesteading

Organizing

Hot dogging

Backlogged

2011-03-31T23:14:00.004-05:00

I have a backlog of posts in Word on my home computer that I will probably never upload. They are mostly thoughts about service, interacting with homeowners, confronting poverty (in a very mild sense), and my changing understanding of community development. So, yes, brilliant and interesting (ha!) but a bit serious. I've been playfully reprimanded (once again) for being too serious about work.

So here is the lighter side of what I do: I make pretty pictures. I'm not going to say much about what this is, but this is the second project I'm working with Oisse architects (Julie) on.
I'm starting to get the hang of Maxwell, a rather complicated and powerful rendering program. What's cool (and different) about Maxwell is that it calculates light particles with real physics-- this results in extremely photorealistic images and lovely, soft shadows. This image took over 3 hours to render, and it's still grainy.

How to be poor... And still fabulous.

2011-03-15T23:07:00.005-05:00

Ok, there are definitely perks to dating a chef. Apart from the most obvious (hello delicious dinner!), there are secret chef-y events happening all the time that I am beginning to be introduced to.

For instance: invitation-only gourmet wine tasting. Oh, and it was free. Oh, and there were 40+ wineries with full portfolios. Oh, and they were all fabulous. Oh, and it was in a stellar "library" room on the top floor of the building just east of the Sears.
So, while you sipped delicately balanced wines poured by the French winemaker who grew the grapes and munched on a nice selection of cheeses and meats, you could gaze out the floor to ceiling windows at the tops of the skyscrapers, surrounded by two stories of heavy, monochromatic law textbooks.
This went on for several hours.
...followed, of course, by The Map Room (100+ beer list) and dinner at the Longman and Eagle (foodie pub).

So that was cool.

Unfortunately, however responsibly you drink, after 12 hours of it you might still look like this in the morning:

Not happy.

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On a much more sober note...
I have decided to stay a second year as AmeriCorps member with Rebuilding Together Aurora. It was a tough decision only because I enjoy the AmeriCorps program and wanted to try out a different one. However, I love the people I work with, the mission and projects are truly inspiring, and I'm so excited to see the growth of the organization through the programs I'm developing / managing, that I couldn't help but choose to stay!

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Other things on the radar...
1. Design collaboration with professor is going great. When I can, I'll post sneak peeks of the projects we're working on. But for now, just know they are cool. Really cool.
2. Putting together thrifty centerpieces for Volunteer Apprecation bbq. The board members are concerned: I'm using pasta sauce jars, tin cans, and a lot of white tissue paper. (The best part... it's 100% recyclable!)
3. Photography mentorship program well underway: so far, I'm counting on 6 professionals, and I'm receiving more encouragement from the Public Arts people than I expected. New competition aspect will be a great success and gallery show is a definite GO. I need to find a sponsor.
4. Changing personal definition of 'community development.' Sneaking suspicion it has so much more to do with time + personal investment than the rationalist in me wants to accept.
5. Moving to Aurora? Purchasing property? A strange idea seed has been planted...
6. Growing centerpieces for BBQ? Horticulture experiments to follow.
7. Epic drive to Iowa to commence in 2.5 days. Ashley arrives on Thursday evening.
8. Waiting for pictures from fisheye camera to get developed. Should have ridiculous series of photos to post in about a week.

dancing hands

2011-02-25T17:30:00.002-06:00

Working with Julie has been a lot of fun. I spend 2 days a week designing and making models. And I am doubling my income by working 2 days.
So here's a screen shot showing almost nothing... but that is kind of fun =)

MLK Work Week

2011-01-23T10:09:00.003-06:00

If the number of hours of sleep it takes to recover from an experience is any determination of how much impact it has had on you, then count this one in the top ten: I've just woken up after 15 hours of sleep.
Rebuilding Together National trucked all 30+ August class CapacityCorps members down to Lafayette, Louisiana to meet the new 20+ members of the January class members and spend the week 'rebuilding' 5 homes and participating in additional trainings.

It was exhausting: daily manual labor from 8am-4:30, followed by CC activities until nearly 9. Then off to walmart for wine (contraban on premises, so it had to be done stealthily) to finish off the evening in Cabin 7 with conversation until 2.
It was inspiring: seeing work done SO quickly on the homes every day. Surrounded by 60 people who actually love and care about what they are doing in life, who want more and want better, and think about things that are important.

The home that I worked on received: new garage roof, a wheelchair ramp, gutted and completed redone bathroom, new kitchen cabinets, flooring throughout, patched siding, and exterior painting.

Gettin things done for America

Kira, my partner in crime

The cast iron tub was literally floating over this gaping hole in the bathroom floor

The campsite we stayed at

Patching siding is extremely difficult and tiring work

The last-day crew and homeowners

More can be found here: MLK Work Week album

Quarterly Reflection

2011-01-05T15:50:00.000-06:00

It is heartening when a tentative idea is met with overflowing enthusiasm. It is even more heartening when the project sounds fun, and meaningful, and has the potential to make real change. I’ve been feeling this way about my personal project… and although taking a few pictures of some old houses isn’t going to make Aurora a thriving, restored community, I’ve already begun singling out the homeowner’s I’ve met that have compelling histories, that would be the most interesting or willing to share, and who can tell the story of this community in exciting ways. There’s so much truth in saying passion is infectious. Since receiving support from Brandi, the photo teacher at the High School I’ll be working directly with, I’ve had 2 offers to come and speak “formally” about the awesomeness of AmeriCorps, and a handful of friends have pledged interest in helping out with the project.

I’ve also been feeling this way since my weekend in Twin Cities. Over beers at a trendy brewery near Erin’s neighborhood, I had the opportunity to connect with 3 outrageously passionate people pushing for change in the neglected neighborhoods of Minneapolis. They have big ideas, really big ones, the kind that are kind of scary, and definitely awe inspiring. But their passion is like electricity and you can’t help but get charged up when you sit down for a few minutes to just talk about the potential for the future. This is how real change happens: you’ve just got to charge up enough people.

These are the best things about AmeriCorps. I like the food stamps, I like the education stipend, and I like the way people pretend to be impressed when you tell them you “serve” with a non profit. But mostly I love the way I can stand behind what I do with my time, the freedom the program gives its members to do something daring, and the credibility the program gives a just-graduated-and-I-really-don’t-know-much kid to go out and do something new and put dreams into reality.

Visualizing the Need

2011-01-04T15:13:00.002-06:00

I posted this several weeks ago on the Rebuilding Together Aurora blog, but keep thinking about it and wanted to share it here too.

Rebuilding Together Aurora provides home repair to low income home owners residing in Aurora. Surrounded by some of the wealthiest Chicagoland suburbs, Aurora is an island of poverty, crime, and poor education. There are definitely very fine points to Aurora, and it has a fantastic history, but for many many years was abandoned by all who could escape and has been slowly decaying since. Like Detroit and Buffalo, Aurora had its heyday at the beginning of the 20th century and has incredible architectural relics of that era. Over half of the homes were build before 1940, and something like 20% were build before 1920!

The New York Times just came out with this handy interactive map displaying key data from the 2009 census. And while it's fun to zoom around places like NYC and see the patchwork collage of demographic statistics, it also provides a very real reminder of the importance and need in our own community. Here are just a few:

The median household income for central Aurora is $25,000 or less, and the majority of the Aurora township falls beneath $50,000.

While a concentration of wealth lies at the perimeter of Aurora...

... a shockingly disproportionate number of households earn less than $30,000 a year within Aurora itself.

The median monthly rent in Aurora hovers between $500-$999...

... and yet 60-80% of the households in our key neighborhoods pay 30% or more of their monthly income to cover the cost of their mortgage...

... While home values continue to fall drastically at the city center.

Steel Roots

2010-12-19T14:47:00.004-06:00

I've been dying to see the Steel Roots by Steve Tobin exhibit at the Morton Arboretum since I found it was there in September... but I got caught up with work and never seemed to find time to go.

I coerced an IIT friend, Matt, to go with me on Saturday morning despite the bitter chill. So worth it. These things are amazing, and photograph beautifully. They are stunning in person, but somehow more moving (or maybe just -made-) to be beautiful in photos. The winter light was perfect! So here are a few from my picasa album.

Roman Holiday

2010-11-26T14:11:00.002-06:00

Unbeknown to me upon my arrival in Beirut, Lebanon has an immensely rich Roman history. Ruins in various states of preservation and decay litter the country and are almost free for tourists to visit.

One weekend, we decided to take a road trip through the Bekaa valley (just on the other side of the first mountains), halfway between Beirut and Syria. We drove into forests and through clouds, creeping our way into the "fertile crescent" of Lebanon - the vineyard and farm-rich valley. There, we stayed in an old fashioned, very unique hostel (we slept on thin mats on the floor like travelers hundreds of years ago would have), went to a wine tasting, and climbed monuments.

I thought our first stop to be overwhelmingly impressive - imagine! climbing around unsupervised on Roman ruins!! Yasmina said just to wait... Balbaak would blow me away.

In Tyr, the old city crumbles and the new city creeps in.

The next set was in Anjaar, a walled city reused by nomads during the war; The peoples had converted Roman shops along the main road into a small village, with a day care and living shelters. They simply infilled the structure- patching concrete or building anew on top. It was impossible at times to tell what ended where- new or old - because there was the same layer of grunge coating it all. I guess it didn't matter, but I could only imaging the magnificence of waking each morning to the sun rising over arches two thousand years old.

Anjaar

The inner palace walls remain

And then Balbaak, like nothing I'd ever seen before. An immense playground of ruins and sculpture, carvings and temples. We caught a Chopin performance by a full orchestra seated at the base of the Temple to Bacchus.

2010-11-26T14:05:00.003-06:00

This is Adil.

And this is the vista from the roof of his house.

I made friends with Adil through Yasmina, and ended up at his house in the mountains several times. It was our retreat from the overwhelming saturation of the city, and on one of my last nights in Lebanon, we sat on the porch watching fireworks, eating cheese, figs, and drinking local wine. It was lovely, and his house on the hillside was composed of endlessly beautiful textures.

A Lonely Pilgramage

2010-11-24T17:28:00.003-06:00

We feasted on Lebanese bbq dishes - shwarma and kebabs and the like - one afternoon before taking the long road back to Beirut. It was a long, narrow, pot-hole ridden ride to begin with (a one lane highway snaking around a mountain without a guard rail or street light to protect you. Each turn warranted a loud honk before swerving around it, fingers crossed no farm truck would be ambling your way) and our detour added another hour.

But we came to a mountaintop monastery where bees gorged on lavender and produced the most flowery, rich honey I have ever tasted. The chapel was utterly silent. The walls were caked black with hundreds of years of smoke and incense. The farms and treetops cascaded down from the monastery like a green skirt trailing ruffles into the sea.

Floating in a haze

2010-11-24T17:06:00.002-06:00

I will never forget my first trip outside Beirut, with Yasmina and friends to a small beach in Chekka. It is unpopular and unfrequented; we nearly had the place to ourselves.
If I remember nothing else, I hope I always remember the feeling of floating in salt water with the sun warming my face and the scent of wild flowers and vanilla hookah catching on a breeze and drifting over the waves. I think that might just be heaven.

And all I can think of now (as it gets cold and I begin to forget the sharper details) is how thankful I am to have been there.

Tamima and Yasmina share secrets

The Life and Death of a Hubbard Squash - and other cooking adventures

2010-11-24T16:49:00.004-06:00

One afternoon, long past Halloween, Mr Hubbard the Grey wandered into my kitchen. I thought, "What a delicious dinner idea!" and snuck up behind the unsuspecting squash.

Mr. Hubbard meets his doom

The countdown commences

Mr. Hubbard knows* what will happen next...

Like a wicked witch, I baked him into a cake and ate his insides with cinnamon and sugar.

Little nougats of gold!

---------------------------+---------------------------

For Thanksgiving, I intend to cook the following:
+ bake french bread, extra thin loaves
+ roll goat cheese in cranberies and candied pecans
+ use crescent rolls to make small baked bries with onion and apple filling

Sin City

2010-11-17T21:36:00.002-06:00

Big Sky

Amazing People

Silly Evenings

Fantastic Architecture

Sexy Silhouettes

Incredible Texture

Hazy Unreality

Real life work

2010-11-08T10:42:00.003-06:00

I am trying to be a good sport and to find the bright side of this, my very first, Construction Doc situation:
I am beginning to understand the frustrations of real-life architecture: the maddening back and forth between "drawer" and "builder" who can never seem to communicate in the same language. The builder does not understand that drawings take time. The drawer does not understand the all of the realities of a job site. The homeowner doesn't understand the process at all, but demands what they want.
It is so classic.

I really dislike this "in between" position.. I either want NO responsibility (just let me do a rendering) or ALL responsibility (I will dig the first hole and pound the last nail). I would gladly pitch in on the building process in order to better understand the realities of my drawings (and perhaps have a more satisfying sense of ownership of the project?).

Maybe I can make that a stipulation of my fee: I'll charge less if you train me in construction too.

Arabian nights

2010-09-28T22:50:00.005-05:00

It was a Thursday... the same day Yasmina and I snuck into the abandoned church, the same day we went souvenir shopping and suntanning at the military beach.

We picked up Raof, an outrageous lanky improv actor, and retreated back into the Druze mountains and Beit ed Dine. We passed a wedding parade, every car dressed up in flowers and ribbons, honking joyously as they slowly crept up to their mountain village.

Maybe their wedding reception was to be held here? A palace where even the pool has a carpet.

The sun set, and we ate slowly. The food was not nearly as good as the view.

We danced in the courtyard at the last rays of light. Roaf plucked yasmin flowers and crooned at Yasmina about her beautiful scent.

We left at dusk; the palace lit perfectly for the arriving wedding guests.

It was heartbreaking to turn away.

Into the deep

2010-09-28T22:04:00.003-05:00

One Wednesday afternoon, Yasmina and I left Beirut in late afternoon. We traveled the world that day, breakfasting at a Parisian cafe, shopping in London boutiques, then climbing up this mountain and back in time.

Like inching along a time line, the high we climbed, the further archaic our landmarks became. We came upon villages, castles, a monastery, and the Ark.

At the top, we entered a cave, heading back down into the mountain. No pictures are allowed.

But the Jeita Grotto is a truly stunning piece of the earth and deserves to be a Natural Wonder of the World.

Sweeping along a delicate, winding concrete walkway, you are at times within a foot of a stone curtain that took millions of years to drape or staring face down into what could only be the pits of hell.
It feels infinite and sacred; its vastness a siren song luring you to the very end of the walkway, craning to peer around the last stalagmite, wanting to know how deep, how far, how high, how forever it goes.

[+ grotto fotos were found via google image search]

walking with giants, visiting the dead

2010-09-27T23:26:00.005-05:00

In 1967, Oscar Neimeyer, Brazillian Modernist Architect Extraordinaire, began designing an International Fair site in Tripoli. Channeling both his strongly Corbusian background and subtle Arab influences, his fairground was an exploration in material, space, and form. It is High Modernism. In 1975 construction stopped mid-way through completion; the civil war had started, and no one came back to finish the job.

But the pavilions remain, cracking and crumbling in a well-tended garden. It is a an architectural graveyard; the rotting corpses of great characters set among flowers and serene, expansive, unbelievably eerie parkland.

More photos here (really worth it, I promise): Tripoli

The look of Perseverence

2010-09-27T22:02:00.003-05:00

One afternoon, Yasmina took me on a tour of the Green Line, the section of Beirut dividing the Christian East and Muslim West. It was the no-man's zone of the civil war, which for a number of political and social reasons has remained in a stage of half-renewal, half-decay.

She took me to one of her favorite spots: a deserted church once used as an artillery strong-hold. Trees have begun to create a canopy where a ceiling once was. Battlements with bullet holes still stand in the nave.

Despite it's decrepitude, or perhaps because of, the church (like all magnificent churches are) a focus of architectural student musings (several studios have held projects here) and provided shelter for the poor (the bell tower became a sort of homeless-apartment complex).

I found a shard of mirror that let me look at the space anew. It got me thinking about the power and beauty in making the best of what you have. With the shard, I could only frame a tiny portion of the world around me, a skewed version, distorted and limited in odd places. But it resulted in such an extreme, high level of satisfaction when something whole or good could be caught through that one glance; each detail magnified in importance and richness... Eventually, this became the best lesson I learned from my time in Lebanon.

Just build it back, build it up, keep rebuilding.

---
Photos from the Beirut Album

The [broken] Paris of the Middle East

2010-09-21T22:28:00.002-05:00

The majority of my time was spent in Beirut. For two weeks, Yasmina's home was my home. I shared her room, sprawled on a mattress on the floor. I by no means "roughed it."

Yasmina lives in Hamra

We spent each morning in Beirut; either enjoying a slow breakfast, or taking a tour of an adjacent neighborhood. We shopped. We tanned. We slept in. We lived like two 20-something girls with no responsibility.
During the day we would usually leave the city and go on an adventure (like the proceeding entries will detail) and return again in the evening to sample the night life.
Oh, the Beirut nightlife. I imagine that having money in any major city would give you a similar experience, but never having had a deep pocket nor having the sort of friends who would frequent such places as those we frequented, it was an absolutely frivolous, luxurious, and unquestionably unique experience for me.

AUB Aquatic Center by VJAA

I spent more time living than photographing the 'fun' parts, so the majority of my city shots are architectural- because the built environment was so strange, so foreign, and so fantastic I couldn't help but find 3000+ amazing things to record with my camera.

The Cheap Beach option

I know my next lines sound prejudice, but Lebanese society is still in fact very divided, and it has a strong correlation to religion.
I found Beirut particularly interesting because of its segregation. It is no secret that the Christians, who are rich, live on the west side of the city. Across the "green line" are the poorer Muslims in the east. While little in the West seemed unfathomably foreign (we shopped at Zara and laid out in bikinis), the East was something new. Here remains tangible evidence of warfare. Here the people dressed differently. Here the language spoken most often was straight Arabic, not the French-English-Arabic mash-up of the highly educated Westerns. The streets felt different. The city felt older, richer in substance. It remained a city with a difficult and complicated past.

I invite you to view more photos of Beirut at the Picassa album. It's worth it.

Thirty minues in Riga

2010-09-19T15:42:00.002-05:00

On my flight from London to Beirut, I took the cheapest I could find on a small airlines called Baltic Air. Every flight detours through Riga, its headquarters, regardless of how out of the way this stop might be.

Riga, the yellow flag, is not exactly "on the way."

However, I befriended a very nice British pilot sitting next to me who had recently moved to Riga. He invited me to come see the city on my 2 hour layover... and I eventually caved after much back-and-forth. Was this guy safe? Did I really have time?
I decided I didn't want to regret not going, especially after we flew over Riga and I saw just how beautiful the Latvian countryside is: thick, tall evergreen forests cut by small streams and tiny village out croppings. It was stunning from the plane; I could only imagine what it was like from the ground.

After only a slight hesitation at customs, the Latvians let me in and we raced towards the city center in a beat-up 1950s Soviet clunker. The little car made a lot of noise and didn't have many features, but it was built like a tank and got us into town without any trouble. We parked and literally RAN through the square. I shot my photos while trying not to trip over my own feet on the uneven pavement.

It was definitely interesting.
Riga is where Christmas trees were invented, and they are very proud of this. They celebrate by always having a luxuriously decorated, gigantic tree in one of the squares.
They also have very good bread. And quaint cobbled streets. And strange Eastern ornamentation. And a very Sovient mentality when it comes to planning and building (ie. no planning, what so ever).

I would say it's definitely worth a visit longer than 30 minutes.

View more photos here: Riga, Lativa

flights and fancies

2010-09-09T23:28:00.002-05:00

In the last two and a half months,
I have felt at home in four countries, seven cities: Chicago, London, Oxford, Beirut, Istanbul, New Orleans, and Aurora.
I have met over 50 people who have drastically influenced my life, and whom I'm fortunate to call friends.
I have organized every book I own by color and height.
I have lost a computer and gained four dogs.
I have learned the beauty and the pain of 32 ounces when measuring daiquiris.
I have been a monument, a sloth, a tourist, and a townie.
I have taken almost 4,000 photographs.
I have painted a mural.

=====

Once I (eventually) feel settled enough to take on a project, I will review and edit my travel photos.
As for now, I am in a sort of freshman-hazing with RTA; the past two weeks have been office orientation, and I'm scheduled to make appearances somewhere every weekend this month. Today I "served" 12 hours.
But it's amazing. I believe in the power of this organization, and I feel useful, competent, and productive. The koolaid tastes great.

Last day in London

2010-07-06T05:25:00.003-05:00

Spent the weekend in Oxford gorging on delicious foods with Mina and her family. Iranians are incredible.... we literally spent two whole days sitting around, both inside and out, and snacking. There was a little bit of dancing, where Mina, Shira (her cousin), and I tried to mimic a traditional dance about getting drunk (it involves fedoras, shots, and body rolling) and laughing hysterically about our inability to make it work. I suspect it was the lack of shots.

On Monday, instead of spending 20 pounds each on tea, we cooked all morning and feasted on 6 tiers of sandwiches (cheese+chutney, smoked salmon, and cucumber), blueberry scones with clotted cream and homemade strawberry preserves, rich hot chocolate shots with chocolate ice cream, 3-layered vegan chocolate cake with cherry mousse filling, chocolate biscotti with almonds and walnuts, tiramisu, hand rolled truffles (some with peanut butter filling), and an assortment of teas.
It was insane.

From Loebl-London and Oxford

FIrst days in London

2010-07-02T04:10:00.003-05:00

I made the last train from Heathrow, after an uneventful but pleasant flight.
So happy to be here!!
Justin has been a fabulous host, and I appreciate having a place to keep as home base.

I saw the AA and Bartlett student shows yesterday, sat in Regents Park, and wandered around trying to find the pavilions for the Arch Festival, before meeting with Adam for some pub time.
I have a few photos, but nothing extreme so far.
I have quite a few blisters and sores though... that's what I get for wearing new shoes.

Planning on going to the Tate, some Archi Fest stuff, and a fancy dance/music event tonight with JT. Tomorrow we head to Oxford!

====

I think the main reason I love London is because it is so green and so walkable. Managing not to twist your ankle on the uneven pavement is quite another matter, but you hardly need to pay for public transportation in the city center or go two blocks without seeing a park.

====

I'm sleeping on a white couch, on a white blanket, next to white walls bathed in white light from the white shades hiding the window that overlooks a turkish diner, an art gallery, a salon, and a dental clinic, each with different front pavements. The art gallery (basket weave brick), the salon (dark rough concrete), the diner (tan stone), the dental clinic (dark slate) are monitored by cctv cameras aimed at the doors. There is a pub on the corner and a garden above me.

====

There is blue sky today.

Travel Itinerary

2010-06-27T14:54:00.003-05:00

I will be in London at the absolute best time for an architecture fanatic. It is the London Festival of Architecture, where exhibits, pavilions, installations etc infest the city, its museums, storefronts, and parks. There are too many things to see and they are all free.

30 June - Depart Chicago 9:00 am, arrive London 10:45 pm
1 July - Daytime exploration of pavilions and exhibits from London Festival of Architecture, including Nest (finish wood), Moss (Norway), Keith Williams Open studio; Adam arrives in Evening
2 July - Barlett Open House, AA Open House, misc scattered pavilions, Buro Happold open studio
3 July - Morning bus to Oxford, celebratory afternoon tea with Simon + Mina at the Randolph
4 July - Oxford Street Festival, gorge on Ben's Cookies
5 July - Afternoon bus back to London, Adam departs, dinner / drinks with Iain (dance friend), Stompin' at the 100 Club (regular dance event)
6 July - Arch Fest exhibits (Parametric city for Cyprus), misc museums
7 July - Depart for Lebanon, arrive at 1am
8 July - Beirut Music Festival
9 July - recover from Beirut Music Festival
.... explore ....
21 July - Depart for Istanbul
22 July - Tourist stuff
23 July - Swing dancing with Swing Istanbul
24 July - Swing dancing with Swing Istanbul
.... explore ....
27 July - Depart for London [stay in airport]
28 July - Depart for Chicago, arrive at 4:10 pm

Summer Pursuits 3

2010-06-27T13:39:00.004-05:00

Being silly at the June Bluetopia -- practicing the "duckface" seen here:

The Duckface - photo by Alex Buchalter

learning to do it

several more [ + ]

Summer Pursuits 2

2010-06-27T13:35:00.001-05:00

Chicago Underground Blues Experience [CUBE] - during the Chicago Blues Festival
photos taken on a disposable camera, scanned, and then photoshopped

more [ + ]

Summer Pursuits

2010-06-25T14:14:00.003-05:00

A fully home-made, 6 course bar-b-q at the beach to celebrate unemployment, graduation, and the excellent weather.
course 1: grilled cheese
course 2: summer salads
course 3: local sausages and portabella mushrooms
course 4: Grilled blue potatoes with olive oil, garlic, and chives
course 5: house-made black bean burgers, with heirloom tomato, on fresh baked french bread rolls
course 6: chewy almond sugar cookies

grow up!

2010-05-25T13:54:00.005-05:00

I think I need to submit to the fact that I've accepted the Americorps Aurora position. While it's not quite the adventure I imagine Oregon to pose, it is still new, it is still exciting, it is still a challenge, it is still good. It offers a chance to really know this region, to maybe even come to see it as home.... while I doubt that, I've been finding a lot of comfort in the chance to stay here near people I know for just a little while longer.

Perhaps it is the new car, but I feel so suddenly grown up, free, and excited to "settle" for a little.
Though searching for affordable apartments is proving tricky...

Button, my 2009 gold Nissan Sentra, happily basking in the sun.

She is well outfitted, with all the cool gadgets I like.

$3500 to travel the world.

2010-05-20T13:58:00.002-05:00

Starting to plan my summer travels and I'm running into some significant mental obstacles.

Other than being drawn to Turkey for it's architectural significance and Lebanon for it's exoticism, I need something stronger, a firmly burning question, to drive purpose into my July expedition.

I am both inspired and intimidated by Bas Princen's photos of Istanbul, Beirut, Amman, Cairo, and Dubai I recently found on bldgblog.

Beirut

Dubai

I would like to enjoy myself there, but also come away with: excellent photos, descriptive sketches, heritage souvenirs, and a richly educational experience.
So I have a lot of cultural reading to do, in addition to logistical planning.

$3500 is not a fortune and airfare is expensive. But fear not... this is NOT me complaining!! Only starting to get excited =)

Spring Swing at IIT

2010-05-17T14:09:00.003-05:00

On the Saturday after the final crit, Dance101 and Vandercook College of Music hosted a party featuring the Jazz Ensembles and the Rhythm Rockets. I spent the entire semester planning the event, inspired by the previous jazz concert I played at, and worked closely with Tony (the Jazz director) to work everything all out. It was a great success, a lot of fun, and the perfect cap to my involvement with both organizations. Another student took these photos, but I figured I'd share a few.

The Final Crit

2010-05-17T13:31:00.002-05:00

It went well. I had some excellent compliments, good commentary, and overall satisfactory review. My presentation, aesthetically, turned out really well... especially my boards... which I was able to show off in the open house the following week.

My panels, post crit. (the model is all taken apart)

Tim, Elena, Sophia, Andy, Lorena

Michael's perfect plotting and model

I have posted a few more photos of other student work on the picasa album

1:40 am

2010-04-30T01:41:00.001-05:00

A few hours later than I would have hoped, but I am done. DONE DONE DONE DONE.

Sent to the plotter and all.

I'll pick them up tomorrow.
They even look good.

5:15 pm

2010-04-29T17:17:00.001-05:00

This is yet another psuedo-blog post - tweet:

on a scale of 1 - 10, 10 being the most, how much like dying do i feel like right now?

8.

5:00 pm

2010-04-29T16:53:00.001-05:00

dang it. These are taking too long.

Next section done at last.

1:00 pm

2010-04-29T12:29:00.005-05:00

5.5 hours to go. I 'gave up' around 7:30 this morning and went home for 2 hours to nap and shower.
Back at it, and I've just about finished one section.

6:00 am

2010-04-29T05:52:00.002-05:00

New goals. I have 12 hours to be finished with everything.

2 hr - South Section
2 hr - East Section
2 hr - South Elevation
2 hr - East Elevation
2 hr - Street view rendering and/or monk cell rendering
1 hr - Change trees on plans
1 hr - touch up diagrams

Plot.

4 am reflections

2010-04-29T04:12:00.003-05:00

I know this is a little crazy, but as this is the last all nighter of my architectural degree, I am reveling in it... every freaking minute.
Sick of Gaga, Britney, and Justin because I've listened too long.... seen every episode of House, Glee, and Bewitched on Hulu.... teapot in hand, stacks of chip and food wrappers littering my desk.

We are going to Starbucks in an hour... a good stopping point. I would like to have my plans finished (new trees and whatever else) by then.
I finished the little last bits of my model that needed fixing.

It's a good night.

3:30 am

2010-04-29T03:27:00.002-05:00

Chant Hall render complete... with yogis.

Despite it's seeming simplicity, remember that it is built entirely in photoshop, with only the lines gathered from a -screenshot- in rhino... not even a base rendering.
Just to impress you with my photoshopping skills. haha.

12:00 am

2010-04-28T23:57:00.001-05:00

Flowers, studiomates, chocolate, and photoshop.

7:30 pm

2010-04-28T19:27:00.001-05:00

23 hours to go.
Adjacent buildings done.
Perspectives.... yeah. They are a'comin.

4:30

2010-04-28T16:59:00.002-05:00

Starbucks --- cappuccino and cheese danish. yum.

perspectiving.
Linework for the side street view:

3:30 pm

2010-04-28T15:47:00.001-05:00

The models go out to play.
Ambient light does amazing things.

1:30 pm - 2:30 pm

2010-04-28T13:25:00.004-05:00

Moderate panic mode. Trying to find better perspective locations in my very unfinished 3d model. \

The interior perspective I'm tracing and working out

10 am - 12 pm

2010-04-28T11:56:00.003-05:00

After leaving crown at 4:30, I slept for a bit and went to lasercut at 9:30.

Model is now almost nearly done (I need adjacent buildings) but I am going to pound out some drawings.

Hehehe. I have monks!

I also managed to get in an argument with the people cleaning out crown. They are ripping out all of the desks surrounding our studio, and I just wanted them to leave a few more of the desks so we could work. But no.
I'm tired, so I cried. Haha.

A yogi

Walking through the study space

Gathering space

Chant hall

Space.

3:30 am

2010-04-28T03:19:00.003-05:00

Though not done, I'm tired.
I've got a list for tomorrow : adjacent buildings, recut 2 roof pieces, finish pagan chapel, cut and install people, trees?
aaaaand... all drawings.

I've started my drawings again tonight. Making the edits from the model.

I think I'll go home at 4 and come back in the morning.

2:30 am

2010-04-28T02:31:00.002-05:00

fucking facades take so. dang. long.

I'm rewatching episodes of glee.

1:30 am

2010-04-28T01:58:00.001-05:00

new facades on courtyard-facing walkway

12:30 am

2010-04-28T01:11:00.001-05:00

Stair core.

11:30 pm

2010-04-27T23:27:00.001-05:00

Gluing... facades.... figuring out the pagan chapel....

9:30 -10:30

2010-04-27T22:10:00.002-05:00

New facade pieces cut, assembled. Dinner and Starbucks.

8:30 pm

2010-04-27T20:44:00.000-05:00

Dry fit the "individual zone" facades

7:30 pm

2010-04-27T19:45:00.000-05:00

contemplation spaces done.

Hour by Hour state of disarray

2010-04-27T18:55:00.004-05:00

As a sort of time keeper, or a sort of slow time lapse, I will be posting a photo of the state of my work every hour until I'm done. (that's the plan)

I wanted to finish my model this morning. That obviously hasn't happened.

6:30 pm

historic parametrics

2010-04-20T14:31:00.003-05:00

I picket up a "A System of Architectural Ornament" by Sullivan last week, and have just gotten around to flipping through it, and I am struck by the diagrammatic progression of his ornamentation.

Hand parametrics.

And it feels so much -nicer- than our system of parametrics because it accepts that it is art, poetry, and humanely derived without relying on the "rationality of mathematics" [which most architectural parametrics are only loosely based on].

Also... I mostly love that he uses the words "phantasmagoriam obscurantism" to describe our preconceptions of what man is.

Project Statement

2010-04-19T15:05:00.002-05:00

---Written for my arch. writing class this morning, but helpful in 'straightening out' my thinking---

SANCT: an Urban Interfaith Monastery.

Interfaith is difficult to define; comprised of people seeking spiritual reconciliation, these communities are made up of believers and non-believers alike: Christians, Jews, Pagans, Buddhists, Atheists, Agnostics, Protestants, Muslims... Interfaith is about conversation between historically contradictory groups of people. Interfaith communities are fluid, flexible, adaptable. Often meeting in coffee shops, convention centers, other churches, an interfaith "church" is simply a relationship: the development of spiritual understanding through connection with others.
The task I set myself at the beginning of the project was to define and understand “interfaith” as a spiritual community and to explore the creation of meaningful, spiritual space without a reliance on icon or symbolic form.
Through my research and involvement in a local interfaith community, I have come to understand interfaith as the most intensely individualistic pursuit of truth; it attracts people who are "spiritual but not religious," confused, uncertain, or dissatisfied with organized religion. Testimony, not Testament, drives discussion. Beliefs are based on instinct, not prescription. Self-understanding is as crucial as community candidness. The purpose of Interfaith is the development of self through reflection and discussion. While this may not seem far off from most spiritual pursuits, interfaith communities are unique in their
emphasis on an individual’s definition of truth, equality of differing beliefs, and non-hierarchical inclusion.

So I began through program, compiling small spatial ideals of the places I personally felt most open, and sought unity amongst their contradictions and juxtapositions. At times the meaning of the program overcame the formal composition; at times the formal composition sacrificed programmatic clarity. But this struggle between meaning and image became symbolic of the larger discussion: what is non-iconic spiritual space?
Around midterm, I initiated a large-group discussion between members of a Pagan and Christian interfaith group to better understand the characteristics of pure spiritual space. Were there spaces or places that inspire your spirituality? Why? Was it light? Materials? Shadow? Nature? Ritual? Familiar symbolism? My findings were overwhelmingly in favor of my original instincts: a quiet garden, a grand light space with high windows, ceremonial procession, soft floors, and all the “creature comforts” of small homey space.

My proposal mimics the beauty and the oddities of interfaith as a concept: self reflective, yet supremely conscious of external conditions. Interfaith is both introverted (individuals seeking clarity in their own befuddled beliefs) and extroverted (sharing faith with others). But it is personally rigorous; individuals are self responsible for their involvement, understanding that interfaith cannot be fully experienced with closed heart, with a closed mind.
Over the course of the semester, my interest in the program became more and more self-obsessed and eventually morphed into the most contradictory program possible: an urban interfaith monastery. Providing a place for truth seekers to meet, rest, and explore their beliefs in diverse community, the monastery provides a temporary retreat and emphasizes both the individual and communal aspects of interfaith.

Shielded from the main road, one must enter through the garden on the side street. The first floor is public, open, the most programmatically inviting and uninvolved. The ground floor provides a holistic summary of an interfaith center: garden, sanctuary, gallery, dining, and gathering spaces.
Progression into the rest of the building, where the spiritual spaces lie, is intentional. A ceremonial staircase (the so-called “stairway to heaven”), is visible from the entry and framed with light, offering the primary point of access to the second and third floors.
The second floor, at first contradictorily, is the most private and the only floor with continuous circulation. While the “stairway to heaven” continues immediately to the top floor, traversing the second floor prepares the heart and mind: study space leads to private prayer cells, which leads to the chapel for collective prayer. The Chapel (Chant Hall) opens back onto the study space. Visitors (the Monks) may continue to circulate through these preparatory spaces until their desired path is decided upon and they are ready to continue.
From the second floor two paths (paths to enlightenment?) are made available: group or individual. The Stairway to Heaven continues into the large gathering hall, a brilliantly lit, tall space. The Heaven Hall functions as a large ceremonial space: while not the most overtly spiritual, it is the gathering place for meetings and functions of all sizes.
The secondary stack nestled between quiet study space and private monk cells leads instead to the next steps in individual spiritual development: counseling and yoga / meditation.

Naming the project

2010-04-17T13:28:00.003-05:00

This has been a really odd semester for me.
A very thoughtless semeseter, I should say.
I am faced now, as I lay out my final boards, with naming my project. Typically, this is a completely organic, unforced process. A name would have revealed itself at some point in the semester through my writing on the project.
But I have not been writing. I have not been thinking, reflecting, or sketching. My sketchbook is hardly half full [I normally go through at least a full book, sometimes two].
And I have the creeping feeling that this semester was an utter waste of lost potential. What could have been so meaningful, so good has just died. It is a wreckage of undefined formal decisions, careless decisions, un-researched assumptions.

I may not have learned anything about architecture, but I have learned about myself: that this process does not work for me. I do not like this kind of architecture. I must trust myself and what I know to be good, what I find interesting, and push forward into the things that interest me.
It feels a little late to have learned this lesson... one that I have been aware of but never had to truly struggle through.

I do not despise my project any more, but I do not love it. I wish I had another 6 weeks to develop it, now that I know what I should have known at midterm.
I don't want to blame anyone else, but it did take a long time to figure out how to deal with my professors. Conflicting personalities trying to be productive. I understand the nuances better now. I understand what to take and what to leave of their criticism (mostly leave).

So anyways... I have to write about my project for Monday, name my project, and put my boards together in a way that tells the story of what I hoped to achieve. If I were fully honest, I would say it was not a success. I would say the project is weak, but that I understand myself much better. I would point out the good parts and say I would like to develop these ideas. I would like to confess failure.
But, as anyone in architecture knows, this is not acceptable. You must always stand up for yourself, spin the weaknesses into disregard-able pieces, to pump up and emphasize the good parts.
It is the business of selling yourself, of selling garbage, of white lies. It is absolutely necessary in a culture that judges worth and responsibility on the success of every endeavor.

If I were to suggest I wasn't satisfied with the project, there is a chance I would have to keep working on it over summer until it was "done." Krueck has been known to give incompletes until the work met some illusive standard.

Well anyways... I need to write about my project.

Final Model Materials

2010-04-17T12:50:00.002-05:00

Because this studio final is not about creative thought but perfect production, we have to make large, realistic final models.

These are the materials I will be using for my final model.

I also have an insane schedule of finishing one drawing a day for the next week to give myself 4 days of model making time (cutting it close!!). Prayers for productive efficiency being accepted now.

The thin stone stuff is corian I shaved really closely so light filters through (to mimic alabaster) and then lasercut with a really simple "parametric" circle pattern.

Frit on the glazing is achieved by applying several layers of transfer paper dots.

The dark wood will either be stained bass (like in the model) or oiled walnut (which looks better, but is more difficult).
Sand blasted acrylic with a larger scale circle pattern will cover large sections of my facade.

Yeah!

2010-04-14T19:15:00.003-05:00

I know I have been terrible about posting about studio this semester. This is largely because my professors have encouraged us against thinking too much... and just DOING. So, I've been producing a lot, then stressing about it not being meaningful.

Though I knew this before, I am now very very certain that this is not my ideal way of working: I need a LOT of time to think.

But with two weeks left in the semester, and hopefully my last modifications to the building completed last night/ this morning, I have started on the final images and model.

I have materials, they are gorgeous, and I'm incredibly excited about the model looking fantastic.

I am shaving Corian down to about 1/32" thickness, so light filters through (mimicking alabaster)... and then lasercutting a simple parametric circle pattern over it. The effect is lovely. It looks like a thin sheet of stone lace.

I'll post photos tonight... But anyways. Our review is Friday the 30th. We have to submit everything by Thursday at 6pm... so I have 15 days to complete everything. Time is ticking!!

***note... I am getting into the finals week high of delicious sleepless delirium. I love the intensity this time of year!***

Beirut or Turkey or both?

2010-04-11T15:51:00.002-05:00

I am struggling to rewrite my essay for the Martin Roche traveling fellowship (due tomorrow!!) about where I would like to travel and what I would like to study.
The more I research Lebanon, the more interested I am in the response of the built environment to its political instability. There is an obsession among the AUB faculty with post-war reconstruction, yet the city itself is still volatile and unpredictable.

This flirtation with disaster, daily living on the edge, gives the city an intensity of life and vibrancy entirely unexpected.
There may not be much exciting architecture happening, but the city is a living precedent for the contemporary discourse's obsession with post-apocalyptic continually-volatile societies.
While I wrote my manifesto against such discourse, it is a fascinating relationship, providing inspiration for change. Continuing joyfully, confidently, hellbent on progress, perhaps these are the most hopeful people, the most hopeful buildings?

But I cannot stop my love affair with ancient spiritual space, and I feel it would be a great loss to not visit the Hagia Sophia while in the Mid East.

But how do I tie in these two contradictory themes?
One, ancient spiritual space, and its ability to inspire and strike our souls, thousands of years after completion. As the cradle of civilization, home to some of the oldest cultures in existence, both cities offer prime examples of ancient structures that remain relevant through centuries of evolution and use; as home to the best surviving examples of Byzantine architecture, I would especially like to explore the mosques and cathedrals throughout Istanbul.
Secondly: Both countries act as gateways between East and West; Turkey, which has remained relatively isolated and peaceful, has had the opportunity to develop a flourishing cultural mash-up of contemporary forms and heritage pieces. Lebanon, while dedicated to western modernization, is politically volatile and subject to instability. This contradictory position provides insight into the pervasion of contemporary American culture; from the extreme juxtaposition of old and new, I hope to better understand the key influences of our society and discover potential avenues for the development of an equally hopeful neo-vernacular of our own.

illegible plans

2010-04-02T02:32:00.001-05:00

yes. this is my boxy building.

Painterly Comics

2010-04-01T16:43:00.003-05:00

Great lecture by Jeff Kipnis last night titled "Why Bother?" - a hilarious attack on rival-critic Robert Somol and their differing interests in graphic novels as influence and inspiration on architecture.

A few of my more favorite quotes and things to think about from the evening:

"critics, as they grow older, do one of two things. They either become bitter, like Frampton, or insane in the utter ridiculous conjectures on architecture. I'm not bitter, so I guess I'm insane."

"yellow is the key to cartoon architecture"

"it is absolutely essential to get with people who share your interest in doing positive misbehavior"

"[Gehry's "giant turd" tower] is happy in a sort of anal period sense..."

"our job as teachers it to take works of genius, turn them into pedagogy so students regurgitate it mediocrit-ally... in hopes that it inspires new works of genius"

"if you do theoretical work, it should make you go back and rethink your old work"

For the Super Small

2010-03-23T21:25:00.003-05:00

We are a society of individualization: single souls fighting for meaning, definition, and place. in our media-induced delirium, we struggle for significance.
Starved for connection, we increasingly insert ourselves into cyber space, cyber culture: online communities have replaced any sense of real face-to-face community.
Architecture is slow, reflective of culture, a frozen monument to a society’s biases and preferences. So where does architecture fit, when our culture has shifted from concrete relationships to that of the ephemeral?
The basic necessities of life that our built environments must meet are no longer just to provide food storage, shelter, or community engagement. Our digital dependence will not lessen, but virtual communities do not rely on real-life relationships. We face a severe shortage of physical interaction.

In a field of isolation, does architecture have the power to reconnect individuals, to build physical community?

In two stages, yes.

First, our architecture must enforce interpersonal affairs by removing the middleman crux of the digital device. Only by absorbing the digital interfaces that guard our persons (removing the laptop, blackberry, or ipod) will individuals have the opportunity to reconnect without hiding behind tech devices. By fully accepting user tools, architecture as form may come to reject the obviously technological. Futuristic will become passé.

Secondly, we must cultivate the super small.
Communal living is contemporarily taboo; Modernist idealists and the Age of Utopias are at their bloody end, hanging on by a few residual fragments. Public housing blocks were an undisputed failure, bare bones of the last vestiges paying homage to (what turned out to be) devastating dystopias.
The Soviet Constructivists had this same idea; “new byt”, they called it, or “new everyday life.” The Narkomfin building minimized living quarters, reducing sleeping space to a single small cell. All public acts were shared. The project, so hated, was never completed and quickly vacated.
Hippy communes are still comical, ostracized by capitalism and practically impossible.

So, then, is ours too doomed to fail?

While these other eras failed, ours has the potential to succeed, because the super small can only exist, and absolutely must exist, within the context of the extra large: high density, globalized culture juxtaposed by the individualism of small space.
When our extra large digital community becomes too engrossing, the extra small discourages excessive alone time- it enforces communal gathering, personal interaction. The extra small can exist in any physical setting, but can only exist communally.
The extra small is adaptable, relatable, human in scale, and potentially local. The extra small can be recyclable, fanciful, luxurious, and unpredictable.
The extra small provides the most basic needs, but depends on a larger context. In this way, the individual is acceptable, but the individual must also connect with others. The new architecture of community enforces individual physicality.

apocalypse… later. how about some sincerity?

2010-03-23T21:25:00.001-05:00

We face a future of obvious uncertainty.
As graduates during a recession, we look out upon a future limited by our loss of promised opportunities.
It is easy when times seem tough to despair. It is easy to see the faults in others or to lose confidence in our capabilities.
Throughout the most progressive academic discourse I see concern for the environment shape dreams into dystopias. I see social injustice perverted and extorted. I see the belief in change reserved for the apocalypse.

It seems as if all faith and hope in the humanity of today has been lost.

We may not stand at the most crucial turning point of architecture, but our time does have significance. Our generation is the first to deal with the digital dimension's influence on our social order, the wild abandon with which our cities sprawl, and the ability to both design and manufacture nearly all the forms of fancy.
Our actions, but more importantly our attitudes, towards these challenges will be the points of influence and critique of architecture to come.

A slump in building always coincides with the rise of ambition, dreams, and purpose. We decide, while we have the time to think, where the future of architecture is headed.
While future architecture's disapproval is inevitable, we (like parents every where) hope to impart some meaningful new knowledge, something important, that will stick.

It is therefore why we must push firmly for an architecture of hope, consideration, and good.

It is not the form, nor necessarily the initial concept, of much contemporary architecture I draw issue with. It is the cynicism, the harsh irony, the utter disregard for humanity and spirit that drive the discourse.
Though beautiful, it concerns me to see only dark, brooding images come from top universities; it concerns me to work on projects where the individual experience is never discussed; and it concerns me that intellect is now so closely aligned with sarcasm.

With the rise of postmodernism, we became fearful of sincerity, afraid our best intentions would be found so wrong, like the urban imaginings of the Modernist Utopians. But turning away from all forms of sincerity is not the only way to comment or critique contemporary society: fanciful does not have to be violent, beauty does not have to brutal, edgy does not have to be aggressive.

Midterm Review Reflections

2010-03-22T16:46:00.002-05:00

My review went terribly. Read: second worst review I've ever had, outdone only by my final review third year where 8 jurors ripped me apart.

That said, it's time to move on.
While I can't work harder and please them, I need to find a way to please myself. Last week was hell. I hardly slept or ate, skipped all my classes and didn't do any of my other work. I made myself sick for something I didn't love.
And I refuse to do it again.

I have 6 weeks to fall in love with my project and end on a good note. I started today by not going to studio, taking the day to go shopping, be outside, reflect on architecture, and dream about future possibilities.

The criticism for my project has been the same over the last few weeks: it feels confused, disconnected, and conceptually weak. I have to agree, considering there has been no time for thought, I've spent the entirety of my days and nights producing new formal iterations based on nothing but elevation proportions, I've become increasingly frustrated by my professors' lack of interest in the program.
However, there is one kernel of interest from the comments I received: the suggestion that it wants to be a monastery.

While this by no means solves all of my problems (especially concerning circulation), it at least provides some solid inspiration and a new route for research. An interfaith monastery!!
It is so obviously meaningful, I don't have to argue for it.
Monasteries have rich historical formal relationships that could be extorted.
An urban monastery has obvious inherent juxtapositions embedded in the concept: enclosure, quiet, and seclusion in the context of a city... all of the things I wanted to explore but couldn't argue for. Programatically it makes sense to have large contemplation spaces, private cells, a library, a kitchen and dining hall, a large central courtyard, etc... and for them to be very separate.

I know there are several monasteries in the city... perhaps I could visit to get a better idea of what they are like.

My only source of encouragement these days:

2010-03-16T14:43:00.003-05:00

After contunally frustrating and unproductive reviews with my professors, and unhappiness in the success of my project thus far, the one kernel of hope I have is this:

The GPAs I could graduate with:

Straight As (unlikely): 3.961
B in Studio, As in everything else: 3.922
C in Studio, As in everything else: 3.883
D in Studio, As in everything else: 3.844
Straight Bs (impossible): 3.844

I love having so many credits that a poor grade doesn't matter.

Defining Circulation

2010-03-13T12:13:00.001-06:00

I am realizing, as I struggle to piece together my building, that good spaces are largely about circulation. In fact, movement is really the most defining aspect of space: space can only be understood in three dimensions, necessetating movement over time.

This is both shocking and odd, because circulation is often an afterthought, a secondary design feature shoved in where it feels convenient. This is more true, perhaps, for -bad- or standard architecture; thoughtful, well designed spaces typically aim to solve circulation creatively.

While programs have various emphasis (and therefore it is unfair to apply this reasoning to _everything_), modern art museums are typically good examples of this.

It has been interesting to read Koolhaas simultaneously to working with Kruek; through studio, I am learning the conceptual nuances of Modernist space, while digesting the best contemporary criticism.
I understand the anger and frustration towards glorified abstraction of "phenomenal space" and the obsession with disparate program.

It is largely over circulation where OMA battles Modernism; while Mies' spaces enourage free movement over the free plan, Koolhaas often exploits paths, breaks circulation, or revels over mechanical aids.

If I am to let program define the building (which I must), the primary question then becomes : What sort of space, and therefore circulation, does the program necessitate?

Interfaith meeting

2010-03-11T22:02:00.003-06:00

March 11, 2010
Coffee shop, 12 or so people. Half pagan, half Christian. Discussing Faith and Space: the role buildings and spatial environments have on our experience of the divine.

The Questions:
What places are meaningful to you?
What role does space play in your understanding of faith?
What environments are most conducive to reflection, feeling close to god, reflecting on your spiritual center?
Can space feel inspired or sacred without symbol or iconic form?
Do any materials resonate with you?

The Answers:
Varied and revealing. Opinionated and informative. Far too long to post all of them.

The Important Notes:
Emphasis on wandering, progression or sequence through space;
A multiplicity of events

Having an entrance that is not initially obvious is ok. It encourages the visitor to seek.
Integration of garden and architecture
Disrupt traditional hierarchy
Grand Gathering is more useful than Grand Contemplation
Many entrances
"Communitas": a shared individual experience

Generally, I feel validated for some of the initial decisions or instincts I had. A few of the suggestions are helpful in forming a direction for the problems I am struggling to overcome (specifically entrance and procession into the contemplation space).
Definitely helpful.

space vs place

2010-03-05T12:30:00.003-06:00

the spatial environments that stay in our memories, and thus define our histories, our selves, are more often places than spaces. The common place becomes historic space: the doorway where a first kiss happened, the backyard pool of a lifechanging conversation, the second bathroom stall on the right.
The banality of our memory spaces is astounding.

Not that impressive spaces don't stick with us, lasting imagery in memory, but the places that are truly important are usually of the ordinary.

There is power in this- event transforms space, however banal, into powerful place.

Is it possible to design for place and not just space?
Is this the same as designing for experience?

Finding passion

2010-03-05T00:57:00.002-06:00

I like space but not architecture.
...Quality construction, but not finished models.
...Parameters but not limits.
...Materials but not details.
...Theory but not concept.
...Experience but not circulation.
...Natural curves but not manufactured curves.

Universal symbols vs. universal space

2010-03-02T15:28:00.003-06:00

I am reading The Temple in the House: Finding the Sacred in Everyday Architecture by Anthony Lawlor.

This book describes elements that are universally present and sacred or meaningful [the gate, path, and destination] in all cultures. The steeple, or tall element, is a universally symbolic element.

But universal space is not necessarily achievable by the culmination of universal symbols. To what extend are these symbols really legible as metaphors? Is it too classical (ie. representative) or Venturian (ie. decorated shed or applique) to consciously apply these forms in order to find meaning? Are they powerful only when stumbled across or found unintentionally? No. This must not be true.
Symbols can be consciously employed, but likely compose more successful space when not intentionally metaphorical. The narrative rarely reads in architecture, but the space does.
So powerful universal space may contain these elements, perhaps unintentionally, but it's point or purpose cannot be solely defined by these characteristics.

Glorified Space

2010-02-28T21:14:00.004-06:00

I have reached a point where the exterior massing of my building is mostly set. The structural grid is [mostly] settled upon, and I have an idea of enclosure. But building the larger model has allowed me to think about the interior space of my project in an entirely new way:
I have a shell. I am rewriting the interior.

It is a strange paradoxical situation, where the exterior was first formed by a now irrelevant configuration of interior programming. When finding form, we are often faced with the chicken and egg problem – do you let the interior determine the form or do you create an interesting massing first? There are benefits and criticisms to either; I seem to have stumbled on a way to do both.

I now have a 6 story contemplation space. It is narrow, long, and extremely tall. It has light on all four sides. It has the potential for procession and ceremonial entry. I have the space to make sweeping staircases, tiered balconies, hanging masses. In other words, I have a completely flexible volume of divine space.
So now I have to ask : what is divine space anyways?

Church of Spilled Blood, St. Petersburg

Koln Cathedral

Giant Buddha at Wat Tham Sua temple, Thailand

The obvious for awe-inspiring space ring throughout any religion: vast, opulent, intricate, light filled. While the majority of my mental images are Christian spaces, the same can be true of temples, shrines, and ceremonial spaces.
It is not the subject that inspires awe, but the opulence. The representation of divinity has more to do with money than god. It is not what the cathedral represents that makes our heart leap- it is the space itself. Were the mosaics of the Spilled Blood to be of any other subject, their effect would not be lessened. Were the giant golden Buddha just a statue, the overwhelming power of 30 feet of gold towering above you would be the same.
It is a cruel irony that the “divine” is most easily felt through an exploitation of human weakness: the lust, greed, and envy of great wealth, our extreme bias for outer beauty. We retreat to these places because they make us feel small; we are reminded of a higher power; or, perhaps, for the freedom from the ‘real world’ into one of pure beauty and personal detachment.
Churches are the Heterotopias for the soul.
From here, the Vatican is equal to Las Vegas: a city scale Heterotopia, disconnected from reality, designed to remove entirely your sense of self responsibility. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. What is said in confession, stays in confession.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin

Jewish Museum, Berlin

So as a creator of sacred space, which way to I turn? is opulence and grandeur justified by its proven power to inspire? Or, more true to the humble characteristics of most deities, do I design a modest environment?
Both paths can be successful.
In Berlin, there are two famous examples of each: Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews and Leibskind’s jewish museum. Eisenman’s space is stark: architecturally simple and unassuming. His space is brilliant and powerful, but only because it forces a procession through horrifying information that overwhelms; the strength is in subject, not the space itself. Visiting his monument ruined my weekend.
Liebskind’s museum, on the other hand, is a beautiful and iconic collection of symbolic form. The information presented is typical museum fodder, but the architecture itself is the draw: a series of voids transformed into physically powerful experiences. Visiting his museum made me ill.

I have a hole: is it filled with procession or is it filled with form?

Model Shots

2010-02-22T21:00:00.002-06:00

Review went pretty well. I stayed up late working on a very large foamcore model (which is still not done, but has served its purpose), and I found a few of the photos I took of the models I've done so far.

Spatial Icon (the sculpture from the first two weeks)

Spatial Icon again

After the acrylic layer box model, we made our first "real" models to start thinking about facade. This is my first iteration.

First iteration again... the main corner (entry)

The Gold Standard - my very incomplete iteration 2... working through new massing definitions. Also called "Church of 1000 minarets"

As always... more on the picasa album here.

scale and process

2010-02-22T02:28:00.002-06:00

I'm beginning to realize that I will likely go the entire semester kicking and screaming and moaning about the process imposed by my professors, and then want to immediately take it back.
Evidence #1: the acrylic box model. I was horrified when we all had to create the exact same "shelf" model, with a given size and structural grid. I thought our projects would all turn out the same - uninventive, without personality, boring. I thought I would hate the process.
But I was wrong. The shelf model is an incredible way to initially start out organizing space - you work through section, elevation, and plan all at the same time. Instead of getting stuck in the 2d, you are immediately thrown into the 3d. There is no way to avoid space.

Evidence #2: the 16th facade study model. I thought it was too early and that drawings should be made.
I was wrong. Again... a physical model says so much more than a drawing or digital model. The space is so much more tangible.

Evidence #3: the 1/8th model. I am still not done (currently working). I thought it was too early to go so large.
But my god, was I wrong! Working at different scales simultaneously tells you so much more about the space. I have never built such a large model before. It is 20"x20"x12" and you can literally get inside the space. And I'm realizing there is so much that needs changing.

So here's what I've learned so far:
-Avoid getting stuck in the 2d by jumping directly into the 3d. But let it be meaningful (based on plan) and changeable (so you don't fall in love with one iteration)
-Work at different scales... big scales, small scales, and drawing... all at the same time. Significant issues can be caught and adjusted early on in the process, before it's too late.
-Spend personal time thinking about experience and emotion, but don't get caught up in it. You can find it in the things you've done, but get something out there first.
-The lasercutter is your friend.

Pictures soon.

Screens, plane

2010-02-15T16:28:00.004-06:00

I made a new model last night/this morning working out a few of the major issues in my building. I spent two hours cutting shiny gold paper into 3 densities of screen. I decided that if my GPA has to go down for these professors, I'll do it in style. Haha.

But surprisingly, my desk review went incredibly well- they like my building and didn't mind the gold at all.

So now I'm thinking about the potential of screens for defining complex space. Screens are a pretty incredible facade option... having the potential for both translucency and opactiy; rich materiality; ornamental form or pattern.
By obstructing half of what happens behind them, screens reduce the three dimensional to a complex collage of 2d. Sort of like polarizing lenses for a building's interior activity.

Anyways... a few cool screens for my own inspiration:

I need to keep my imagination open.
Islamic; slats; metal; brick; translucent; green; orthogonal; circular; shadow; folding; reflective; perforation.

School Update

2010-02-14T16:37:00.004-06:00

Spatial complexity; spatial legibility; spatial coherence; spatial fluidity; spatial transparency; compositional balance; material clarity;

Writing about space, that intangible, ambiguous, amorphous air that fills crevices, flows around blocks, hangs heavy or dances freely through line, arch, mass... is hard.

This semester, despite my initial notions about program, has been (and will likely continue to be) about purity of space.
Although it's not what I expected, I can't really think of any more perfect ending to my studies at IIT. My studio is horribly time consuming, completely subjective, dependent on a keen eye, obsessive about the concept of materiality, and as vague as Visual Training.
It has reignited my respect and passion for composed space; the quietness and subtle balance of Modernist form.
I realize now that pursuing a narrative-based, research-based, environmental-based, or digital design-based studio would have been utterly inappropriate for my final semester. It means too much for me to come to terms with my education, my beliefs, and my interests after 5 years of exploration and uncertainty.

But because writing about space is hard, I'm going to try to do it every day. New Goal: reflect daily.

This weekend was Camras weekend: tons of prospective students flooded the campus to sit for interviews and tour the school. As Crown Scholar, it is my duty to go around with the prospective architecture scholars for an evening of Chicago architecture and dinner. I enjoy it every year, but this Thursday was especially good for me. When talking with people about their burgeoning interest in architecture or why they might want to attend IIT, I am inevitably reminded of my Crown interview weekend and how I felt the first time I walked into Crown Hall. All I remember thinking was "I could be so happy working here." The openness, lofty ceilings, yet strange intimacy in each section; the views, the sense of shelter contrasting the sense of freedom. It felt like a space of big ideas and collaboration.
And it's only now, after reading Colin Rowe's Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal (PDF), that I understand, architecturally, where that feeling comes from. The intimacy comes from the division of space through materiality shifts; the openness from the open ceiling and upper clear windows; the shelter from the hanging ceiling and semi-opaque walls; the space for ideas and dreaming by the height and connection between studios.
At least in Modernism, though I think in almost any great space, it is the clarity of phenomenal transparency that makes it. Even the architects who we normally consider anti-Modernist, avant-garde, or otherwise non-Miesian employ this tactic... consciously or not.
It is, in the most visually obvious sense, the continuation of datum lines.

I also feel the need to clarify. I do not mean to suggest that Modernist composition is the only good architecture. I am still fascinated by ornamentation, concept, augmented reality, and self-sustaining environments. However, clarity of composition has been somewhat abandoned in recent practice in favor of these others; pure space exists without influence of programmatic juxtaposition, environmental context, or fancy additions. It is both Utopian, achievable, and utterly real.

Nothing More

2010-01-29T11:48:00.002-06:00

Often, I write all day long with white ink on white paper, late into the night, until it is all I can do to feel the letters curving to earth from the tip of the pen & then, I fall asleep.
Dreaming of running, or maybe driving in a car the color of water & I wake the next day remembering nothing & I gather the stack of paper & a pen of black on the desk in front of me & the words begin to dance over the page like long legged insects across a still lake & the words in white whisper behind & underneath the new day.
If there is any secret to this life I live, it is this: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can. & there is nothing more to it than that.

by Brian Andreas for Story People

Interfaith thoughts

2010-01-28T12:13:00.003-06:00

Wassily Kandinsky; Yellow, Red, Blue (1925)

An interfaith community brings peoples of different faiths, from Christianity, to Muslim, Judaism, even Pagans, together to share their spiritual lives. It is a union of disparate parts, a community of souls seeking love and truth. Like Kandinsky's piece, an interfaith community could be seen as a chaotic mix of random, nonsensical elements- but when read together (correctly), the community begins to make perfect sense as a harmony of spirits, as the painting becomes a composition of visual music.
The challenge architecturally is to create a divine space without icon, symbol, or reference; to create a sanctuary in the city accessible and inviting to all people of faith.

So we must ask: What is the architecture of the divine? How do we express a purity of spirit?

For me, it is a meal shared with friends, sunshine on my cheek, a small quiet place, a livingroom and a small group, a tall narrow cavern and a haunting melody, sitting among trees at sunset, listening to a waterfall on a clear day...

These are my elements. The site is my canvas. I am painting a collection of souls.

2010-01-12T20:50:00.003-06:00

I am hungry, and exhausted, and not sure if I have made the right decision, but I have signed up for a regular studio.
Not Tim Brown, Not Werner Sobek, but Krueck and Jacobs.

We will be doing a 5-story interfaith center.

[[Basically a church]]

I think, in light of where I am in my eduction and my new year's resolutions, that it is a fitting time for me to think about procession, ceremony, symbolism, and meaning.

It will be my first building design since third year, and will have a strong focus on the experience of materiality.

Fingers crossed (superstition?) but I'm excited. I am also hoping it will offer a wealth of material for my Architectural Writings course.

Last day of secure freedom

2010-01-10T15:26:00.002-06:00

I have just finished reading the Alchemist, and so my thoughts of late have been about dreams, omens, and the untiring pursuit of one's Personal Legend. I feel at the beginning of my own, though unlike Santiago, am unsure of my direction. I did not have a dream of buried treasure, but I have the opportunity to choose the next steps towards self fulfilment.

I am slowly working on a proposal for an independent studio. I would prefer to call it a "mini thesis," because I feel it should have more weight and significance than a typical studio. I finished the proposal this morning and submitted it rather later than I would have hoped. I'm not sure if it's too late or not, but we'll see. I've been torn between pursuing the project or selecting from the 20 or so offered every semester. We'll see tomorrow how it all turns out.

My inital thoughts were for a Chicago living machine, as described in a previous post. However, after a short meeting with Tim Brown, I began rethinking my approach entirely.
I would probably have done this anyways. I know I shouldn't, but I can't help but put extra emphasis on the meaning of this project. I want it to be a holistic representation of myself and of my interests. I want it to be both intelligent and beautiful, a commentary and a design, a research and an art project.
Aren't all projects thus?

This is made especially difficult by the fact that I feel on the edge of the unknown. Not only am I graduating in a few months time, to end my current life as a student (the only career I've known), I am not certain of where I want to go in life, what I want to be when I grow up! Wait... isn't that what I was supposed to be figuring out over the last five years?

Somewhat ironically, the thoughts I expressed as a brand new freshman ring even more true today: I'm not sure I want to be an architect, but I know I like design.
In retrospect, there have been moments over the last 5 that depict a winding, but persistent path towards my still unknown personal legend. As a sophomore, I remember remarking to a professor that I did not want to be an architect because design was stressful, I wasn't sure I could handle the level of passion and commitment I felt for my projects. I was afraid of failure.
As a junior, greatly influenced by a boy I loved, I took a leap and applied (without much hope) to the Architectural Association... and got in. A dream! And from there, I guess, I realized it was possible; I might actually make a successful designer, it just takes leaps.
I think a lot about Elle Wood's closing remarks to the Harvard Law Class of 2004: "you must always have faith in yourself."

I've been telling people that I wanted to work for an NGO, to do grant proposals and learn the business and law side of sustainable stuff in Chicago. To some extent this is true, but I also realize now that this was a desperate cover for not knowing at all what I wanted, and fear of not finding a job. I've moved on. I have a goal.
Eventually, I want to work for a company like IDEO. This is not a simple task: it is highly competitive, drawing the majority of it's employees from Stanford's "d.school" and IIT's Institute of Design (ranked #1 in its field). The majority of their employees have terminal degrees in their area of expertise; their interns are all grad students.
I want to get a Ph.D. I want the opportunity to continue academic discussions, to learn and teach for many many more years.
I want to stay in Chicago for a little while. The city has so much to offer, I like using public transportation, and I am learning to find the space in both my day and my heart for the rest that makes peace possible, a quiet I used to only know during long summer breaks. I like how easy it is to meet new people, and to find special places that feel secret and unique, and to lose myself in a crowd.

And now I have to ask myself, how do I want to do that? What do I love to do right now?
I love reading, of imagining the places of my stories. My project proposal incorporated as much as I could: emphasis on the development of a "log book" which would hold all of my research, diagrams, sketches, and narrative development. Sort of like a whitebook, or well organized sketchbook, but with more emphasis on the development of a character. I'm sure I picked this idea up somewhere, but I don't know from whom... but I love the idea of creating a "relic" of sorts, a document that not only contains all of the work but acts as a sort of "evidence."

Anyways, I am spending my last day of break doing quiet things. I met with a friend for coffee, am at the library, running errands, and plan on spending quite a while reading. I'm in the middle of two new books at the moment.

Independent Studio Proposal

2010-01-04T11:55:00.003-06:00

I have proposed a project for an independent studio / mini thesis for the spring. I am pretty excited, though nervous about it, and have still not decided whether it would be wise to pursue it. I will have a pretty intense courseload (18+ credit hours, as usual), but all 3 electives are very reading-and-paper heavy... on top of looking for jobs, teaching dance, and hopefully having some sort of life.

My goals for the project are a bit broad:
I would like to work on a project to explore some of my interests around vegetation, sustainability, and small design. I would like to have a building at the end, but would also like it to have a key smaller element that I could potentially fabricate. I would also like to spend some time becoming familiar with local ecology.

Though I haven't settled on a final idea, I have been thinking along the lines of a heavily research / experiment based design of a living machine for some aspect of Chicago/ Illinois ecology.

1)Research
-pinpoint and attempt to understand some aspect of suffering local ecology, and how living aspects (including humans and built world) relate to it.

2) Experiment
-develop a working prototype of living machine

3) Design (fanciful or realistic)
-fanciful: using the research and prototype as a starting point for a narrative, write a short fiction and design the building associated with it. I.E. Crazy environmental scientist starts building these living machines that grow and grow and become a self-contained, self-sustaining crazy-vegetated fantasy land on a random parcel in urban Chicago (like biospehere? Could have some fun images!).
-realistic: prototype becomes one element of something like an education center for the Chicago Park District, or a facility for cleaning up the lake shore, etc.

I'll be meeting with Tim Brown, the professor I'd like to work with, sometime this week to discuss the proposal.

Intensified Societies: Heterotopias and the Spectacle

2010-01-04T11:41:00.003-06:00

[This is my final paper for my Avant-Garde class]

Intensified Society: Heterotopias and the Spectacle

Both Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and Foucault’s speech on Heterotopias were presented in Paris in 1967, a time and place of extreme political, economic, and social turmoil. The texts describe contrasting elements of society: one of the pervasive and corrupting nature of pop culture, and the other of isolated cultural structures. Guy Debord, self-proclaimed leader of the Situationists International, was an oft-disrepute artist, filmmaker, and poet. His ideas, with other members of the SI, reached cultish status within the 1970’s Parisian scene, but were never made (and purposefully so) mainstream. Largely defeatist, his texts concerning the Spectacle are less a call-to-arms than an arduous description of the Spectacle’s deep-rooted existence in our contemporary culture. Michel Foucault, a notable French philosopher and sociologist, wrote “mostly histories of medical and social sciences, [but whose] passions were literary and political” (Gutting). He “began from a relentless hatred of bourgeois society and culture and with a spontaneous sympathy for groups at the margins of the bourgeoisie (artists, homosexuals, prisoners, etc.)” which gave direction to his political activities and writing (Gutting).
Despite Foucualt’s and Debord’s reputed disdain for each other and pointed counter arguments (at least from Foucault’s end), I find continuity between their versions of intensified societies. Instead of two very different black and white scenarios, the ideas expressed by Debord and Foucault represent extremes of a continuous social spectrum (between pop culture and isolation) that help in defining and understanding each other.

The Situationists were a contradictory group: adamantly opposed to becoming a movement, they denied being “transformed into either another art world “ism” or a simplistic ideological “point of view” (On the Passage, vi) by limiting publication of their work, limiting work itself, and purposefully, ardently staying “underground” while still managing to create powerfully politically influential theories and texts. It is difficult to describe these artists and revolutionaries as “avant-garde” without offending their ideology and purpose. This group lies somewhere on the border between the “historic avant-garde” as described by Burger and the contemporary avant-garde, fitting into neither completely, but somehow embodying the quintessential characteristics of both. The Situationists were both a conclusion and introduction to two significantly different art eras. While it may be premature to claim this, the Situationist International (SI) seems to sit atop the schism between 20th century art and contemporary practice.
This schism may only be felt and may some day be disproved, but is intended to describe the loss of socio-political drive of the 20th century avant-garde. The Situationists were at the deathbed of the “historic avant-garde;” but whether in or beside it has yet to be determined. Despite this obviously grey area embodied by the Situationists, I find it most comfortable to include the SI in “historic avant-garde,” and even to argue that the SI was the most conclusive and most successful (or rather least unsuccessful?) of the avant-garde movements.
All of the elements for the SI to be “avant-garde” in the historical sense are there: the socio-political bent, the desire to bring ‘art into everyday life,’ and the advanced forms of artistic expression. The Situationists, and especially the likes of Guy Debord, took the developments of the previous century another great step forward by becoming sociologist philosophers, architects, and urban planners. Perhaps their success was due to the diversity of mediums used to express their ideology: film, poetry, literature, painting and collage, city planning, and activist / political involvement were all tools at the Situationists’ disposal, rather than the relatively limited development of traditional art forms (painting, performance, and sculpture) developed previously. The breadth of work and keen sense of truth behind The Spectacle allowed the “ideas articulated by the SI to penetrate urbanism, among artists and radical political groups, and during the short-lived eruption of punk” (On the Passage, 19).
However, understanding and commenting upon the importance of the SI is made difficult by the limited quantity of physical work: the second half of the group’s history was spent “actively refusing and negating the concept of art as a separate, exhibitable enterprise;” it is perhaps this point that makes the group both the most ‘successful’ avant-gardist group (in terms of staying true to their ideals) but also the most difficult to pin. By refusing to put into practice any of their concepts (especially surrounding architecture and urban planning), the group effectually legitimated ‘paper architecture,’ but also remained relatively unknown to the general public. “Like radio currents, the Situationist concepts have been emitted and remain alive but invisible until picked up by a receiver. Tuned to the right wavelength, the message can be transmitted” (On the Passage, 18). This decision on the part of the SI, vehemently enforced by devout members, is itself a counter to the Spectacle. As Debord describes, the Spectacle is a problem of commoditization, made possible through automation and mass production. Our desires, as consumers trapped in capitalist society, have thus shifted from the quality of products to mere quantity. “The quantitative is what the commodity-form develops, and it can develop only within the quantitative” (Debord, 38).

“This is the principle of commodity fetishism, the domination of society by the ‘intangible as well as tangible things,’ which reaches its absolute fulfillment in the spectacle, where the tangible world is replaced by a selection of images which exist above it, and which simultaneously impose themselves as the tangible par excellence” (Debord, 36).

The Spectacle, as I have come to understand, is the moment when the photo of Niagara Falls beats out your memory of the experience. It is the purchase of a knock-off designer handbag; it is the suburban home furnished solely from World Market and Pier One Imports. The Spectacle is anything that feeds us, the capitalist consumer, images and ideas about how society is, how life is, that become our ideal for what or how we should live and behave.
The Spectacle is created from a single flash moment of society or culture, frozen and intensified, and then spat back out in a way that suggests it is culture, all of it, the most important aspect. Debord writes, “the spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life. Not only is the relation to the commodity visible but it is all one sees: the world one sees is its world.” (42)
But, as Debord emphasizes repeatedly, “the spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images” (4); the spectacle is more pervasive than just a single, flat representation. The difficulty lies in the fact that our understanding of the world is based off of these representations. The danger lies in the subconscious control and influence of the subtly communicated ideas; ideas that include, but are far beyond, a high school student’s need to wear what is in style, or a child to have the latest toy, or the housewife to keep a spotless name-brand kitchen. It is beyond consumerism, commoditization, or mass production. All assumptions contained by society are perpetuated by the Spectacle, even how a professional should act, or the correct path of “success” from college to businessman. It is the selling of life style. It is the perpetuation of both the bourgeois and technocracy.
“Life Style” is itself a commodity and is rarely concrete. It is easy to slip into the commodity fetish described by Debord, when money, tangible yet not so, speaks in the name of “economy.” Economy, alluded to by Debord, is an over-used and poorly understood concept. Division of labor as a result of industrialization has been paraded and accepted in the name of this unknown concept and turned it political. Domination, due to the division of labor, is now an aspect of economy, in reference to both cost and market, and is inherent to the commodity and therefore to the spectacle because of their reliance on economy (41).
“Modern economic production extends its dictatorship extensively and intensively. In the least industrialized places, its reign is already attested by a few star commodities and by the imperialist domination imposed by regions which are ahead in the development of productivity” (42). Those regions, like Europe and U.S. already controlled by commodifcation, spread their virus influence to less developed nations. The problem is both signified and perpetuated by our disconnect from the production of our goods; Debord describes it as “alienated consumption…[that leads to] alienated production” (42). Working in cubicles, sitting at a computer, we sell our labor abstractly, and in return get some small fragment back (through our wages which buy products), but they are not the things we have produced. We are “absolutely separated from the productive forces” (42) of our consumptive habits and therefore inescapably consumed by the Spectacle.
“With the pre-fabricated desires and choices presented by (capitalist) commercialism and government regimes, individual subjectivity recedes and converges into a singular commercial consciousness” (Harris). With capitalist commoditization and emphasis on quantity over quality, we only think we have a choice in choosing what we want or have, made possible by the excessive customer service of American shopgirls. This is, as Debord writes, the “humanism of the commodity” (43). The customer may be right, but the customer has no say in what they are right about. Our obsession with stuff, and buying stuff, and slaving to make money to buy even more stuff, can have only one possible end when considering the consumer’s understanding of the value of their newly acquired hoard: we no longer need things for their fundamental use, but for their newness.
He equates this to a shifting in our understanding of “survival.” Our desires are represented as needs, and therefore become “true” needs. Even the most basic elements of survival, like “food and lodging today exist only to the extent that they are imprisoned in the illusory wealth of increased survival. The real consumer becomes a consumer of illusions” (Debord 47). Indeed Thoreau said the same a century earlier:
“Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a house as their neighbors have… shall we always study to obtain more of these things and not sometimes to be content with less?” (Thoreau 43).

Fashion magazines offer a clear example of the Spectacle. A frozen moment of perfected life, an airbrushed model in designer clothing lounging in an architectural masterpiece; intended to convince the viewers of the value of this reality, “lived experience [is] transformed into spectacle, desire into consumption” (On the Passage, 4). However, the Spectacle, though produced and utterly consuming, does not necessarily include all escapist forms; those moments of wholly separate societal orders, like World of Warcraft and other role playing games, offer visions and versions of society that are too contrasted from ‘real’ life to retain the total influence of the Spectacle. “One cannot abstractly contrast the spectacle to actual social activity… The spectacle which inverts the real is in fact produced” (Debord, 8). These forms of contained society are more closely related to the Heterotopias described by Foucault. Indeed, Foucault defines Heterotopias within this inversion; they are “effectively enacted utopias” that exist with a very physical location and manage to “simultaneously represent, contest, and invert” “all the other real sites that can be found within the culture” (Foucault, 5).

Foucault’s lecture on Heterotopias, later published as a journal article, defines them as self contained societies within the broader social milieu. They are literal, physical places defined by isolation; worlds within themselves, they contain their own rule sets mimicking some version of society at large for hierarchy, function, and behavior. They are places that are both “absolutely real… and absolutely unreal” (Foucault, 6). His examples of a jail, a cemetery, and a boat help to illustrate his meaning.
Foucault describes heterotopias in relation to the ‘other’ type of places in society: they are sites that exist in every society, functionally in accordance “to the synchrony of the culture in which it occurs,” (7) but “that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (5). That is to say these spaces have express purpose in society as shells for those elements outside the mainstream; they provide a sheltered location where separate and more appropriate cultures may be cultivated.
Additionally, “these spaces… linked with all the others, which however contradict all the other sites, are of two main types” (Foucault, 5).These two types are either Heterotopias or Utopias, “sites with no real place. [Utopias] are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces” (Foucault, 5). Utopias, I feel, represent Foucault’s version of the Spectacle.
A Heterotopia is experienced as “a sort of absolute break with traditional time” (9), while Debord describes the spectacle as “nothing other than the sense of the total practice of a social-economic formation, its use of time. It is the historical movement in which we are caught” (11). So, if we are to believe Foucault’s point at all, the Heterotopia may either represent the physical containers of oft-fringe spectacles, experienced as a break from the pop-spectacle, or the utter absence and removal from Debord’s Spectacle.
The line is between these two blurs as the isolation characteristic of a Heterotopia becomes less extreme. It is isolation that defines a Heterotopia; a breach of that isolation evidences the introduction of the Spectacle. However, it is possible that within the most isolated Heterotopias (like prisons), contained elements of the Spectacle may be introduced, and only further define or make obvious the isolation and disconnect of the Heterotopia. For example, the introduction of televisions to the private cells of prisoners “allows them to ‘monitor actuality,’” to glimpse ‘reality,’ while poignantly illustrating their total disconnect (Virilio, 65).

Where are the moments of gray between the Spectacle and Heterotopia? The Spectacle is effervescent; an intangible set of relationships, influence, and power perpetuated by physical things. The Heterotopia is decidedly physical; a set place with a location that contains a world of relationships. They are defined by their utter disconnect from the Society of the Spectacle. Heterotopias seem to have a range in their strength, dependent largely on this disconnect or seclusion. For instance, a high-security prison, with its extreme physical isolation, limited social interaction, and self contained hierarchy, ranks high on the Heterotopia scale, whereas an academic institution or university with a vibrant student life ranks low because of the continuous outside cultural influence. Heterotopias and the Spectacle may be seen as extremes on a gradated chart. Those less isolated Heterotopias lose their strength by opening up to the broader culture, and the spectacle as a result.
A difficult example that suggests another relationship, however, is the cinema. The cinema, described by Foucault as very characteristic of Heterotopias, is also a fundamental means for the distribution of the Spectacle. On one hand, the physical space and experience of a cinema is powerfully Heterotopia because the audience members lose track of time while watching a film, are relatively isolated as individuals experiencing the same thing, and the space provides a contrast of elements: audience members are seated “at the end of a very odd rectangular room, [facing] a two-dimensional screen, [on which] one sees the projection of a three-dimensional space”) (Foucault, 9). Yet a film, the purpose of the cinema, is epitomic manifestation of the Spectacle: images detached from life, “fused into a common stream that no longer resembles real life” (Debord, 2). This suggests the Heterotopia as a container and exemplar of the Spectacle. It is perhaps through our interactions with different Heterotopias that we are made aware of the Spectacle at large. It is the shift, the break in reality, which allows us the opportunity for a moment of reflection on the society we have just left.
“It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society… the spectacle (in all its forms) is the present model of socially dominant life” (Debord, 2). It is easy to see the incongruous nature of these two theories only when we consider society at large as a continuous, even thing. When we disregard the odd or fringe elements or deem them merely sub-elements gone awry. But when we consider those elements, moments in society outside of the “socially dominant” style, as unique societies in themselves (as Foucault describes Heterotopias), we can being to allow the possibility for simultaneous “spectacles” determined by the dominant culture of each sub-society.

While the SI was not successful in seeing their political dreams come true, their revolutionary ideas are still powerful. Like most other avant-garde movements that preceded them, the Situationists “sought a revolutionary society” of their own definition; it is perhaps a Heterotopia that would provide the necessary separation from pop-society to foster the development of such a revolutionary society. These are all just fancy words for a simple concept: innovation is possible when you remove yourself from the mainstream and invent your own world. This is the idea behind any fostered or intentional Heterotopia, like Arcosanti or an Amish Mennonite community. It is also perhaps from these points of isolation that we must look for the next revolutionaries, the next true avant-garde if it is even to exist.

References:

Debord, Guy. Panegyric, Volumes 1 and 2. New York: Verso, 2004.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1983.
Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias."MICHEL FOUCAULT, info.. .
Gutting, Gary. "Michel Foucault." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008
Edition). Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
.
Harris, Zach. Spectacle. University of Chicago, Winter 2007. Web. 26 Nov. 2009. .
Kan, Leslie. Spectacle. University of Chicago, 2007. Web. 26 Nov. 2009. .
On the Passage of a Few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationsit International. Cambridge Mass: MIT, 1989.
Sadler, Simon. Situationist City. Cambridge Mass: MIT, 1998.
Thoreau, Henry D. Walden. New York: The Heritage Press, 1939.
Williams Goldhagen, Sarah, and Rejean Legault, eds. Anxious modernisms experimentation in postwar architectural culture. Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, MIT, 2000.
Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

It was a very merry Christmas indeed

2009-12-26T23:47:00.001-06:00

Relaxing, filling (to an extreme!), and very memorable.

Next Steps

2009-12-14T16:09:00.002-06:00

Now that classes are over for the semester, I have a chance to sit back and.... freak out!
My thoughts throughout the semester on what to do after graduation have tended towards a non-design job with something like a non-profit. Ideally, I thought, I would work with an NGO, do research and learn how to write grant proposals, learn how to run a successful business organization, and hopefully gain focus and clarity on the path in architecture I'd like to pursue.
However, recent conversations have had me second guessing this.... and reconsidering grad school as the next step.

I'm just still not sure exactly what I'm looking for. I want to find something that combines my interest in small projects, really tangible things, research, teaching, history and theory, community, materiality, and making. What does this equation add up to?

I've been afraid of leaving academia (because I love the freedom, constantly learning, and the intense discussion)... and I'm not sure if that means I am just still in love with being a student, or if that means I really want to stay in academia.

I've started looking for grad programs and (unfortunately) the deadlines are closing in. I have only a few weeks (if I choose to apply) to get everything ready and submitted. Time is ticking!

However, a few that I'm pretty interested in (at least from what I can gather from the websites) are:
Oxford Brookes - Development and Emergency Practice
Architectural Association - Design + Make
UT Austin - so I could work with the Center for Sustainable Development

Presentation Photos

2009-12-09T22:34:00.001-06:00

"Blahblahblah"

Photos from our final crit are now on the picasa album.

Excellence!

2009-12-07T19:12:00.003-06:00

My final review went very well. Without a doubt the most fulfilling final presentation, and warmest reviews, I have had. They loved it, I loved it; but what's more (and certainly most important) is that there were no details I had to skim over, nothing I regretted not doing.

I am very very proud of this project.

Final Boards

2009-12-06T13:13:00.002-06:00

The presentation is tomorrow. I am second and present at 12:30. I'm actually excited for this presentation, and I think it will be one of my better finals of my undergrad. We'll see!

I've uploaded JPGs of my final boards, but be warned: they are quite large and might slow down your computer to view. But I think that they are nice, and give a good overall explanation of the project. They will be accompanied by all 12 of the final models.

The odd blank spaces are where physical stuff will be added to the models (material samples, 3d prints, etc).

Concept

Architecture/Space

Details

Structure

Materiality

Costume

Phase 3: dance props

2009-12-05T21:01:00.001-06:00

Once removed, the sail shapes become interactive props, that define space and blow in the wind.