Arg!
I’m running behind and feeling overwhelmed. I had a beautiful concept for the tower project , complete with variations . Then, I started to engineer in the stairs, the railing, and the top observation deck, and just couldn’t figure out an elegant way to keep the very scuptural skeleton clear while making it an inhabitable building. So I ditched it and completely redesigned.
I reintroduced the triangle stairs, added a CMU wall for strength, capped it off with a triangle observation deck. After significant tweaking, it regained the upward thrusting arms on the forest side, and got fairly well proportioned. It’s ok, but I wasn’t that excited about it. It relates pretty well to the wall house, but it’s pretty static and doesn’t have the gracefulness of the more sculptural tower. I wish that I had stuck it out with the other concept, but at least I didn’t have to feel like I was muddying up that idea. Perhaps the dual tripod will have its day in the sun.
As far as making friends goes, that’s been pretty successful, and I’m starting to feel like I’m creating a fairly comfortable group for self. Here’s a picture of what happens when grad students are playing in the studio:
That’s Charlie, decked out in vinyl drafting board cover, some very cool paper that has little slits cut into it all over so that it stretches out, and holding Kyle’s concept model. It was over 100 degrees this weekend, and they turned off the A/C in the studio Friday-Sunday. Suffice it to say, it was disgustingly hot and not conducive to work, but quite a bonding experience. Also, Friday night I got about 15 people to come with me to Prince Puckler’s, the local homemade ice cream shop, where they have Sundaes with the local chocolate shop’s fudge for $2.75 on Fridays. Yay for ice cream.
I’ve gotten housing for the fall with a girl named Sarah. It’s a two person house that she’s currently living in, and I’ll need to start collecting furniture, but she’s got the common rooms covered. More on that later, I’m sure, but good to have a place to transition into.
And now, I must get back to work. The next part of the project, a cubical house, is entirely uninspiring to me. I spent the morning making a little cube with volumes carved out, and while it wasn’t entirely unpleasant, I was fuming the whole time about my professor and the assignment in general. After talking this weekend with brother Dan, I’ve started to feel like I should have looked a bit harder and visited the schools. I think that in the fall, my misgivings will prove unfounded, but right now I’m doing a bit of the old regret thing. Anywhoo, the cube making took longer than intended, and I ended up not having as much time for drawing/napping as hoped. So, with a two hour nap under my belt, I now have about 10 hours of drawing to do. No, I won’t get it all done, but I’m going to try for a solid two hours of work.
Oh, there’s so much more to say. An abrupt realization this weekend: there are more people my age in this program (about 60) than I knew of in Brattleboro, although thinking about it a bit harder, I realize that with the School for International Training, there were many more people that I didn’t know. Still, gives a sense of scale. Off I go.