This weekend has been lovely. Compared to pre-architecture school era (or PASE), I worked a whole lot, but now that I'm in architecture school era, (or ASE) it was a relaxing weekend.
We had four things to do this weekend - a precedent study of three braced-frame towers, a midterm analyzing a building, a model of a set of code-compliant stairs, and a presentation of our drawings from Timberline lodge. Plus, I probably should have caught up in my sketchbook and put the rest of my trees into my site model, but I didn't, and I feel o.k. with that decision.
It turns out that other than the presentation of the drawings, this was actually quite an inspiring set of assignments. I created a set of triangular stairs, which sort of went beyond the call of duty, but made the assignment more interesting for me. Unfortunately, as I went along, I lost a bit of interest, so the construction is a little less than fine hand joinery, but it suffices, gets the idea across.
Then, for my midterm, I analyzed the Glasgow School of Art, by Charles Mackintosh. This turned out to be an easy assignment because the building is pretty awesome. Something I'd like to visit sometime - Mackintosh was one of the reasons I decided to go to architecture school. I'm not really sure how to sum up what I wrote, other than that I hope it's not over the top, but at least it's the midterm, which was sort of just assigned to help us get started for the final, which is a 15ish page essay on the same building; I'm now about 3 pages in.
The tower precedent study was what really got me though. There I was, sitting in the introductory lecture on the tower project (the next building on our imaginary lakeside site, to be adjacent to the wall house), hearing this assignment and thinking about how little I wanted to go look at water towers, etc. But once I started looking for towers, after getting sidetracked thinking that I'd study the Rundetaarn and other Copenhagen towers, I found some pretty awesome ones. Here's my list:
- Tour d'observation, Berinzenne (1995) and Tour d'observation, Gedinne [aka Millennium Tower] (2001)
- Suchov – Turm, Technische Berufsschule Zürich
- and a fourth one that I didn't follow through with due to a paucity of images, Aussichtsturm "Lothurm", Magglingen
A great contrast to the Mackintosh building, but also fun to find these very new pieces of architecture and be able to annotate them freshly, without having in mind all of the commentary of former critics. So, overall, a good exercise.
In addition to all this schoolwork, I got a chance to look at a potential house for the fall (very nice, but perhaps a little out of my price range, depending on what we can bargain with the landlords); eat birthday cake and nachos, in that order, with Shannon and Brian (two of my new, non-school friends who are dating and happen to have the same birthday); laze about in bed a good deal; go to a winery in Salem for a concert; and go on a couple of runs (in which I realized just how much sitting in the studio I have been doing). So, I'm feeling fairly well recharged for getting back to school tomorrow, and I'm also feeling ready to make those pesky change of address calls...
Hooray for R and R, in whatever small doses it can be found.