In Case You Were Wondering

I am still alive

I am in Barcelona until Monday, at which point I fly to Brussels and probably take the train to Ghent.

I am having a pretty awesome time on my trip.  Recent highlights - visiting the Alhambra thoroughly; all of Seville (except perhaps the Metropol Parisol, aka the main reason I went); playing with the Grulitas in Lanzarote, both on and off the field; walking around Sagrada Famiglia and finding both Modernista and pre-modernista gems in random Barcelona streets.

The best food I have eaten is the Bon Bon tapas from that awesome restaurant we visited on Sunday night after a nice walk from our apartments on Lanzarote (wherein I explained linoleum and everyone listened with apparent interest).  The bocadillo here in Barcelona the first day I arrived.  The cake-first meal I had with A and J in Cologne, with possibly the best berry cake in the world, then cabbage roulade with delicious pumpkin mash.  Also, the meal they cooked me with orange-garlic salad, duck with orange sauce, and fruit cobbler.  Pastries in Paris, pretty much without exception.  Jamon Iberico.  Tinto de Verrano.

Seville is beautiful, walkable, full of interesting buildings, laid back, and sunny, and if I'm not married in 3 years I'll learn Spanish and move there because it's full of the most handsome men I've ever encountered in one place, and I've played in a lot of frisbee tournaments.

I have met so many wonderful people on this trip, which is something I was really worried about.  I never feel really good writing about them, though...suffice it to say, sometimes it's quite difficult to say goodbye to someone you've know for really only a few hours, or someone you're getting to be with again after many, many years apart.

Blogging while on a trip is hard to do - when I have a thought, I'm usually out walking around, and don't want to stop to record it; frequently I'm without good internet connection; often there's too much to say.  Occasionally there's not enough to say.  Some places are disappointing or require more processing or are overwhelmingly awesome.

You can see a through-line from the vernacular architecture of the area around Chur and Peter Zumthor's buildings.  I wish more buildings were like his best works.

It's an amazingly difficult thing to keep architectural pilgrimage sites maintained.  So many hands want to touch, feet walk through dirty from the trek there, gum and trash magically accumulate, birds poop, sun and rain and snow fall, stones and mortar fall, metal expands, times change.  Sometimes, these days, it's also difficult to see anyone enjoying them in real time.  Everyone has their cameras out, to the point that I wonder what is actually coming through, but nonetheless/and, I feel compelled to take my own pictures to fit in.  Sharing the space with so many camera faces can be very odd - it's not exactly what I imagine when I think of creating great buildings for people to enjoy.

I kept up with photo documentation of my trip until I arrived in Paris.  I have Milan, Cinque Terre, Sagogn, Lauterbrunnen, Basel, and Lyon (including all side trips) through rough edit, but Paris gave me a huge backlog.  Cologne, Barcelona, Lanzarote, and Seville will be up someday. Maybe.

East of Eden is a fantastic book.  99% Invisible is an amazing podcast.  I was a little annoyed by but also quite enjoyed the Alchemist, and enjoyed without reservation the Book Thief.  Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is almost too funny to listen to on public transportation.  I am so grateful for podcasts.  They are free, insightful, entertaining, easy to get and delete, short, and they give you a dose of English whenever you want one.

My French helped me survive, but is not conversational.

My portfolio is under construction.  This whole website is under construction.  Sometimes you start projects at really inopportune moments, but at least you have started them.

I'm very happy to find myself eager to start on my Portland adventure.  I'm not hurrying through this part of the trip, but it's been very reassuring to have conversations with people where I tell them where I'm from and I know that I'll have as much exploring to do when I get "home" as I am doing here.  I'm still keeping my ears open for places that call my name here, though.

I think I'm staying within my budget.  I have occasionally skipped something I wish I hadn't, but such is life.  I feel like I've had some really excellent luck on this trip.  I've stuck quite closely to the plan I made ahead of time.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm drifting around too much, not engaging enough, and sometimes I realise that I haven't been going out on the weekends much - only when I'm with friends, really.  Then, I try to listen hard to what I'm really feeling.  Mostly, I'm not sure what it is, but it's good practice and every now and then, I hear something.

Winter Meals

When I was in grad school, I learned a trick from a friend for eating healthy homemade meals on a tight schedule. It wasn’t a big revelation, since I’d already tried it myself, but her method worked far better than mine. She had drawn up weekly meal plans, including a schedule, a grocery list, and a combination recipe so that all of the week’s dishes could be made in one coordinated cooking session, then stored in Tupperware ready to go out the door.

I have been doing a great clean up and organize effort this year, which has a way to go yet, but I thought I’d revisit her old meal plans the other day. They’re especially good in winter, since it’s not as easy to head to the garden or farmer’s market for fresh bits and pieces. When I looked at her old plans two weeks ago, though, I wasn’t that inspired, so I thought I’d do some new plans. My friend was much more concerned about variety than I am, though, so be forewarned that if you want more than four meals in your rotation, my meal plan is not for you. Here are my plans, which are sourced pretty much from Epicurious.com and smittenkitchen.com

White wine week:
My favorite dish of the week was Orzo with Shrimp, Feta Cheese, and White Wine, from Epicurious (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/107904?mbid=ipapp)
I also made a delicious chard and white bean stew (http://smittenkitchen.com/2011/01/chard-and-white-bean-stew/), and chicken and mushrooms in white wine sauce (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/1940?mbid=ipapp). Each of those three dishes called for white wine, and I finished the bottle with a dried fruit compote (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/231666?mbid=ipapp). To top it off, I bought a few extra carrots and a full bag of celery, plus some fresh tomatoes and lettuce and I made fresh green salads whenever it felt too wintery. I also steamed some broccoli so that I’d have another cooked green.

This week of food actually lasted closer to two weeks, and I didn’t get tired of eating anything. I did have an unfortunate incident with the pepper grinder and the stew, so finding whole peppercorns in the stew was probably the low point of the week, but using a whole bottle of wine and most of a package of thyme were great perks. Cooking for one can be difficult that way. 

Green olives week:
This week, I’m planning to cook a moroccan stew, a barley risotto, and some lamb chops, with a side of escarole or other leafy wintery greens, and some cous cous, probably with raisins involved. I have some white beans left over from the previous cooking session, and the green olives and escarole carry nicely through the recipes. I’m going to do a bit more planning and substituting to make the shopping list more straightforward, but I think it will be another wonderful week (or two) of food.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/01/squash-and-chickpea-moroccan-stew/

http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/01/barley-risotto-with-beans-and-greens/

http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/06/lamb-chops-with-pistachio-tapenade/

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/351173?mbid=ipapp

Do you cook for a week at time? What are your favorite meal plans? Are you interested in having the shopping lists and combined recipes for my weeks? I’d love to hear your story if you try one of these two weeks of food.

Waking up from hibernation

Another two part post – some musings on generation divides to follow the life update.

It’s funny that I just bought furniture for my apartment, since I’m planning to move.  If that move is to somewhere on I-5, I’m good, if not, I’m probably contributing to the awful amount of particleboard in our nation’s landfills.

I cleaned a lot this past weekend, and with the organizing and the beautiful weather, I feel a bit like I’m waking from hibernation.

I realized that I’d sort of been snowed under, with things all over my floor literally preventing me from moving freely.  I subscribe to the idea that a real housecleaning can do wonders for the psyche, and that making doors fully operable and floors clear to walk on can help to make paths in our lives clearer, too.  I realized, too, that the snowed-underness is somewhat chronic for me, but that it might be worse because there were a few things I’d never really taken care of from graduation, plus getting back from LA added an unfinished unpacking to the pile, plus entering into the Cavin Family Traveling Fellowship delayed the cleaning another week.

So, I finally took my car to get washed, which was really so easy that I will totally do it again, and I finally replaced my little old art tacklebox with a set of clear plastic drawers that also hold my office supplies and my sewing supplies.  It’s on wheels, and it almost makes me glad that my desk doesn’t have drawers because it’s great to be able to roll it around as an extra work surface during intense sewing/architecture moments.  I got a new trashcan for our bathroom, our first of which mysteriously disappeared a few months ago.

I also got a bookcase.  I have two wonderful little white bookcases that are painted wood deals from a vintage store in Springfield.  I’ve been watching craigslist on and off, and considering that I went to every vintage/antique/goodwill store I know of in Eugene and Springfield this summer to get those beauties, I knew that chances were slim of me finding a third.  Oh, it was sad to put those plastic dowels through that laminated skin, to nail that cardboard onto the back of that board, but it is amazing to have my books off the floor.

So, I’m set up to conquer the world, by which I mean update my cut sheet and send out applications, redo my last IDP installment, send in my taxes and census form, and finally file away the little bits and pieces that have been floating around wondering where they belong for oh so long now.  If only it wasn’t so beautiful outside.  And, if only I didn’t realize that I’ve been spending way too much time by myself… although with a lot of folks on spring break and a promise of rain next week, I might be successful yet.  Wish me luck in taking on all of those looming tasks – I think it’s going to feel pretty great to knock them out, just like it felt to finally finish furnishing my rooms with the things they were lacking.

Oh, and I didn’t get all new things.  Doing that laundry in the basement, I checked to see if the trashcan had somehow walked downstairs and discovered a somewhat homely but perfectly serviceable coffee table behind what appeared to be an entertainment center.  Yes, it’s got a laminate top, but parts of it were wood, and it was free, and it will go back in the basement when I move.  After six months without a coffee table, it’s awesome to have one.

OK, on to my ponder.  Today I was looking at the Harvard Business Review for graphic design inspiration.  I know, it sounds as bad as it was, but really, I needed to see how they set up their cases, since the cases we’re writing for work are based loosely on their model.  They may not have the best designer on staff, but man can they write a case!  I got distracted by the task at hand by actually reading the article, which was about differences in Gen X and Gen Y approaches to the workplace.  What’s somewhat funny to me is that I think I’ve read the article before, and it’s totally cheesy, and it’s definitely based on caricatures of the stereotypes of the two generations, but nonetheless I was hooked.

I frequently find business writing compelling for several reasons.  I want to be a good employee, and if it’s in my cards in the future a good employer or manager.  I also think that there’s something fascinating about the way that business writing hovers between applied anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics.  I guess the third reason I find business writing compelling is that the people doing the writing know that they’ve got to be compelling, so they generally relate interesting stories, make clear assertions about those stories, develop catchy ways to remember their information, and keep it brief – in other words, they write to be compelling, and the good ones succeed.  Oh, and generally, they don’t go off on tangents like this.

That first reason, though, was what I first thought of when I read the case today.  I saw some similarities between the situation described in the case and my own situation at work, and thought that I might adjust the way I was considering certain parts of the situation.  I also thought that I might be more sensitive to some of the things the case brought to light in my job search.

Then, I thought about that job search, and how this whole internal discussion I’ve had about taking advantage of the downturn to do something more innovative and interesting totally reflected the attributes of the Gen Y thinking presented in the case.  I realized that part of my hesitancy in pursuing that kind of new “job” or whatever it would be that would make living possible as I was doing awesome architecture stuff that was good for people and the environment and let me draw and build and talk to people – that hesitancy comes from my uncertainty that Gen Y thinking is all that good at making stuff in the real world.  It seems clear that it’s got some benefits – open source techniques work for my friend who makes shoes and for some of the bike companies I admire greatly.  Certainly Gen Y thinking is effective in the realm of ideas and technology.  Yet I wonder if Gen Y thinking, as outlined in the article, is compatible with building things, which takes a long time, requires a lot of players and investors, and is meant to last a long time, too.

Here’s the thing.  Part of me is on board with the revolution.  I’m ready to use better platforms to collaborate more effectively.  I’d like to keep drawing by hand, to keep talking in person, but I also think we’re on the verge of having way better modeling software – software that incorporates more of the benefits of hand drawing while it dramatically increases the ability of the modeler to make excellent, easy-to-construct building – and I think that videoconferencing will become more accessible, but more to the point, hard and software will improve our face-to-face meetings, helping us record our thoughts better and launch from those thoughts more effectively.  I also think that design must be at least partially open to the crowd’s influence if it’s going to be relevant, and I think things from coordinating construction to monitoring energy use will all transform in positive ways if we think about them differently.

But part of me thinks that there’s something to be said for putting in your time and going through the established routes.  There is something essential to me about knowing the fundamentals.  And even as I write this, I realize that in some ways, it’s knowing the fundamentals and being tied to those “proper routes” that loose us the ability to look at problems freshly, to hear the voice of the novice that revolutionizes the game.  Fundamentally, I think the same thing is happening in architecture as in environmental change – the status quo is difficult to disrupt.  Building codes and contractual setups change slowly, protecting us from rash decisions, but they can also stymie valid change.  With environmental change, the political and physical obstacles are deeper and wider, but again, they slow change that we can envision, even if we have difficulty implementing it.

Anyways, in the end, I wonder if us Gen Yers, with our impatience; disrespect for pecking orders, lines of authority, and proper protocol; need for feedback; with our life experienced through machines and need for entertainment and instant gratification, I wonder if we can really make great things.  Will our things forever be left unfinished?  Will they be two-dimensional?  Will they speak only to the now?  Or, will they be made faster and better by people who have more time to spend with their families and friends, by people who find that their work is fun and rewarding and challenging, and who tell each other when they’ve gotten it right?

I also wonder if there even is a real, measurable difference, or if it’s just the idealism of the young rubbing up against the conservativeness of the old, dressed up in new phrases, with the specter of technology floating around to scare us all a little.

Well, that’s not where I thought this would end, and not even close to what I thought I would say, but it’s time for me to get off the couch before the day ends.  I’m glad that spring is coming here, complete with adorable little birds at my window, and I hope that it brings even a tiny bit of resolution on the pressing matters in my mind.

Little Victories

We picked a theme for HOPES 15!  It’s “Thinking Small,” and here are the bits I’ve been working on so far:

Solving our ecological problems will require massive change, as Bruce Mau has suggested.  Yet even as we must think big, we must also remember to think small.  Visions are accomplished incrementally; details are important; impacts must be studied and limited; the meek among us require protection.  Join us as we consider the meaning of “local” and “appropriate,” as we ponder the ripple effect.  Help us contemplate nanotechnology and microclimates.  Plant the tiny seeds to grow the revolutionary change.

Topics:

Scale – buildings, economies (Schumacher), “local” discussion

Nature – microclimates, invertebrate communities, guerilla gardening, agricultural questions

Activism – small change/massive change, beginner’s steps (Radical Simplicity)

Ethics – Nanotechnology, appropriate technology, design for the meek/forgotten, design for children

Other – Visioning: what’s the importance of thinking small and thinking big, what can we miss by doing too much of one/the other?; Finding focus in an interdisciplinary field

We’re already gathering ideas for speakers, too.  I’m very excited about this topic: I think that it’s amazingly open ended, yet gets to really important questions and still maintains a core idea that’s very strong.  I can imagine that when we share this idea with everyone (after we come up with a manifesto that’s a lot less cheesy and a lot more focused), people will immediately think about something interesting, and that’s pretty good.

Right after the HOPES meeting I headed to the fields for our last game of the season in the A-league.  Rumpus was holding even with Strike Force Seven when I got there.  We kept it pretty even, but they put up a couple of points on us as the game was coming to a close – 5 minutes left and we were down, but we came back even and finally won at universe point.  There was something amazing going on.  At one point, I laid out for a disc I knew I didn’t have, but that was the moment where I decided to go all in.  I think pretty much everyone else was there with me, too.  

So, Rumpus Room is spring A-league champions.  After the game, we headed back to my house.  I got to throw my first party in my very own house!  We had pizza and I made cookies as folks showed up.  A full-party game of Apples to Apples developed, and we just had a good time together (and with players from Kremlin, the other team that we hung out with all season).

This morning, I taught my last section for Architectural Context.  It’s pretty amazing to have two semesters of college-level instruction under my belt.  I can’t imagine how long it takes until you really feel like you’re in the right place, like you’re really the one who should be talking.  I feel like that at certain moments, but I think that’s just because I’ve never been afraid to give my opinion, not because I think my thoughts are so worthy of professorial consideration.  One way or the other, I’ll just have a little bit of grading left.  Summer is coming on quickly.

So, there are three bits of info.  Lots more going on – other productive meetings, work plans for the summer, obsessive checking of Facebook as if there were actual people there that I could see and talk to, hitting the upload limit for my Flickr account, excellent cooking, and productive errand running.  Hopefully, with such great things happening, and a full weekend coming up, this little sore throat and stuffy nose go away.  And, on that note, I shall get to bed now.

letting it go too long

what do you get? way too much to actually write about.

Seeing Barak in Eugene, and being so inspired that you campaign for him for hours in the rain, snow, hail, and occasional sun. I hope I’ll write about him more once I get wireless in my…

New apartment that I moved into on Thursday and have gotten 90% organized in. Thanks to the fearless four – Renee, Jake, Truc, and Stacey – who made the move from old to new take just about four hours! Photos coming soon…

Which I didn’t take on either of my two trips to Portland this break. Trip number one, I visited Herman and Ruth, enjoyed the excellent okra stew and Herman’s amazing flatbread as well as his amazing dutch oven bread and the divine sheep/cow cheese that they shared with me. We went to Ikea and did several hours of shopping…

Which also happened somehow on trip number two, after I picked up Emily from the train station and we had an excellent lunch at Besaws, but before we drove back to Eugene along the coast, which made me wish I had gone to the coast a long time ago, and made me promise myself I’d go again soon…

but which has the fault of not always having a strong cell signal, so that a call with Stefan was cut short. We’ve made a date to re-call, though, so I’ll surely get to hear his news, as I did…

when Joe Little called out of the blue. He’s moving to D.C., so I’ll have one less reason to visit Chicago, but one more reason to visit D.C. Which I don’t have a great desire to do right now considering…

The current state of our government, and if you didn’t, like me, obsessively listen to NPR this last week, you should at least hear ;this week’s This American Life.

Anyway, this term I’m taking it easy. Just doing a practicum with Gary Moye Architect;, taking Roman Architecture and Architectural Precidents 2.0, teaching Architectural Contexts, organizing and attending the HOPES conference, and taking a short class on Graphic Statics. It will give me enough time to play some frisbee, I hope, and celebrate Ruth’s retirement, I hope, and maybe even visit Oberlin for a reunion…

And maybe, if I’m lucky, I can read some novels this semester. I hope.

Portfolio of My Dreams

I am making a portfolio for getting a job this summer. I started out with great difficulty, and I now have eight pages that I’m very happy with, but that I just realized won’t print the way I expected them too. No worries, should be able to work around that easily, but it’s kind of poopy.

It’s always exciting to hit the print button on something like this, even when you know it’s just the black and white rough. This semester has been so heavy, it’s really come down to moments like this – hitting the print button at 1:24 in the morning to see the draft of the thing that you want to have looking beautiful by Wednesday at 12:00 – that I’ve had to learn to savor.

Making a portfolio is lovely in a way, because you get to reexamine your work and cast it in a new and different light. What did you want to say with that project, what were you learning? So far, this portfolio is about fabrication, concept, system, and observation. I’d love verbs, but I think I’m okay with these nouns. Looking at my projects with these nouns, I’m seeing new patterns emerge – for one, my delight in pattern that I never would have said that I possessed – I think it’s the joy of something orderly yet a little off-kilter.  I see the desire to make something exciting happen in section and the attention to detail that means something quite different than I always thought it did.

Attention to detail is now a mode of thinking about construction – carefully choreographing how materials dance around each other. Where will they kiss, where will they float past, where will they collide, where will they nestle? I always thought attention to detail was in the way one would precisely staple one’s paper; I never thought I possessed it (which, looking back, I’ve always been fairly precise with my stapler, at least when I thought it counted). I’m sure now that I do have it, in droves.

So, will the square format 11×11 set of plates get me a job? I never thought I’d make a square format portfolio, so I hope it doesn’t reflect poorly on me, as I thought it might (for no apparent reason, other than thinking that it maybe says you’re a square). I hope so – I’m going in with the recognition that it’s a work in progress.

I’ll let you take a peek.

Goings On

In the past three days I:

Won a dance contest dressed as a zombie
Completed a studio midterm
Witnessed the 3 am ramblings of a racoon
Rallied for climate action at a Ducks game
Failed to produce any drawings for tomorrow’s seminar
Listened to an intriguing lecture about the Architecture Association (in London)
Contemplated quitting school
Contemplated studying abroad in Italy this spring
Enjoyed beer at the Beer Stein, a local restaurant with over 900 beers
Disengaged from my bike seat while moving forward (slowly, thank goodness)
Wondered what’s going on in my head

Hmmm.

Return to the Prosaic

I’ve been told that I’ve been missed by my vast readership, so here I am, trying to write over the past month and a half.

I’ve gone for two runs since I returned to the US on the 6th, and I’ve started a large book, and generally kept a low profile, since I needed a vacation from my vacation.

I finished the term, and was glad to have that done. My studio partners and I submitted our project to the competition, despite many last minute revisions and extreme difficulty with the printer. The moment of truth came when I was helping Michael cut his presentation boards during the long wait for my boards to print. I held the ruler as he cut – and in his sleep deprived state, slipped and sliced my finger. The cut opened up the floodgates, and everything that seemed wrong about our studio, and about our trip to Finland, and really, about the world, just hit me and, in typical fashion, I lost it. Then, eventually, I stopped crying, and we sent off our project, which did print in the end; we made a lovely model; we had a fun send-off party; the cut, which wasn’t actually very deep, healed; and I think that after all, the experience let me get over some of the silly things that weren’t ideal about our trip and enjoy just how worthwhile and once-in-a-lifetime it was.

We set out after Finland on our travels. We visited Stockholm, Copenhagen, Bergen, Oslo, and the Lofoten Islands, with boat, plane, train, and automobile. The overwhelming feeling was that everything was much more expensive than we’d expected. We saw many fascinating things, despite our attempts to economize, and of course, many pictures will eventually make their way to Flickr. Highlights include going to the Louisiana Museum in Denmark and pretty much all of the Lofoten Islands/Norway.

If there is some sort of overwhelming reply of curiousity about the trip, I can add more details, but since I think I can pretty much count on sharing stories personally with most of my vast readership, I’ll leave it at that. These experiences will undoubtedly surface in the future as they’re now a part of me.

Three more overall highlights from the academic portion of the trip – the lecture series we had was wonderful; our model of the sauna we measured at Kiljava was archived in Finland’s Museum of Architecture; I learned AutoCAD in two days thanks to my studio partners.

So, now that I’ve vaguely covered that vast and interesting part of my life, I’m once again on solid ground to keep reporting to you the prosaic and mundane…thank goodness.

Not What I Expected

Life rarely is.

Didn’t expect to measure a smoke sauna – it makes you smell like smoke, and it might get you a little grubby with soot, and you’ll likely have a backache by the end of the day.  Smoke saunas are dark, so you’re also likely to feel some eyestrain.  Makes you wish you’d have gotten the chance to take a smoke sauna after all that work…

Didn’t expect to upset my boyfriend by drawing – it turns out that when you’re so much of a perfectionist that you can’t let anything happen differently than you envisioned and you can’t admit that you’re making life impossible for those around you, you can really bug people.

Didn’t expect to eat great meals all week on 30€ – including homemade ice cream sandwiches and a meal of grilled salmon, reindeer and lingonberries, mashies, cauliflower, and mixed berries with cream/ice cream.

Didn’t expect to want to be with the aforementioned boyfriend significantly more after our long, tense discussion of many of the things that often come between us.  Then  less when he seemed unable to consider forgiving my aforementioned stupidity about the drawing.  Then more when he showed himself more than capable of that forgiveness.

Didn’t expect to read Harry Potter so soon to its release date – did expect to enjoy it, and succeeded, despite feeling quite guilty as I repeatedly slipped away from social time post-dinner and post-sauna.

Didn’t expect to get to go to Rauma’s Lace Week, let alone the Night of Black Lace – and didn’t succeed, since the tourist book printed the wrong date for the event, and the city of Rauma turned out to be almost a ghost town because everyone had partied too hard the night before.

Didn’t expect to be quite as disappointed as I was by The Simpsons Movie.  Don’t know why.

Didn’t expect to have a delicious desert of Buckthorn sauce over ice cream at a fairly fancy restaurant in Rauma at the end of the strange day of finding ourselves a day late for the big party.

Didn’t expect to miss out so completely on Gingerbread building.  Or to be so enchanted by the Turku castle.  Or to spend so much of the time thinking about past places and people.  Didn’t expect to forget the name of the street I lived on in Brattleboro (Elliot St.) or the ones I lived on in Oberlin (Pleasant and Cedar).  Or to be so nostalgic about both places during such a supposedly exciting trip around the world.

Didn’t expect to ever be so confused about so many things.  Still awestruck by life, though, so don’t worry too much yet…

Excuses, Excuses

Pitiful. It’s the 18th and I haven’t posted yet this month.

Reasons? Despite having “lots of free time” because I dropped my ECS class, I actually have very little free time. Ok, I might have, right off the bat, but things have ramped up. I don’t know how I would be handling it if I were in ECS, actually. But also, I’ve been taking some time to do nothing, which means nothing, including typing on the computer. Oh, and I’ve also been taking a little time out with someone special. Happy valentines day. I have my first boyfriend ever.

Good things are happening – the murmur on the street is that summer travel to Finland looks positive. I’m about to put in my application for a Graduate Teaching Fellowship (GTF), which, if I get it, would give me more teaching experience and would pay tuition for the terms during which I would teach.

On V-day, I helped put together a review for the undergrad studio, and I was very proud, because it went so well. The day before, I rounded up a bunch of friends from around the department and convinced them to be reviewers at 8:30 the next morning. They did, and they were excellent – all the undergrads felt that they got solid reviews, which is more than I can say for myself in many of the reviews I’ve been to.

And yesterday was just gorgeous. I spent much of it in the sunshine, in my tanktop no less. Despite some rearranging, I ended up making the hike up Spencer’s Butte. I went with a bunch of the second year boys, and enjoyed the change of company. It felt like my efforts to get to know more than just the folks in my year were really paying off. The three time a week workouts (with a little gang that goes straight after studio) also seemed to pay off.

So, I’ll post a pic from around midterms, which happened a week ago, because I meant to do it a while ago. This past week I floundered around, trying to make a facade for my building, and had great difficulty. Didn’t get to work much on it this weekend, but I’m sure I’ll get there before the final review. Just have to restrategize…

[The building from Ankeny Street (one block South of the Burnside bridge in Portland). The right is the "wall of action" where all the meeting and training rooms are arrayed. Behind it is the "alley" where bridges connect the wall to the rest of the building. There, a double height volume (blue) houses the shared office space, and a one and a half height volume (yellow) houses the library. All the way to the left, behind the stair tower, is a little pocket garden.]

Oh, and I’ll also say that I’ve been feeling almost constant reminders of various friends from Oberlin and Vermont, wishing I knew what everyone was up to. I think this coming week I’ll try to make a few calls, write a few notes. If you don’t get one, it’s probably not because I don’t love you, but because those best laid plans just never happen.

Something totally random, thanks to Lyrica:
create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Anywhoo, I’m back on track with the blogging. Ready to go again. Missed it. Happy now.

Little birds...

In my dream last night, which seemed very allegorical even while I was dreaming it, someone lassoed a raven with a fishing rod that had a lasso tied in the fishing line rather than a hook at the end. It was amazing.

We went to Portland – up on Thursday night, back on Saturday morning – to scope out our site and get a bit of an idea of what the city was like. Highlight of the trip in my opinion was the Weiden Kenedy building. (You can find it under the “projects” link at the Allied Works website.) The criticism of some of my peers that the building was all about selling the image of young, hip workers in the same way that their ads do. Sure, but the space there was actually inspiring to me. It seems like a while since I’ve been outright excited about a space in the way that I was as I walked through that building. 

I didn’t get enough time to explore the site, and I hope I get another chance to head back to Portland soon. I like the city more each time I visit. I did get a few flashes of insight as I walked around and listened to the woman who presented the site to us. I really need to read the program and get thinking about the possibilities. I was on a bit of a hiatus this weekend, though since I came back to Eugene on Saturday to play in Winter Thing. Throws are still questionable, and I do wonder about my future in the disc world, but I had a great time pretending to be a long and pulling down my fair share of points. I’ll need to do some serious work to catch up for spending so much time on disc this weekend, but it feels like it was worth it, even though I came home freezing both days. In case you were wondering, we went 4-1, and only lost to the eventual winners of the tourney. We took the B pool.

And speaking of catching up, it’s back to work for me. Oh, check out the T-shirt I think I’m going to buy. It’s super sweet. (If you buy something, use this link to get to Threadless.)

Back in the Saddle Again

Off to a great start.

I can still run a mile in under seven minutes, and without too much difficulty, in fact. I’ve worked out 2 days in a row.

I’ve flossed my teeth 5 nights in a row.

I am warm underneath my soft new comforter.

The perfume that I ordered from the internet without having ever smelled it smells wonderful all day. The haircut that I got right before school started looks good up or down, styled or unstyled.

I led the undergraduate studio in rearranging their desks and they did a fantastic job. They all, or almost all, contribute something, even in the large (16 person) discussions.

The teaching in my studio is much more to my liking so far this semester. The project is an urban building, in Portland; it’s home to an imaginary nonprofit that coordinates other nonprofits such as Doctors Without Borders and Architects Without Borders.

I had another chat with Tad and Stefan.

I got my first Netflick, the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and will watch it soon…

I rearranged my studio so that I have fewer peripheral distractions and more pinup space.

I have Human Context of Design and Environmental Control Systems, two classes that cover the exact topics that I find most interesting in architecture: the social/behavioral/relational aspects of architectural space and the sustainable/regenerative possibilities of architectural systems.

Oh, and – it’s on Dan.

The Rollercoaster Ride

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.

Finally, a weekend

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.

Waiting, Anticipating

It's time to play the waiting game, and so that's what I'm doing. Everything for the past two days has seemed so geared towards Monday and beyond. I cleaned the kitchen at the house, got that P.O. Box and figured out tuition, and ordered a whole bunch of books.

In that shopping mindset, I got excited about replacing my broken cameras with a new digital. I did a ton of research (aka read a lot of customer reviews on Amazon) and I've got a front runner, the Canon PowerShot SD600 6MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom. It seems to have all the capabilities I would likely need through a couple of years of grad school, including some manual abilities, plus it's lightweight and portable enough to just take along on fun trips, plus it's not too super expensive. This is a big decision for me, but also a fun way to while away a day...

Which didn't really need whiling. I did a sprint workout in the middle of the day, after making some split pea soup. The workout was great, mostly since I could see how after three weeks of working out I would be in very good shape. That's a big motivator for me. Also, I have found a workout partner who will definitely challenge me. She's a physical therapist, so she seems to know every possible variation on each exercise, which adds flair and adventure to something otherwise potentially dull and painfull. After the workout, I headed to the market on the bike that I've started to fix up.

So, all in all it was a productive day, but really, what it comes down to is sort of a holding pattern. I'm avoiding resume tweaking (the architecture students I hung out with tonight said that they couldn't remember anyone working during the first summer), trying to decide whether to play in the summer league, and opening a new bank account.

Here's the exciting thing though: soon I'll be writing about real thoughts and ideas, rather than giving a list of what I did in my day. I know you'll miss knowing about how much fun it was to darn my socks, but you'll be oh so intrigued to hear what I really think of Loos' voyeuristic designs. Perhaps this weekend I'll get a chance to listen to the Shiguru Ban keynote address from the HOPES conference and respond. That would be nice.

Also, one last tidbit. Tonight I got invited to a salad party. This is a party in which the host, who is probably a gardener, supplies the greens, and the guests each bring a favorite salad topping to share. What a lovely idea - everyone should have one!