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.

A Strange Place

Here are a few things that are rolling around in my brain:

Accumulation and accretion, with the world just getting more and more full of things. And then, the passing on, too.

Desire becoming reality, and other things also becoming real – with my growing perfume collection, I am sampling many scents, and sometimes feel as though there’s something real there. When I taste wine, I often get very physical words coming to my mind – wine for me can be round, soft, or tall. I’m not getting that the same way with perfumes, but I think that if I smell for long enough I’ll be able to articulate things a bit more. I’ve been enjoying the strangeness of them, the leather and sweat and smoke. My favorites are the ones that surprise you over and over again, making you think that there’s a corner somewhere close by that you’ll turn and find something real. The one I’m wearing right now, though – Patou 1000 – I lean in to get a deeper draw, and it smells like someone peed on me. Weird. I can’t get enough from 5 inches out, but right up close, whew! Yet, I’m going to put a bit more on before I go out.  Wherever that corner is, it’s a strange place.

Plus, trying on all these perfumes is probably just a little bit of an intensification to that who am I and what am I doing here feeling that I haven’t been able to shake, even when for a little while, I thought I might have that answer. Today I was useless, and far from figuring out any answers, I just avoided the question altogether. Thought I was making some progress, but still pretty lost on the whole subject of what to put the majority of my energy into. I can’t help but think, though, that at some point this question will be answered, and that a bit of psychic reworking never hurt anyone in the long run. Watching a lot of the videos at the99percent.com has/hasn’t helped.

The conversations that we have with ourselves – I saw Moon last night, and that little phrase kept rattling around in my head.  It’s a must see, and I felt like it was perfectly resolved, despite what many of the reviewers said at the time.  It made me very sad, but then, I also felt very appreciative afterward.  I imagine that’s a part of what I liked about A Serious Man, too.

I’m heading out, and already running late.  I’ve been thinking of several of these things for a while, now, though, so had to get a little ramble out.  No doubt you’ll hear more about perfumes, accretion, and life courses soon, whether or not you wanted to.

Oh, and props to the President for a sweet speech on Wednesday, and for finally having what NYT liked to the Prime Minister’s Question Time, (the reference to which seems to have disappeared from this article) which I have always hoped would happen in our own country.

Who are these buildings anyway?

I’ve been reading Sweet Juniper like it’s my job, and I just had a realization while looking at this, and also thinking about what my mom said the other day.  I’ve long thought about writing about buildings, and I know that I’ll do “real” writing about buildings like I did in my Architectural History classes.  I’ll write about the way that light enters a room, I’ll write about the juxtaposition of materials, I’ll write about the spaces they enclose and the spaces they occupy.  But I also want to write building fiction, and I think I know a little more about that now.

These days, we talk in our profession about how buildings should be built to last.  How they are investments, or ways of sharing our values across time.  We say, or the Europeans say to us, that in Europe, you don’t build with the idea something will come down, you build so that it can stay up, even if it needs patching and fixing.  Buildings are bigger than us, and I think that it makes sense that they would have a longer life span than us, the same way very large trees and whales and elephants do.  And, they’re even less able to care for themselves than plants, which are immobile but have some pretty kick-ass ways of feeding and repairing themselves.  So, as long as we’re in a symbiotic relationship with buildings, we keep them warm and weed-free, and they keep us safe and dry.  But, they also observe us in a way we sometimes notice, and they watch each other and the part of the world that they can perceive (I don’t really believe that real buildings do any of this, these are now my fictional buildings, and maybe, a little bit, what I’d like real buildings to do, too).  They are our memory keepers.  But, I think they’re memory keepers that keep the full experience within them.  A photo album is full of snapshots, a treasure box full of the little objects, but a house, it’s inhabited by ghosts, and those ghosts are both what is good in life and what we would normally like to forget about in life.

So, I think that’s what these buildings in my stories, whenever I may eventually write them, will be – the keepers of the ghosts, the large and sort of helpless, but intensely wise by the time that they’re abandoned, beings that see everything that we do, all the objects we cherish and the arguments that we have and the plants and animals that we don’t really understand, and the way that we’re mostly confused, and keep most of their opinions to themselves.  Maybe that’s a little why we get sad when we knock them down, even when we know they have to go – we know they’ve seen a lot and have stoically endured it.

What my mom said – “It seems as if for most people, like myself, buildings once created become things, possibly very lovely and appreciated things, but still things, whereas for you, buildings once created become creatures, beings, alive and organic and able to act upon other creatures, interact with them being to being.”  What do these ones think about us?  Do they miss their neighbors?

You can write, but you can't edit

I was walking down the street the other day, when my bike had a flat. It’s almost unheard of that I’d make the walk in to work, since the bike ride takes just about 10 minutes. However, at this time of year a morning walk can be really wonderful. There are puddles and sunshine and there’s that good old crisp fall air. In a poetic mood, I drafted this poem in my head:

The trees grow from golden pools
or red skirts dropped to their ankles
in lust last night

And immediately thought of posting it to my faceybook page, where just the night before I had posted:

The late night laundry/agitates in the basement/soap in a dark tub

and

warm from the dryer/knits, delicates, and denim/so many colors

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I generally believe that the poetry that I write mostly in my head doesn’t do so well once it’s written down, and even those verses that translate to physicality fairly well don’t always last for me. Almost as soon as I had written the little tree ditty down, I realized that what sounded lovely in my mind was really trite/derivative/uninteresting. Nice to think, but not so necessary to share. (I do realize the irony here.)

On that line of thought, and what with walking into work, where all I do all day is edit, I pondered for a moment the fact that much of our communication these days is unedited. I imagine that was always the case – kind of like buildings that were designed by architects, communiques that were edited must only make up a small portion of documents, and an even smaller portion of all communication. Kind of interesting to just ponder for a moment all the communication in the world. But, I digress. While this has always been the case, now we proudly share these mostly unedited thoughts in a public and fairly long-term manner. I don’t wish to make this another post about the problems of our modern world, but I couldn’t help but thinking that editing is sorely missing from our world. I am excited and interested by our vast new opportunities for self expression – I’m here, aren’t I – but I wonder what we loose when we don’t review, rewrite, and on occasion, censor ourselves. In particular, what are the political implications to this manner of comporting ourselves?

****

On a different note, I’ve failed recently. I intended to write something wonderful for Blog Action Day, and to participate in 350.org’s giant day of climate action. In fact, I begged off the first one and casually ignored the second to go watch a Ducks game. If I’m not taking climate action, who is?

I have succeeded, on the other hand, in enjoying life a good bit more than I was before. I’m sewing and making other projects. I am cooking delicious food, going out with friends, reading books, and actually finishing my portfolio. I’m trying to capture the lovely sunny moments before it all goes grey for months on end.

****

A final note on two recent Harper’s articles: this month’s Notebook and September’s article “Dehumanized.”

In this month’s notebook, entitled “The Cold we Caused,” Steven Stoll returns to the theme Mark Slouka wrote about in September. Stoll sums up Slouka’s position quite well, despite the fact that he’s applying his criticism to climate change rather than what happens “When math and science rule the school.” Stoll says, “By confirming the human role in climate change, and by declaring a warming world injurious to the public good, the EPA has swung a club against perhaps the grandest capitalist conceit of the twentieth century: that society forms part of the economy, not the other way around.”

On reading Dehumanized, I was certainly convinced by Slouka’s statement that we cannot forever argue for the humanities based on an economic basis, but that we must be able to find other values useful in our society. Slouka’s call for a return to the civic, the political, and the societal concern struck me as important, but difficult to undertake, as any paradigm shift is. Yet while reading Stoll’s article reinforced Slouka’s position, it also made me consider that this argument seems particularly applicable while our economy is in shambles. I wonder to what extent the downfall of the economy influenced this perspective, or revealed this truth, and to what extent that same downfall might allow us to approach these seemingly intractable problems in a different way. Could there be some sort of progress on these matters?

27

I am now 27.

I just fell in love with the BurdaStyle website, and especially the Ellen pants, which, should I ever get to make them, will probably be disappointing since I’m not a stick thin/5’10.” Working my way up to that, and looking forward to sewing again.

First phase of the project is almost done, so work is coming along. Portfolio is coming along more slowly, but progressing. I have a new layout that’s a bit more clear, but I’m still working on how to get some of the spontaneity of the old one in there. The projects are developing into better stories the more I work on them.

Sasha’s visit was wonderful, and I’m looking forward to her moving up to Portland.

Many more plans and thoughts. Finished Howard’s End, reread The Diamond Age (again), and started Rebecca.

Also, I put up the last year’s photographic highlights on my Flickr account.

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.

Late Night Thought

Just a little late night thought.  Snow here has been wonderful; transformed everything into a close/parallel universe.  I feel happy, and like love is happening even though I have no object of affection.  Keep making progress with school, had enough time to make dinner tonight with actual vegetables.  What will tomorrow bring?

Jens

Last night I headed up to Portland to see Jens Lekman in concert.

It was amazing, better than I could have ever hoped. The wait outside the venue was cold and I missed the chance to meet up with the Portland crew – it turned out that their midterm was 5-8pm. Inside, though, the opening band was good (Throw Me the Statue), and I slipped forward into the crowd as they played. 

Shortly after they finished, Viktor Sjoberg came out and started to mix a bit on his laptop – it built up until Jens and crew came out with piccolos and flutes flashing and started off the set with Into Eternity. Here’s the rough setlist (the order is a bit jumbled):
Into Eternity
Opposite of Hallelujah
Your Arms Around Me
Sipping on the Sweet Nectar
The Cold Swedish Winter
Maple Leaves
Postcard to Nina
You Are the Light
A Strange Time in My Life (partial)
A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill
Friday Night at the Drive-in Bingo
You Can Call Me Al
Shirin
Pocketful of Money

I danced along to all of it, throughly enjoying the matching outfits, amazed at how faithful to the albums the performance was, but even better, which I didn’t think was possible.

I’m not sure how to put into words how happy it all made me, but, it did, beyond all reason. Here’s one reason, which the happiness is beyond, but which it rests squarely upon: I had the sense that as polished as the performance was, mistakes were ok, and more than that, being a little goofy, and able to laugh at the world and one’s self in a non-depricating way was really important.

That may not make a whole lot of sense, and I thought I was going to be able to write about the experience a bit more coherently, but I’m not sure that I can. Suffice it to say, it was entirely worth the very low ticket price, and the gas money and time committment of driving up from Eugene.

And now, off to sleep, having decided against the study abroad option, as hard as it was. Wish me luck on my structures test tomorrow…and wish me even more luck in getting through the rest of the semester – I think its really going to ramp up from here as we move towards the final.

Finland in a Funk

Studio has kicked in, and I’m in a funk. There’s a huge amount of program, and it’s quite difficult to understand because of translation issues. It’s also difficult to pull out the kind of conceptual basis for the school that I’d really like. My partners and I have made some progress, but a lot needs to happen before tomorrow’s review.

It’s been a rainy weekend, and I’ve sort of laid low. We grilled out again on Friday night, then I went out on the town with a couple of the other girls. The night started out well, with a fun band and good drinks, not to mention getting out of the 6€ cover. When we headed down to the second bar, though things got a bit rougher, so I headed home, but not early enough to avoid having to pay for the night time train charge of 5€. So all I really did of note this weekend was to head to the National Museum, where I wore my shoes thin looking at everything. This weekend, more than in a long time, I wished I had a good novel!

The past week, though, we headed to Turku. On the way we stopped at Paimio, Aalto’s TB sanitorium, and at a couple of chapels. My favorite was the Chapel of the Holy Cross, a concrete building that used several daylighting elements to acheive a space for mourning that seemed much more moving to me than the other funeral chapel that we saw. I also decided to prepare my case study on the recently completed Turku Library, and my partner Erika and I are hopeful that we’ll be able to talk to the architects (the firm that I mentioned last week, JKKM) about the process and the final project.

So, I posted photos from last term on Flickr, and Michael has posted photos from Finland up to this point. I’ve also uploaded my final presentation from last term, that shows my furniture Twist. It’s my intellectual property, so don’t go getting any ideas!

Ok, I’m going to go make lunch then light a fire and get some studio work done.

Memories

Thought I’d do something to help myself with children’s furniture: I’m going to try to post a memory of my childhood every day.

Number 1
I remember that my brother and I used to make radio shows. I think we probably only did it once or twice, but one day in particular, we spent hours with the tape recorder. We did funny voices, made jokes to one another, and pretended to be pirates. We sat in the front room of 649, on the sea green carpet, next to the black L-shaped bookcases that we had. 

I’m a bit frustrated with school lately, but have other good bits that I’m saving up – a great but tiring weekend of frisbee at Gandy Goose (3-3, finished 4th place out of 16); the first goslings of the season yesterday at the Millrace; Michael making me a very tasty stir fry for dinner Tuesday night.

HOPES is happening this weekend, so tonight I’m heading to the first keynote lecture. I need a quiet weekend soon!

Developments

Just thought I’d post some pages of my sketchbook with a bit of commentary to give a glimpse of what I’m up to in studio.

(Under the) Table was one of my first ideas, interesting because it encourages the subversive use of the dining room table as an architectural aedicula. I didn’t really want to design an “adult’s” table, though, so it’s the first idea to go by the wayside.

The first sketch for a Parent and Child or Child and Child rocking chair. The new idea is to have nesting Matroyoshka like chairs of mini sizes.

Here’s the dowel that would go along with the Peg Chair. It’s developing steadily – now I’m thinking that it will be a hook at the gripping end. If it’s a hook, then two can link together, plus you could hang things on it, plus it still serves the function of a handle for the peg and for the furniture.

Collage of sketches for this furniture piece. The idea is to have a few parts that add up to make many different furnitures – a chair, a table, a desk, a set of steps, a booster seat, a bin, a fort, a set of shelves. The next development (after the pegboard and doweling development) is to have multiple sizes, just like with the Duck chair. Esther suggested more shapes, so I’ll be thinking about that too.

I’ll take pictures of my little models tonight – the pics of the first thing I made out of wood and the mobile aren’t going to happen since they’re now both dried up.

Oh, and if you would, please tell me what you think of the Snap preview. Is it helpful? Annoying? I can turn it off…

Time, creativity, nature...

I should be asleep right now, but instead I’m in this weird state of trying to write an essay and instead checking out new music. I’m supposed to be writing essays for my application to study in Finland over the summer, but they’re on such inane topics that they’re hard to focus on.

Good news of a sort – I got my Environmental Controls Systems classes waived. That means that I have one less class of work to do this term, which should help loosen up my schedule a bit, and that next term I can take a different technical skills class. All that work at Oberlin payed off. I’m a bit worried that I’ll be missing out on an essential part of the Oregon experience, but as Alison (the professor) pointed out, I can always GTF for the class.

So, I’m planning as of now to use the time to read the textbook and just refresh my memory a bit, as well as doing more studio work and explorations in the library. I took my first action in that vein today – I made six tiny models that were mostly just about making six tiny models. They explored some of the concepts I wanted to get at, but they are pretty much just objects that I’ll enjoy looking at over the semester. Studio seems to be going very well so far. I’m hoping that my efforts in plan drawing this weekend aren’t getting me too stuck in my ideas, but I’m making a pretty conscious effort to stay loose with the whole thing. I’m getting a lot out of my professor, too, so far.

The energy this semester seems markedly different than last semester. There’s the fact that I’m TAing, which is a lot of fun even though it’s pretty scary to be the person being looked to for wisdom. There’s the Savage Lectures, which have been pretty fascinating so far. There’s the excitement of actually knowing people in other years, and having a little bit larger social circle. There’s a sense of action, better weather, and the beginning of terminal studios for the upper level students. I’m having a good time, and expect to continue doing so…

Tonight I saw Brook Muller, one of our professors, give a lecture presentation of his fall studio’s work. The studio studied how to create infill development in Eugene that would simultaneously increase the density of human inhabitation and create wildlife corridors. After seeing the work, I’m looking forward to taking a studio with him. The thing that was most interesting to me was that he was working with a landscape ecologist. Evidently landscape ecologists study “how spatial variation in the landscape affects ecological processes such as the distribution and flow of energy, materials and individuals in the environment.” It’s funny how I’ve learned many of the principles that come from the field, but never knew it existed as such. Turns out that many of the principles are analogous to architectural principles and can be strong generators of form in architectural applications.

My reaction was that it seemed very much like Second Nature, that moment when we recognize that we must start to garden our wilderness in order to preserve it.

Ok, now I’m really starting to not make enough sense to keep writing. So I’ll add Dan’s blog to my blogroll and go to sleep, and finish my essays in the morning.

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.)

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.