Some Photos

Here are four pics of the laser cut (my first time using the laser cutter!) model of my multi-furniture prototype.

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…

Dazed

I just came across an old draft of a poem that I will now share with you despite the fact that it should probably never have seen the light of day again:

There is a space — within the heart
Where dappled sunlight drifts –
Accumulating dense and thick
Til summer’s burden lifts

And lets the soul once more resume
The comfort of the cold
Alone — enclosed — and justified
of prejudices old

It’s from my recipe book, when I was in the Emily Dickinson class at Oberlin. Wouldn’t be half bad if I could do something better with the last line.

I’m looking at recipes because I’m supposed to make something for the potluck that my studio professor is hosting tomorrow night. It’s supposed to “tell about me.” I could bring ice cream, but I don’t want to make it. Could make one of my fallback favorites, shortbread or peanut butter fudge or lasagna, which come to think of it, I might make the lasagna. Could make the grapefruit cake I’ve been making recently, and just change it around to be an orange cake so that it’s a bit more straightforwardly Floridian. I’ve sort of been thinking that I’ll make the Mac and Cheese that I made on New Year’s, though, since I’ve been craving it ever since. It requires a blender, though, and I don’t have one and I’m not sure I want to attack the cottage cheese by hand with a wooden spoon.

I’ve sort of been wondering about in a daze the last week or so, maybe even further back. When I’m in school I’m pretty focused, but I’m not that focused otherwise. Perhaps it’s in part due to the fact that I’m still up in the air about what classes I’ll be taking this spring. I was originally going to take a Product Design class along with Children’s Furniture (my studio) and Architectural Context (a required class). But then I got into a Daylighting class and had the thought that it would be great because it would be something architectural to balance out the object making in studio. Long story short, I missed the first Product Design class, but then realized that I had missed it and that I really did want to take that even more than the Daylighting class – basically thinking that the studio and product design class would reinforce each other more and the daylighting class would add more to a semester when I was actually designing a building – so I found the prof and begged and I think I’m in the class. But I’m not really sure. In fact, so not sure that I’m still going to the Daylighting class and still thinking that I need to do the work, which is problematic, since the work is done in pairs…

That and the fact that I’m still needing to figure out Finland tickets and travels, and the fact that it seems like Michael and I have very different schedules this semester, and the fact that there are still things like making a portfolio page for last term that I didn’t do over spring break that I sort of want to do, oh, and the fact that studio is still entirely open ended and I have no direction to start exploring yet are all making me feel quite dazed. At least it was a drop dead gorgeous day today and I got to spend a good bit of it outside, running and reading, and wandering around aimlessly in a daze.

So, I should really go to the grocery store soon, because whatever I make probably should be made tonight, but I do want to promise pictures of the little centerpiece that I made in studio yesterday, complete with the story of how it came to be. Good things are going to come out of this studio, I’m sure of it. And I’m definitely making the orange cake. Tomorrow.

Spring Breakin'

I’m currently enjoying the most laid-back spring break I’ve ever experienced. Michael (the boyfriend) and I were originally going to head down to San Francisco, but for many and various reasons, we changed our plans at the last minute and have been hanging out in Eugene doing very little of anything. We’re going to head up to Portland for the weekend, which is particularly exciting since Emily, my friend from Oberlin, is visiting the West Coast and will be my main attraction to Portland.

We just got our studio assignments for next term, which for my little ever-forward-thinking brain is super exciting. I’m in the Children’s Furniture studio with Professor Hagenlocher, which was my first choice. I was a bit concerned to take an Interior Architecture studio for my first studio but it seems really exciting and I’m sure I’ll be able to follow up with a lot of good architecture studios later – especially since I already know I’m heading to Finland for the summer.

Speaking of which, yesterday, I bought two travel books to scope out things to do in Finland and beyond. I’m trying desparately to figure out what travel dates make the most sense, since tickets are going up, but it’s pretty difficult to try to plan for the trip. Right now I’m thinking that if I fly out of Chicago to Finland I can get pretty good prices – then I can get a cheap flight from Portland to Chicago, hang out for a few days there, and on the way back jump down to Florida at the end of the break. Just have to figure out what sort of time is appropriate at the end of the program, which of course means making an estimate of the cost of being there, which of course is very difficult to calculate for one such as I with little to no understanding of what I would like to do there.

Anyway, just a quick update from the semester. I passed with flying colors from my studio, literally, with a Pass Commend. My professor really liked my work, as did I, and I hope you will too. I made a little set on Flikr for those of you who who’d like to see some of the highlights.

Hmm, it’s 3:45, and Michael and I are going to get some lunch. I’m going to see if I can convince him to take a little trip to the hotsprings. Oh, and maybe I’ll get you a picture of him soon…

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.

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.)

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.

Music, Culture, and Distracted Posting

Just sitting around at home, trying to work on a mixed CD for the folks at school.  We all promised that we’d make a mix of our favorite songs and then share, so as to increase our musical horizons.  When you listen to 10+ hours of music a day, sometimes you have to have someone inject some new sounds into your repertoire.  When I’ve got a resonable playlist, I’ll post it here, so you all can oh and ah at my fantastic musical taste.  I’m going to try to keep it pretty folky, since there was an original idea to have each person’s mix be one genre, and since much of my music falls into that very broad category.

I’m going to a conference call today on how my mother’s church can work with the new Orlando Performing Arts Center.  Kind of exciting to think that Orlando might have an answer to Playhouse Square.  It’s not nearly as much of a cultural wasteland as you naysayers out there may think.  Or at least it won’t be in five years.

Actually, when you think about a new performing arts center, you realize just how much interesting culture there is in a place.  I think that once it’s consolidated, people will take quite a different view of the city, and perhaps the city will take a different view of itself.

I’ve got to get going so that I can drop mom at work and have the car to get to this meeting later.  I got a new licence, with a horrible picture, for this very moment.  So, more on cultural development and Orlando next time.

Postscript is that I’m staying at mom’s until Monday night, so photos won’t be up until Tuesday at the earliest.

Are we there yet?

Just thought I’d take a moment while I’m sitting outside of the model shop to write a word or two. I’m waiting to get a sheet of wood laser cut with the title of our project and a scale figure, but I have a strong suspicion that no one is going to be here tonight. Guess we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way.

We’re so close to being done, and I’m so ready. Last night I pulled my first all nighter of grad school. Having spent quite a while making my disappointing web page, I then had to scramble to make a model and draw a perspective for the spatial composition review this morning at 8:00. Luckily, I really enjoyed making the model, and thought it was perhaps the best exercise I’ve done so far at school. We were each given patterns – generally plans, but some less representational patterns, too – and had to transform the 2-D pattern into a 3-D spatial composition. The space had to be architectural and have a program.

I chose to make an art school from one of Tadao Ando’s plans. I used it in section, though, and had a subway stop with pneumatic tubes, and then a lecture hall, a gallery/hallway, classrooms, studios filled with diffuse north light, a pool for studying how things move underwater, and a field for setting up landscapes and large outdoor installations. I’ll post some photos soon – the model really was beautiful, and hopefully it won’t be too destroyed when it’s returned to me.

I saw Johanna Newsom last weekend after all, and I made the right choice. She played Book of Right On, Sprout and the Bean, Bridges and Balloons, the entire new album (Ys), Sadie, Peach Plum Pear, and Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie. It was amazing to see her alone on the stage, but with such presence, and I loved the material from the new album, which she played with a five person band. I managed to be at the edge of the stage because I won a free ticket to the next concert in the raffle before she went on. I had to pee the entire time, but it didn’t matter at all as I sat and listened.

I’d better get back upstairs, since no one has come to open up the model shop. We have one more project due tomorrow, and then we’re done for the semester! Hurray, I’m looking forward to visiting sunny Florida so much, and sleeping and running and eating like a normal person!

Final Review, Finally

So, another long time coming post. It’s been hard not to write more here, but clearly not hard enough – I’d say stressed is the word of the month.

We had our final reviews yesterday, and I thought it went surprisingly well for me, perhaps surprisingly less well for everyone else, based on what others have said to me. I was pleased that the reviewers generally liked my scheme, despite the fact that part of it was aptly described by the first reviewer as looking like a double-wide. I felt like my insistance on exploring a few ideas was reinforced, and the reviewers had helpful ways of how to make some decisions more readily in order to push the ideas to the forefront. Primarily, one reviewer explained to me a process of diagramming that seemed like a revelation, and I’m excited to try it next term.

I have to admit, I was pretty depressed about my scheme before the review. Adding the landscaping definitely regained some of the cohesion of the scheme, and brightened the outlook a bit, but I was still not as proud of my work as I was this summer. In considering why, I started to think about what I had learned in the semester, and realized that this course seemed much more about editing – about floating an initial idea and then sticking with it to sculpt it into something viable – than about exploring – questioning, coming at the project with a deep curiousity, trying many different approaches, and then settling on one. I’m sure I’ll be thinking about that more as I have my exit interview, but my hunch is that I’m of the second school, dispite how valuable it is to learn this method.

Ok, lots more to say about personal life and other bits of school life than I can really digest right now. I’m getting excited for the break, since I still have three more projects to push through. Those projects should be lots of fun, though – a website and brochure, a small cabin for a camp, and an abstract transformation from a 2-D pattern to a 3-D building.

I’ve got to keep writing, it’s amazing what this does for the sanity level…expect to see more soon.

Oh, and weigh in if you have an opinion – do I go see Thom Mayne lecture or Joanna Newsom sing on Saturday?

Been a Long Time Coming

Woah, back on the blog – I’ve been away too long.

So, lots of developments. I went into a bit of a funk for a few days when I couldn’t get my design for studio worked out. Called mom, talked it through with her, got a few ideas, came into studio and worked out the plan in less than an hour. Woo Hoo. But then again, after worrying over the plan for so long, I lost a bit of what the overall architectural vision of the place is. Recoverable, and that’s the next task, after all, but a little scary to find oneself so unsure of something that is really the basic unit of what makes a plan architecture.

Anywhoo, on to more exciting/recent developments, I voted today, and I hope that you did too.

Sunday night I drove up to Portland with a greatly reduced crew to the Bonnie Prince Billy concert. A bunch of folks bailed on the show, but thanks the power of Craigslist, we were able to resell the tickets no problem. The show was awesome despite the fact that I only recognized about four of the songs, and the fact that we were sitting about 10 feet away from a guy who decided to heckle for the entire show.

The rain in Portland that night was particularly bad – we think that the leaves had covered all of the storm drains, and we actually had to cross in the center of streets because the intersections had become impassable rivers. Also, there was a rumor that there was a small earthquake while we were in the show! The rain, though, has started in a serious way, and it’s impossible to keep dry, although my Patagonia jacket does well for the top half. Gotta get some fenders and some rain pants.

Big brother Dan is visiting, and he helped me set up a new external hard-drive for my computer, so that I can hopefully get my creative suite running fast, lightning fast… He’s also cooking tasty food for me, and we’ve gotten to chat a bit. Tough trying to get time with him while trying to be a responsible student.

Oh, by the way, on Friday, there was a really great lecture by the folks at Lead Pencil Studio. The work was inspiring, and it was fascinating to glimpse how their collaborative creative process worked/how they blurred the lines between art and architecture.

Ok, off I shall go to grab precedents for our little cabin we just designed for building construction – whoops, aren’t the precedents supposed to come first?

An Actual Architectural Musing

So, since we’re designing our studio project in heavy timber, I’ve been thinking a lot about the material. I’ve been caught between two ways of making: the neo-timber glue-lam and steel bolted connections with tensioned cables, and the shipbuilding-inspired Greene and Greene/Japanese Joinery all-wood connections.

Here’s the question. Both are beautiful in their own ways, and both are problematic in their own ways. But, which one conveys more precision?

Is it the steel connected glue-lams, which can be made to have the exact strength and load bearing capacity they need, and can be connected with plates forged specifically for the job?

Or, is it the hand-crafted all-wood connections, which require precise planing and measuring, and a deep appreciation for the limits of the natural material.

Environmentally speaking, I suppose that these days it’s more responsible to use glue-lams, unless you happen to be rich and lucky and stumble across a large pile of reclaimed timbers that are in good enough condition (specifically, not too hard) to remake into the structure of your building. Or, if you happen to be building on a wooded lot, and can mill on site, carefully picking your trees from the stand – the way we did at Oberlin when we built the strawbale farm office there.

Still, I want to repeat the question before I head off: which one – glue-lam and steel or wood-joined timbers – conveys more precision? 

Oh, and I guess, if you happen to know, which one is actually more precise?

****
Part 2:

After a discussion this morning in Building Construction, I gained another related question.

How much is precision conveyed by specificity?

For example, is the reason that the all-wood connections convey precision because you know that not only was each connection designed conceptually, but also that each connection was refined when it was actually made in the wood, and that none of the other connections were the same?

Must get back to class, but had to add that bit in – oh, wish I could keep hashing this out…

October 18, 2006Replies 2

Wish I were getting more (Science of) Sleep

OK, super fast post:

Science of Sleep was amazing, especially since we went to The Sweet Life whose web site looks dorky, but which is actually so frickin good and really hip. We went as a goodbye to our temporary housemate, Karen, who’s going on a Mission to Salt Lake City this winter.

That set a good tone for the past few days. We had a pin-up yesterday in Studio, and I’ll have to get some photos up soon of my two proposals, although I already started to rip into the one that I’m going to adapt for Friday. I’ve done lots of diagramming, which has been good fun, and my next diagrams are going to be of the flows of water, air, light, and heat on the site. It’s a good chance to get some of that environmental responsibility in.

Sunday disc doesn’t seem to be working out for me – it’s just too hard to tear away from the studio at that time. So, I’m going to have to make an even more determined effort to catch another workout time.

Saturday night I went to my friend Jake’s house and played “He Said, She Said” with a small group of folks. It’s one of those write a phrase, fold it over games. The format is

[Male Name]
Met [Female Name]
At [Location]
He Said “[Quote]“
She Said “[Quote]“
And the consequences were [consequences]

Very simple, but absolutely hilarious. We were rolling around with laughter. It is important to limit the names to people that everyone in the group knows, but other than that, anything’s up for grabs.

We had our first exam today in Building Construction, and we’ve got lots going on – precident studies, cube building, and ever more projects for digital media. You can see my Photoshop explorations at my other website. They’re not quite as outrageous as a lot of other people’s, but I think they look pretty good, and a bit more realistic, if not in scale then in how they’re blended.

Ok, that’s some updates as to content of life, even if not any serious musings. I’ll get some photos of work up soon, and perhaps even add more photos to my Flickr account. Oh, and maybe one day I’ll respond to your comments – thanks, btw.

October 17, 2006Leave a reply

Cloudy gray times, you are now a thing of the past

I had a really fun weekend, and I just finished up a new assignment for my digital media class, so I thought I’d pop up a note.

We got our program for studio, and we’ll be designing “Agate Strings Workshop.” It’s “a place for the making of violins and fiddles, teaching and learning how to play these instruments, and live performances. A group of violin and fiddle makers have joined with several teachers to build a facility where they can share workspace and have a shared interior and exterior place for live performances. They imagine holding recitals for students here, performing here themselves, and inviting other musicians to join them.” The program came with a pretty inspiring speech about the process of design, and articulating the spirit of the place.

Lots of work on the table, but I’ve also been making plenty of time for play. I’ve got two leagues going, and even though the Sunday level of play is a bit more chaotic, it’s still lots of fun. I went to the class potluck on Friday night, and to our Denial team party on Saturday night, both of which were relaxing and entertaining.

I’ve got to get to class, which is a shame, because I wanted to write a bit more of substance, but I’m going to post a poem that popped into my head yesterday when we got the program.

Daily

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

-Naomi Shihab Nye

October 10, 2006Reply 1

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

Today my friend Rima died.

I hadn’t talked to her in about a year and a half – last time I saw her we were playing together at Gender Blender, the tournament in Canada that was my stop off between graduation in Oberlin and adult life in Vermont. She got married this summer to her longtime boyfriend, also a good friend of mine. She had cancer, though, and today she died. I didn’t know that she got married or had cancer until one of our mutual friends called me today to tell me the news. The weird thing is, though, that today as I was biking home, I thought I saw Rima, which was strange, because I haven’t thought about her all that much since closing her last email with pictures of that tournament in Canada. I was thinking about a number of friends, folks I wanted to call and get in touch with, as I was biking, but I wasn’t thinking about Rima, and then I thought I saw her. So I just wanted to record that bit of uncanniness, and say that I will miss her.

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I felt so sad and alone as I sat in studio. My design groove is definitely not back yet, and as I sat there being discouraged by that fact, I started to enumerate all my flaws, and feel entirely inadequate and very unhappy. I felt unfashionable, frumpy, clumsy, and smelly. I felt like the one person I had started to really become friends with was angry with for some undecipherable reason. Thank goodness I had frisbee league – as I ate an apple in the studio and tried not to cry I thought about skipping it, but as soon as I set foot on the fields my spirit was lifted and I felt whole again. I was most certainly frumpy and smelly, but it was of no consequence.

I dressed up today, wore my black heels and a fancy sweater and some mascara. I looked at myself in the mirror, and for the effort, I didn’t think I looked appreciably better, but I thought at least I gave it the effort. I made it through the day with significantly fewer negative thoughts, I talked to my formerly close friend, and decided that I will gently work my way back to being friends with him, and I figured out that I do really have some free time on my hands.

I want tomorrow to go well in the studio, because I need some encouragement from actions, and not just from the kind words of friends.

I’m so glad you’re here, dear diary.

October 5, 2006Reply 1

Being Here

Wherein the author explores her surroundings, both physical and mental.19202122232425262728293031 17181112131415161067895 1234Nov » « SepOCTOBER 2006MTWTFSS

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Cube House Drawings Layout

Cube House Drawings Layout 

Here’s my first attempt at blogging from Flickr. This is the photo of all of my drawings from the Cube House project. It shows how the three pages related to each other. I chose to draw in pen on double matte mylar, which turned out to be really fun. The drawings have life to them because the lines aren’t ruled exactly straight – if you look closely you’ll see there’s quite a bit of wobble. But, that wobble gives them a nice hand illustrated look. Also, using pens means keeping a steady line weight. Unfortunately it also puts limits on how light and dark you can go. I used six weights of pen, but the one complaint I heard about the drawings was that there was not enough variation in line weight. I would have liked to poche (fill in with shaded or, in this case, solid tone) the structural members in the plans and diagrams, but since I was holding off on that for if I had enough time, I didn’t get to that. I think that would have solved the line weight problem.

The Close of Another Chapter

I’m officially done with my first semester of grad school, and in fact I’m already a few days into my vacation.  I’ll be bopping all over the east coast in the next few weeks, and I didn’t bring my laptop for security reasons, but I’ll probably still be writing more often than when I’m in school.  Especially since I have a lot to ponder after this first semester.

Since I last wrote, I finished the paper, went to the tournament, scrapped the design I was working on for an entire redesign of the cube house, completed the final design including model and three sheets of ink on mylar drawings, completed my sketchbook, had my exit interview, and started these intercession travels.  There’s a lovely picture of Herman and Ruth at the tournament that you should check out as a teaser to further stuff…for now I’m going to go enjoy pizza and conversation with the fam, who just walked in the door – Liz and Ricky and B.  Lovely!

Study Break

Taking a quick break from writing a paper to say hello to myself, remember that I am a real person, not just an automaton that goes from task to task, doing whatever she is told.

Actually, I’m quite enjoying writing the paper – the one about the Glasgow School of Art – as I did a sizable amount of research and got a feeling of actually being there. Strange, though, that I know how different it must be to visit than to look at photos and imagine. It’s a good exercise, though, because it’s fairly analogous to the design process. Yes, I make models, but a fair bit of what I do is sit and look at what I’ve drawn and imagine the reality it implies. Each drawing brings me a step closer to what that reality might be like.

Drawings become like notes on the imagined places in my head (in fact we have a book called Visual Notes which I recommend, and want to get more thoroughly familiar with, but which addresses more the notation of actual real places). Yesterday, I did just go outside and sit with my eyes closed, imagining that I was approaching the site of my Cube House (the third part of the compound we’ve been designing). I felt kind of dorky, but it worked. I’d become familiar enough with my rough plans and sections and my sketch model that I could start imagining the places that they enclosed, complete with patterns of light and material choices. Pretty cool!

The drawing class we had was very helpful, and perfectly timed to make that envisioning exercise totally worth the slight embarrassment I felt. They told us how to trace over pictures to get perspective shots of an imagined building. It’s sort of like a collage, you just take the lines you want and then add the rest from your brain or from another underlay of a different photo. I made some very convincing drawings of my buildng, and called it a day.

This whole thing was in part inspired by Mackintosh’s moves on the facade of the Glasgow School of Art, and by that building in general. I do hope that I always have a history class to feed me inspiration! I’m planning to really start a scrapbook sometime soon…

Speaking of inspiration, I bought plane tickets for a trip home to Florida, then up to visit Grandparents in Massachusetts and friends in Vermont. The South Main gang will be on the verge of moving out of their house by the time I head their way, so I should be in for another lovely, melancholy saying good-bye party. The trip as a whole has been inspiring me to keep plugging away – I’m so close to being done with my first semester! I’ll finally have time to change addresses and close my old bank account! 

Also, I’m heading to Kleinman, a tournament in Portland, this weekend, which is my main inspiration for trying to finish my paper tonight. We all know how much work one gets done at frisbee tournaments.

Also, I just added a link to Practical Action, the British group that works to get appropriate technologies out there, in use. Check out the gravity ropeway on their front page. All my designs should be so elegant.

So, I was thinking that I’m not feeling challenged enough by the school, but then, I was thinking harder, because that’s what Rachels do best, and I realized that I need to meet the challenges they are giving me head-on, and then I can see how I feel from there. Basically, that means no more whining about anything, ever, and the resoluteness to stand up for what I believe to be true and right, coupled with the intelligence to know when I haven’t got a clue and the flexibility to hear and enact valuable changes to my opinion.

Doesn’t that sound like a set of traits that everyone would be better off displaying?

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.