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.

Oberlin Again

When they told me at the airport desk that I was flying standby because I had no seat reservations, I knew I’d be writing about going back to Oberlin.  It’s been so long since I blogged that they’ve entirely changed the WordPress layout, which, by the way, looks really good.  But sometimes you just have something to say, or far to much to say, and you realize that even though your last post, from two months ago, was about how long it had been since you wrote, it’s time.

I got on that plane on Thursday night, flew to Vegas, and Chicago, and finally Cleveland, where I begged my way back to Oberlin.  We drove in pretty quietly, everyone on the airport van watching the landscape for change, trying to remember what had been there last time we came that way.  Finally, past the Farm, we arrived.

Getting back was like inhabiting a memory.  In my mind, the place had become more real than the actual, alive Oberlin.  I knew where everything was (with some notable exceptions, like the A-level remodel), remembered everything, but it all just looked a little flat.  Maybe that was in part due to the fact that when I arrived, the town was still quiet.  Friday was a day of arrivals, and after I found Sam at his gas station and put down my bags at his house, I returned to Tappan to collect people.

This clumping was something I hadn’t quite experienced as a freshman, coming in for preseason and missing out on that first week of orientation friend-finding.  It’s a thrill to have a posse, though, and I thoroughly enjoyed adhering first to Melissa, and then to Tina, Phoebe, and Henry.  In the Feve by around 3, it just felt so good to be back.  The whirlwind started.

The dance party at the Sco, the dance parties/porch sits at 189, the alumni game, the trip to Chance Creek, breakfast at the Black River, stumbling into the Swing Dance, schmoozing at the art show, visiting the AJLC to use the facilities, showering, drinks at the Feve, the front lawn of Tank, softball at the Pleasant street park, the Bippy show, weirdly, partying in South, buying a sticker at the bookstore and a postcard at Ben Franklin: all over the place, reuniting.  Sleep a little, do a lot.  Miss even more.

Revealed (or rerevealed) to me:  

1. I want to do everything I ever find interesting, and am frustrated at the impossibility of that desire.
2. I know a lot of fantastic people doing amazing things, and am frustrated that I do not
   • know them better
   • keep in touch with them more frequently
3. There is a script for the reunion meeting that is a little sad and progressively harder to overcome the more you use it. Phrases often repeated:
   • Where are you now?
   • I’m in grad school/I’m going to grad school/I’m working in this amazing environmental job/I’m getting married
   • I know you look familiar, but I can’t remember what context I knew you in
   • Meet at the Feve tonight
   • Do you know where Hans is? (a representative example)
   • When did you get in?
   • What’s going on tonight?
   • and my repeated conversations – about Eugene: how close it is to everything, how it took me a while to like it but I do now, how it’s not as rigorous as I like but you just have to make it what you want, how if you’re ever on the west coast you should visit me/I should visit you – about Oberlin: how much it feels like this weird memory that I’m inhabiting, how I’m in sensory overload, how when I was there I could deal with a lot more going on all at once but since I’ve left I no longer can be in that close proximity with that many people and be comfortable and happy, how the people even if you didn’t know them that well just feel like the kind of people you want to be with, how everyone is doing such interesting things, how I feel kind of dorky taking pictures of the buildings but I feel like I need to because they come up in my architecture classes – about the reunion: how so many people are here!, how certain particular people are not here, how amazing it is to be here, how it’s not actually my reunion but I knew that I couldn’t come next year and maybe not for some years after that and this was the last year I knew anyone graduating and plus the people in this cluster (02-04) were the people that were there when I was a freshman and I felt close to them maybe even more so than my own cluster.
4. Oberlin is beautiful, especially in the spring.  The people there are pretty amazing, and really are different from the general population of the US.

So, a mostly wonderful experience.  Even the hard parts, the not getting enough of the people I wanted to see and soak up, the occasional awkwardnesses and left-out feelings, the being excited when you’re so sleep deprived that you want to cry, even those were pretty good.  Maybe the hardest part, scheduling my plane so that I couldn’t find a ride to the airport and had to spend a lot of valuable party time asking people to borrow a car and then leaving straight from a dance party and not getting to really hug people and say goodbye – maybe even that was pretty good.

When can I go back?

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.

APT! OMG!

I’ve been saving that title for weeks now. My future landlord called today and told me that I am approved for the apartment I’ve been thinking about for two months. Those dreams will now be a little more real. I’m going to take a look on Saturday just to confirm that I really do want to move in there. Always good to double check. But, I am sooo excited.

You know what else is good? I’ll tell you.

a) I’ve got a little portfolio to show off tomorrow, plus a very nice resume. I will get three copies of the portfolio printed and bound in the morning (hopefully, although I expect the line will be long), and ten copies of my resume, and I will go talk to the visiting firms and be professional. See what kind of recruiting I can make happen.

b) Which, on that front, I’m having a conversation with a local firm on Monday to talk about the potential for me to work with them next term in a practicum, which may turn into a summer internship anyway. Perhaps the poor studio offerings for next term will turn out to be a boon.

c) I’m announcing the Top Ten Green Projects competition tomorrow, at which point it will hopefully be a little bit more out of my hands and a little less work for a little while.

In the next few days, perhaps I’ll really have some time for studio! Actually, I’m about to head home and do a little bit of work right now.

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.

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?

I am posting

because it’s been a long time.  School is really packed, but less so now that I dropped my Pritzker Prizewinners class.  I think I’ll catch up with work this weekend, though, and I’m getting to work on studio again already, so I’m very happy with the decision.

Part of the reason I’m behind is because last weekend I played with the Fighting Merkins at Winter Thing, a little tournament here in Eugene.  We came in second to a bunch of high schoolers heading to junior worlds in a few months.  More than that result, however, the weekend was a fantastic amount of fun.  Good to play again, with those folks especially.

It’s late at night and I just spent a couple of hours doing structures calculations/organizing my gmail account/uploading photos to flickr/researching jobs opportunities and classes for the ecological design certificate/mostly doing structures calculations.  Point being, I’m not very eloquent.  I did have to break the no blogging spell, though.

More and more and more.  Soon.

Going Home

I thought I’d write a bit about the act of going home; its peculiarities, its necessity, how unattainable it can be. Little did I know how much I might have to say.

I’m in approximately my 26th hour in the airport. The one I’m in now is Phoenix. I spent last night sleeping on the floor of the Las Vegas airport. I’m pretty sure it’s the first time that I’ve slept overnight in an American airport waiting for a flight.

My flight back to Eugene from Orlando didn’t start well. When I got to the gate in Orlando, I found out that our plane was delayed just over an hour for maintenance. Not to worry – my layover was long enough that I would make it to Las Vegas in plenty of time. I wasn’t looking forward to the 2:15 arrival, but I had a cab already called and I knew I’d be just fine.

Las Vegas proved to be much worse than Orlando, though. Already, by the time I arrived on the scene, the action had started. Our flight was canceled, and the crew reassigned to another flight. Almost immediately, though, our flight was reinstated. Without a crew, though, we were stuck on the ground until a new crew could join us. They’d come quickly from elsewhere in the airport … no, they’d come flying in from Tuscon … no, the plane from Tuscon was missing a part, so they’d arrive in a few hours after the part was installed … no, the flight was cancelled.

Strung along through the night, my 62 fellow travelers and I had set up camp in the A terminal of McCarran airport with thin blue blankets and pretzels past their expiration dates. I found a secluded spot with a plug, plugged in my computer and set my pillow on top of its warm cushioned form, and created a little nest of blankets and woolen hats and bags. I tuned out the slot machines and drifted in and out of sleep each time a new announcement came over the PA.

With the final announcement of the cancellation and a hasty handing out of meal vouchers, we trudged down to the ticketing counter, moving in the opposite direction of the first early morning passengers. In line for another hour and a half, we overheard stories and exchanged rumors; we tried not to stare at the man going to visit his dying sister and the man about to miss his son’s wedding; we wondered what we would do if we were stuck in Vegas for two days, when all the hotel rooms in town were probably booked.

Then, with the good news that there was some space on the 1:09 flight from Vegas to Phoenix that would connect with the 5:56 flight from Phoenix to Eugene, the waiting began. Since then, I’ve pretty much been sitting, or, on occasion standing in line. Now, the cheer has just gone up: We’re Going Home!
Boarding is about to start for the final flight of the journey, so I’ll have to report on the outcome and give a more meaningful ponder to the more existential aspects of going home once I’ve arrived there. For the mean time, I’ll say that I flew through The Road, which was weirdly appropriate reading to have with me. I appreciated that my request for a lunch voucher was filled by the counter agent with no questions. And, I enjoyed some of the moments of conversation with my fellow travelers quite a bit, although perhaps not quite as much as I enjoyed conversations with longtime friends over the phone. I’m going to get on the plane now (only 45 minutes late this time)!

Charge

I have retreated, and now I am ready to charge.

The end of this semester was quite abstract. I worked extremely hard on my studio final, completing several plates of highly detailed black and white pencil drawings. My presentation was a success; the architecture it conveyed was only marginally successful. My reviewers variously had little to say on the subject, or they told me that it was “unconvincing,” “too polite,” and looked residential on one side and like a library or airport on the other side. My professor, however, seemed happy with it, and told me to be a little less self critical, so maybe it’s not so bad. I believe that the work will be displayed in the Hearth (the little cafe in the middle of our school) at the beginning of next semester, which is actually very flattering.

After the studio review, everything else I had to do seemed strangely removed. I think I was reeling a bit from the criticism at the review – I’ve become so used to the Oregon style of review that even though I was excited to get a critical review, I was almost completely unprepared for it. So, I wrapped up the Kahn seminar, the seminar on urban architectural ecology, and my structures class. I have to say, smashing the two foot tall balsa wood tower that Sarah and I tied laboriously together with hemp rope was the highlight of the week. All in all, though, even with the low level of energy I had at that point, and the horrible cough I’d picked up, the end of the term was pretty satisfying.

And this weekend, after I finally finished cleaning out my studio, I turned right around and headed to the retreat. We went up to Odell Lake, and in the lap of luxury we played a lot of games to “get to know each other” and then we organized the Environmental Control Systems class that we’ll all be teaching next term. Simultaneous to my retreat, the Vermont crew got together in Leyden and partied. A shame to miss it, but duty, and tuition, health insurance, a stipend, and professional growth all called.

So, I’m not sure that any of that information will be particularly exciting to my readers, who must be clamoring for something fantastic after such a long hiatus. But sometimes life is pretty much just surviving the wicked cough you’ve got.

I’m heading back to Florida in a couple of days. Perhaps life will be exciting there – I’m really looking forward to seeing the fam, especially the bro. I’ll try to get some excellent pictures. Speaking of which, I put a couple more photos of Finland on Flickr, and I’ll continue doing that over break; also, when I get my scans stitched together, I’ll put up my final boards from this term. Finally, If you’re feeling very generous towards me, please refer to my updated wish list page. There are many ways you can demonstrate your love for me materially, and I encourage you to do so.

Facebooked

I finally gave up and joined Facebook.

I’ve been holding out for years, but since the people that I see every day in studio kept asking me, I could no longer ignore it. I’ll admit, it’s a lot of fun, and it reminds me of just how many people I’ve met in my life.

Talking to a friend recently about all of the relationship upsets that we’ve heard about this term, I couldn’t help but muse that the proliferation of people that we’ve met in our lives makes steady relationships much more difficult for our generation. We know a lot of wonderful people – we also know a lot of people that can’t live up to our composite of all of the wonderful people that we’ve met. We’re moving around all the time, which makes it difficult for us to comprehend being set in one relationship with one person (even if that doesn’t necessarily mean in one place, it implies it).

So, just musing on the fact that I’ve taken a small step away from being here. I’m also, now, being everywhere, with everybody, at least until I get tired of it.

BTW, Studio is pretty intense, in part because everyone else is kind of freaking out about what a short time we have left. I’m just slogging along, continuing to design. Haven’t decided what media I’ll use, but I’m imagining I’ll be hand drawing, perhaps in pencil (I’d like to use some color, so I’m not sure that I won’t switch to ink; but I did some more tone rendered drawings earlier in the semester, and I really liked the way they looked).

No matter the intensity of studio, I’m planning to take Thursday off and relax with friends.

Here’s an image from this summer - it’s the drawing Michael and I did of the smoke sauna in Kiljava.

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.

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.

Search for Meaning

One of many. We had our midterm on Monday (actually, we have a second one coming up in a week and a half – its nice to be able to re-scheme and have it reviewed before the final, so that you have some time to develop more fully). I got some not particularly clear feedback, but the gist is that I’m thinking about fairly drastic changes to my project. The project is a wetlands education complex on the western edge of Eugene. You can see actual information about this place and project here.

My basic scheme will remain the same, I think. I’m running site circulation up from the bike path on the southern edge of the site, through my linear hilltop grouping of buildings, and splitting it between an observation “telescope” and back down to the bike path. Three main buildings interface with the path – a staff building to house the office functions of the the various wetlands protection partners; a community building to provide a meeting place for citizens involved with the wetlands; and an education building where the school programs they currently run will have a permanent home.

Really, what’s in question is the making of the buildings. In my presentation, because of how schematic it was, it appeared that structure would run through exterior walls, and activities would take place within little boxes all related to each other through a single, thin interface.

My concepts, though, are much more about layering, about a switch-rich architecture. I’m not sure how to express this, though. In my desk crit today, Don and I discussed the method of creating simple superstructures with boxes inside that shape the overall shape and offer convenient ways to define specific rooms within larger, catchall spaces. However, there’s something about this method that I’m resisting. In some ways, it just seems too simplistic. It doesn’t have very much more depth to it than a more traditional room arrangement – although I guess that has in part to do with how the boxes themselves are constructed. 

One of the other thoughts is to use the somewhat complex roof structures that I was beginning to develop and bring them to a more tight configuration that spoke clearly to the spaces they defined. There’s something I’m a bit uncomfortable about with the potential for not just exposing the primary structure, but making it do acrobatics. I don’t think this place wants to be ostentatious. I think this method has a lot of promise, since I’m not sure that it necessarily becomes ostentatious…

Thirdly, there’s an idea that I’m floating around with that I thought might be a bit Fay Jones, but when I looked at his work, it didn’t seem particularly relevant. Its a more delicate use of structure – a bit more on the stick framing side of things – but without the sheet-rock. I looked again at the Viikki Church and I think that its a good start. This is what I’ve been trying to get at with the Radical Tectonics, but I’m really not quite sure what I’m aiming at. The Atlantic Center for the Arts has some of it…and the building I took my original inspiration from, the Institute for Forestry and Nature Research in the Netherlandsalso has it in certain ways. I guess I’m trying to find something with a bit more depth to the wall than the first and a bit more simplicity than the second.

Well, I’ve fuffed on, and I’m not sure any of it is particularly clear. What it comes down to, though, is that I’m ascribing this great meaning to this doubling and tripling of the walls. That I want some kind of depth to these spaces, but I don’t know how or why.

Costume

I got one today! Sasha and I went to Value Village and found lots of fun clothes – from one-piece denim jumpsuits (now Sarah’s costume) to windbreaker outfits, to ski bibs (now Sasha’s costume). My costume is a red and blue armless full-length wetsuit. I am now on the hunt for a good mask and snorkel…

Hey, I also put 8 pictures up on Flickr from this summer. Check them out.

Blog Action Day

Today is blog action day, so I’m doing my part.

It’s been rough coming back to school, because all those things I learned in my undergrad are being updated. Getting my minor in Environmental Studies at Oberlin was great. I knew all about the things that were horrible with the world, and how to fix them. It was going to be tough, but if we took action right away, we were going to change our course.

I finally watched Inconvenient Truth last week, and while it was interesting, I have to say, school has been full of a lot more pressing ideas, since we didn’t take action right away. Probably the most intensely upsetting of those are presented in Stephen Meyer’s The End of the Wild. Everyone should read this book, or at least the article “Gone” from Mother Jones, which summarizes some parts of the book. As far as that goes, thank goodness for the visionaries at the Wildlands Project. 

At school we’re trying to address all these extreme situations with our designs – the greatly increased problems of climate change, the massive extinction we’re undergoing, and the social inequities that result from our decisions. But, even though I think this is a great way to approach the problem, it’s not enough. I demand that those in politics, those in power realize that we do want change, and not just as a passing fad. This is real. I am disgusted that the White House just didn’t get the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, that was intended as a message to you, Mr. President. But, change can happen at the next level down, and the next.

Keep making your personal progress. The efforts we each make are worthwhile. They give us encouragement, they teach us about living within limits, they show others that this issue makes all the others – universal health care, abortion and marriage rights, education reform, whatever it is – sink or float. If we don’t have a world, or have one that is constantly racked by disasters, we don’t have any hope.

Let’s unite. I’m hopeful today.

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…

Blog from Michael's

It’s sunny today, and I’m yet to head out, but soon I will go do something outside in order to gather up the rays. Or maybe I’ll go to the mall.

It’s the final weekend of lots of sales here in Finland, and I need a new bathing suit. Tomorrow morning we’re heading for a summer cabin, where we’re going to measure some saunas so that we can make scale models of them in wood, and bake gingerbread so that we can make scale models of famous buildings out of it. We’re going to be working hard, I tell you. So, add to my shopping list a scrubby brush, and maybe a pair of pants that’s another size up.

We’re actually going to be working with a professional model maker and photographer, and the gingerbread models are for a new book of his in which we will be credited. I’m quite excited because I’ve always wanted to make overly complex gingerbread houses, ever since I first saw O.H.I.O.’s gingerbread displays. Also, because when we get back to Helsinki, we’ll be using the posh model shop to create high-quality wooden models of these saunas, so I’ll get some actual instruction in model making and be able to make some high-quality models for next term’s project when I get back to Eugene.

This past week we toured around Jyväskylä and environs, taking in some of Aalto’s earliest works (including a small church and the Worker’s Club) as well as some of his master works, like the Säynätsalo Town Hall and the Expermental House. We stopped in Tampere along the way and saw a hideous library and a lovely church, done by the same husband and wife team. Needless to say, the sketching regimen was somewhat intense, and my camera slowly drained out of batteries and got overstuffed with photos. Of course, the first thing that we did upon returning to Helsinki was to visit the Viikki wooden church and the experimental housing and teacher training college that were also in Viikki, in order to take photos and sketch a lot more. And after that, we went to the Rock Church (yes, it’s carved into the bedrock of Helsinki) for a little more sketch and shoot. Today, no more of that.

Actually, today I’ve been planning the trip at the end of the term and writing emails. Got a email from Ellen, my room mate at Duke the summer after 8th grade, which was really exciting. Replying to her sent me off on a little trail, and I emailed 5 Chicagoans in all.

So, I’m off, and what the hell, maybe I will head to the elementary school in Leppavara to sketch and shoot, since it is so nice outside after all.

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.

To Estonia and Back

Hey, it’s been a while, but I’m back on the blog.

I’m on Michael’s computer (we got back together a couple of months ago – shortly after the last blog) in a building built by Alvar Aalto, in a University partially designed by him, in a city that’s right across the bay from Helsinki, in Finland. Yes, I made it to Finland, safe and sound. Travel went fairly smoothly, with just a short delay in Amsterdam due to windy weather; although I landed in Helsinki with less than 15 minutes to the bus departure, I still caught the bus I had planned to take way back in the U.S.A.

When I got to my apartment, I found out that I had one of the smoother trips, as some people had lost luggage, or had to put down a deposit on the supposedly pre-paid apartments, or had significant delays/reroutings in their flights. It took a day to get the keys to the room, so I spent a night sleeping in the hallway on the chair pad from a housemate’s room, but no harm done. Unfortunately, we’re not all at the same site, and some of my classmates have housemates who are from different programs, including Michael. I think that would be great if it were true for all of us, but as it is, it sort of seems like an extra stress for those classmates who aren’t going to be quite as clued in to what’s happening in the program.

A few more quick gripes – really, everything is expensive, it’s no joke. Luckily, there are store brands and a cheap lunch at the University, plus on Tuesday we should be able to get transportation passes so that we don’t have to keep shelling out for each trip.

Also, we haven’t yet gotten internet in our apartment, which we are apparently supposed to have right off the bat and for free. Like many things, we’ve run into bureaucracy in solving the problem, which wouldn’t be bad except that in general, it’s inflexible and unhelpful and everyone’s on vacation.

Now, onto happy things – my apartment (and everyone’s in fact) is quite nice – one big window in each bedroom, and a balcony off the kitchen. There’s a shower room separate from the bathroom that has it’s own heater. That way you can turn off the water as you lather up and you don’t get frozen. Our fridge was a moldy, smelly mess, but we cleaned it today. Unlike in London, there’s plenty of space for everyone’s food in the fridge. Above the sink are the traditional drying racks, which make for a nice clean countertop since you don’t have to have a dish drainer hanging out. My housemates are great, and I think we’re going to head out on the town tonight…which is going to cut this posting short.

That’s probably a good thing, since I’ve got lots to tell about the end of last semester (at this rate it may never get told, but that’s ok, too) and even more about being here in Finland. But right now, I’m going to sign off, and be here.