The Blazing Sun

Designing Books

2012-02-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

Just had a lecture by Ken Botnick, our resident book designer, for our design thinking class.

In general, I would say that my graduate school experience compared to my undergraduate has been primarily about issues of representation. I suppose, in the end, architectural ideas can only be developed refined so much, but representation much more so.

The bar is set pretty high here- there is a high level of expectation for graphic design. It is more important to know your way around Adobe Illustrator than AutoCAD. I had to learn illustrator quickly, and I've actually come to really enjoy using it for graphics and diagrams, but I'm still fond of the power and simplicity of InDesign for graphic layouts. Photoshop I use least these days, relegated to its old function of manipulating single photos or images.

Actually, our studio so far has centered around the production of books, and we're working with page spreads and books to organize our design thinking work. Hence the multiple presentations by Ken Botnick.

Got some good quotes from him today:

You can spend a lot of time...and money on fonts....and I have.

He was quite disparaging of Helvetica, but saved a lot of invective for Arial

Arial is the al-Qaida of typeface. It's an insidious force whose network is spreading.

and

The designers of Arial took Helvetica and made it bad. It's the Las Vegas of typeface.

For reference, the most popular typefaces for architects seem to be Helvetica, Swiss, and Arial. I'm not sure why. I think they all look a little too skeletal.

I don't normally link to outside content, but I'll make an exception for the typographers/designers in the audience.

I'm Comic Sans, Asshole from joehollier on Vimeo.

Between 1 and 2 people

2012-02-13T20:56:00.001-07:00

Last night, Saori and I used a groupon to check out Flaco's Cocina, which had surprisingly decent Mexicanish food. I got a grilled mahi mahi baked burrito ($11) and Saori got the Chili Rellenos ($9) and the portions were pretty decent. Place was cozy, more like an old diner or cantina, although the feel was colder rather than warmer or more textured.

Today we had a studio pin up of ideas and it was quickly apparent that we need to focus on programming the site and letting that program drive the rest of the design. In the middle of the review, it began to snow heavily, and over the course of two hours, we got a few inches of snow blanketing the city.

Tonight, we had a lecture by architect Monica Ponce de Leon, who spoke on themes of adaptive reuse and negotiating with historicity. It's a subject I'm very much interested in, given that the buildings which will transform the way we live and consume in the future are already around today. Anyway, he take on building in historically sensitive contexts is kind of a middle road a la the Byrds: there is a time to speak, there is a time to stay silent, there is a time to be respectful, there is a time to be rude.

For the habitable objects she designs for her projects, she follows the SHoP architects method of components which are computer fabricated and then assembled via IKEA style assembly manuals. More IKEA than SHoP, actually.

There was an interesting moment in the lecture when she asked the audience to raise their hands if they knew what Universal Design was, and only me and a few other hands went up. I'm kind of surprised, actually. Universal design, which was framed as a critique of ADA, is a way of thinking inclusively about design. In contrast to ADA which has a distinction between able and disabled people, Universal Design seeks to accommodate the range of human abilities. OXO Good Grips tools is often cited as an example- they were originally designed to make life easier for suffers of rheumatoid arthritis, but the easier to grasp handles made life easier for everyone. Anyway, Ponce de Leon designed a series of desk carrels for a library, and each one is a little different in size, seat, height, desk height, etc.

I was vastly bemused when she described the width of the carrel ranging from "two people to one lonely person," which made me wonder precisely how many steps there were between 1 and 2 people. Actually the more I thought about it:

1 lonely person
1 person + 1 fish
1 person + 1 cat
1 person + 1 dog

1 person + 1 person obnoxiously leaning into the carrel to disturb the 1 person

1 person + 1 child

1 person + 1 orangutan

2 people romantically intertwined

1 obese person

2 people

I was not impressed with the work she showed us, frankly. Where there were things I really admired about the approach and certain details, overall, I was underwhelmed and I didn't think that the RISD library insertion was as successful as her methodology would suggest. Perhaps I didn't see it in the right angle, but it seemed very much like the architecture inserted simply disregarded the context rather than respond to it in any particular way. The two things really fought each other for supremacy, and the art installation in the hotel atrium looked fantastic in renderings, but came off looking just like some wavy loops hung with some string.

Of course, I must add, as always, that the position of the critic is easy, and getting anything built is very difficult- anything reasonably interesting, historic, or challenging, doubly so.

salsa sin huevos

2012-02-11T23:27:00.002-07:00

Attempted to go salsa dancing tonight. There's a fantastic place in CWE, Club Viva, that has salsa on Saturday nights, and the place was really hopping. The most Hispanic people I've ever seen in one place in St. Louis. In a packed basement which can legally hold 499 people, everyone was dressed really nice- ladies in their heels and cocktail dresses, guys in their fitted dress shirts, nice shoes, and the older gentlemen with their fedoras. Great music. There were really amazing dancers out there. Salsa is a guys dance in a field of guy's dances. I took a look out on the packed dance floor, and decided to grab a beer. Didn't see anyone from architecture, but just one girl who a joint MBA/MArch grad (who is, incidently, the president of the salsa club). I think there were a few business students. I was too intimidated to dance, so I just watched, enjoyed the music and the dancing, and then left.

Really wish I could dance like that. I was way too intimidated to even ask anyone to dance, which is why I guess I'm not a business student. The architecture students could be found around the corner at the Irish pub, drinking heavily and socializing among themselves. I made a round, said hello, and left. I drove in, and with Saori still at studio, I didn't want to be out all night. Mostly, I was just kind of down after leaving the salsa club.

Gotta take some salsa lessons.

Something special about St.Louis

2012-02-11T09:52:00.001-07:00

Before you think that I'm going get all sentimental and dewy-eyed over this post-apocalyptic city, I'm not.

Well, maybe a little.

In Design Thinking the other day, my professor for the class, Ben, was talking about centrality vs distributed cities. In many cities, there's a big core which is active, vibrant, and interesting, and then once you get beyond that core, there's pretty much nothing. St. Louis, he pointed out, has an active core which is attempting to be something and do something and has actually made some progress, but that one of the real values of St. Louis is that there's so many cores of interest around the metropolitian area. There's about a dozen old downtowns, distinct neighborhoods, and other nuclei of interest, which make St. Louis Metro into a kind of archipelago. Centers of urban interest and activity separated by either non-place suburbia or urban wasteland.

St. Louis, the [post-apocalyptic archipelago] river city.

We were at one of those hot spots last night, in Central West End (CWE) at Brassiere by Niche, a moderately upscale French bistro for Silvino's birthday. Great food, great environment. 17 of us showed up and we ate at one long table and the staff were very patient with us considering we mostly paid by separate checks. My dinner:

Urban Chestnut Brewery Wingnut ale

moules marinieres

french fries with garlic aoli

Scoop of house-made brandy ice cream

Grasshopper

2012-02-10T12:36:00.002-07:00

I thought I would share the work I'm doing in my Optimization in Parametric Design class. While I am highly critical of wacky forms for the sake of wacky forms, I decided to take this class because

wacky form architecture as a style isn't going anywhere anytime soon
I needed to learn Rhino and Grasshopper
There's a optimization and responsiveness component to using grasshopper and Rhino in this way.

This last point I'll illustrate with our assignment. In the screen capture below, you're looking at four triangles in Rhino that I scripted in Grasshopper. I fold them open and close a few times to show how the "cell" operates to open and close using a slider in Grasshopper (not shown). Then, I use another slider to make the grid 10 cells wide and 10 cells deep so now I have 100 cells. You can see a point that I move around in Rhino that doesn't do anything. Finally, I change the parameter which controls how open the cell is from the slider to an algorithm which calculates how far away the center of the cell is from the point. The closer the point is the center, the more closed the cell is. You can see that as I move the point around, all the cells change depending on their proximity to the point.

Boogie Nights

2012-02-09T10:36:00.001-07:00

Today was an unusual day.

Suki meowed at me all night, keeping me up, while saori chan spent the night working in studio for her pinup today.

I drove her back home so she could take a quick shower and went back just in time to catch the GAC meeting. We were reminded of the crucial importance of finding replacements for our positions, as elections are in march.

For studio, instead of a desk crit for work we havn't started yet, we drove down to the Pulitzer art museum designed by Tadao Ando. We used the rectilinear and tall galleries and narrow plaza for an understanding of the Uffizi and the notion of scale, with the method of drawing them in one point perspectives. For some reason, we've been dealing a lot in studio with perspective drawing- it seems to be a fixation for Z. He was going to initially propose that we do all our books by drawing by hand, and our last class was basically constructing perspective drawings in the field. (our books turned out great, by the way, they looked fantastic together with the coordinated covers).

After studio, I went back to work at my desk and my friend Silvino dropped by and asked me I wanted to come out Swing dancing with a few friends. I said, Sure! Saori was going to be structures class until 9 anyway, and I've actually been itching to dance again for some reason. Loss of dignity as I ase I guesss. So I grabbed a bite to eat, picked up some stuff for Saori and then headed out with Emily, Silvino, and Natasha. Silvino and Emily are like me, just kind of doing it for kicks, while Natasha apparently loves to go out and dance, so she was happy that she could rope us in for the night out. And I do mean out. Way the hell out out, damn near out of town beyond the 270.

The dance hall is marked by a big white "Bud Light" sign and is basically just a big dance hall with a dance floor, a stage, and a big basement for practice. It could have been a senior citizen center. The average age of the people who were there to dance looked to be about sixty. We paid our $9 (a little expensive), got our name tags and went downstairs. There were already two other couples down there, for the beginner session. Our instructors, Pat and Tony, were good teachers, and we learned the absolute basics of the "Imperial swing" which is basically a six-count dance step, a "glide" which brings the partner in front and away, a turn, and a return. The steps weren't that complicated although I get tripped up with the turns sometimes.

I was complimented on how well I was leading the ladies I was dancing with, and I thought once again back to junior year in ASU, when I took salsa with Jen. She was an extremely type A girl who wanted to be in control all the time, so I learned to develop a really commanding lead while dancing, which has served me well since then in dancing.

Anyway, after about 40 minutes, they released us upstairs where there was a bar and a dance floor. The bar was fantastic, like a bar you might find in the middle of nowhere in the midwest. The menu on the wall reads

BEER

cup $2

bottle $2

pitcher $7

And of course they serve two great American semibeers; bud and bud light. Actually, I can't really taste the difference between the two since one has a hint of beer taste, and the other, half of a hint.

So we grabbed a pint and headed up to the dance floor where there were a bunch of folding tables around the large dance floor. They had the music going, laser lights on the ceiling, DJ booth, and actually about fifty people out on the dance floor and sitting around the tables. We watched the first one and sipped our beer. Seems like everyone was in their late 50s-70s. Everyone seemed to know each other too. The elderly DJ would also take breaks from the booth and come down and dance as well. They played a wide variety of music actually. Everything from swing to waltzes to Maroon 5's "Moves like [Mick] Jagger" oddly enough. Lots of different dances. Four-play, river waltz, line dancing, the country two step, and other varieties I'd never heard of before.

Dancing with my own count is one thing, dancing to music is something totally else. I havn't learned the steps well enough to let my intuition take over in balancing the footwork with the beat, so I'm constantly screetching to a halt as my footwork falls apart and worse, I'm not leading well either since I have no idea what the hell I'm doing out there. So its kind of awkward.

Practice, practice.

I was better at the salsa dancing (well, after the semester long class in it, I should remember something!) so that was fun as well. Might go out saturday and do some dancing with the salsa club.

It was really funny, people were so excited to see us (young folk, new folk) that we were constantly being asked to dance. Even the woman cleaning tables took Silvino out on the dance floor for a spin and she could really boogie. And EVERYONE told us that should come back. And bring more friends.

Design Thinking leads to Design Drinking

2012-02-07T20:48:00.000-07:00

Today was a big 'push' day, and now I'm wiped.

Left studio a little after 2 am last night, and got up again at 8 this morning for my 9am landscapes class. I had a presentation due on the hydrology and hydaulics of the Demun and Wydown neighborhood. Went pretty well. With only six people in the class, its hard to feel intimidated presenting. Especially when I've got fancy graphics like these:

Afterwards I had about two hours to wrap up and print my Design Thinking concept book spreads. I feel pretty good about how much time I'm spending on it. It's kind of like swimming over a very deep body of water. Just keep swimming; if you think too hard about what you're doing, you'll get bogged down and start to sink. You have to trust your intuition is working towards something, and its the critical mind which simply provides the structure.

Here are the book spreads:

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Anyway, we had 13 students (two DT sections combined) for our review. We started at 1:30* and didn't end until about 6:30. Five hours of nearly nonstop presentations on critical conceptual thinking and we were all fried. I don't know how our critics can handle it. I can barely handle it, and I'm just following along, not even making really critical comments on it. My presentation went ok- I was a little nervous, but I'm doing work that I proposed, which I'm really interested in, so its a lot easier that way. But it is still intimidating to get up in front of your peers and have your conceptual thinking directly exposed.

Got some good quotes out of the day though:

The pornographic frescoes seem mundane at this point, if you've been on the internet.

and

Bananas suck at making tools.

and more insightful,

Using something against its purpose [e.g. using a book as a paperweight] liberates things.

And other random bits of knowledge, such as the NSA buying warehouses in the middle of fields and using them as the entrances to elaborate underground research and surveillance centers, and Pompeii's status as basically a seedier version of Atlantic City in Roman Italy, and the role of insurance companies in creating structured segregation in St.Louis.

Bus Loop Burgers

2012-02-06T19:04:00.001-07:00

Saori and I grabbed some burgers from Bus Loop Burgers tonight. I came across this place in an usual way. I was searching for St.Louis architecture when I came across a page with this image:

Apparently, it was the main station of a bus loop waaay back sometime. The station now holds a burger dive which took the name of the station: Bus Loop Burgers. The structure is really amazing and nobody really uses it for anything except to wait in their cars after they order (it takes awhile to get your food). I really wonder what's in the roof- as it looks like there could have been offices there at one point. Hopefully no bodies.

The area of town its in is very run down. Old brick buildings probably dating from the early 20th century, many of them shuttered. The area looks really impoverished. Laundromats, a few convenience stores. Lots of empty lots. Looks like they recently put in some nice "period" street lighting along the street, Martin Luther King Dr St, which was probably some elected official or alderman trying to use a little money.

This is considered North St.Louis. It's the kind of place I'm hesitant to drive at night. I looked it up Google maps, and I was shocked- it's about 2.5 miles. If you take Skinker north of Delmar, you cross Olive and go under the metrolink bridge, and its like the average income of the area halved. It's quite incredible actually to drive it. It's a stark reminder of how St.Louis has such sharp transitions between neighborhoods- Less than two miles separate a major street in these first ring suburbs- On one, it's hard to find parking because the metered parking spots are full and its considered a pedestrian/urban highlight of St.Louis. The other I wouldn't feel comfortable parking any time of the day.

Sorry, got off on a tangent there. Was the burger place itself sketchy? Let's just say its the kind of place that makes beef seem like an illegal drug. Kind of fun though. You walk through the doors and in the narrow waiting space, there's two benches facing each other. You order through a tiny hole in a plastic screen that runs to the ceiling, and all the transactions occur in a rotating plastic pass-through.

The menu had about a hundred items, ranging from breakfast dishes (served all day! with Sunny Delight), to Gyros, to 99c Chinese egg rolls, to about thirty different burgers. The menus were all over multiple walls, some handwritten, most heavily annotated. Saori and I each got the 'Big Boy Burger' because we were feeling pretty hungry. We ordered and then had to wait about fifteen minutes for our food to come out since they really only seemed to have one person back there cooking. We took our burgers back to studio to eat. Smelled so good in the car, I started singing about them.

These burgers are indeed big boy burgers. We were probably looking at a 1/3 lb of meat, cooked. Delicious, freshly grilled, but still a metric ton of meat. Saori gave me a onion ring that was so big and thick, I had to take a break in finishing it. I never did kill that burger. I've seen bigger burgers, but I couldn't tell you when. Got it with Vess cola, which is only sold in the St.Louis area.

Oh, and I bought my tickets for Florence for spring break. Going with some classmates for our studio, although its very loosely structured, so I'm planning a side trip as well.

Glassy Eyed

2012-02-04T14:24:00.001-07:00

I had the surreal experience today of buying eyeglasses that were cheaper than the eye exam.

I drove out this morning to an extremely thorough (and expensive) eye exam at Contemporary Vision Center in Manchester. I was there because I had a $15 coupon for $150 worth of glasses. After I'd unwittingly scratched the hell out of my lenses, it was time to replace them. The exam was at least double the most expensive eye exam I've ever had. They had a lot of very nice and sophisticated equipment, including a device they kept trumpeting that lets you see two options side by side instead of "A...(flip) or B. (flip)A...(flip) or B." They also did a high resolution retinal scan and the optometrist talked about the images blown up to about two feet across on the screens.

My eyes look good and seemed to be in good health, I'm happy to report. They're going to email me the images.

The less than fantastic thing was their selection sucked. They're located way the hell out in the outskirts of Manchester along the all big box suburban stores and strip malls and suburbs. It should come as no surprise then, that the vast majority of the frame styles looked like upper middle class suburban housewife. There wasn't a single frame I really liked, and all the frames were at least $100.

So I got my prescription, paid for my exam, and left.

I then went online, and bought a pair of glasses for less than $50. The website is apparently the Amazon.com of eyeglasses. There's no brands as they're all manufactured in China and shipped stateside. I opted for the slightly more expensive poly carbonate lenses (extra $9) and anti-glare coating ($4). Should be getting them in about 2-3 weeks. We'll see how that out. For sake of comparison, the last pair of glasses I bought cost over $300. So yes, its a risk since I can never really really know how the glasses will look on me, but then it's a discount of $250.

Gadgets

2012-02-03T21:03:00.002-07:00

For someone who has more than once decried the waste and materialism of technological consumerism, I've been getting a LOT of electronic gadgets in the past month.

But I can explain:

The new computer was necessary for studio. My laptop graphics card (fused to the motherboard) was flaking out and I was losing a lot of time and work when my workstation came to a crashing halt, often several times an hour. Plus, with this 23" monitor, I can look at two program windows side by side and work across the desktop.

I was giddy when I started opening boxes.

Apple, Inc., actually, bought me a new ipod nano. There was a class action lawsuit against them since their original ipod nano battery kept overheating when it was being charged. Guess they turned the "obsolescence" dial a little bit too far to the right. Anyway, I guess Apple figured that nobody would keep an Apple product more than two years (after which, it's probably broken anyway), so they offered to replace all the original ipod nano's out there.

Actually, my old nano worked fine and even outlasted the first generation touch which came out years later, and it was only when Saori had it in Buenos Aires that it stopped working. Anyway, I enrolled in the replacement program and they mailed me an "ipod transport package" which was "specially designed to secure ipods for transit." It turned out to be a padded mailer with a plastic baggie. So they should be sending me a new nano any day now, although I'm hopeful that old nano was recycled and not by barefoot children in an Indian landfill.

Which brings me to... my new Kindle. Dad actually gave me some money for Christmas and asked me if I wanted a kindle or new glasses, and so I used some of the money for a kindle and I'll use some of the money for new glasses. The kindle I picked up because of my landscape class.

The landscape class has a required textbook that we're apparently using which is $60 at the cheapest. They have a Kindle version, which is $50 and isn't the same size and weight as a textbook. But which kindle? I was debating between the basic $80 version or the $100 touch version, and I ended up getting the basic. It was $20 cheaper, and a read in numerous places that the touch was terrible at rendering PDFs, which is a lot of how I read classroom material.

I'm actually kind of surprised at how much I use it, although the novelty of a new thing also helps. There's literally thousands of free books out there and nearly ten you might actually want to read. Found a good one on traditional Japanese fairy tales. ProPublica also published a free book on the Financial Crisis (SPOILER: it's Wall Street's fault). I also downloaded a book by Haruki Murakami that I've been desperately waiting for in paperback. The hardback version is $40, so I was happy to pick up the kindle version for $14. So its nice to bring to bed to read a bit at night, and then when I wake up in the morning, I can use the browser and check email. The thing uses very little battery power, especially when you turn off the wi-fi. Supposedly it can last for weeks on a single charge. We'll see.

Craig Dykers Architecture Lessons

2012-02-01T22:48:00.001-07:00

Architect Craig Dykers, co-prinicpal of Snohetta (Library of Alexandria, Oslo Opera House, World Trade Center Memorial Museum) is teaching a studio this semester, and he also delivered a lecture on his firm and work tonight. There were several valuable lessons we gleaned:

(courtesy of Anita) Put a beer tap in your architecture office.
It's pretty freakin' awesome to work for Snøhetta.
Also put in a fruit bowl to make it look healthier.
Hire a chef to come make healthy lunches for your staff every day. This may sound really expensive, but as Dykers pointed out, the American 'lunch hour' is really closer to two or three once you factor in thinking about where to go and what you're going to eat, getting there, eating, coming back, and then zoning out for a bit when you get back from lunch. At Snohetta, their lunches last 20 minutes. Since profitability, especially in architecture is directly a product of productivity, you've just effectively gotten an extra hour of productive work out everyone in your office for the cost of lunch.
transdisciplinary > multidisciplinary
The balls of the bronze bull on wall street are shiny from being handled so much. People aren't perverse, they're just human.
Architecture should provide structure when people need it, and unpredictability when people need it.
Architecture should be a verb- it does stuff. For example, a building may attract someone's view, and then pull it through to show them a part of the city they haven't seen before.
Do lots of competitions. Snøhetta was pulled together out of a bunch of 20-somethings who happened to win a competition. The competition happened to be designing the $220 million Alexandria Library in Egypt. So now they can do things like install beer taps in the office.
The 'gift' of architecture is that we can take large spaces and make them seem intimate.
Ownership of a thing = being able to put your dirty boots on its surface.
Wild reindeer mating is a pretty big tourist draw in Norway.
Questions drive projects much more than answers. The key is to find the right question [and to ask it at the right time]

After the lecture, we went to the lecture dinner with Dykers, which was at a classmate's house. We got a huge platter of food from Pappy's Smokehouse, which is one of the top-ranked BBQ restaurants in the city. They were apparently sold out of ribs (happens often) but there was plenty of chicken, brisket, pulled pork, and their amazing barbecue beans. We polished it off and I quietly grabbed a beer for the road to take back to studio.

How many cookies can we fit into a coffee cup?

2012-01-29T23:48:00.001-07:00

Saturday was largely unproductive as far as school goes. I made a Spanish-ish scramble with chopped green onion and manchego cheese, which was actually pretty good, served with some toasted bread that Saori had picked up.

Fortified by a late breakfast, we headed out on a St.Louis field trip. Saori had asked me to take her around the city as a means to get her acquainted with a city that I've been inhabiting for the better part of a year and a half. So we drove out to the place I think is really interesting in far north St.Louis, the chain of rocks park and bridge.

Constant reader, you may remember that I took a lot of photos and spent a lot of time documenting an old road which was build and consequently abandoned for at least several decades, and I took Saori to hike around there. It was very different denuded of leaves, much less 'magical' if you want to call it that.

Of great interest to Saori was the huge field at the top of the bluffs, which was the former site of an amusement park, since one of her initial interests for design thinking is homo ludens, or the playful human.

We also satisfied my curiosity by walking almost all the way across Chain of Rocks bridge, which is an ancient steel girder bridge which spans the Mississippi. It once served two lanes of cars, but its now a pedestrian crossing. It makes me wonder how many exclusively pedestrian bridges cross the Mississippi. It's actually quite beautiful with the rusted girders and the epic sweep of the river below. We actually crossed over the state line into Illinois mid-span. The full length of the bridge is almost exactly one mile.

We grabbed lunch at the Mexican place and headed in to studio to get some work done around 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

This morning, we also had a slow start, but we met up in studio a little after 11 to go have some brunch. Saori and I were joined by Dew, Chuck, Kenny, and Freda, and we walked over to the South 40. The South 40 refers to the undergraduate residential/amenity center of Wash. U. Little shops, a laundromat, a bicycle repair center, a convenience store, all with dorms above. There's a broad promenade connecting it to the main campus, and then you enter this roundabout plaza with a clock in the middle of it, and you think, when did I get to Disneyland? The promenade takes you down a series of terraces with the little village of dorms around you and at the base, there is the massive cafeteria.

This is a wonderful secret for graduate students. Saturday and Sunday, the cafeteria offers an "all you care to eat" brunch buffet for less than $9 (although you do have to use your campus card to pay for it). It runs from 11 until 2pm. All the stations. Pancakes, Belgan waffle maker station, custom omelets, donuts, yogurt, Kosher food (served by a Hisidic Jewish student), pizza, roasted turkey breast, cereals, fruits, coffee, fruit juice, and more. I was in heaven, totally overloading my plate even with the french toast sticks that I knew came straight from the freezer aisle. The first thing that Chuck did was to make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. As I went by with my giant plate teetering full of carbohydrates, grease, and protein, I found myself chastising him and telling him how many rules of buffet dining he was violating. But then, I realized that not everyone immediately attempts to see how much syrup the plate can hold.

It's called the Bear's Den and it's full of undergraduate students, looked like most of them residents of the dorms, i.e. underclassmen. You can tell they also all wear either track pants, short shorts, sweats, or basketball shorts. The opulence and lavishness of the brunch speaks to the concern of the parents for their little darlin's off to school and away from mama's kitchen for the first time.

When I was a freshman, I sure didn't truck with that kind of foppish fluff. No luxury brunch or cushy meal plan for me, no sir. It was hardtack and dirt, twice a day. And most days, no hardtack.

It's kind of funny to be a graduate student (read: starving wolf) in the midst of the happy little Eloi of freshmen. While students around us were casually eating bagels and yogurt, the table of architects were trying to figure out how many cookies and other foods we could smuggle out and stretch our food budgets.

Still, seeing all those freshman, I am so incredibly happy to be a graduate student. Even undergraduate was so much hand-holding, I feel like I'm finally in the place which is stimulating, challenging, and self-directed enough to really gain traction. And no more hardtack for me, no sir.

Bridge to the weekend

2012-01-28T09:10:00.003-07:00

I think I'm 90% over my cold or whatever it was. I thought I was out of the woods yesterday, but then I was hit with this nausea, headache, and 'malaise' (medical term for "feeling like crap") and I had to miss my Grasshopper class. This really sucks because the class is primarily technical, and I need to learn the techniques! However, Dew has offered to show me again what we learned.

I am feeling much better today- the throat is much better at any rate, much less froggy, and I'm optimistic that before the weekend is out, I'll be back to 100%

This past week in studio has been fairly low key- primarily reading and research into the history of Florence. I'm still debating about going there as a field trip. However, at the end of class yesterday, our instructor told that for monday, he wants to see two books on the subject. Small books, yes, but book designs nonetheless. 'Dummys' of the real final project due a week from monday. 13 copies, so everyone in studio gets one. (was Judas one of the 12 apostles or was he the 13th?) Anyway.

Last night, we were planning on going out to a bunch of gallery openings downtown and in Grand Central, but Saori needed to cut some stuff for studio, and Suki and ourselves needed feeding, and it was Saori's mom's birthday so she needed to skype her, so we didn't end up getting out until after 10.

Ended up going out to Bridge in downtown, which is a really nice bar- basically a wine bar but for beer (although they also sell wine). About 40 beers on tap, plus another 60 bottles. Saori picked up a really esoteric Japanese alcoholic ginger beer, and I got a draught of some 4Hands American Red, and a Unibru Grand Cru. I really liked the 4Hands- really bitter. And it's made in St.Louis, if I can find the brewery. The Grand Cru was like the Darth Vader of beer- a extra strong dark Belgan ale. 11% ABV, malty, but with the crispness of the high alcohol content. Too strong, too dark for me. 11% is stronger than Nyquil.

Of course, the nice thing about Bridge is that they serve beer in four sizes, 4 oz, 12oz, and two larger sizes. So you can really taste a lot of beer if you want. You can basically customize your own flights. Food was pretty good too- snacking bits. We left a little after midnight. We were lucky to get a table at 10 actually.

So much work to get done this weekend....

Alec's New Toy

2012-01-25T23:59:00.000-07:00

I really really geeked out today over my new computer. There was the excitement of picking up two giant packages at FedEx. I breathlessly dragged them up the stairs to studio, trying to keep them out of the miserable rain we've been having. And when I started cutting open taped cardboard boxes, it was like I was 8 again, unwrapping a giant box of Legos.

I bought what I'd call a mid-range performance computer. Computer, as in tower and monitor, not a laptop. Pretty good specs- 3.4 GHz i7 processor, 1.5 terabyte hard drive, 12 gigs of memory. A gigantic, gigantic 24" LED monitor. Pulling it all out of the box at studio, people were commenting on how excited I was.

Setting it up, installing my favorite standard software- Picasa, Firefox, Avast. Trying to uninstall all the bloatware Dell pre-loaded on my computer. It's really exciting. I can't wait to see how my 3d software and rendering engines run on this thing.

Beginning of the semester

2012-01-23T22:35:00.001-07:00

Busy weekend. Friday night we stayed in since we had some freezing rain, but saturday morning I went to a big group brunch with some friends. About 20 people showed up at a friend's apartment, and we had a huge breakfast party of pancakes, buckets of scrambled eggs, leagues of bacon, armies of sausage, fresh bread, cinnamon rolls, Pierre brought Nutella and baguettes. Amazingly delicious actually. In typical French fashion he was also late. We picked up a few cartons of the "Culinara" fresh orange juice they sell at Schnucks grocery store. Culinara is actually the Schnucks store brand, but it is the most expensive juice in the store. The reason is that they fresh squeeze it in the store. They don't even pasteurize it. They just bottle it, slap a label on it and put it out. It's phenomenal. It's like drinking orange flavored sunshine. It makes Tropicana taste like Tang in comparison. One of the guests at the brunch took a sip and said that it life-changing orange juice. I wouldn't go that far, but it is pretty damn good.

Saturday night, we ended up going over to a friend's house for a hot pot new year. Lots of people, lots of food, lots of beer. Chinese, Japanese, Americans, Macao, Taiwanese, and mixtures of everything between. Good times. Not even enough chairs for everyone. We didn't even need to bring anything, there was so much food. Also the most Asian glow I've seen in one place for a long time.

Sunday, I woke up feeling like crap. Not because of the beer or what I ate, but crap like-seriously-coming down-with-something-crap. We worked in studio all day and then I came back early and Saori stayed and worked while I went to bed.

Today is not much better. Drainage, really sore throat, throat congestion, bit achy, eyes a bit more sensitive than usual, nasal drip, general irritability. At least I'm not running a fever or have headaches. Treating it with as much rest as I can get, lots and lots of tea, vitamin C, fresh Kiwi (the national fruit of China!), hot showers, and spicy food.

I gave a presentation on Midieval Florence today for studio, seemed to go over well, although I didn't use the book the professor wanted me to use. The stupid librarians couldn't find it, and I wasn't sharp enough to force them to find it. Oh well.

Oh, and I realized this weekend that the class I thought I had mondays was actually on tuesday. So I skipped the class for no reason and now I'm a week behind. At least its the beginning of the semester.

Tonight, Saori, Tyler, Weng, Dew, and I went out to grab dinner at Boba Noodles on Delmar. Actually, really decently priced, fairly authentic Chinese food. Fast food. Noodle bowls and rice bowls, like you might find at a cheap Shanghai streetside cafe. And all the teas as well- boba but also more exotic varieties. I got a hot ginger milk tea which has the great bite of ginger to it. Great on a winter day.

Anyway, hoping that I'll wake up feeling wonderful tomorrow.

Design Thinking - Week 1

2012-01-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

This semester I'm enrolled in a class called Design Thinking, which is supposed to frame the problem to be explored in the final semester as the final project of graduate school. It is like a thesis is in that it is the capstone project, a major final requirement, and largely self-directed, but there is not usually a written component.

Anyway, our first assignment is to write a 100 words on a topic/concept we're interested in pursuing, pick three words, and 'curate' a series of images which interest us which should relate to the concept.

My first idea for three words were

Repetition
Repetition
Repetition

but then I thought it was a bit to predictable. So then I considered:

Repetition
Repetition
Anomaly

Which has more interest, but I don't think they'd let me do that.

The three words need to be selected from a particular book. There are about 60 kids in the class. There is one copy of the book in the library. Design Thinking has been around for over five years. One might think that the school would perhaps want at least a second copy.

The book in question, A Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture, is highly suspect because it simultaneously claims to be a dictionary and uses made-up words in the title. There are more made up words inside, but we were asked to peruse this book and pick three words which seemed to fit our concepts. My words are:

atexural
metastitial
perichaos

Not really. But I think some of those words are in the book. I've actually written my 100 words around the idea of porosity.

So much for Florence

2012-01-22T00:44:00.003-07:00

So, we had our first day of studio yesterday. We met for a lecture in the library as a class for the first time. Z, our studio instructor, gave us our first assignment, which is to read a book about the history of Florence, and then create presentations based on our assigned chapters. I've got the early middle ages, between 1000 and 1300 AD.

Aside- I've never understood the desire to change the system from AD, anno Domingo, [year of the lord] to CE [common era]. You're still counting years from the mythical birth of Christ regardless of what you choose to call it. If you really wanted to be a-religious about it, you'd select some other event as the 0 mark, the first recorded writings, for example.

Anyway, I chose to present monday, which means I've got a lot of work ahead. The good news is that theres a ton of material on the city ready for us. It's an incredibly well documented city and not much has changed. I have, for example, a file with all the buildings and streets of the city.

The kicker for this class is the trip to Florence. I'd really like to get to know the city better- I was there only two days when I was backpacking back in my undergraduate days, and I was really taken by the city. The timing is good- right before spring break so I could take the time to travel more around Europe. But it's expensive, and the school is not going to finance my trip. The fact is that I just bought a needed computer, and the lowest cost of the trip will still be around $1200. I'd still be seriously considering going except for the fact that my professor, Z, can't commit that he'll take us himself. I mean, he's the main reason I'm interested in this studio, and if he's not going to be there to show us around, that's a huge disincentive.

Also, not related but a general disincentive- I realized I missed a class last tuesday, the first class of my landscape class and there's a reading due tuesday from a book I don't have. So not a great start to that class either.

I'm still debating Florence. If I find a spanking deal I may consider it.

Went to a Chinese Lunar New Year party tonight with a bunch of classmates, many of them either Chinese or American Asian. Really good hot pot, beer, tons of people, a good mix of asians and Americans. Really fun. However, it occurred to me that Saori and I were the oldest people there, which is a new thing, but happens with greater regularity. I'm 27 and Saori's a year older, and we're hanging around with the early 20-somethings, people who, due to the economy, tended to push through from undergrad to graduate, so they're only around 22 years old. Made me feel kind of old.

Also making me feel kind of old is that every month that I look in the mirror, I see a little more of my dad looking back at me. I've got a much longer face, but Saori thinks my resemblance to both my parents is getting stronger. I've always favored my mom, especially the nose, the high forehead, and shape of my face, but there's something of my dad coming through more more distinctly which I can't put my finger on.

Fact is I'm less than three years from thirty, and when my parents were my age, I was already two or three years old, and they were both working.

The Grasshopper who told the Rhino what to do

2012-01-20T00:15:00.002-07:00

I dropped Saori off for her early class this morning and went grocery shopping, cleaned the house a bit, and rearranged some rooms. My old roommate is gone, but I kept refering to that room as "James' room", but now that I moved my desk and all my printers in there, it feels more territorialized, and I now think of it as "the study."

Picked Saori up from school and made a run by the transit office to pick up our metro transit passes, followed by a quick run to Goodwill to drop off some old stuff. I've wondered why the quality of stuff I see at Goodwills around here is so low. First, there's not much of it, and secondly, its not nearly of the same quality or quantity of what was in the Phoenix stores. This Goodwill is on the fringe of the most affluent areas of St.Louis. Are people generally poorer here than in Phoenix or do people tend to hold on to their stuff more here?

Anyway, stopped for a quick bite of Pho for lunch, and then went back home. We took a long walk around the neighborhood to get some exercise and talk about St.Louis, and then I headed back to school for my night class. I'm enrolled in this class entitled: Optimization for Parametric Design, which is... exactly what it sounds like. There's a lot of classes with names like "Territorializing Context: The Subliminal and Interstitial," "Decoupled Spatialization in the Semiotic Landscape," "Biomimetic Aphasia," or "Pattern Recognition" where who really knows what the class is about.

Anyway, the class is very technical and practical- essentially a software class which teaches students how to use the Grasshopper plug-in for Rhinoceros, and practical applications thereof. Rhinoceros, a.k.a. Rhino, is a 3D modeling program like a very very advanced version of SketchUp, and far superior in every way. It is actually the computer modeling software of choice for most of my classmates, and its pretty powerful for making forms. Grasshopper is a plug-in which runs in Rhino, and by manipulating variables and creating an algorithm in Grasshopper, that sequence actually generates the form in Rhino.

For a very basic example, instead of drawing a rectangle in Rhino by clicking two corner points, I could, in Grasshopper, simply give length and width dimensions, and Grasshopper tells Rhino how to construct the rectangle.

Anyway. Should be practical. And even thought the final product is about the pointlessly formalistic swoopy object, its still a type of class I havn't taken, and to be honest, sharpening Rhino and Grasshopper skills is a good thing to have on the old resume. At the very least, its good to know what potential there is.

The last bit of fun news is that I finally broke down and got a new computer. My current laptop has a graphics card that is crapping out on me- I can't take out the card since its welded to the processor, and I can't rely on a machine that totally crashes several times a day from graphic glitches. I picked up a new Dell xps 8300, which has a 3.4GHz intel i7 core and an AMD graphics card. This means I have a very fast, very powerful computer. Also comes with a 24" monitor, so I am a very happy boy. Going to get it in the mail hopefully before the end of the month.

It's a tower, so it's not portable like a laptop, but then I'm working at studio all the time anyhow, and its also upgradeable, so I can swap out components instead of having to ditch a $1300 laptop because the graphics card is screwed up.

Wheel of Classes

2012-01-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

Studio selection day begins around noon, when the booklets containing the course descriptions of *most* of the classes offered during the semester are published, but more importantly, it contains the descriptions of the studios offered that semester. Why the studio options come out immediately before students have to choose is beyond me, but the only explanation I can come up with is that the school is so unorganized that they really only know what the final studios are going to be when the damn thing goes to print that day.

Anyway, you have an hour or two to peruse the listings and descriptions of the studios before the presentations. Mercifully, this semester the studio presentations were limited to a two hour window. Each studio professor gets up before the student body and pitches the studio, aided with powerpoint.

Afterwards, you are given 30 minutes to rank all 11 studios in your order of preference, and then you turn it in to a box.

The studios, quickly, were:

A cancer recovery center, small scale, but on the topic of life and death and experience. Taught by a visiting professor from the firm Snohetta.
A studio proposing infrastructure/architectural responses to Jefferson parish of New Orleans, especially in regards to flooding, water, infrastructure, urbanism, and wetlands.
Another SE Louisiana studio with a landscape focus on the area around the port.
A montessouri school, with connections to an art program, and famous educational architect Herman Hertzberger.
An adaptive reuse of an monumental Masonic Temple in grand center of downtown St.louis
A redevelopment of the Uffizi square in Florence, Italy with a city museum.
A redevelopment of the Monte Carlo waterfront in Monaco, through the lens of Archigram and with the assistance of Denis Compton.
A digital fabrication studio taught by some famous architect about something related to swarms, scales, biomimicry, but basically making big, swoopy forms that are on the cutting edge of how difficult it is to actually fabricate.
A small medical office building in suburban st.Louis. Really.
An evaluation of Los Angeles, an urban studio, as to what it could be.
A re-evauation of the parking garage typology.

My top three choices were the cancer center, the Florence center, and the St.Louis adaptive re-use. I got my second choice, the one about Florence.

This studio is taught by the same professor I had for Urban Books, and actually features a book as part of the design process. So it's going to be a lot of books this semester. I really like the professor, a Brazilian who is currently involved in research on Lina Bo Bardi. The only thing is that the studio seems very amorphous and undefined at this point, which I think was a bit of a disincentive. However, the studio will make a trip to Florence during spring break, so I need to decide if I want to money it up and go. I really want to. Florence was one of those cities where I passed through very quickly and regretted not spending more time there.

Saori got the montessori school, which was her second choice. She's in her 6-9pm structures class right now, a class I am very very happy to have been done with a few semesters ago.

Kim Massie Tuesday

2012-01-18T01:27:00.001-07:00

Tonight, we finally made the pilgrimage back to Beale on Broadway to listen to Kim Massie sing.

To understand the significance we must turn back time to April 10th, 2010, nearly two years ago. I wrote about it then. Saori and I were in St.Louis for the first time, being courted by the school in their big open house. Our student host who picked us up at the airport, Bloom, insisted that no matter what we decided about Wash U, we had to hear this one woman sing. So he crammed a bunch of us in two cars and drove us to an abandoned part of the downtown, close to the river and the the train tracks and the stadium, around 10 o'clock at night. Silvino was there too. It was an amazing night.

Tonight, Silvino returned with us and this time, I drove, and we were able to get a table in the back so we didn't have to stand. Beale on Broadway is a roadhouse, really. A few beers on tap, a good selection of bottles, and a tiny stage. But it plays live blues 7 nights a week, and Kim Massie on tuesdays.

My only problem is the clientele. In the heart of one of most black areas of the metropolis, the only black people are the ones on the stage and the bouncer. Why they have a bouncer is beyond me- the median age looked to be about 40, and most people dressed like the second richest quintile. I don't have a problem with the "House of Blues" (or Cotton Club) phenomena as much as I have a problem with their musical tastes. I loves me some good blues, but those boomers love them some bad generational rock, and the band seriously plays for requests.

Don't get me wrong, Kim Massie is still phenomenal, regardless if she's singing "Whole Lotta Love," but I just wish we could stay on point musically. It's kind of like going to hear Aretha Franklin live in concert and people keep requesting ABBA songs.

What I'm wondering, and I wondered this before, when I went to the Blues festival in Webster grove and the streets were filled with middle agers, what I wondered was:

Where are the people my age? Is blues music just not on the radar? Is it not cool because its something that was really big to the gen Xers? It's really good music, it's much more accessible than say, jazz, and St.Louis is one of the three big river cities known from its blues scene. Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blue less than three miles from here. Ok, I can believe that some twenty-somethings go to the electropop/rap clubs, some go to Death Cab for Cutie concerts, and many stay home, but I'm surprised that for a generation supposed to be more open minded, we're still the youngest in the blues bar.

The Last Supper (Before School Starts)

2012-01-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of classes- technically. The only thing on my plate today is the Design Thinking class, which I have no idea of what will happen. My guess is a two hour lecture on what we're supposed to be doing, why we're taking that class, what is the value in DT as a methodology. Anyway, that's not until two, so we had the luxury of a soft entry to the day complete with lounging, coffee, sausages, toast, and fried eggs.

Last night began with a ham. A giant spiral ham we picked up at Target. Sticking it in the fridge, I thought, wow, that's a giant ham. We should invite some people. So we called up Dew who had just gotten back into town, and then Kenny. Once they got here, Dew was complaining about not being able to find a roommate for this semester, and then simultaneously Hiep posted on facebook about looking for a room. So the room went into an uproar as everyone scrambled to contact Hiep, and I ended up driving out to pick him up as well.

The ham was fantastic and we served it with baked sweet potatoes (still a little underdone, I need to find a better recipe), and salad. We invited our downstairs neighbor, Toly, since we were making a lot of noise, and he came up and joined us for some Wii games for an hour or so.

A good welcome back party for the group.

Justin Beaver

2012-01-15T19:35:00.002-07:00

A friend texted me last night: "Hey do you guys want to go to the penguin parade at 2 tomorrow?"

I asked Saori, "hey Sachan, I know this is kind of a long shot, and you probably won't be interested, but there's a penguin parade at the zoo tomorrow. You wouldn't be interested in going, would you?"

Of course, she wasn't interested at all, so we only arrived an hour and a half early.

It was actually a really beautiful day out today, highs in the 40s, sunny. It was our first time to the zoo, which tells you a lot about my school program given that (1) It's free, (2) it's within a 3 mile radius of my house, and (3) I've lived here for a year and a half. We parked on the street, about 2/3 of a mile from the zoo since I was concerned about the parking situation (actually, in the winter it's fine. Almost nobody goes to the zoo when its so cold out).

Not too impressed when we first walked in. First, it was almost totally empty of people where we walked in, second, there were no animals in sight apart from the bear on top of the "build a bear workshop" boutique, and third, there was a major construction project to build what looks like a really cool sea lion exhibit. The only animals we saw outside were geese on the frozen lake, surrounded by shuttered stores and cafes.

We did find a group of people around the prarie dog enclosure, which was a hotbed of activity. I don't know if its just because its winter, but those were some fat little rodents, like oversized hamsters. They munched on veggies strewn about the large yard, chased each other around, sunbathed, and generally ignored both the birds which were so aggressive they were pecking food from the prarie dog's little hands, and also the smaller squirrels, who darted into an out of the enclosure with a sure ease, and wandered through the larger rodents stealing what they could with impunity. Something about that small, sunny community was highly mesmerizing.

The enclosed ape house reeked, but at least it was warm and humid inside. The enclosures are glass, so you can get up very close to the primates. The whole family of hominids were there- gorillas, orang-utans, chimpanzees, and humans on the other side of the glass. Only the bonobos were absent, since nobody really remembers them anyway. Very active apes, and they were as interested in us as we were in them.

The bird exhibit was also enclosed. I'm still not sure how I feel about enclosing birds in such small enclosures, indoors, permanently. They did have some beautiful birds.

When we made our way to the penguin exhibit, people were already lining up along the parade route. This was more than 40 minutes prior to the event. Lots of people, and more and more came as the time drew closer. We staked out a spot beside a woman who was like an obsessed, territorial little bird who pecked at people who as much as lingered for a moment in front of her staked claim. It got more crowded. Maybe 300-400 people squeezed up to form a wall along the sides of the walkway. I started wondering aloud when Justin Bieber was going to show up. Wardens patrolled the crowd pushing people back and reminding them via bullhorns not to touch the penguins, and to keep back. Saori and I fought to keep our space as well.

And then, an excited murmur from the crowd. An emperor penguin waddled into view, slowed down by an attendant warden trying to keep the group together. Then more penguins. Really only six or seven penguins, half emperor, the other half chinstrap? or another smaller species. They waddled around, mostly at random, guided by the wardens, while moms lunged forward with cameras and shoved their kids at the penguins. It was a mess of penguins, wardens, and people when they stopped right in front of us. I could have reached out and stuffed one into my jacket. Saori loved it and the kids were going nuts. It was pretty cool to see the penguins walking around in front of you. If its really nasty weather next sunday, preferably with snow and ice, we'll be back.

We met up with some friends afterwards and walked around the zoo together. The indoor animal exhibits were interesting. Nothing much stirred in the outside enclosures. The river otters were happy though.

Saori and I went back to the Fox and Hound Tavern, an English style pub, and had a pint and some food while we warmed up.

salad days before the beef

2012-01-14T09:28:00.001-07:00

We had a slow morning yesterday of coffee, biscuits and gravy, and eggs, and then spent most of the early afternoon sorting and unpacking. We got out of the house late in the day, and made a trip to Target and the grocery store for a few items.

It's strange to be cooking for two again- I tend to snack through the day, so Saori was not quite filled up with my dinner of a bowl of rice and a handful of dry salad.

We ended up going over a friend's house for some appetizers, drinks, and games. Trivial Persuit was my (bad) suggestion and was quickly abandoned when more people arrived. Played a few rounds of Scattergories, but then we decided to head out before getting involved in a late game of Cranium.

Still pretty cold, and the snow is still on the ground, but at least it's sunny out. I've got a lunch meeting today with the head of the Young Architect's Forum and one of our professors about setting up a discussion of IDP (the Intern Development Program), the standardized system for recording hours of professional practice- a requirement for anyone who wants to become a registered architect. It's a small step towards fulfilling my role as the VP of professional in the GAC.

Snow, Saori, Subscriptions

2012-01-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

Woke today to find a blanket of snow over St.Louis. It snowed all day and its only now letting up, although the wind is still gusting something fierce. It really makes me appreciate the huge living room window to lay back on the couch and watch the wind whip up swirls of snow.

Something about the snow made me want to cook, so I baked some gingerbread cookies (ok, from a mix, but still). Not terrible.

Saori sent me an email letting me know she was coming in today and not tomorrow, so I spent most of the morning sweeping and mopping. I used a bleach solution for the kitchen and bathroom since I had some concerns about the growth of mold since we've been having so much flooding in those rooms.

I'm excited and nervous to see Saori again- yes, we saw each other over the summer, but I'm always a little afraid it will be strange to see her again, since we're not used to each other's company. It doesn't even seem real that I'm going to go pick her up in person.

On my flight over to the UK, I was looking for a magazine to read on the plane. Popular Science is nothing but glowing gadget reviews now, and Wired is also going that route, as well as struggling to capture the experience of the internet in a magazine format. Ends up being really frenetic. Even the architecture and design mags are half advertisements for contemporary plumbing fixtures, office furniture, tile, and carpeting. I'm not looking for something as involved as Foreign Affairs, but I want something that will last me more than half an hour to read. So I picked up a National Geographic. You know what? It's a really good magazine. I know I sound like a grandfather, but they've got well-written, in-depth articles, got good spread layouts and graphics, and the photography is superb. I just got a year long subscription. $15.

We'll see if I actually read them, but I think that it would be something nice to peruse before bed, or drinking tea in the morning. Worth a shot.

the mastermind

2012-01-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday started at 5AM, when my ancient nemesis, Jet Lagg, strode into my bedroom and violently threw me out of bed.

I got a lot done though- swung by the bank, paid bills, went grocery shopping to restock on everything, set up some financial stuff for the semester at my investment company, worked on a spreadsheet of finances for the rest of the year (do I want to graduate broke, with less debt? or take on more debt and save a bit for job hunting? Do you feel lucky, punk?), organized the apartment a bit, and watched some TV while I did a load of laundry and put it away.

I've been traveling for over 20 days, and I haven't slept in the same bed for more than four consecutive days. I've ping ponged at breakneck speed from St.Louis to Oklahoma City, to Orlando, to London, to Bath, and spent time in about five or six other cities, villages, and towns along the way. And yet, less than 24 hours after I arrive in St.Louis, I'm wandering around at home, trying to make up an excuse to get out of my apartment.

I ended up meeting a friend of mine for a drink at Three Kings, a pub-ish place in the Loop. Good draft beer selection. There, we ran into a group of people we knew who had just graduated and we joined them for a drink, and finally we were joined by my roommate, who was also part of that same group of recent grads.

They're excellent designers all of them, but none of them have that architecture job yet. However, they're still upbeat, they sound ready to throw themselves into the job search after this winter break, and there's a sense of good humor mixed with fatalism. We joked a lot about the "the heist" we were going to commit, "just enough to pay back the student loans, and take a small vacation afterwards."

It's useful and a little scary to see how short the distance of one year will run. I need to really start looking forward and envisioning where I want to be a year from now, and from there, start thinking about how I can get there. After all, I was designated

'The Mastermind'

Return to Catfordshire-upon-Squirreldel

2012-01-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 10:15AM, so we had a driver pick us up three hours in advance, to give us plenty of time. It was a good call. Halfway to Heathrow, the traffic came to a dead stop for about half an hour while an accident was cleared. We got to the check in counter five minutes before they would have closed check-in. Cleared security surprisingly quickly- they didn't even make me take off my shoes. Inside the ~~shopping center~~ terminal waiting area was packed with people. No open seats at all. And of course, because it's Heathrow, our flight was delayed an hour.

Heathrow is one of my least favorite airports in the world. The absolute worst, of course, is Dulles in DC, for a variety of reasons I won't go into here. Heathrow is a mess. Way too far from London. The terminals are miles apart from each other, first of all. Secondly, there's not enough seating inside, and you're forced to wander around overpriced luxury goods the entire time. They don't announce your gate until its time to board, which means if youre unlucky enough to be flying on a discount airline where where you line up is how you board, there's a mass stampede to the gate. And about every other flight I've flown out of there has been delayed.

Tay and I enjoyed a bite of breakfast and a coffee at one of the restaurants, as much to sit down as eat, before our number came up.

Our seats weren't bad, actually, although the plane was older. Flying over, we had individual screens with a variety of movies. Maybe a dozen films, starting every twenty minutes or so. I won't mention that OVER 15 YEARS AGO Singapore Airlines offered individual screens with about a hundred movies that could be played, paused, fast forwarded and rewound. The flight back to Chicago had a series of ceiling mounted cathode ray-tube monitors, which showed Arthur and another movie which I completely forgot. It's a long flight. 8 and a half hours, and you really feel each one of them since you're flying with the daylight the entire trip.

Because of the delays getting out of the UK, American put me on an hour later flight out of Chicago. They gave Tay a neon orange expedite pass. It was pretty well organized. We were told on the plane to see the agents in orange vests, and once we got off, we told the agent who we were and they handed us our passes with the new tickets inside. Tay's Expedite pass was like the ExpressPass for the airport. It was amazing. We totally bypassed the immigration line and got to get in the fast lane, which we breezed through. The pass got tay in the fast lane for security screening as well, so between the time we got off the plane and the time we cleared security in a different terminal was less than 20 minutes. Most of that time was waiting for and riding the tram between terminals. It was amazing.

It was kind of sad seeing Tay off at his gate. It was in Chicago that our paths once again diverged. We'd really been traveling together, and pretty much sleeping in the same bed, for almost three weeks. It was really good to be able to spend so much time traveling with my brother.

Got into St.Louis after dark, and my friend Kenny picked me up. His driving skills had really improved since I left my car with him. Of course, the day I'd left him my car was his first day to have a driver's licence, but that's besides the point. I dropped him off at school where he was working, and drove home. When I switched on the radio and some good Mississippi blues came on, I finally felt "I'm home." Back at the house, Suki was thrilled and pissed off to see me. Desperate for attention overload. I cooked and ate some ramen since that was what I had. My roommate had returned from Alaska with some Reindeer sausage and smoked salmon, but I'm saving it for later. My journey was at an end, and a new one begins.

Littlehampton and Arundel

2012-01-08T12:44:00.000-07:00

It seems my time in the UK is once again at an end. We've got a taxi coming at 7:15 AM for us, bright and early for our morning flight to Chicago and points onward.

Yesterday, before dad took off for another buisness trip, we spend the day in Guildford on the high street- dad had a haircut and we ate lunch at a pretty good Thai place off the main street called Sir and Madame. Actually, the best chicken penang I've ever had. I think there's something about the quality and freshness of the ingredients that just makes everything better. Dad took off in the afternoon, and we ordered pizza in and watched Flushed Away.

Today we drove down to the seaside town of Littlehampton, got incredibly lost, and finally made our way to the East Beach Cafe. The cafe caught my eye for a few reasons- it's right on the beach, with views out across the English channel, and because the architecture is very distinctive. It has a very contemporary design, by which I mean that is is a monocoque, or single shell, strucuture- the skin of the building is its own structure- there are no columns or other structural members, and the entire thing is created out of metal plates welded together. The form is low and oblong, and the back of the cafe is contoured in a series of stepping forms. The overall effect is a giant abstract oyster shell, opened to the sea.

The food was very good. We ordered steamed mussels, which were fresh and absolutely fantastic, and fish and chips. Everything was very fresh, and the breading on the fish, which seemed to have some ground corn meal as well, was light and crispy.

I took some pictures down by the shoreline, and then we drove on Arundel since the day was getting late. Arundel is a picturesque town with a quaint square and high street of pubs, inns, boutiques, sweets, wine shops, and antiques. The city is dominated by a massive castle complex which forms a picturesque backdrop, as well as a huge cathedral nearby. We walked around the town, visited the cathedral since the castle was closed, and got a pint of ale at a local pub.

I've really enjoyed the local cask ales, especially the bitters. They're not carbonated, which is different, and served "cellar cool" which is cool, but not cold. The taste is very nice, very mild. The other fun thing is the 'pub dogs,' which are dogs which actually live at the pubs, usually the pub owner's pet who lives upstairs. Seems to be mostly black labs, and they're a little inquisitive and always friendly. They don't beg and generally leave patrons alone who ignore them.

The UK is always an interesting visit for me since its such a sharp contrast to the US, illustrating what is possible and what is compromised. I walk around the high streets with their high levels of people and energy, the vibrancy, and I wish they had them in the US. We did, up until about 50 years ago, when the department stores, strip malls, and shopping centers put them out of business.

Americans got to save money on less expensive suburban strip malls, but at the cost of the urban experience. We exchanged a vibrant, historically rooted pedestrian-friendly street with a multitude of dining and shopping experiences for an ocean of asphalt and a giant, faceless box so we could save a buck.

Interestingly, since that time, there has been a slow, fumbling attempt to recapture it. Shopping malls with their atria, then outdoor malls, then 'districts' of outdoor malls with a stronger pedestrian experience and some attempts at dining and entertainment, even a few "lifestyle centers" which attempt to bring in some living and office spaces. The jury is still out, but all the demographic data points to a massive generational shift back to the cities. People in my generation want to live in exciting, vibrant, urban centers. The retiring boomers, empty nesters, also want to live someplace exciting and fun.

I'll get off my soap box. Time to put the soap back inside and pack it up for the long trip back home.

My name is Alec and I'm addicted to the AA

2012-01-07T05:56:00.000-07:00

Actually, what happened was,

The night before in London, I wanted to go to the AA bookstore (this is the bookstore at the Architecture Association school of architecture) so I dragged Tay there and got to the door, and realized that I didn't have nearly the time I wanted to spend there (I usually budget hour at least, and this is a bookstore much smaller than the living room of my apartment, by the way). And Tay's boot search was not fruitful at that late hour, so we decided that we needed to return to London the next day.

Anyway, jump to the following morning-
We caught a ride into the Guildford station with dad again and then attempted to buy tickets to London, which proved more difficult than we had originally anticipated. It's a long story, but basically the British will encourage you to jump queues but won't accept an unsigned credit card, even if you sign it in front of them.

I really love train travel. You go to the train station, which is in the center of town, and the moment you walk in the door, you see trains and the board with all the departure times and destinations. Theres no Orwellian melodramatic security theater, and its a short walk to the platform. The only line you ever stand in is for tickets if you want to talk to a real person, and you never wait more than ten minutes for anything. You see the train arrive, you board it, and because there's huge windows everywhere, you see the train departing and the landscape changing. You really experience the transition from A to B, which for me is really important in understanding A, understanding B, and the relationship between A and B.

Flying, you leave A and go to faceless airport somewhere outside of A, you spend your time in various windowless chambers until you find yourself in another faceless airport. Is it the same airport? Usually the only way to tell is to recall if there was a protracted period of heightened unpleasantness beforehand. Your only introduction to B is the drive in from the airport.

Coming into Waterloo station is one of my favorite feelings in London. All the tracks end there, and everyone gets off and you join the crowds getting off all the other trains coming in from different parts of the country. It's a huge station of steel, iron, stone, and tons of glass, and a combination of widely varying styles as its expanded over the many years of its use.

We caught the underground back up to Oxford street- first stop was the AA bookstore. It's a very small bookstore, but its packed with books, and the books are amazing. Perhaps a dozen titles, and that's being generous, you could find in the corner big box bookstore. My school's giant architecture library would carry perhaps a quarter to half of the titles. Perhaps 75% could be purchased online from various sources, and typically for astronomical markup. However, a lot of titles, especially international ones, are very hard to come by and some titles are exclusively sold through this one bookstore.

It's an exciting place for me as well because its in the AA, which has produced and had studios taught by some of the most notable names in contemporary architecture. It's in a series of residential apartments, actually, and you have to be buzzed in from the outside, so it's kind of fun just to go there.

The books are expensive too which means, that even though I saw two titles I really really wanted badly, I couldn't afford them. (I can, however, find them online, but alas, more expensive.) So I spend a lot of time at the sale shelf and the $3 clearance box. We ended up spending a little over an hour in the store. Tay was very patient, and perused some of the philosophy and other books while I shopped.

Next stop was boot shopping for Tay. We walked back to Oxford street and walked the entire thing again, stopping in at nearly every shoe store along the way and any other stores that caught our eyes. Tay picked up a pair of jeans at H&M. I'd spent my wad at the bookstore, so I didn't buy anything. At the end of Oxford street, we worked our way back through SoHo and Chinatown, stopping for lunch at a pretty good Japanese place. Split an Ebi tempura roll, and I got a grilled eel rice bowl, one of my favorites. Not too expensive either.

We cut back north to the first Aldo and Tay found the boots he'd been looking for. We spent maybe half an hour while he tried to figure out how much he wanted them, how he'd potentially wear them, etc. In the end, he got them, and for good boots, it was a fair price.

I wanted to see Hyde park and Harrod's so we walked, again, the full length up Oxford street. In the past two days, we'd traversed Oxford street no less than four times. We got to Marble Arch and Speaker's corner in Hyde park, and walked in after sunset. It's startling and interesting to suddenly go from super high density center of London to the vast open fields of Hyde park. It was a pretty place. I wish I'd gone during the daylight hours.

We emerged at the far end of the park onto Knightsbridge, and picked our way over Harrod's. Tay had never heard of it, but I was intrigued. It reminded me of a labrynthine, endless cruise ship store. Endless luxury brands, insane prices, strange and gaudy decoration, marble and gold, various themed bars, cafes, restaurants, ice cream parlors, tea rooms tucked inside. A solid block of a department store. We roamed through it, eventually finding our way to...the Harry Potter store?

It was smaller than any of the stores in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, but they sold some very different products. They had some action figures on sale (although I can't imagine 'Confused Ron' would ever be a hot seller.) The marauder's map is kind of cool, but not at $40, and its the kind of thing I'd hide anytime I have company. The wands were different too. They did have a Dobby latex mask though which was very disturbing on Tay.

Anyway, Harrod's got old quick. Number one, it was really crowded, and number two, we never seemed to change scales of space. We went from room to room to room and they were all the same size, so it began to feel very claustrophobic. We finally found our way out and agreed we'd have rather just sat down and bought a pint someplace instead.

Tube back to Waterloo, and dad suggested a train for us to catch, and we ran to catch it and caught it for the ride back.

L O N D O N

2012-01-06T18:43:00.003-07:00

Yesterday, dad got us up early and we drove into Guildford with him. He dropped us off at the train station and went on in to work. Transportation in the UK is wildly expensive. Petrull, which is the British pronunciation of "gasoline" is about $8 a gallon. Rail is not much cheaper. A round trip ticket to London and a day's underground pass runs about $30. The center of London is perhaps an hour to 45 minutes drive from where we are out here.

The upside is, London is amazing to just be in, and they have some of the best museums in the world, which cost absolutely nothing. Which is what we took them up on.

First stop was the Victoria & Albert museum, also known as the V&A. Although they have collections which span time and the world, the exhibits seem to be organised mostly through the lens of design and style. What did people design, and why seem to be primary questions driving the exhibits and the collections. They had an amazing middle east collection, and some fantastic work from the middle ages. Interestingly, they also have collections of particular materials, such as glass, although my favourite was the architecture hall, which featured scale models of architecture from around the world, and cases of drawers with original drawings and sketches from famous architects- contemporary and historic, Palladio to Foster.

After the V&A we followed Tay to a place his phone recommended, a really tiny hole in the wall kebab place. It was so small, the lamp on the spit brushed both sides of the restaurant, and people had to duck underneath the kitchen counter to get by it. We ordered just kebabs (they were out of french fries) and attempted to find someplace to sit.

I voted for a few seats we found at the back, regardless of sharing a table with strangers, but it was warm, very cosy, and I could really feel myself becoming more like a local, jammed into the back of this tiny place. Tay, however, does not share similar sentiments regarding personal space, especially while eating, so we ended up sitting outside, despite the fact it was about 40 degrees and the wind was so vicious it blew away our pita bread. Our kebab meat froze instantly.

We really needed to warm up a bit after our polar lunch, so we stopped into a nearby cafe/bakery and I got a cappuccino and a delicious walnut creme coffee cake. It's nice to be in London where cool cafes and windows full of wonderful looking baked goodies are on display every ten meters.

After our coffees, we walked over to the Natural History museum. I had intended to only go for a quick spin, but it ended up turning into two hours as we were both sucked into the depth and breadth of the exhibits. It's a huge, elaborate, and labyrinthine building, branching off like the tree of life into smaller and smaller sections. We saw perhaps a quarter of the museum. As we left, Tay described it as "the Louvre of natural history museums." That ate a lot of our time, so we took the underground back up to Oxford street.

If London is the shopping center of the UK, Oxford street is the shopping center of London. The street is about a mile long, lined on both sides with a combination of boutiques, larger stores, overpriced pubs, tiny tourist crap stores, and giant department stores behind neoclassical facades. I'd say 90% of the street is apparel. Shops from around the world. Aldo from Spain, Muji and Uniqlo from Japan, American Apparel and Quicksilver from America, on and on. It's a fun place to be, especially with the British going nuts for the after New Years sales.

It was dark when we got there, but all the buildings were lit up with their Christmas displays, and the giant department stores had beautiful light displays cascading down the facades. Tay was looking for a new pair of boots so we stopped in at an Aldo, and I popped over to Muji. We ended up walking the full length of the street before catching a the tube back Waterloo. Caught an hour long train that conveniently dropped us right at the Milford station. We were so wiped that we didn't even mind the long ride.

Bath and Beyond

2012-01-04T11:40:00.000-07:00

After we met up with dad at the hotel, Tay and I went on our own walking tour. Tay is Mr. History, and I'm Mr. Architecture, so we're pretty compatible in old cities. Bath Abbey is nothing that exceptional. It's a lovely building, built most recently in 1675, and it has beautiful fan vaulting, but it didn't stun or stagger me.

So we walked on to the Georgian circus, which is a ring of buildings around a giant roundabout. The idea was that no matter which door you walked out of, you'd see the facade of buildings straight ahead. The whole time we were in Bath, Tay kept asking me what the difference between Georgian and Palladian, and I kept giving him really wimpy answers like "Well, Georgian is a lot more fussy than Palladian" or "Georgian is British and more recent, while Palladian is Italian and older."

After our walking tour, we met back up with dad and had lunch at the Pump Room, which is a very large old building which used to house the pumps in the Georgian baths, which are right next door and right above the ancient Roman baths. We ate a nice meal there, and lots of hot tea. We decided to forego the tour of the ancient Roman baths because, well, none of us were that interested and there didn't seem to be much of the Roman baths left above the water line.

However, the pump room did offer glasses of water from the Bath springs. Tay had to have a glass before we left, so we shared a cup. It was warm, minerally, and unpleasant, especially with the sulfur in the water giving it a less than pleasant smell and taste.

Our time at Bath was at an end. I was amazed that we'd spent so long in Bath yet none of us had wrinkled fingers.

We drove on to Lacock, a tiny village about 30 minutes outside of Bath. The village is ancient, and the houses there have slate and thatched roofs, waddle and daub construction. Quiet, cobblestone streets. It has been used in several films, most recently for several scenes in the Harry Potter series. All of the scenes in Godrick's Hollow were filmed here, so we saw the church graveyard where Harry and Hermione found his parents grave, as well as the Potter residence, which showed up in the first Harry Movie as flashback. Tay wanted me to take a photo of him in front of it, and was kind of embarrassed and little surprised when a little girl skipped up to him and asked if he could stand aside and let her go home. The nearby Abbey was also used extensively for scenes in Hogwarts and the courtyard.

We drove on, taking a detour through Salisbury. Dad actually asked me if I wanted to see Stonehenge, but I was not that interested or curious. I know its a lot of history embedded in the stones 3000 years old, and its a marvel that it was able to be built, but it just doesn't resonate with me. We went on to the city instead, parked in the city center and walked to the cathedral instead. It was well after dark at this point, and the cathedral was beautifully lit at night. The spire is actually the tallest in the UK.

We stopped for a pint in the Haunch of Venison, supposedly the oldest pub in Salisbury. It surely looked it, and actually has the oldest pewter bar in the UK. Tiny, tiny place. There were only four people sitting downstairs, and we still had to go upstairs to find seating. There, we found a mummified hand on display in a niche in the wall, supposedly the hand of a gambler who was found cheating at cards and suffered the loss of that hand. He's one of the pair of ghosts supposed to haunt the place. Supposedly as well, Eisenhower and Churchill had a pint here during WWII, planning out the D-Day invasion. Actually, I'd be amazed if they were in any public place, let alone discussing one of the most closely guarded secrets of WWII. Still a cool bar for a pint.

We drove on and had dinner at a really nice place called the Cyder Inn, really far off the beaten path, and actually a working inn as well.

The final stop for the night was at an old favorite- the Refectory, for some STP- sticky toffee pudding, which is pretty much the pinnacle of deserts.

Bathing in Bath

2012-01-04T10:36:00.003-07:00

Anyway, keeping in mind my goal of visiting the bath spa, I was facing some serious constraints- the spa opened at 9 and we needed to be checked out of the hotel by 11, the cost for 2 hours was about $40, and most seriously, neither Tay nor I brought bathing suits with us. I talked to the girl working the front desk at the hotel and she told me about a sports store down the street from the baths which were having serious blowout sales. (After the new year is serious sale season in the UK).

Tay and I worked out a plan for the following morning, which had to be followed in order for us to maximize our time at the spa.

7:45:00 alarm goes off
8:18:00 we go down to the hotel breakfast with hotel towels stashed in my backpack
8:35:00 left the hotel breakfast and set off for the sports shop
8:45:00 arrived at the sports shop and quickly searched through the store to find the cheapest bathing suits. Not Speedos, but close- swimming shorts which were shorter than boxer briefs. They were cheap- less than $9.

9:05:00 arrived at the spa.
10:35:00 left the pool
10:43:00 left the spa
10:52:00 arrived at the hotel, packed, dropped our wet hotel towels.
11:00:00 dropped keys and checked out.

The spa was really nice. When we check in, they gave us a chipped wristband, which we held to a plate to operate the turnstile letting us in. They actually give you an additional 30 minutes on top of your two hours in which to shower, change, etc. The locker rooms, which are the first room you must enter, were also very nice and unlike any other locker room I've been to. Unisex, the changing booths form a ring around the space you enter, and are bounded by two doors- one opening to the entrance, one towards the outer ring of lockers. You close both doors, change, and then open the doors again. You put your clothes in a locker and close the door, and then hold your chipped bracelet to a reader pad, which locks the locker and remembers your number for you. Towel in hand, we went first the large indoor pool.

The building seems to be supported by four large columns, which are expressed as giant funnel shaped mushrooms, which actually go into the pool. Several floors above, they are the in the centers of the the four circular glass steam rooms. The pool water was warm, not as hot as the springs come out naturally, but very nicely relaxing. There were seating areas with jets, fountains for a stream of water hitting your shoulders, and underwater jets which gently propel you around the pool.
The day after a bank holiday, on a workday morning, it was really quiet. We were actually the only ones in the pool for a long time. We got bored and wandered our way up to the rooftop pool. This is also a thermal bath, also totally empty. Five floors above the street, the roof pool had a great view of the surrounding old city and especially the Abbey tower. The rain was still drizzling town and in the cold air, the steam rising from the pool was whipped around by the wind. It was really great sensation actually, the cold rain and air and the warmth from the water. We spent a lot of time up there.

We did spend a little bit in the steam room too, which is a large chamber containing a huge warm shower in the center and four cylindrical glass pods containing four differently scented steam. The steam room walls were punctured with a grid of small, circular windows, perpetually fogged. After fifteen minutes in a steam pod, one could also walk directly out on the lower roof terrace for a bracing blast of cold air and rain.

After another soak in the rooftop pool, we changed and made our way to the exit. When you came back to the lockers, you held your bracelet to the panel and your locker popped open. The exit turnstile was pretty cool. The turnstile itself was unremarkable- the reader was cool. You held your chipped bracelet to a reader panel. The panel then slid open to reveal a small illuminated tray where you placed your band, and then the panel slid back over it and you were indicated to pass through. Maybe I'm just easily impressed.

Bathtime puns

2012-01-04T04:26:00.004-07:00

Two days ago, we took an overnight trip to Bath. We got packed and on the road by midmorning, heading out across the green countryside, stopping only for a quick bite of traditional British fare: KFC chicken wraps from the drive-thru.

The city name jokes got started before we'd even entered the city, only got worse as we approached Lacock, and didn't subside until we reached Salisbury.

Bath is a small, picturesque city. Most of the architecture is very Georgian, which reminded me strongly of Edinburgh, especially the New Town. The Avon river runs through it, so named because when the Romans came through wanting to document everything, they asked local Britons what the river was called, and the Brits responded avon meaning 'river.' The same story with the Neva river in Moscow.

Bath has held its place through the history of the UK by both the virtue of the baths in Roman times, its position as a border town between the Britons and the Saxons, and later in Georgian times as a resort town and high fashion center for the aristocracy.

We stated at the Hilton perched above the river, located in the historic city center, which centers around the baths. After we got checked in, we went for a walk down to Sally Lunn Buns, which was the self-proclaimed oldest house in Bath, as well as the residence of Sally Lunn, who invented the buns for which the town is well known. The house is very old, part of a line of adjoining houses along a narrow pedestrian street, but as we discovered on wikipedia, the myth totally falls apart. Sally Lunn was not her name, it was a very very rough Anglicization of a French name, as are the origins of the eponymous buns, and there is no evidence that she ever lived or baked in the house bearing her British name. (Lunn buns, by the way, are very similar to the rolls served in the southern united states- fluffy, large, and delicious) The food was good though. I had a Welsh rarebit on a Lunn bun, which is basically cheese, by bacon, mushrooms, melted on top of the bun.

We then took the hop on hop off bus tour of Bath, which drove us around. We sat on top as long as we could before the cold and rain drove us below. The rain and the early sunset ended our day after we got off the bus, so we adjourned to a pub for a pint before retiring back to the hotel. Urbanist that I am, I wandered around in the light drizzle and dark, following my whim along streets and alleys. I found my way over to the Thermae spa, which is a modern spa/thermal bath which uses the water from the hot springs.

In researching Bath, I decided that I really wanted to spend some time at these baths. First, I really wanted to follow the footsteps of the livestock, Britons, Romans, Saxons, and Georgians, who came to Bath to relax and soak in the mineral-rich hot springs. Secondly, I was curious about the architecture, built by renowned architects Grimshaw, in a modern design which picked up elements from the city. Bath is largely built of local limestone, especially Georgian bath, and Grimshaw used this material extensively for the baths. The mushroom shaped columns, which fan out at the top similar to Wrights columns at the Johnson building, strike me as interpretations of the columns terminating in fan vaulting in nearby Bath Abbey. Third, I could really really use some relaxation.

I was called back to the hotel and we took a taxi to a very swanky modern Indian restaurant, the Mint Room. The food was very good with the right mixture of spicy dishes and more mild dishes, and we amazingly ordered the right amount of food. I was really missing the burn on my cheeks and top of my head.

We took a cab back to the hotel and walked around a bit, trying to find a pub that served STP, but all the kitchens were closed at the relatively late hour. The clientelle was a lot younger as well, closer to Tay's age. We ended up playing cards in the hotel bar until about 11, when we call it a night.

I've actually been kind of surprised at how much dad likes to play now- we'd played a hand or two in Switzerland before, and he was lukewarm about it, but this trip, he's been really into it once he grasped the essentials of the game, and he's been wanting to play every night. He's getting better, but Tay and I are still beating him pretty consistently. I have a lot of experience, and Tay has a lot of experience, plus he's a pretty shrewd strategan.

Skip to the bit about pubs!

2012-01-01T17:47:00.001-07:00

Last few days have been a blur. Tay and I wake up after ten, and usually closer to 11 am. We eat a huge, elaborate breakfast around noon and people generally take an hour or two to get organised and ready to do something. We'll drive out and take in a pint at a village pub, and another at a different pub nearby. After dark, we head home, and eat a huge, elaborate dinner at eight, followed by a few hours of cards before breaking up after midnight.

Last night, New Years Eve, dad took us to Inn on the Hill, a nice country pub. Please note that many country pubs double as restaurants, and many of them are quite nice. This was one of them. For dinner, I ordered butternut squash gnocchi, followed by roasted duck. For dessert, I ordered a quite delicious apple-pear crumble served with maple whipped cream.

The demographics of this area are really revealed by the pubs. Let's start with who I see there: lots of middle age to late middle age, sprinkled through with a few families. Perhaps not too surprising. However, these folks don't look like the agrarian sort. A peek into the typical parking lot yields a surprising number of BMWs, Land Rovers and Audis. London is an hour's drive time away.

The pubs themselves tell me volumes now that I think about it. The typical pub out here was usually built out of an existing barn or house. They're ancient structures, some of the original architecture built 600 years ago. We're in the middle of pastureland. If we were in the US, the pub should be like the country bar in rural Kentucky, complete with neon bud light signs in the window, broken juke box, and the scratched and filthy tables stolen from the long-closed restaurant down the way.

However, I've never been to ANY 'English' or 'Irish' pub in the US which was half as nice as the country pubs out here. The chimneys are cracked, the building leans, and the old tile roof sags, but there's a sleek and quiet modernization that gets lost as you're dazzled by the quaintness. You're looking at the old harnesses on the ancient beams and you totally miss the discreet, modern lighting fixtures recessed into the plaster ceiling. All the wiring for the inconspicous speakers and electrified old fixtures is recessed. The door and walk off mat is too nice. Everything is a little too clean and polished, and the wait staff are a little too polite. The menus are professionally done, on quality paper, in leather folios. The light levels are appropriate. The bathrooms are very nice.

I get a sneaking suspicion that these country pubs are essentially as themed and carefully contrived as the "Rielley O'Finnegan's Irish Pub" in the Oklahoma City mall. Another give-away- the building's history is often displayed- either writ large on the wall by the bar or on the backs of the menus. Locals, regulars, farmers. I'm guessing they're not going to give a toasted teabag, especially once they've read it the first time.

I really took for granted that I was the only tourist here, enjoying the pubs for their ancient histories, and quaint, country pubby feeling. My hypothesis- These pubs don't exist for the local farmers (which makes me wonder- who works these fields? Do they live farther away and commute from where property values are lower?) These pubs are here for the upper class commuters, who use Surrey as a bedroom community for Guildford or London. Guildford, which I read somewhere is one of the most expensive places to live in England outside of London, is in the heart of the area, and the heart of London itself only 45 minutes away by the many express trains.

Of course, I could be wrong about the exclusivity of the area. It does seem like there's a lot of these upscale pubs. However, it could be that the area is very mixed economically, and that the poorer people go to less visible pubs. Or, more likely, echoing the historic patterns, perhaps most of the middle and lower classes who live out here reside in the larger villages and towns, and go to less fancy neighbourhood pubs, while people with the country houses (which are, incidentaly, extremely expensive) drive to the more remote country pubs.

So, ultimately, its good for me to remember that very likely, these pubs are the playground of the wealthy Brits seeking a bit of the lordly country life, or to pretend to be shepherds or something.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, after dinner at the nice pub-
We played cards until midnight, and then watched the London fireworks on the big screen TV. A year ago, we were actually there, on the banks of the Thames river among the millions, so the home theatre experience is somewhat lacking.

Lists from 2011

2011-12-31T20:01:00.002-07:00

Lessons for next semester

Spend the right amount of time in studio. I've realized the risk of not putting enough time in studio, but I'm overcompensating, spending all my surplus time in studio. Studio becomes home, the socialization place, rather than the working place. 'Come in, work, leave' is the way it needs to go. My productivity slid last semester and went straight to hell this semester.
Make models. My craft is good, I'm most intuitive working with physical models, and it ultimately moves me to where I need to be. People relate to reality much more intuitively. I need to be making models from the beginning through the end. Model making as a methodology.
Abandon Revit. It's a great production tool and is one of the industry standards, but its a production tool, not a design tool. You try to design a shark, you end up with a refrigerator. It has its uses, but not in the first 2/3rds of the semester.
Embrace Rhino. This is the software I should be blazing fast with by now, a software flexible enough and graphically sophisticated enough to design.
Embrace Everything. Studio is the time to learn all new software, techniques, methods, ideas. Forget your snobby elitism about bullshit formalism. Grasshopper can do more than just make cool looking objects.
Find your passion. Studio instructors don't really care about what position you take architecturally as long as you can defend it and are passionate about it, because in the real world, passions really do take you where you want to be. 2012 might not bring the end of the world, but I'm not as hopeful for 2112. There's no time to not do what you care about the most.
Exercise. 2012 is feeling like the year my metabolism seriously turns the corner. I need to bring back walking, eating healthier, socializing, and sleeping.
Take action early. This was one of the years I was most disappointed in myself. I let myself down in studio (see above), I let the student body down in my office in the graduate architecture council, and I failed so secure the international internship I'd sought. All of these failures are attributable primarily to my failure to make a plan early and act early.

I can do better than 2011.

But there were bright spots too in 2011, as well as other key moments in my life.

Two consecutive semesters without Saori, which is like living without sunlight, taught me how to live with myself again, and moreover, how to be happy with myself, how to go out with friends, how to be sociable. Made a lot of friends.
I helped mom and Tay move out of Phoenix and road tripped with Tay and Saori and Suki from Phoenix, Arizona to Bloomington, Indiana.
I traveled to amazing new destinations including New Orleans, Shanghai, Helsinki, Aland, Edinburgh, Orlando, and three separate trips to London (new years 2011, summer, new years 2012).
I had a great spring studio with a very rigorous professor, who was very difficult to work with, but who pushed me to do a lot of good work and I finished with a really great project.
Despite living as frugally as possible (with the notable exception of travels, see above), I ended up spending everything I'd saved for college during my three years of working. The bright spot is that I'm actually feeling better about the future since I've worked out a way to survive, pay bills, and tuition without increasing my student loans. No, it doesn't involve selling vital organs, bodily fluids, or standing on corners downtown.
I learned a new craft of bookmaking. Really enjoyed it and it feels like it will bring me great rewards as I develop this skill and combine it with my love of writing and design.
2011 was really the year of family- I spent every holiday with local and extended family, and summer helping family, and winter with both sides of the family.
I tried hot yoga. It was ok but I got dizzy and had to sit down for awhile.
Fundamentally, I'm still doing what I set out to do- I'm going to architecture school in one of the top schools in the country, I'm making the grades, and finding time to travel while living in a place almost to myself. If I were Christian, I would say that I was exceptionally blessed- my intention matches my reality, which is a lot more than can be said for the vast majority of mankind.

You're UK, We're UK

2011-12-31T08:42:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was our first whole day in the UK. We slept in pretty late, like 11 hours. We were both pretty wiped out from traveling and I built in some tiredness so I'd be able to sleep on the plane, so there was some serious catching up to do.

We started the afternoon with a stop by a pub- Withies- for a pint. (Trivia: Pub stands for Public House). The weather was stereotypically British- gray, overcast, with the kind of miserable, annoying rain which is between a mist and a real rain- a light splattering as if someone is peeing nearby. I hate it because you feel like an umbrella is overkill but the droplets build up on your hair and clothes.

We drove on to Guildford (Trivia: Home of Ford Prefect) and found the city was packed with holiday shoppers. The parking lots near the high streets were full with up to ten cars lined up in the middle of the street waiting to get in. Tons of pedestrians everywhere. We ended up parking a short distance from the base of the high street, and hiked it in.

Guildford has two main shopping streets which run parallel to each other, and are connected by narrow pedestrian passages lined with more shops. Lots of people out and about. Sales in all the stores. Even with sales, the prices in the shops were still ridiculously expensive. First, the exchange rate is you basically multiply British Pounds by 1.5 to get USD, so there's that built-in expense. And then, there's the overall higher prices of the UK. Looking at the prices of even heavily discounted cashmere, its no wonder that we saw so many internationals flocking to Orlando's outlet malls.

After we threaded our way back and forth between both streets, we stopped for another drink and then went on to dinner at an Italian place. It's kind of amazing for me to stop and think about the age of the buildings over here. I mean, everything is relative. In Phoenix, Arizona, if a building is 100 years old, it's a museum or protected as a historic site and there's usually a giant bronze plaque. In St.Louis, that age gets pushed back by about 50-100 additional years. In the UK, those are the buildings that get the Walgreens put into them. Old for England is at least 300+ years old. We were in a pub yesterday that went back to 1700. The oldest pubs in England are over 500 years old.

The other thing that is kind of strange for me is that the ethnic food places are usually staffed by ethnic people. So the Italian restaurant is staffed by Italians. It shouldn't be weird, but for most of my life, Italian is so American, it never seemed out of place that at Delhi Palace I'd be served by Amit Gupta, but at the Zio's Cuchina It'd be Peter Schwartz. And when the waiters say "grazie" I can't help but think of the SNL sketch with Adam Sandler and Dana Carvey as the Italian restaurant pepper boys. ("Fresh-a-pepper?") Anyway, my sausage and mushroom risotto was pretty good, and the tiramisu was quite good.

Drove home through more fog and mist in the darkness.
London is actually quite far north, so it gets dark around 4pm here. For sake of comparison, the UK is situated on a latitude north of Maine, and London is only 300 miles south of Moscow. The US is a very southern country in comparison with the rest of Europe.

Played the card game daihimen (Japan) for about three hours when we got back to the house in the village. It's a really good game. (AKA President, Scum, Asshole (US), Plow the Big Two (China)).

Fanboats and Airplanes

2011-12-29T11:02:00.001-07:00

Once we realized we just needed to get the hell out of Gainesville, it was a simple matter of trying to trying to figure out to go. Tay and I both wanted to try out some fanboats on the swamps, so Tay found us a tour near the everglades in an preserve, where we would stand a better chance of seeing some wildlife. The kicker was, it was out past Orlando, so its about two and a half hours away.

We were a bit concerned about the weather, but when we arrived, we were seeing bands of clouds and sun. On a stretch of raised freeway, we took a small exit and pulled into a small parking lot with the swamps stretching on either side. We were more concerned about the two huge tour busses. We'd made reservations, but we were about an hour and a half early. They bumped us up 30 minutes, so we had less time to kill comparing gator heads, talking to the birds, and petting the pig. The pig in question was a massive, sleepy, white-bristled pig which was so fat, I never did see its eyes. It was napping, and when we got close, it would emit a drawn out quiet squeal. And would when I touched it, it would squeal some more. This was a very vocal pig. And huge.

Fan boats are essentially flat bottom boats with big, powerful, fans mounted on the back for propulsion. Because they don't have rotors which stick in the water, they don't get bogged down in the aquatic plants, and they can skim over 6" of water. The boats we took sat four across, and four deep, plus the pilot. I got the front seat. We were provided with sound isolating headphones and microphones which blocked the noise of the fan yet still allowed us to talk to each other and to the pilot. I wasn't prepared for how fast these things could go. We took off down the channel, and it was like we were flying just above the surface of the water, water spraying off to the side, wind in our faces, with ducks and great blue heron taking off to get out of the way of the boat.

It was amazingly fun. The fan boat can ride over pretty much any part of the swamp, and with the storm fronts moving in and out, we were flying through a landscape of water, plants, land, and sky.

The pilot took us into a quiet glad and turned off the fan so we could appreciate the silence and peace of the place. It was the heart of a dense salt cypress mangrove swamp, with the trees rising out of the water and towering above us. Green and gray with the ghosts of white cranes quietly stepping through the trees in the depths. It was an amazing place.

The ride back was miserable. The rain picked up, and flying along, the rain stung my face like a thousand needles. My jeans were quickly soaked, and I couldn't see anything out of my glasses, but at least they were keeping the rain out of my eyes. All in all, well worth the first half.

Tay urbanspooned us a new place to try, a fast foody kind of place well known for its seafood. I got a basket of fried scallops which were delicious, although Tay's Ipswich clams were not my favorite.

I drove the three hours back home, we played some cards, packed.

The following morning, we breakfasted, and mom dropped us off at the Gainesville airport, which had all of four gates. When Tay and I refused the milimeter scanners and asked for a pat down, it was the most exciting event of the day. They actually used us to train other TSA officers with a senior TSA guy supervising.

Hour flight to Miami on a flight so small it was three seats across. Four hour layover in Miami international. What a difference from Orlando and northern Florida. From what I saw, the areas we were in had little endemic culture. Downtown Orlando, at least when viewed from the freeway, looked like a sterile combination of postmodern and postmodern inspired towers. Other than that, my experience of Orlando is theme parks, freeways, and outlet malls. Slick, international, anonymous.

Beyond Orlando, the state seems to be an apathetic contest between the midwest and the south- the sleepy towns and southern lifestyle of Georgia, and the the suburbs, strip malls, and fern bars of the midwest. They war to contain the encroaching lush landscape of palm trees and pines.

Miami international airport, as sterile as it was architecturally, seemed to be a lot more culturally vibrant than the north. There was a sense of rootedness to place, the Hispanic community was engaged, and we actually had some pretty good Cuban food at a restaurant in the airport surrounded by Hispanic patrons. I think the next time I come to Florida, I'm going to need to spend some time in Miami.

Our flight to London was full, except for the seat beside mine, which was pretty cool, since I was able to lay down and get a few hours of uncomfortable sleep. Overall, the flight was quick, only about seven hours, and at this point, I've mastered the art of stretching time out to the point I can get half an hour of entertainment out of the emergency landing procedures card.

Dad picked us up when we landed at Heathrow. Crowds better than expected, and the weather was much more mild than I was anticipating. I think St.Louis and Bloomington are probably the coldest places we'll see this winter. So far we've been taking it easy, doing a little grocery shopping, watching some TV, just relaxing as we all are fighting jet lag. Flying east is a bitch.

Chirstmas and St.Augustine

2011-12-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

Christmas day we played it cool, opened presents around 9, leisurely breakfast, and a leisurely dinner. I cooked a little ham, mom threw some sweet potatoes in the oven and cooked some biscuits, and tay made us a salad. Served with a little champagne, very nice, very simple Christmas dinner. After dinner, we ended up going to see Arthur Christmas which was actually really good. Best movie I've seen in awhile, in fact.

Day after Christmas, we drove up to St.Augustine, which, according to the tram guides we encountered, is most fabulous, famous, highest rated place in the United States. In fact, they expressed shock and dismay that it had not already been declared the nation's capitol, despite the fact that it has the oldest masonry fort in the US AND the original Ripley's Believe it...or Not! Frankly, we were as shocked as they were, as we rode the tram along the street which the driver assured us was rated in the top 10 most beautiful streets in America by National Geographic. Since, you know, National Geographic is always coming out with top 10 lists.

There are apparently three competing tram companies in the touristy area of St. Augustine (Ripley's runs one of them). We parked at the "Old Jail" gift shop and boarded one of them, and a small tractor pulling cars of seats (think Disneyland parking trolleys), pulled up and we piled on. The guy driving the tram narrates the tour while driving since there's so little traffic in the historic downtown and because Florida has such conscientious and safe drivers:

If you look left...uhh.....come on...come on.....you can see the third oldest house in.....dammit turn already...... America, which was also ranked the most historic by National Geographic...aannnd we're gonna wait here awhile while someone learns to parallel park......and was constructed in.......man! nearly got me!....HEY SAME TO YOU!

And so on and so on. It was fortunately, a hop on, hop off bus, so we hopped off because our idea of seeing a place is more than just riding the tourist tram.

We walked through the historic Georges street, which was entirely reconstructions, except for the content of the buildings, which consisted largely of bars, restaurants, and novelty tee shirt stores, just like the Spanish colonial settlers had.

We wandered over to Flagler college, ("One of the best private universities in the US!") which used to be a grand hotel, built over a hundred years ago. Architecturally, its quite interesting.

Flagler was a seriously wealthy rounder (one of the founding partners of Standard Oil) who decided to try his hand at hospitality, and he wanted to turn this little seaside town in Florida into the "Newport of the South." So he bought a big plot of land and about a hundred million dollars and gave the design to two architects fresh out of school. I think this was pure genius- if only there were other patrons of the arts who would learn from this wise and sagacious decision, and hire more freshly graduated architects, who have their eyes unclouded from the harshness and grit of the wearing road of professional practice.

The place though, is seriously cool. It was made from board-formed concrete using new processes from the time, and was fully wired for electricity and hot and cold running water in the guestrooms, which, for 1888, was kind of like having wifi in 2000. Flagler also hired a young decorative glass maker to do the window glazings. So now the dining hall has something like 1.3 million dollars in original Tiffany glass, plus the dozen or so chandeliers spread through the hotel.

After the hotel tour, we walked over to the fort. (By the way, this was apparently the busiest day of the year for tourists for St.Augustine, and the city was just packed.) The fort was very interesting- low, stony, built for an age of siege and artillery. We wandered around inside for awhile, watched the firing of the cannon, shuffled through some exhibits and called it a day. We ended up hopping on the tram where we got off, and then rode it around the historic city while waiting for it to return to the "old jail" tourist center. Turned out to be a good deal. Tickets were $20, but parking in the historic city would have been $10 anyway.

Tay Urbanspooned a place for us to eat outside of St.Augustine- a local place called Ned's (?) which kind of looked like the place that would serve limp fish and chips, but actually had a delicious and sophisticated menu. I got the fried trigger (fish) with linguine and vegetables, and it was excellent. Tay and I split Key lime pie for dessert ( creme brulee and tiramisu were also on the menu) since that was one thing he'd been hunting for awhile while in Florida.

Christmas

2011-12-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

It's Christmas eve- do you know where your family is?

I live in St.Louis, but I'm in Florida.
My girlfriend lives in St.Louis, and she's there now.
My brother lives in Indiana, but he's here with me in Florida.
My mom lives in Florida, and she's sleeping nearby.
My dad lives in the UK, but he's in Oklahoma tonight.
My grandmother lives in Oklahoma, but she's in Utah tonight.
My other grandmother lives in Oklahoma and she's there now.
My grandfathers live in my memories.
My friends are scattered far and wide across the entire world.

But there are all, actually, here with me.
Merry Christmas

Potterheads

2011-12-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

In the quiet hours before the dawn, they came.

In silent lines, streaming from the guestroom buildings, from the hotel lobbies, from the overpriced cappuchino cafes, in hundreds, they came.

They traveled lightly, with only what provisions they could carry. Families, mothers carrying the smallest children, larger children close at the side in order not to get lost in the mass migration. Faces set in a mixture of grim determination of the refugee and the hope and expectation of the pilgrim at the end of the journey.

In long lines, they traveled. The boats could only carry so many, and the rest walked. As the sun rose in the distance, they traveled along the resort walks, the shuttered shopping and entertainment districts, the murmur of the crowds growing and swelling as they approached the place they had sought. Many had come from far, many had crossed oceans and seas to be here. The pace quickened as the masses surged passed the gates, the excited murmuring growing to a rapturous roar.

They were the chosen people, gifted above all others by what had been given unto them: an early pass to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

We, too, were pilgrims. Striding past the slower families in our quest to attain a favorable position in line for the castle ride, we had only 30 minutes to wait before we could ride. It was a pretty good ride, but I think I actually enjoyed the ambiance of everything, the castle and the village more than the ride itself.

There was one other thing we brought, that made the day at the park much more enjoyable. The other benefit of being a guest at one of the three Universal Studios resorts, apart from the ability to get into the park an hour earlier than the regular visitors, is that you get an ExpressPass, which lets you cut at least 2/3rds of the lines at nearly all the rides. It was awesome. We probably saved at least four hours of waiting in line over the course of the day.

Anyway, after we finished the first ride, we wandered around the Hogsmeade street for awhile, enjoying the scene before we headed over to Spider Man adventure. Mom and tay had been diligently tracking wait times since a few days before with their iphone apps, and apparently this ride was one of the longest wait times, so we jumped on it second.

Actually, we had to stop for breakfast first since mom was getting punchy, and nothing was open that early, so we ended up munching on $4.99 salted pretzels. Gotta push through.

Spider Man was probably the biggest disappointment in the park. You have to wear ill-fitting 3D glasses for the unbelievably bad CGI elements of the ride, which turned out to be a lot. The ride is basically you get into a cart which rolls around in front of a screen, where bad CGI 3D characters from the spider man universe jump on the front of the cart and point various weapons at us before being dispatched by Spider Man. It was really quite bad, and we could not for the life of us figure out why wait times could get up to an hour for such a terrible ride.

The rest of the morning was a blur. We hit the park hard. I got drenched in the Jurassic Park river ride, we rode the Hulk which has a fun bit at the start but actually is pretty tame in comparison to the "Dragon Challenge" in Potterland. It's just a big, noisy ride.

We even did the train ride above Suessland, which is actually a great way to get a good view of the rest of the park. The ExpressPass made such quick work of lines, it was easy to say, hey that looks kind of fun, lets try it! without worrying about a huge time commitment.

Anyway, around lunchtime, we'd been at the park for five hours, moving pretty fast, so we were pretty burned out, so we left the park and took the water taxi back to the resort. Back at the resort harbor piazza, we split a pizza at the 'deli', and went back to our room for a nap. We slept for about three hours.

After we woke up, we grabbed gelatto downstairs for our ride back to the park. It was a great time to go back in the late afternoon. It was cooler, the sun was going down, and the hordes of people were thining out slightly.

Our first stop was GrinchMas, a 30 minute long live song and dance show based on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." I've read the book, seen the Tex Avery cartoon, seen the Jim Carey movie, but I havn't seen the staged version. I'd rank GrinchMas just above the Jim Carey movie. Like the staged verision and the live action movie, this thing spent way too much time in Whoville, dealing with the least interesting characters in the entire story. The Grinch was kind of fun, and so was the more involved reparate with the narrator, but Whoville seriously needs to be buried in an avalanche.

The park is so much more enjoyable in the dark- the dinosaurs look more real, the Hogwarts castle looks more real and dramatic, everything is a little more exciting and fun and fantastic without the critical light of day. We rode the Dr.Suess tram again at dusk, and it was really pretty to see the park in the afterglow of the sunset. They lit the torches at the gates of the Jurassic Park land, and the river ride itself was a lot more enjoyable. (although we still got drenched in the flume drop at the end.)

Around 8 o'clock, we got into Mythos, billed as "the best restaurant in a theme park" which is kind of like "the best chairs in a department of motor vehicles", but we'll take what we can get. The food was good. The Mahi Mahi was cooked through (not seared), but overall the food was much better than say, Olive Garden. I liked the inside decor, which was made to look like a soaring grotto, and we got more cheap, bad drinks (whiskey whip - $5).

We spent the last hour in Potterland, riding the castle ride one more time, and the Dragon Challenge another three times. Seriously the most under-rated ride in the park. Fast, exciting, almost no lines. We rode the front of the coasters (there's two of them on parallel tracks) one right after another. We were out-riding the teenage kids riding alone.

Before we left, we stopped for a cold butterbeer, which tastes about as a good as it sounds, but we decided to grab one anyway. It's kind of like a mild rootbeer with a butter flavor. Not fantastic.

But the park finally closed at ten, and we joined the mass exodus of people out of the park, and hopped on the boat back to the hotel, our pilgrimage at an end.

Let's Play with Letters

2011-12-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

Just got my grades back

A is for Urban Books, for my three handmade books
B+ is for Studio, more for effort than my project's looks.
B+ is for Advanced Building Systems, our final poster kind of flopped*
A- is for Urban Development Seminar, where my renderings popped.
A is for landforming workshop, worth only one credit hour,
.10 is the value which my semesterly GPA goes sour.

It's not an overall terrible report card, and its not like anyone really cares what your grades are when you graduate from architecture grad school. I'm actually most upset about studio, regardless of my letter grade. This B+ says to me "I thought your project was not very good or even complete, but I know you put in a lot of effort, and so I'll put you in about the middle of the pack, gradewise."

Its not like I wanted to fail or have to retake, but I wish I could do this semester over again.

*The final poster was a group effort and if it was not carried out to the expectation of our instructor, I take a heavy share of the blame. My group mates were all awesome and contributed greatly.

Orlando- first day

2011-12-23T21:28:00.002-07:00

Busy busy busy.

We left Oklahoma a few morning ago, bright and early as Tay dragged me out of bed at 6 am so we could get into St.Louis early for a few things. Driving back was pretty quick thanks to both Tay's new GPS and his driving.

Got back to STL, repacked a bit, cleaned a bit. Called my friend at school who was working at the lasercut lab and picked him up since nobody is cutting anything on account of the final presentations going on. Bumped into my studio professor briefly in the hall, just long enough for him to utter a surprised hello and hurry down the hall. (He later gave me a B+ for studio, which is probably generous).

We ended up going to Dewey's for pizza. Good. Actually, really good. Decent prices too, and apparently we arrived the night they were training the staff so we got great service. Gave the car and my house keys to my friend who's going to look after Suki. Cab came to pick us up the next morning at 6 AM for our ride to the airport.

Flight to Orlando was quick- two hours. Mom picked us up at the airport in the rental car and we drove straight to the massive city of outlet stores.

Almost.

Actually, she put us up for two nights in the Loews Portofino hotel in the Universal Studios resort, so we went there first. It was actually pretty nice. I could make some really sarcastic comments about the artifice of a fake Italian seaside town on an artificial lake, but you know, it kind of works you know? If the gelatteria on the harborside piazza isn't Italian and the bueno sera has a southern twang, really, who cares? Fundamentally, you have people living in high density residential low-rise apartments with some shops and restaurants and cafes surrounding the piazza. The wine and gelatto is still good, and even though the small boats floating around the harbor are permanently anchored, a real water taxi is there to ferry guests.

You can talk about artifice all you want, but the truth is that the Paris, France we see today was totally contrived and scripted since the days of Hausmann. The Paris that existed prior to that was almost completely eradicated and was then effectively frozen in time.

The one thing, however, is that the resort circulation is a real pain in the ass.

Park your car at the handy self-park.
Navigate your way through the parking garage where there are two sign one above the other pointing to the elevator lobby in opposite directions. (The elevator lobby is actually straight ahead).
Take the elevator up to the lobby. Walk across the lobby to the other elevator.
Take the elevator down to the harbor level.
Stroll across the harbor around the lake to the guestroom building elevator lobby.
Take the elevator up to your floor.
Walk the 200 meters through the double-loaded corridor to your guestroom.

Anyway.

We got settled and then took the water taxi to the main park. Universal Studios Orlando really consists of two theme parks, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, which are accessed via the hinge of the complex, CityWalk, the shopping center. Then there are three satellite hotels, including the Portfoino, which send boats back and forth to the CityWalk dock. CityWalk is a heavily, heavily themed shopping and dining center. You can't just have a bar and grill, it has to be the "Official Restaurant of NASCAR Bar and Grill."

We worked our way over through CityWalk to the blue man group box office and got student tickets for 9pm. We had some hours to kill so we had a drink at the Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. Not the main Margaritaville restaurant, not the patio, but the satellite cantina bar. They had some $4 margaritas so we signed up for three of them. We had a lot of really bad, cheap drinks this trip. And really really bad music. At this cantina, it was we were listening to a record made by terrorists who had had kidnapped and drugged Jimmy Buffet and forced him into making terrible covers, tripping balls and at gunpoint.

After the drinks, we wandered through the rest of CityWalk. Apparently the vast majority of people there were transitory, moving from and to the parks, and the place was actually really dead.

So we hightailed it to the outlet mall.

Traffic was terrible all the way there, and the place was packed. Close by, however. Actually, the whole operation was very slick, very international. People from all over the world coming to get some screaming deals on luxury merch. Tay set the itinerary since we had limited time before our Blue Man Group engagement. We actually ended spending most of our time at JCrew which was having a 30% off everything sale, on top of the current sales on top of the discounted prices. Since we hit it last, we were racing the clock, and combined with the cheap prices, it was difficult to not run through the store throwing random items into the cart like we were contestants on Shopping Spree.

Grabbed Subway on our way out and rushed back to the hotel room (see steps 1-7) and then after slamming down our sandwiches, rushed back to the Blue Man Group theater in CityWalk.

The show was really good. None of us were sure of what to expect, but I really enjoyed it. The humor was kind of Dadaist and strange, the music was good, and they gave us some really interesting and unique experiences. The blue guys were really talented and the highlight of the show was this very funny and strange sketch where they had an audience member come up on the stage and share a dinner of twinkies.

After the show, we took the boat back and enjoyed a midnight drink at the harbor-side bar on the piazza. They even served draft Peroni beirra.

Mission Impossible IIII: Hug Protocol

2011-12-18T22:38:00.000-07:00

Today after another slow morning, Tay, Dad, and Neri went shopping and I stayed behind with Grandma. I'd already been far too tempted at the mall already, and I knew that today, the last weekend before Christmas, was going to be a royal mess so I opted out.

Grandma and Id drove out and met them at the mall where we watched Mission Impossible:IIII Ghost Protocol. While this was superior to the Mi2 and Mi3, it was still way too long, and oddly, way too cuddly. Everyone was all about talking about their feelings, and working as a team. It wasn't The Muppet Movie but it was close. Best thing about it was the opening prison break scene.

It was gratifying to see all the Burj Khalifa shots- I spent about two months working on a team for my building systems class on that building, studying its structural systems, environmental systems, enclosure, curtain wall, etc. etc. so it was fun to see the building showcased in an action setting even though there were substantial problems with reality. (hint #1: the Burj uses an insulated glass unit- which means it's got two panes of glass, not one, which means you can't just laser cut through it so easily, and you definitely can't kick through it).

After the movie we went to Cattleman's restaurant in the old stockyards district of Oklahoma city. Lots of steakhouses and western attire. Real deal kind of place. More than a few people wearing cowboy hats at the restaurant and several waiters had eye patches. Real Oklahoma conservative kind of place- the drawings of famous cowboys/actors on the wall featured Ronald Reagan, the menu cover proclaimed that even a republican president had eaten there, and it was the first restaurant with a smoking section I've seen in maybe ten years. Half the menu was steak. I ordered the catfish and 'lamb fries'. If you don't know what they are, time to look them up. Also known as 'Rocky Mountain oysters.' Pretty good. I couldn't bring myself to order the steak. I know its probably excellent, but the peak of steak perfection has come and gone- I will likely never again find a steak as good as the one I had in Buenos Aires at Lomo on my birthday so many years ago. I just can't bring myself to spend $30 on a third-tier steak. All that "USDA Prime" label says to me is "this cow was not grass fed on the Argentine pampas."

If I go to Brasil or Argentina again, I'll reopen that quest for the best steak, but I'm just going to get close here. I am, however, open to finding the best BBQ, the best pizza, the best Mexican food, the best beer, and the best donuts. These are challenges, but it is conceivable I may find them in my travels in the US, so I'm a bit more optimistic.

A Very Quelf Christmas

2011-12-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we picked up my brother from the airport in Oklahoma city. One would think that getting from Bloomington, Indiana to Oklahoma city, OK, a trip that would take less than 12 hours by car, would be less than an Odysseus ordeal. After Tay finished his last final Friday night, he caught the last shuttle to Indianapolis and spent an uncomfortable night at the airport. The next morning, he flew to Chicago where his flight was canceled due to mechanical issues and then his next flight was delayed by several hours. So. Tay finally arrived in Oklahoma pretty tired around 3 o clock in the afternoon.

We took him home, hosed him off and dragged him out to Jeff's house for the Perkins pre-Christmas reunion. My uncle Jeff and Aunt Ashley decided that we fragmented Perkins clan should at least see each other often enough to remember faces, so we were all invited. Jordan, Lauren, and Olivia were all invited, but couldn't make it, coming from Kentucky. But we did get to see a lot of other Perkins- Jeff's family, Josh and his fiancee Andera, Dustin, and his family (I havn't seen Dustin in maybe fifteen years) and dad's cousin and his family (I forget his name.) Lots of little ones running around.

Jeff's house was filled with Christmas decorations- two trees, several manger scenes, scent of cinnamon and pine in the air. They baked two giant lasagnas and chicken strips for the kids, and lots of wine and beer. We all exchanged small gifts in front of the tree and the giant screen with the Call of Duty 3 playing on it.

As the party wound down, Karsten demanded that we all play Quelf. As Tay shot me panicked looks, I took in the way-too-contemporary "fun" graphics on the box, like it was from a hot new cereal brand. Not good. My first impression of Quelf was that the game designers liked Cranium but found it way too cerebral and structured and productive and creative. It's basically a party game. My brother tells me that its bears a suspiciously close resemblance to a drinking game called "Kings Cup" where playing cards have certain rules or tasks associated with them. Sounds like some game designers decided to turn a cheap buck with some flashy graphics.

I was not impressed- the game seems to be made for people who feel like they need permission in order to "get a little wacky." Cards assign rules such as "place your shoe on your head" and "place your car keys on your head." Oh, how wacky and unpredictable! The bane of dad's night was a card that ruled he had to play peek-a-boo with anyone who asked him a question. At least we got through the card with Karsten shouting at the playing pieces over with quickly. Overall though everyone seemed to really enjoy playing it, and I'm sure it was most people's highlight of the week. I was advised going in that its much better with a beer- I think the next time I play I'm going to need a six pack, and definitely something stronger than the 3.2 beer available in Oklahoma.

It was fantastic to see everyone though, and to reconnect with relatives I never knew I had and ones that I've not seen in over a decade. I'm really lucky to have them.

Burj Bubba

2011-12-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

Old habits die hard, apparently. I was tired but couldn't bring myself to sleep last night so I read until I started to pass out around 11:30. Then, around 7 AM, I was wide awake and panicked. Totally unsettled for some reason. I had to check emails and phone messages to begin to calm down. It's probably just my body is so used to leaping out of bed and running on adrenaline.

You can't run full speed for three months and then suddenly stop into relaxing mode.

Anyway, yesterday we had a leisurely morning and headed into town. Met Uncle Jeff and Aunt Ashley for lunch at a Mexican place in bricktown. The food was about how you think it would be, although they served us Tecate in giant frosted glass goblets.

There's a giant tower going up in downtown, which will be the tallest in Oklahoma. It's a Meisian wet dream- concrete columns and slabs and the whole thing wrapped in glass which is way too transparent, the whole thing 50 floors, about 250 meters tall, which soars above the surrounding towers. I jokingly called it the "Burj Bubba" (the burj Dubai is by contrast, four times as tall)

Kudos to the city for getting an iconic tower and optimistic symbol of a urban renaissance, however, the use of all that glass and treating every side of the tower the same means that its going to bake in the brutal Oklahoman summers.

Spent the rest of the day shopping, hitting the mall to wrap up Christmas shopping. Amazing day to be there, and really really hard to stay focused on buying for other people when J Crew, Gap, and Banana Republic are all 40% off everything.

Dad spotted a restaurant in the mall that looked familiar- Cantina Laredo, which is their favorite spot to dine when going into the West End in London when they catch a show. Same menu.

We stopped at the tri-county Wal-Mart in Grandma's area to pick up a few things, and on my way out, I saw the new cell phones with the 3D screen. It's pretty amazing, and I don't know how it works except its 3D without glasses. I'm amazed that I'm seeing this technology for the first time in a rural wal-mart in Oklahoma.

American Heartland

2011-12-15T22:12:00.000-07:00

My goal was to leave town around 9 am. It ended up being noon.

There were a few leftover tasks that needed to get done, such as packing, handing in final documentation, books, and models, and a quick cleaning of the apartment. And then I bought some new shoes. I needed something low for days that are kind of cold, kind of wet, but not necessarily insulated and waterproofed, so I took a trip to Nordstrom's rack and found a pair in the clearance section of the shoes. So that took awhile.

The drive to Oklahoma city from St.Louis took about nine hours, including two stops for gas and a break for McDonalds somewhere outside of Springfield. I brought my road atlas with me (I'm a MAP!) and realized I had no idea what town I was in.

Interesting radio selection. I tuned to this religious channel for awhile and listened to the risk factors for Satanic possession, followed by a tirade about how all Muslims want to take over the world, impose Sharia law and outlaw all other religions. Welcome to the American Heartland. Also drove underneath the world's largest McDonalds, which actually spans the freeway, floating about twenty feet above the road surface. It was quite a beautiful drive, actually. There's something really poetic and epic about the landscape, with the masses of dense bare trees, the rolling topography, and the huge horizon.

I got through the fatigue of driving and my general exhaustion from the past week through a combination of sweet tea, coffee, singing, and dancing in my seat. My car became a one-person dance club as I roared through rural Oklahoma in the dark at 80 miles an hour.

Uncle Jeff navigated me to the house, so I'm here now, safe, fed, and tired.

misc. work

2011-12-15T00:54:00.000-07:00

It's 1:30 AM. I got six hours of sleep last night, which really isnt recovery sleep (although strictly speaking you never really "recover" from sleep loss) and I'm driving the 9 hours to Oklahoma tomorrow. I really hate this part of studio. Documentation of my work which will never see the publication they're collecting it for because it's just not good work. Cleaning out my desk is probably the biggest weight off my chest as I get rid of months of accumulated models and printouts and sketches- I wish that instead of throwing them away I could burn them.

Throwing all my permanent studio tools in the car- chair, chest of drawers, tea box and boiler, widescreen monitor that no longer works with my computer because my laptop graphics card is shot.

Oh yeah, I'm gonna need a new laptop next semester.

The apartment is still a mess although I think I have the suki situation worked out. Instead of driving my elderly cat for 9 hours down to Oklahoma and making my grandma deal with her for four weeks, I'm having a network of friends look after her here. The other serious upside of this situation is that I wont' need to make a return trip to Oklahoma to rescue Suki after I get back. I'm also wanting Suki to be home to greet Saori when she gets back from her travels.

Yesterday, in the middle of my studio's reviews, I got two consecutive phone calls, one right after another. One was from my roommate and the other was from my downstairs neighbor. Whatever it was, was probably not good. I excused myself from the room and got the lowdown. Our apartment was flooding- or at least flooding from our bathroom. We got some water on the floor in the kitchen and bathroom, but our downstairs neighbor was getting a torrential downpour from his ceiling light in the bathroom.

My roommate thinking quickly shut off the water main to the house and we called our maintence guy who came right out. Apparently one of the bathroom pipes had rusted through and burst, and another was also leaking through the rust. By the time I got home, the situation was cleared up enough that I could take a shower and do laundry.

I suppose I must get around to talking about reviews. Our reviewers were much too nice. Instead of saying that my project was terrible and inhumane and incomplete, they suggested that it had a lot of potential and had I considered changing the backside and reconsidered the urban strategy. It's was a polite review for a half-baked project. Depressing. At least I opened it with a short introduction totally in Chinese which impressed the hell out of everybody. It's too bad my project was such a lousy follow up act.

Le Dinner Final

2011-12-14T20:53:00.001-07:00

Went out to dinner tonight with Dew, Chuck, Ian, and Kenny at Brassiere by Niche in CWE. Really good food, good atmosphere, and the prices weren't ridiculous either. Great service. It was nice to celebrate the end of the semester with friends, even though I looked like a homeless guy the rest of the group invited off the street. I ordered the Herb gnocchi pariseine, zucchini, squash, corn, tomato, basil and tasted everyone else's dishes. The chicken was amazing.

Also treated myself to the first beer in two weeks. A wonderful and unpretentious draught Saison 'farmhouse ale.' Good times.

sleep

2011-12-13T22:01:00.002-07:00

The hours of sleep I got a night over the past few days looked like this:

3, 3, 2, 2, 1.5, 5. That's slightly over two normal nights of sleep over six days.

Sleep deprivation in architecture students is an interesting thing. A little can act as a stimulant- when you're tired, you're less critical, acting less rationally and more intuitively/erratically. For me, there's four stages to serious sleep deprivation, say, on 3 hours of sleep a night or less:

Tired - Maybe after the first night of 3 hours of sleep. You feel a little haggard, a little worn, and a little tired. You feel about the same as usual, just thinking idly about how it would have been nicer to have been able to sleep in another hour.
Punchy - A short phase- you feel oddly light and awake. Everything strikes you as kind of funny, and you feel lightly drunk. You work and think you're actually being super productive because you're feeling so good. This whole lack of sleep thing isn't really a concern, maybe I can live my whole life on 3 hours a night! But then you realize how quickly you're zoning out, and how you always have to keep moving your eyes around to keep from being hypnotized by everyday objects.
Painful - The fun time is over. Your body hurts. You go to bed tired and wake up feeling ten times more tired. Your eyes burn, your face is greasy, and your hair is a fire hazard. Your stomach is always borderline nauseous. You've lost all sense of humor, and actually, you find yourself often in extremes of emotion- you're quick to fly into irrational rage or abject misery. You write incendiary a irrationally hostile messages about print labs. Your neck is stiff, and you frequently have to walk around to keep from falling asleep at your desk. You feel thin, immaterial, spread way to thin. You fantasize about sleep.
Undead- You've lost all emotion and your face is as wooden as the work table. You can barely move your body. People stop you and tell you that you terrible and you just stare back at them expressionless with empty eyes. Your thoughts and motions are slow, and your mind works like a telegraph operator typing out S.O.S. while freezing to death, one ping coming down the line after another. Beyond this point, there are hallucinations, illness. Your own body force-quits you to get some sleep in an automatic override and I've known people who have missed their own final reviews because of it. Just today, someone told me that they have no memory of getting up, walking across thier house, shutting off the alarm, and walking back to bed.

And this is the slow version, if you don't sleep at all, you'll reach phase 4 by the third night.

The Russian KGB used sleep deprivation extensively as a means of torture. Solzthenitzyn writes extensively about it in The Gulag Archepelago, how it was used because its so incredibly effective at destroying the will, eliciting signed confessions, and it leaves no bruises or visual scarring for the Red Cross or Amnesty International to photograph.

The US government uses it too to torture terrorism suspects, really no different from the KGB.

Supposedly, a night without sleep is supposed to take days off your lifespan.

But, my review is done. And I'm going to bed.

See? Low on Green

2011-12-12T23:39:00.003-07:00

Dear Sam Fox print lab:

In a school which is otherwise fine Champagne, the printing lab is the piss-scum on a shantytown toilet.

Fuck you.

Fuck your inane policy which gives unique windows profiles for every single student on every single computer and all the attendant time required to load software and printers every time you change computers.

Fuck your refund policy too, and your staff's general attitude that students only go to a $20,000 a semester school to steal paper.

Fuck your sleaze-ball move of employing students as full time print lab monitors- sure they're not really trained, but hey, they're great as human shields preventing complaints and issues from reaching the staff.

Fuck your smarmy, smart-assed PaperCut comments. I don't need your condescending, paternalistic, "ohh Good job! you printed something!!!"when I print something, and I really don't need a "Nothing in life is free" when I run out of funds because the prints don't go to the printers because your shitty system fucked it up.

Fuck you for taking extended vacations when a quarter of school computers are unusable in the middle of mid-reviews.

Fuck your lack of both professionalism and a professional to guide students through their printing issues.

Fuck your 'fuck you' attitude to students.

Shouldn't you be working?

2011-12-08T22:54:00.001-07:00

To help with my productivity, I downloaded an extension for my Google Chrome browser called StayFocused. Simple to use and effective- you tell it the sites you want to restrict your access to, and it defaults to 10 minutes on those sites a day. I tried to up the time to 20 minutes, but it gave me a pop up window advising me not to do it, and then when I ignored it, it gave me another pop up about about "seriously, why are you doing this?" and something about giving electric shocks to kittens.

It's actually pretty effective. Once you run out of time, you can't change any of the settings and if I try to go to facebook or regretsy or xkcd, and I'm out of minutes, this is the screen I get:

Of course, it doesn't prevent me from using IE ;)

Inspirational quote

2011-12-08T19:33:00.001-07:00

To people who are losing their sleep, health, perspective, and sanity, and especially to myself:

To borrow a quote from a friend's post currently who is currently studying in Korea:

At one part of the meal I was chatting with Junsung, our korean professor, and he was reminiscing about his time with Alvaro Siza. He said that Siza was asked, "Do you love architecture?", to which he responded with a reaction like "Love? Love is a strong word. I don't Love architecture. I like architecture sometimes...Man doesn't exist for architecture. Architecture exists for man."

Junsung said it meant that architecture shouldn't be your life -- it shouldn't be the all-consuming, end-all THING that is the only thing that matters. How then can we even enjoy what we are pouring our efforts in for our entire lives? How can we enjoy our life? So, in order to enjoy architecture (or anything you have a passion for really) you need to not have it be your LIFE.

This is expecially true now that I am in Seoul; it's been clearer to be since I am geographically away from St. Louis. If I constantly remind myself this everyday, I think it would be a great, constantly humbling thing that brings be back to earth. I think we all get caught up in this academic bubble of working nonstop for some convoluted goal of "finishing" a project without even enjoying the process itself.

The complete post here:

Thurspocalypse

2011-12-08T18:50:00.001-07:00

Well the Thurspocalypse came and went with mixed results.

At 8:30AM we had our presentation for advanced building systems. The night before, I'd roughly assembled the final board based on the "minimum of 2'x3' " size that was given to us. I made it closer to 3' x 5' since that really, that size is quite small. Around 2 AM, I called it a night since I was really sleep deprived and I wanted to get some rest for today's presentations. The last thing I sleepily mumbled to Dew on my way out was "if you don't get around to fixing the boards, don't worry about it- I think its good enough to print."

Cut to 6:30AM this morning, when I awoke in a panic. What the hell was I thinking? Those boards weren't ready to go! Why did I tell Dew that it was good? We're going to fail as a group and its going to be my fault. I skipped breakfast, dressed, and went straight to school intending to spend the hour or so before the pin up to fix the boards and add some things to make it at least presentable.

Dew was already there. He'd slept there that night. He sleepily held up the printed, finished board. Looked great. This has been my semester to really let people down. Especially since for this project I've been not doing that much for the group, which is the main reason I'd volunteered to take lead on the board. Balls.

Anyway, I'd heard rumors that the final format would be informal- our work pinned up, we'd wander around and look at each other's work, responding to questions and criticism from the two guest critics. To try to get through 16 formal reviews in less than two hours would be crazy.

Guess what we ended up doing? Formal reviews. Drag-the-chairs-up, everyone-in-the-group-talks, questions-and-comments kind of reviews. The commentary and question time alone for our project took ten minutes.

I think we disappointed our professor with our representation. He was really really excited about our project because it was like nothing else that had ever been presented or pushed into the real world of fitting in mechanical systems and structural systems. After we explained our project, he got up and with dramatic body language explained it again. But he was unhappy with our boards. To be fair, we didn't do a really good job of making it clear the linkages between our sections, elevations, renderings, and plans. But this project is really hard to document.

Seriously, the formal genesis of this project was modeling what happens to static-charged hair in 3D, none of the walls were straight, and most of them rose and fell off the landscape. We actually spent the first three sessions with our professor just trying to convey the building form. We got very high marks conceptually, (or at least I assume so) and probably so-so marks for our project itself. If I had to give our group a grade for the semester, I'd say a solid A- (especially after our fantastic Burj Dubai project). We'll see.

Before the presentations were over, I had to go immediately to my last urban books class.

Oh! I made a hardcover book! First in my life! It's kind of fun, actually.

Anyway, the urban book class was presenting the final books (although actually, none of them were in "final" form, although all of them were bound and worked pretty well as books). The instructors put out sparkling apple juice and some baked goodies for us to have a small party before looking at our books. That was kind of nice.

After books, I went straight home and took a 45 minute power nap before getting up, changing into nicer clothes and heading back to school. I met my community development group at 3 at the library to go over our presentation one last time in the hour before class. The presentation itself was anticlimactic. Not that many students showed up, and neither did our actual clients. If I didn't speak that well, overall it went well, people responded really well to my renderings, plans, and video fly-through. I do admire the experience that the social work and business students have in getting up and speaking to groups. We talk in studio reviews, but its to a very specific audience with a very specific goal. So I think we'll be in pretty good shape for that class. Tonight I'll finish up my contributions to the paper and just get it the hell done so I can focus on studio the next four days.

If you noticed, dear reader, that I missed eating anything other than a few baked goodies today, so did my stomach, so I went to Chipotle after the presentation and gave it something to digest.

Tea and Panic

2011-12-06T22:13:00.001-07:00

Tonight, I went home and fed Suki, ate dinner, and tried to sleep. I got about an hour of fitful sleep, and then lay in bed, my heart pounding and breathing unusually hard. I'd been unable to get my thoughts of the upcoming deadlines out of my head, and so my body was responding by freaking out.

I ended up getting up and driving back to school to get back to work as it seems to be the only thing that can settle me down. On the plus side, they were having the finals tea break when I arrived, so I was able to brew myself a cup of chamomile tea, and sit down with some people who are taking studio a with a lot more lighthearted attitude.

Still alive

2011-12-06T00:42:00.001-07:00

Still on the 3-3 sleep diet. I dont even remember days anymore, since I'm experiencing time in irregular 9 hour slices.

Sad to throw out the leftover mashed potatoes my brother made for thanksgiving, those were really good and I ate them for awhile after everyone left. Tonight I ate a Trader Joes brand Carrot and Ginger soup. I've had soups that were more bland, but I can't remember when.

Finished a rough 'final' hardbound book copy for urban books tonight, and also got a very small thing done for my Advanced Building Systems class.

I'm working on roughing in the boards- I'm very worried about the quality of the work that's going to go up on the board. My optimism meter is dipping down towards the B-.

Last semester was pretty miserable, but at least it felt like I was accomplishing things. This has been the worst semester of grad school so far, and is also a strong contender for worst semester of higher education.

This semester has had a few highlights however, which I should be mindful of: the phenomenal trip to Shanghai, learning the art of making books, a deep plunge into the politics, economics, and social implications of community development, and new methods of getting more out of landscape design. Pretty much everything but studio, which is the kicker considering how vital studio is to the entire grad school architecture experience.

bipolar

2011-12-03T22:33:00.001-07:00

My three hour nap schedule keeps slipping, so at this point, its more like two three hour naps every 36 hours. I'm pretty fried right now so I'm going home.

Architecture school has made me bipolar.
My mood swings wildly from total abject depression where I think I'm one of the most obstinately stupid people in the school and wasting everyone's time and that I should drop out and never design again, to this incredible euphoric optimism of a wonderful bright future riding the crest of the sustainable and integrated infrastructural design along with my shiny brilliant peers where the the silhouette of the bare tree limbs against the brilliant blue sky is the most jaw dropping double rainbow experience. Especially after coffee.

Lots of coffee.

I need to get a grip and some perspective. The combination of sleep deprivation, especially cumulative deprivation, too much trance music and 18 hour stretches in front of the computer can be seductive in their own way, but is ultimately counter to my goals. Lets just say that I can't wait until this semester is over.

High Fi and High Finance

2011-12-02T22:24:00.001-07:00

Busy day today. Skipped studio because I had an appointment at an investment company. It turns out that I'll be able to do all kinds of things next semester like eat, bathe, and go to school. So that's good.

Studio is fantastic, by the way. Smooth sailing for the rest of the week, all problems resolved. No panicking, all my drawings are done, and both models are made. It's going to be a wonderfully relaxing transition to the winter break as my other classes gracefully wrap up. Might even get some reading in.

Actually, tonight I started feeling pretty good because I have the massing mostly worked out. For a point of comparison, this is kind of like Noah figuring out where he might get some wood when the water is mid-thigh height.

According to the university-wide graduate council, school is already over. They hosted the holiday party tonight at a swanky bar downtown. I decided to go for an hour because (1) There's free food and beer. (2) There are fewer things more depressing to me in the semester than spending friday night in studio, and (3) my massing is almost done.

Half of the student population at Wash U is graduate students, and there was probably half of that crammed into the bar. Apparently there are a ton of social work students, and they are quite a gregarious bunch. Actually, they're a lot of fun to hang out with. Saw a few architecture kids, mostly out on the dance floor. Got my free beer (Franzia or Bud Light? Can I have the blow over the head?), and wandered to the food line, glanced at the food, and wandered back towards the bar.

I left shortly after. I do like the clubs and bars, but I have to be in a certain frame of mind (read: inebriated) (Just kidding. Mostly.)

Back to studio.

Dew had three girls working for him this time.

The New Sleep Diet

2011-12-02T02:16:00.001-07:00

Architecture students in the final crunch have their own sleeping strategies. So far I've seen these types, although please add more in the comments:

The Oracle - these students will work for four days straight, with no sleep. On the morning of the third day, they look borderline insane, and they're hallucinating wildly by the fourth night. Frequently, these students miss their final reviews due to illness or the fact that no alarm in the world will wake them up when they finally crash for a nap.

The Minimalist- Four hours of sleep a night, every night. Some people just need less. I don't happen to be one of them. They say they feel fine, generally they look about 80%.

The Cat- Twenty minutes of sleep every four hours. Supposedly at this point, the body sinks directly to REM sleep since the level of exhaustion is so high. Not sure about how this affects one's ability to design.

The Teenager - These people need eight hours of sleep a night, and really can't function with anything less. I'm kind of in this category.

The Shift Worker - Three hours of sleep, twice a day. Supposedly the body has a natural sleep cycle of 90 minutes, so its supposed to be less disruptive to rest and recovery. The strategy I'm currently pursuing. Seems to be working so far.

The Marathoner - 48 hours of work followed by 10 hours of sleep. Repeated.

Last night, the highlight of my evening was sharing pizza with my ABS team members over at my studio desk. It was great to munch of pizza, chat, and not worry about studio. Other friends dropped by to buy a slice for a buck and chat.

When I came back from my nap, Dew had invited two young Japanese girls over to help him build his model. The girls were studying at Fontbonne, the university next door, and since they're only here for one semester, and only studying English, they're really bored, so they were happy to come over and work and chat with Dew. I thought it was pretty funny.

Anyway, photos from the late shift.

Apocalypse Thursday

2011-12-01T01:32:00.001-07:00

I have three main final projects/presentations other than studio this semester.
For urban books, I need to make three (3) final copies of my book, which must be well crafted including making covers and binding it. For my urban issues class, we have a final presentation which the client will be invited to attend and review our recommendations. For my advanced building systems class, we have to put together a final board of drawings, diagrams, essentially a final project. While the last two projects are group endeavors, which helps, there is one glaring, evil, monster of an issue.

They're all on the same day. In one week from today.

I've started changing my sleeping habits- in my undergrad for the serious crunch times, I would take two three-hour naps every day. My problem is that if I'm in studio 18 hours a day, and sleeping for 6, the 18 hours kills me. My productivity just drops to nothing and I feel like crap, so I'm testing this nap method.

A friend of mine gets by with an average of four hours of sleep a night, but then he nearly sliced his finger off the other day, so I'm sticking with a minimum of six hours.

Studio is going ok. I still feel like my project is Cadillac ranch, but oh well. Had a good discussion with my studio professor today. The issue is I have a very modular project, and the question is, how does one terminate the modules in a way that meets the city? He described it as a problem that Mies van der Rohe spent most of his life investigating. The fact that I need to solve this issue last week is not encouraging. He also informed me, surprise surprise, that is 'concerned' about whether my project will be developed enough to finish in time.

He's been 'concerned' about the entire class since the beginning of the semester as far as I can tell, and that really hasn't changed.

I got into a discussion with my roommate yesterday as I was beginning to worry about grades. He told me that actually there is an unofficial curving system in place for studios. Typically, in a studio of 12-13 students, there will be only 2-3 A's, maybe 2-3 A-, 2-3 B+, 2-3 B, and 2-3 B-. There may be a few students who get C's, which are passing but may hold you back from degree project studio. It's not great but its not the end of the world.

Looking around the room, I feel like I'm most likely to fall into the A- range if I'm feeling really optimistic, B range if I'm feeling pessimistic. My gut instinct and the conversations I've had with my professor makes me think I'm looking at a B+, depending on how my final project comes out.

Other interesting bits- not one, but two Chinese classmates got married within the last two weeks. They got dressed up and went before a US judge with their Chinese brides to officially tie the knot. I'm not sure if it has to do with the 11th month, (11 being an auspicious number for long marriages in Chinese numerology) or what, but if I was getting married, you can bet its not going to be in the most stressful part of a semester in the middle of grad school.

Lucky Leaf

2011-11-28T19:08:00.001-07:00

Another lecture tonight, given by Sam Bower, which is technically one of the artist's lecture series, but since the topic is about art, culture, and sustainability, I decided to go for it. Sparse attendance. A handful of people I knew, all of them from the landscape studio so they might have have been heavily encouraged. I also went because this semester seems to be themed "cross-disciplinary", as I've never taken so many classes and workshops with non-architects before.

Anyway, Bower talked about his website, greenmuseum.org, and a lot about the role art can play in developing sustainable culture. He reiterated a point about systems, which I think has everything to do with architecture, in that culture and economy and lifestyle are interwoven and integrated elements. There was the typical highlighting of "first nation" cultures, which over hundreds of years developed primarily self-contained economic/cultural symbioses. For example, if you do a dance and song before you head out to hunt salmon in a traditional, low-technology way, you're highly unlikely to destroy the salmon population or throw the natural ecosystem out of whack since (A) you're creating a very high reverence for the fish and (B) you just can't catch that much spear-fishing with a sharp stick.

Or, to use a more contemporary example, many modern wildlife hunters- sport hunters, fishermen- are actually very dedicated conservationists. Because they find their lives are enriched through participating in this activity, even though it involves blowing away wildlife, they are canny enough to realize that the deer need a forest and the fish need lakes, and all of the various elements which support that ecosystem.

Hunting itself takes the form of ritual, since they're probably not sustaining themselves on their hunting activity. There are other rituals too.

When I was a kid, we had crock pot dinners a lot, and dad would throw in a bay leaf. Ever since I could remember, it was known as the 'lucky leaf' and whenever one of us found it, we'd triumphantly proclaim, "hey I found the lucky leaf!" When I was old enough to wonder about this tradition's origin, I found out that my parents had made it up to keep us from getting upset about finding leaves in our food. It's brilliant- it takes a perceived negative, and through the application of ritual, it becomes a positive.

BLDGBLOG, the design blog, had a post about Chernobyl and other nuclear disaster sites. The reality is that these are places that will be lethal and toxic to people for a very. long. time. The post talked about the potential benefits of establishing cults around the site, so that when/if dominant civilization fails, or we go through another dark ages where people don't really understand nuclear physics and radiation, there will be embedded safeguards- a folklore of the demons that lurk in the reactor core, or oral traditions that warn of evil places.

Anyway, I was also interested when the talk turned to the issue of working for currency. Currently, green museum.org is a totally gift-economy, volunteer-run organization. Several people he knows actually are off the economic grid- and sometimes they sleep under the stars because of this decision. As an example of how it could work, he talked about the need to go to the airport. He could ask a friend for a ride, or he could walk, and if walking, if we saw him walking the long road to the airport we could offer him a ride. We all feel good about ourselves and he gets to the airport. The problem is that at the end of the day, one of us has to have a car. And the fewer people who have cars, the less likely they are to share access to that resource.

Anyway, it was an interesting lecture.

Black Friday

2011-11-25T23:49:00.001-07:00

Today, we declined to participate in Black Friday shopping. Not that we're opposed to grotesque orgies of wolfish consumerism (or least, two out of three in my group weren't), it's just that we don't want to be pepper-sprayed, trampled, or shot.

Instead, we took it slow this morning, with a leisurely breakfast of fried eggs, sausage, and fresh orange juice.

We went to my studio and worked there in the late morning until the early afternoon. It was quiet, well-lit, and it was generally a good place to study and get some work done. Lunch today at Pappy's Smokehouse where we split a pound of pulled pork, hot links, and a slab of ribs. Really really reallly good ribs. Amazing, tender, fall of the bone, juicy ribs. Line was less than half an hour this time. It was nice to take my family someplace that had good food in St.Louis.

Afterwards, we took a driving tour of East St.Louis, crossing the Eads bridge and driving up to my project site for the community development class, which is also a local HIV/AIDS clinic. Drove back to studio and worked for another few hours before calling it a night.

All the people in studio kind of took it in stride that my mom and brother were both working up there with me. Dew, who had dropped by the night before, chatted with them for a bit, but for the most part, they were furniture. And that suited them fine so they could continue to work. Headed back home after ten.

Thanksgiving day

2011-11-24T23:38:00.001-07:00

Tay drove up yesterday, and we picked mom up from the airport last night. We went to the Schlafly tap room downtown for dinner, straight from the airport. Beer was good, everything else was pretty so-so. We ended up driving through the empty, abandoned quarters north of downtown until we could figure out via tay's phone how to get back on the freeway.

I dragged mom and Tay to the grocery store next. Coming from small college towns with "Kroghetto"s, they oohed an ahhed at my nice neighborhood Schnucks. We were shopping for our last minute thanksgiving supplies. Mom had a recipe that she'd gotten from a friend, which involved brining the turkey with ingredients like "candied ginger." I'd already bought the bird, a fresh 18 pounder which was incidently way huge. Mom asks me: "do you have a five gallon bucket?" Me: Nope. The only thing at the grocery store that is that big is a plastic trash can. We are, however, forgetting a very crucial ingredient of tay's mashed potatoes, which would lead to complications the following morning. (Hint: the ingredient is also in the name of the dish)

We drag our groceries and trash can home and mom gets to work on the brine. We pour it into the trash can when its cooled, and then all the ice and freezer packs in the freezer, and more water. Then we lower in the turkey. It does not look very appealing, a white bird jammed into a plastic trash can filled with muddy brown water and a scattering of peppercorns. I hauled it downstairs to spend the night in the slightly cooler basement.

In the morning, we realized that if we're going to have mashed potatoes, we'd probably need some actual potatoes. The regular grocery stores were closed, so this Thanksgiving, I'm also thankful for Chinese grocery stores. They had the bag of potatoes Tay needed, and also the fresh oysters in a jar that I needed. And then because mom was sure they were going to cancel Thanksgiving if we didn't have enough butter, we made a special trip to Wal-Mart to pick up another box.

The turkey was a big pain. Nobody in our group had ever made turkey before, and the turkey was probably too big by eight pounds. We didn't have plates big enough for it, it was a huge mess and pain to cut up, turkey juice and fat flying everywhere. Next Thanksgiving maybe I'll just do a ham, and maybe a smoked turkey drumstick for the hardline traditionalists.

Suffice it to say, the company was incomparably wonderful, the fare, much less so. The dinner menu:

Turkey a la Bucket
Oyster stuffing which was more like a bread pudding.
Tay's famous mashed potatoes which won 'best dish' handily.
Flat rolls
White giblet gravy
Salad
and storebought cookies for desert

The wine was really good, a Malbec I inherited from mom when she moved.

After dinner, we sat around, chatting, and watching youtube videos, and debating which movie we wanted to see in theaters. My friend Dew dropped by to chat and have some tea and cookies, which was fun, and then we all took off. Mom and I ended up forcing Tay to see The Muppets by colluding on which movies we were taking off the table. It was a really entertaining movie, but its the same old rehash of Muppets struggling to put on some kind of production. Some great musical numbers though, including a song entirely covered by chickens clucking which was actually a riot.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T23:08:00.001-07:00

I used to think that I was here, in architecture and living my own life, by the virtue of my hard work, intellect, and ethos- a self-made man. I've had a lot of really stupid beliefs over the course of my life- it's the best way to find out the real ones.

In truth, the way I've lived my life has seasoned the outcome, but I am able to live my life the way I wish to live it because of everyone who has shaped me and lifted me along the way, and I am ever thankful to all of you.

From my love, who sees me most clearly and intimately, and loves me for who I am, who has given such light to my life, to my parents who gave me far to many things to list here and little of which are material things, to teachers who challenged me, and friends who supported me and surprised me with their gifts, to even the kindness and guidance of strangers in foreign lands.

And I'm thankful for the systems of society which make my life possible and enjoyable, to democracy, to the individuals who were motivated and held in check by their devotion to ideals. The fact that I can get a public trail by a jury of my peers, and enjoy the exercise of rights, including representation of an elected government. I am thankful that change is possible without bloodshed. I am thankful for those who stood up for natural conservation, for civil rights, for clean air, food, and water.

I am thankful that I have been gifted with a vast safety net- that generally, a single bad decision will not condemn me to a life of poverty, misery, torture, or death- a safety net that most of the world lacks.

And I'm still gifted by all of your love and challenges and support. What has been given to me is too great to repay with kind words. I cannot give my thanks in any other way other than returning the favor- which I must do, and happily, for as long as I live.

On crap

2011-11-22T21:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday in studio around 5pm, Silvino drops by our desk. "Hey guys, what are we going to talk to Paul [our architecture systems professor] about in tomorrows meeting?"

Me: "What?" Followed by a pause where my brain catches up with reality and a series of expletives.
Silvino: "So when do you guys want to meet before?"

We decide to meet up after the architecture lecture that night, around 8.

I end up getting sidetracked talking to some AIA Young Architects members after the lecture. I'm a little concerned about the time so I excuse myself and begin to run upstairs. One my teammates, Kenny, waves at me from where he is standing in the food line. "I'll be up in maybe ten minutes," he says. Pappy's BBQ. Upstairs I find a wiped out Dew and tired but cheerfully enduring Chuck. Trying to hold my panic, I print off the schedule for the rest of the semester and clutch it without reading it as a way to try to figure out what we're doing through osmosis. Tomorrows meeting is around 3, its not 9 pm, and I have to make a book for another class that happens at 11:30 tomorrow morning. I'm seriously freaking out. Kenny finally wanders back up with a plate of BBQ and I throw out some plans for how to proceed.

What I suggest: that each of us in a very loose way, sketch structural sections over the sections cut from the volumetric massing model, with perhaps the reference projects we were given in the last meeting as a basis of the structural system. Everyone agrees to take a shot at it.

What we actually end up doing: I make a clay model showing the domes and valleys in a wildly inaccurate way on a flat plane (the actual project is nestled into a hilly landscape). Kenny looks up some different case studies and collaborates with me to watch a youtube video of architect Peter Eisenman being a dick in a review of a student's work. (see below) Dew works on other classes, Silvino recovers from an all nighter, and Chuck comes up with a 3D model of a potential structural system that looks great. Yay teamwork.

My clay model is a mildly interesting and short lived distraction. Chuck's 3D model and structural idea becomes developed into what will be the core of the architecture. He definitely saved us this time. I've assumed a sort of leadership role in the group, but for this phase I feel like I'm really slacking. It's not like I'm the only one with outside classes, but my unfamiliarity with Rhino really makes it diffiucult to dive in and work directly with the crazy model.

Pasquarelli

2011-11-21T20:58:00.001-07:00

As I may have mentioned previously, I'm an officer of the graduate architecture council (GAC), a VP of Professional. My most basic job is to go to lectures and collect signatures of professionals seeking AIA continuing education credits. I missed a lecture two weeks ago. Completely off my radar. So I pretty much stiffed a bunch of AIA members.

At tonight's lecture, they announced to a standing room only auditorium (this is the really popular lecture of the season), that I would be taking signatures for the previous lecture which I'd missed. There were probably a few high ranking faculty who made a mental note about the lacking professional VP. My lack of appearances at meetings which I should be attending but havn't been because my email wasn't registered is also probably not building up a case of the most excellent VP of professional the school has ever seen. And then I dumped an entire cup of tea on tonight's lecture sign up sheet, so I was able to professionally hand AIA members a crumpled, slightly damp, slightly stained sheet of paper.

But actually, nobody really cares and it doesn't really matter.

Tonight's lecture, which is the exciting bit, was Gregg Pasquarelli, of SHoP architects out of New York.

I'd vaguely heard of SHoP but honestly it could have been any of the times that they announced the lecture series. Many people had heard of it. My fellow students were very excited and the auditorium was, as I said before, packed to the point of people standing in the back. Maybe its an east cost thing.

Aside- when I came here, my conception of the relationship between St.Louis and the Southwest was of this dying rustbelt city in the middle of nowhere. The southwest was where people were going, where there was new opportunity for business, culture, industry, and design and St.Louis is the decaying city they're coming from. Since living here, and surrounded mostly by east coasters, I've been picking up this new reference of St.Louis as the frontier hick country boondocks of the east coast, which is the only culturally significant place in America. So, the only architects people lionize out here are the east coasters, predominantly New York architects. And the idolization flows both ways. I'd never even heard of Wash U before I applied here.

The lecture was really good. Nobody in SHoP came to architecture with a background in architecture. One of the biggest ideas that Pasquarelli repeated was the notion that contemporary architecture practice has given away entire fields as we strive to specialize, and that we've not only marginalized ourselves as a profession, but also necessarily set ourselves up in opposition to clients and contractors, which has led to a profession paralyzed and terrified of legal repercussion, risk taking, leadership, or expansion out of a very, very tiny box.

His point was that, as architects, we need to embrace all aspects of what goes into a building, to make it part of what we do: finance, politics, fabrication, construction, ownership. He made it a point to say that architecture is the last of the great generalists professions- and that ability to work across fields and synthesize is the asset that we bring to the table, and that we should not be limiting ourselves to just what he called "creating the image of the object".

Accordingly, I was less impressed with the images of the architecture he put up and more enamored with the methodology- SHoP was essentially doing building information modeling before the term was even coined. As young architects without much experience realizing that they would only be given limited funding, they reasoned that their architecture would have to be based on prefabrication. Accordingly, their work is largely prefabricated, and a lot of the prefabrication they do themselves. The construction drawings have no dimensions because every part fits together and arrives on the site in a prefabricated or modular form. Pasquarelli described it as assembling the most kick-ass piece of Ikea furniture ever. Really beautiful pictoral drawings of assemblies. Unstated was the reality that labor is the largest cost in America, and that field labor is extra expensive, and filled with mistakes, errors, and simply crappy construction. The people who build in the US are not craftsmen, and while I was working, we were encouraged to make our details as graphically explicit as possible. This drove the push to prefabrication, which can be controlled by computers and carried out in cheaper, safer, controlled indoor conditions.

Anyway the other thing I really admired about the company is their say, horizontal and vertical expansions. SHoP is really six companies- one designs BIM software, one is a fabricator, one is a construction company, one does sustainable adaptive reuse, one is a developer.

Pasquarelli exhibited restrained exasperation at the US construction industry, to suppliers, and even the AIA. I have a feeling the AIA got his ire from its antiquated and adversarial standards of practice. He showed one slide with three touching circles- client, architect, general contractor, and said that this is the worst architectural drawing in the world. He then told us that it was the only drawing in the AIA forms and manuals of practice. The way that SHoP works varies considerably- sometimes they are their own client, often they share a financial stake with the client, and take on substantial portions historically in the realm of the general contractor.

My favorite illustration of this methodology of practice occurred realtively early in SHoP's career. They wanted to use zinc as an rain screen and approached some US manufacturers. They were told that the zinc would cost 40% more than something more standard, like painted metal. When SHoP asked why it should cost more based on the nearly same cost of raw material and labor, it sounded like the US manufacturers simply shrugged and said it cost 40% more. So, they went to France, bought the material themselves to bring back, found workshops that could mill and cut and bend the material, financed it, insured it, and produced their own exterior cladding. The pieces were so precisely milled and installed that when they wrapped all the way around the building, the two final pieces were within 1/32".

Anyway, it was the best lecture I'd heard really in two semesters. I mean, sure, you can slap some pretty pictures up on the wall and everyone can marvel at what an interesting form it is, but at the end of the day, you're a talented trained monkey on a chain, and really, we're only talking about how long your chain is. SHoP, at least how it was presented to us, presents itself as a way to get beyond the chains.

A Seriously Jaded Blogger

2011-11-21T11:23:00.001-07:00

I was reading some old blog posts I wrote about Thanksgiving in 2004. In comparison with the posts I write now, I sounded so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I wonder what happened to that earnest and sweet blogger.

Actually, I remember being pretty unhappy my freshman year of college. I think I just heavily self-edited a lot more when I wrote. I do feel happier and more 'self-actualized' than my early undergrad to be honest. If this blog has developed a tendency towards cynicism over time, it's because that's what I'm fighting daily.

Roads Gone Wild

2011-11-20T11:26:00.001-07:00

The final project for the urban books class I'm taking is three editions of a handmade book. The class is basically an introduction to bookmaking (technical fabrication, narrative, everything about a book) and the book is a means to explore the city of St.Louis.

My original idea was to do a book of St.Louis taboos. "North of Delmar" would have been the title. But then I realized I don't know the city well enough to be fluent in the unspoken. Plus, after riding the metro a few times, and walking around East St.Louis, I don't think I'd have much material for my book.

So I went back to a place I'd discovered while biking in way north St.Louis, in the Chain of Rocks park. I've blogged about it before. The first pass of the book I based on what I saw out there was basically natural reclaimation porn. I mean, I literally made a porn mag. Roads Gone Wild.

There was something perverse about the abandonment of the street, and the relationship between the pieces of urban infrastructure and the surrounding trees, leaves, and earth. The way the trees twined with the lamp posts, and how the concrete and steel bollards penetrated the soil. I picked up on the sensual aspects of it and took it to extremes.

It was a little awkward to present to my female professor. More awkward later to present it to the other foreign professor of the class. I started off by saying "well, its based on the idea of a girlie magazine..." and then had to awkwardly explain what a girlie mag was because he'd never heard the term before for porn magazines.

And then we had a guest critic, a bookmaker who came from Italy, and as I slid my battered copy of The Street Next Door over, I decided I needed to move on and do something different.

Something a little more staid. Too staid actually, but more sublime. The problem with the 'infrastructure porn' was that it was too much of a one-liner. It was funny and slightly acid in its commentary, but it didn't really capture the place. I wanted to get a sense of the fantastic potential, while still keeping the underlying text. We'll see how it turns out.

hot hot hot laundry!

2011-11-18T20:14:00.001-07:00

Busy day today. There's so little time left in the semester, its near academic suicide to not be busy.

For my community development class, I'm proposing redesigning the interior of an empty building for basically a community fitness center for a low-income community. This is the class where my team has social workers, a 2L law school student, and an urban planner. The 2L law student, by coincidence, works part time for a local construction company. (How she is able to go to law school and work 20 hours a week, I don't know). Anyway, she was able to set up a meeting with one of her coworkers who has 18 years of experience in building cost estimates. Because this project is real in that we're going to deliver our recommendations to a real client who intends to carry it out, it is useful to know how much my interventions would cost, and where we can get the most 'bang for our buck'.

I took the metrolink down and walked the mile to the offices in the Locust neighborhood of downtown. Mostly industrial, lots of abandoned warehouses. Really beautiful with grass filled empty lots and tons of the beautiful St.Louis brick. It's almost to the downtown, but not that intense yet. There's something amazing about St.Louis, something evocative and ethereal that makes me wonder why St.Louis doesn't have a larger artist's community, or at least is known for its artists communities. Needless to say, I enjoyed my walk.

Lunch was nice, my classmate treated us to burgers at Dooley's. Good burgers, reasonably priced. About the right size, too, not an absolute mountain of bread and meat. Over fries, we talked out the building, the areas of concern, potential places to save money, things I'd missed from code, constructability issues. Really helpful. As I'd drawn it, it would be about $150 to $200 a square foot. With serious changes to my proposed roof design, it could come down to about $90. Very useful information to have.

Tonight's happy hour was extra happy with a dual celebration: the release of Approach and the celebration of the schools #4 rankings for graduate architecture. Approach is a concise catalog of student work from the past year. In every studio of approximately 12 to 15 students, perhaps four or five will get their work included. I got a page to myself, showing three images I put together for my 419 housing project. The project, and the images, were really not that great compared to the really incredible work in the rest of the school. I shouldn't complain actually, it's a credit to just be included.

Bruce gave a very short speech from the top of the steps and basically said he was confident that when we go into the workplaces upon graduation we will reflect strongly towards the school. The sparkling wine they served wasn't quite Korbel, but would not be many found many shelves above it.

I've actually had a pretty good friday night. I decided to avoid the alone-in-studio-friday-night depression and went grocery shopping at Trader Joes, and then, because I'm just that wild-and-crazy kind of a guy, I went to Target and bought a new hat. Yes, I have a lot of hats. But this one looked really good with my Colors of Benetton wool coat which I wear all the time in the winter. And it was pretty cheap.

Home, fed suki, then cranked the tunes to get in the mood, and GOT IT STARTED. That's right, readers, sometimes, I get a little dirty. And when I'm feeling dirty, its time to do laundry. Whites. Colors. Lights AND Darks. I wash both ways. My clothes were flying all over the place, water was flying all over the place, and my world was rocked by this machine that spins me around, around.

Made pasta for dinner from the supplies I picked up at the grocery store. I'll probably wash some dishes, take a shower, and hit the sack early tonight to get an early start tomorrow.

Cold

2011-11-16T21:49:00.001-07:00

After yesterdays warm, 70 degree weather, I awoke to find it clear and cold. Actually, Suki woke me up to find and rectify the emptiness of her food dish. Every day, she howls and cries starting around 6:30AM, and on the one hand, I can either throw her into the bathroom and close the door in an attempt to break her of the habit, but on the other hand, I wonder if she's even capable of learning anything anymore, and if I'm just being cruel to elderly animal.

Anyway, today I visited my site for my urban books class because the light was good for more photographs. The site is in way north St.Louis, where the land falls away to the river, which I guess was once the natural levees of the Mississippi, around the point where 270 crosses into into Illinois. I stumbled across the area while bicycling because part of the old roads have been incorporated into the Riverfront trail which ends nearby, starting from the base of the Arch.

It's a network of roads which looks like it linked riverview, the low road beside the river, and lookaway drive, which runs up on top of the hill and serves a small residential community. The roads are all there: concrete bollards and chains, asphalt paving, concrete curbs, gutters, and light poles. But it looks like its been several decades since the last car was there. The street is covered with leaves and patches of thin soil. The vegetation has grown into the street, and in some areas, is so dense as to make passage along the former street impossible. The curbs and gutters are hidden among the bushes and dirt and leaves, and really, the only thing that stands out are the light poles, which emerge from the underground and disappear into the tree canopy. All in various stages of disrepair. It's a strange and eerie place. In the deepest part, where the road is totally covered by trees and undergrowth, sometimes I have to dig down an inch or so to see if there really is asphalt under everything.

I think I am coming down with a cold. There is the nasal congestion and the headaches, stuffed ears and nose, burning eyes, and fatigue that comes with it. So I'm drinking lots of fluids, and getting a lot of sleep. I really don't need this right now. Tonight I stopped by Schnucks to pick up some DayQuil, so I feel marginally less crappy.

Actually, I had a really good night. For our advanced building class group meeting, we decided to have a dinner meeting so we made steamed chicken and I sauteed some zucchini, had a little wine, and talked about our project. Good times.

Another post about Korea

2011-11-15T23:28:00.001-07:00

And I even had a Shin bowl for lunch.

Stopped by Shnucks this morning on the way to school to pick up some donuts and honey. The donuts were for breakfast, to get me through the last round of student movies. The honey was for my throat, which has gotten slightly worse over the last few days. Hope I'm not getting sick. I'm sure averaging five hours of sleep a night isn't at all related. I've actually made myself get 8 hours these last few days just to try to stay healthy, as nothing kills productivity like illness.

Speaking of productivity, I went to a lecture tonight that was almost entirely Koreans and almost entirely management students. The speaker, who was also Korean, looked at us and joked, 'you all could be my children.' The lecture was at the architecture school and the information was passed around because it might have some interest for architecture:

Mr Moon Kook-Hyun has recently lead the UNCCD (UN Convention to Combat Desertification) and he will be giving a lecture at WashU this coming Tuesday, the 15th, in Steinberg at 7:30pm. The title of the lecture is "Korea: New Challenges and New Leaders" but he will be addressing issues in environment, social responsibilities of corporations, and global competitiveness.

I think I might have been the only architecture student there. I was mostly interested in the environmental aspects and how one approaches it from a business perspective. The guy is, after all, a CEO.

Actually, most of the presentation was about business and management technique, how he was able to attempt to meet the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental sustainability, and wildly succeed doing it.

It was interesting to listen to non-architecture lectures because we do, actually, have to interface with the real world of business once we get out of here. Moon talked about the importance of speed- how quickly can innovations be vetted and brought to market, and he began to tie this economic narrative with another narrative- about quality, trust, distributed empowerment, and morality. For example, if you want speed, you need parts from your suppliers quickly and the fastest way to get it is for them to send it to you as you need it, or just-in-time logistics. But it requires a level of trust between the supplier and the company, as there isn't time to inventory or run checks on whatever it is.

Another interesting point he made was that if you ever need to fire 20% of your company, it's far better to simply cut everyone's hours back 20%. And he's also all about education, and developing innovation in everyone in the company, etc.

I did learn that I know almost nothing about business budgeting. Moon polled the audience as to what they thought Samsung spent on its employees. I ventured first: 70%? The rest of the crowd was too polite to laugh. I was partly confusing the value of productivity of the employee, and partly thinking about about how much money must be spent on salaries and wages and benefits. Turns out the answer is 15%. That's it. The car division is even lower, closer to 5%. Medical workers tend to get a higher percentage, like 25%. I still don't really understand how that works.

If I was running a bakery, for example, and I'm paying Enzo the baker my employee $10 an hour, this means that every hour I'm spending about $67 total, or $57 which I'm not spending on Enzo. That's seems kind of high for an hourly cost of raw materials, energy, rent, advertising, logistics.

Spring classes

2011-11-15T09:28:00.001-07:00

Towards the end of every semester, the school sends out information on registration for the next semester's classes. They listed the date of registration to be a day later than it actually was, an easily forgiven mistake considering our laid-back attitudes about what classes we want to take, our wide open schedules, and the huge availability of seats in classes.

Actually, I lost the paper with that information on it, so I checked online at the registration website and so I was able to log on at 7:30 am on the correct day and secure the classes I wanted. (Why are schools so terrible communicating with students? Actually, Arizona State was a lot worse.)

Next semester, I'm enrolling in Design Thinking, a precursor to degree project (it's really a thesis, but they don't want students to get sweaty palmed about it), a mystery studio, and two electives. I've shifted professional practice to my final semester, when I take degree project. The two electives I've enrolled in concern architecture in post WWII Japan with a new professor here who is very highly regarded (actually, I'm pretty much taking the class just have this professor) and also a landscape class about the integration of landscape and structure, which I think is really interesting and exciting.

Four mondays

2011-11-15T06:49:00.001-07:00

There's four mondays remaining to our final review. When I said this aloud in studio, people shushed me and got this terrified look like I'd mentioned "you-know-who." Actually, it scares the crap out of me, especially given that the week before the final monday needs to be totally production of final materials. Which gives me effectively three weeks, including this one to nail my building down to furniture layouts. Right now, I have some paper massing models, although I can use a lot of the same ideas and concepts from my mid-review model. And I will need to, as well, since this thing is going to take a lot of work.

Last night in studio, Andrew jumped up and said "Rico's on in five minutes!" Rico, Andrew's roommate, is one of the students in our studio, a Puerto Rican from UF, who also, it appears, sings and plays guitar. Every monday night, Ally's restuarant in the DUC building has an open mic night, and tonight, Rico was going to play a song. The other three of us in studio jump up and join Andrew as we run downstairs, sprint across the parking lot and pile into Andrews car. We speed off across campus to the DUC center parking, and sprint inside. "Where's Ally's?" we shout at sleepy looking undergrad. We're too late. The open mike is still going on, but its winding down. We've missed Rico by 15 minutes. Still, there's free coffee and tea, so we each grab a cup, take a seat, and listen to one girl stagger through a a keyboard set.

While waiting for the next player to show up and get ready, we are surprised by Chris who gets up and plays some piano jazz and the theme from Snoopy.

K-pop

2011-11-13T23:51:00.001-07:00

Kpop is something that's caught my attention recently. Kpop, which I'd never heard of before this semester, is a genre of completely over the top korean pop music, heavily electronic and influenced by R&B. Extremely sugary, bubblegummy music by teen idol bands of young attractive women or men. What I find so interesting about it is that is seems like a cultural product of globalization. While it is uniquely Korean, it is a heavy export to the pacific rim and is attempting to make inroads in the US and UK. The producers of the music run everything, from the production of teen idol signers to songwriting to marketing. Everything is totally in-house. It's like the Monkees, but no one really cares if the performers are actually playing their instruments. One production company actually keeps a staff of primarily British and Scandinavian songwriters, and often, the same song will be recorded in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese as the bands have presence in each of those countries.

There's a huge commercial aspect as well. The producers of one band, Girl's Generation, made a song for LG celebrating the release of a new phone. The video shows them smiling and dancing around with the phone. That song went to the #1 spot on Korean charts.

I think that what gets a lot of airplay in the US is for the most part overproduced and probably part of the marketing strategy for one company or another (luxury cars in rap tunes, every iPod commercial ever made), but I don't think we're quite at the point where the main point of the song is to sell something. Also, its very likely that major brand companies don't want to come in too heavily. If they have a popular singer sing about their brand or product, there is a risk that the artist will be perceived as selling out, and the that company somehow corrupted them. I get the impression that because the K-pop groups are so manufactured and created, people don't really care if they're selling something.

Lookaway dr

2011-11-12T22:22:00.001-07:00

Up at 8 today, still a little hung over from the two beers I had last night. Had a leisurely breakfast of buscuits and gravy- I ended up just making my own gravy from scratch, which actually wasn't terrible. Could have used some sausage or meat drippings, but oh well.

Drove out to the chain of rocks park in way north St.Louis for some more photography, fighting time and the clear sunny skies that were becoming increasingly cloudy. I'm shooting up there for my book project, which contrasts images of the old road completely overtaken by nature with images of fantasy and horror from the fine and illustrative arts. It's a fantastic place. What used to be a series of long switchbacks up the hills which slope down to the Mississippi flood plain has been blocked off and abandoned. All that was there, remains: the asphalt road, gutter, curbs, concrete bollards with chains and steel safety cables, and the light posts. I don't know when the last car drove on it, but there are trees at least 20 years old protruding from the leaf covered asphalt street. The gutter is lost on the ground, and the streetlights are difficult to spot in the trees. It's a very surreal place.

Spent the second half of the day in studio, working on finding images that would pair well with the photography for the book. Black beans and rice for dinner, and Last of the Mohicans. I'm a sucker for beautiful cinematography. I'll give a lot of leeway to acting and plot, but it'd better be a gorgeous movie.

Seasonal check

2011-11-12T09:25:00.001-07:00

Most of the leaves have fallen, although there are trees which are still beautifully attired in their reds, greens, and golds.

The coolness which ranges up to the 70s some days has yet to give way to serious cold, but there are times in the day when the not screwing around anymore seriously cold brushes by. Two days ago, in the early morning hours when I left studio, there was light layer of frost on my car.

Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away, and last year, it was the occasion of the first snowfall.

Clarifications

2011-11-11T23:50:00.001-07:00

If I have come across as whiny, I apologize. Architecture and studio, while it may hold little joy due to my own attitude deficiencies, has potential for great joy. For example, architecture took me to Shanghai where I had an absolute blast experiencing the city for the sole purpose of experiencing the city. Molecular biologists may go to the city of Shanghai for conferences on genomics, but architecture/urbanists, we go to see the city. It's great. I would not change my course of study for any other. Perhaps we do 'study' longer than law school students, but we have the privilege of working from our own imaginations, in a nearly purely creative/intellectual endeavor. It's challenging, but it should be fun. The fact I'm not having fun means my architecture is boring and dis-invested, which is an academic problem, so really, I should be focusing on having more fun because it ultimately makes for a better project.

FAR to go

2011-11-11T17:11:00.001-07:00

We had our mid-review presentations last Friday. It was an embarrassment. I would say that the work I presented would be marginally passable for my studio two semesters ago. I'm on a creek and I didn't address flooding. I mean, inexcusably bad. The design is uninspiring, uninteresting, totalitarian, and bland.

FAR, or Floor/Area Ratio, is the ratio of the usable lot size to the floor area. So if you have 1000 square foot site, and you build a 500 square foot, one story building on it, you have an FAR of 0.5. If you built two stories, you would have an FAR of 1. We are trying to attain an FAR around 6, and have justification for not having a high FAR. If developers took over the site, they would in point towers, and generally reach an FAR of about 8. That's pretty tall/dense.

The FAR of the building I presented at midreview had an FAR of slightly more than 1.5. I'm not even sure how its possible to get that low of an FAR.

So: to recap, my project this far this semester, per my own evaluation.

Not an interesting form
Not an interesting concept
Not really engaging the creek or the landscape in a passable way
Not contributing to defining the skyline of Shanghai
About as dense as a suburban subdivision in the most prime real-estate of Shanghai.

So, unfortunately, when I am struck, repeatedly, by how bad my studio project is this semester, it is not an momentary thing. This is, fundamentally, undergraduate level work. So let's just say that I was not exactly traipsing downstairs for our one-on-one midterm evaluation.

"Alec," my professor said earnestly "I believe you have talent. No question. But I'm not seeing that level brought to studio. Your ideas and concepts are interesting and compelling. But there's a disconnect that I'm seeing between what you say and what you show me."

Actually, it's all true, except for my compelling ideas and talent. It's beside the point as we're role playing the oldest conversation in education.

"How have you done in your other classes?"

I tell him about my high marks in other studios.

"I see your dedication, and I know you're an A student. This is where you should be:" (indicates with his hands up in the air)

"and here is where you are." (with other hand, much lower.)

"I believe you are capable of so much more than what you have demonstrated so far."

He slides a piece of paper over to me: my evaluation: "It seems to me your talent far exceeds what you are giving to this studio." Low marks in every category. Well not low, but ranging from above average to below average. In other words, low. I nod and agree with everything he's saying and fold up my evaluation to slip into my pocket.

I trudge back upstairs. It's late, I'm the second last person to get reviewed. Back over to my desk and plop into my chair. Dew points at me and says:

"Alec! I believe you have talent! You really do have talent!"

And I can't help cracking a grin because it quickly dawns on me that we've been largely getting the same spiel. Everyone, it seems, has talent. Talent he believes in. But he's just not seeing it.

We are all 'A' students not bringing that talent to bear in studio.

It's actually a huge relief. I'm not designing anything of any real value or purpose. This is an exploratory project for my interest, and my enjoyment. Why have I taken myself so seriously for so long and done such mediocre work?

Wrap party

2011-11-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the successful screening of our movie, we all went to the Hound and Fox Tavern for drinks. Unfortunately, Silvino couldn't make it as he was cramming on another deadline. There's two great things going for the Hound and Fox: the food is really good, and the place makes you feel like you're in London. I've spent some time in a few pubs, and this place captures the feel pretty well. A little over the top, actually, but I love the atmosphere. Complete with fireplace and mounted animal heads on the walls. Unfortunately, there's not much of a selection of beer on tap (although they have Schlafly Pale Ale and Wingnut) and they're also on the pricey side.

But it was a very enjoyable evening to lift a pint with friends, chow down on some fish and chips, banger and mash, and other pub grub, and a game of chess played with Dew (which ended in a well-fought draw). I can't wait until there's snow on the ground and I need an escape place.

Let's Get High

2011-11-08T15:10:00.002-07:00

In the end, I bugged out around 5AM, and grabbed eabout two and a half glorious hours of sleep at home. My group mates, Dew and Chuck, worked on it for another hour or so before hitting an IHOP and taking a keyboard siesta back in studio.

We were the first group to go of the day, and overall it went really well. Because we were throwing it all together so late, there were some errors and omissions that just got left in, like I'd read a paragraph twice in a row. Actually, the unevenness of the editing I think made it a little more interesting, like you never knew what was going to happen. I think I did a good job narrating the whole thing, although I'm sure Dew got sick of my voice reading everything over and over and over as he edited the whole thing.

We got a few chuckles out of the class- some intentional, some not, but that's never a bad thing. Our professors commended us on a very through presentation, they told us publicly and in a group session that it was really good, so it was nice to know that our late night efforts were not unappreciated.

Dew in particular, deserves a lot of credit for taking on the unenviable task of editing the whole thing, and downloaded iMovie and figured it out for us to assemble the movie.

Our movie, by the way, was an architectural systems analysis of the Burj Khalifa and the Pearl River Tower, both designed by SOM's Chicago office. The buildings were totally different, with totally different design goals.

We did incorporate part of this six minute movie, which is actually a really interesting and short animation of how the tallest structure in the world works structurally, and how it was built. Unfortunately, the text is in Korean, because it was a movie likely made by Samsung, who built the tower.

Actually, the clip is way over the top with the hardcore remix of the Clint Mansell and Kronos Quartet's soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream. I also got a kick out of the short segment with the two architects or engineers drawing or looking at drawings etched on verical blue-lit glass panes, because, you know that's how you work as an architect.

Sunday

2011-11-08T01:43:00.000-07:00

Sunday was spent working on a movie presentation for our advanced building systems class. I excused myself at six for a meeting at Meshuggah coffee shop, a really worn and bohemian place, where I met my fellow classmates from the community development class. I do really enjoy getting out of architecture a bit sometimes. They were all really impressed with my fifteen minute illustrator diagram map overlays. It's kind of a pleasant headiness to bring a little "flashiness" to a group, in the way that the really valuable stuff, like locating funding, understanding community needs, etc. doesn't have. Social work students are also just a really fun bunch in my own experience. Actually, I like my entire group, which includes a 2L law school student, and an urban planner. I even got a compliment on my J Crew trench coat. I'll take what I can get.

Fed Suki and went back to studio to keep working on the video presentation. I'd had a large coffee at Meshuggah and with a meager dinner, I was really wired back at studio. Actually, it made my stomach hurt and my hands shake. I worked until about two am.

This morning, I was back in studio before 8. Worked on various projects all day, and started working with my group on this movie for my building systems class after studio around 6. It's 2:40am, and we're still here. We're close to the end though. And we have to present it in about five hours.

I'm so tired.

Wild Country

2011-11-06T01:13:00.002-07:00

I make it a personal policy to try everything once, because you never know it could be my new favorite thing. This was my mom's advice to try to get us to eat new foods when we were kids. Actually, it was never our new favorite thing, and often it was terrible. "It's not my favorite" was the coached reply.

Anyway, a friend invited me to go line dancing with a group and since I'm always interested in new places and new things, I said yes. To my credit, I have, in fact, line danced once before- at the wedding party of my cousins who threw an absolutely fantastic reception which resulted with the entire family being summarily ejected from the hotel ballroom, but that's another story.

The line dancing was at country dance hall "Wild Country" in Collinsville, Indiana, which is about a 30 minute drive out of St.Louis. I arranged a ride from a friend and actually wasted a lot of time trying to figure out if I wanted to wear the nice cowboy boots or my everyday cowboy boots, if I wanted to go with the slim, fitted white shirt or keep it grungy with the thin country style shirt. To bolo or not to bolo, hat is the question.

Turns out anything would have been fine. Most guy there had untucked button down shirts, and everyone had jeans. Many wore caps and fewer wore cowboy boots. A lot of western plaid. Lots of short skirts on the ladies. The place was really in the middle of nowhere, next to the tri-county walmart, in a garishly painted concrete box with a huge, mostly full parking lot out front. Through the security wanding, through the ID check, through the cashier for the cover. It was a $15 cover, which is kind of ridiculous- apparently a B list country music performer was doing a show, someone who, gasp, had been on American Idol.

The inside was great. Neon, lasers,black lights, a giant disco ball, a huge dance floor surrounded by wooden railings, NASCAR playing on the flatscreens, shot stands and small bars distributed around, and a second floor balcony which ran around the entire interior. In lieu of smoke, there was a constant wafting in of fog from a smoke machine high above the floor. I'd broken my $20 I'd brought as spending money mostly on the expensive cover, so I picked up a pitcher of Miller High Life to share with some of the people I was with. $4.50 for a pitcher of beer isn't bad- it's too bad the beer sucked so much.

I danced some. Line dancing isn't really my thing. It might as well be step aerobics. I like dancing that is a little more personal. The vast majority of people there were pretty good. Some of the dances were really fast and complicated. There were a few people who were fantastic dancers, although most of them were pretty competent. A few, like our group, stumbled and flailed around, stomping at inappropriate times, and generally trying not to run into other people. We pretty much danced from 10 until 2, when the floor started to clear out a bit.

The musical selection was really strange. Some people say, 'oh I like anything but country and rap' and that was about all they played. I noticed they got real urban after midnight, and I heard everything from George Strait to Michael Jackson to Flo Rida. I was kind of surprised. If country is your thing, I wouldn't expect you to be a fan of rap.

Overall, fun. But I still can't get studio out of my head. At this point, there's very little than can be done for it, and I expect that if I work hard an produce a lot, then I can salvage a B- out of the ruins. School is an unpleasant and unhealthy obsession.

Three kinds of fools

2011-11-05T14:48:00.002-06:00

There are three kinds of fools in this world:

There is is fast fool, who makes mistakes and fails quickly, repeatedly, over and over and over. This fool, in attempting to add 3 to 7, will come up with 3, 19, 5, 8, 11, 34, 12, 10. This moderately observant fool will realize that 10 works out to 3+7, and so makes some progress in the world.

There is the blind fool, who also fails quickly. But this fool is truly to be pitied because this fool lacks the ability to see approximations of success in his failures. In attempting to add 3 to 7, this fool will come up with 25, 12, 5, 2, 52, 10, 25, 23, 67, 12, 15, 10, 6, 3, 7. This fool will stumble all of his life.

Then there is the true fool, who is different from the other two fools because he fails much more slowly. This most foolish of fools deludes himself into thinking he is not a fool, and scorns the other two types of fools for their many foolish failures. The laborious endeavors of this fool are neither abject failures nor successes. This fool, in adding 3 to 7, will consider 4 for awhile, and then 8. Then much time will be spent arguing for 8 because 3 is a small number and 7 is a larger number and 8 is a smaller number plus 7. This fool fools himself into thinking his stubbornness and patience is a virtue. If there is some help for these kind of fools, then they must abandon their foolish methodology and recognize their foolish attitudes to foolishness.

Rankings

2011-11-02T18:35:00.003-06:00

I don't normally comment on news articles or magazines, but I'll make an exception tonight. Not that magazine rankings really matter when it comes to architecture and design, but the DesignIntelligence Magazine just released it's annual rankings of Graduate architecture programs in the US, and

Washington University in St. Louis is ranked #4

above such venerable programs like MIT and Cornell.

I suddenly feel like my work is a lot more important and my studio projects just jumped from 'ok' to 'exceptionally brilliant.' Actually this is good news because the polls are based on practictioner's rankings- which means that professional architects think that the people they're getting from Wash U are pretty darn good.

Actually, its not too surprising. From my understanding, the architecture program was coming up in the world and the past three years of enrollment have seen record numbers with steadily rising enrollment standards.

(Although when Saori applied here was the first time I'd even heard of the school. I think it's mostly because its still best known in east coast and midwest circles.)

Shanghai: highlights roundup

2011-11-01T18:35:00.002-06:00

Every morning in Shanghai, I'd be up around 6am with the jet lag the newly risen sun. I'd quietly dress and slip out the door as quickly as I could, strolling through the hotel lobby and out the door to the morning streets of Shanghai before the crowds of tourists. It's a different place, even the Bund, in the early morning. There are large groups of elderly walking, and doing group tai chi exercise on the Bund, some even with traditional wushu weapons. There were a large number of gentlemen flying kites too, high above the river. I walk along, several blocks past the hotel to the narrow but bustling market street. At 7am, its packed. Parents walking little kids to school, older kids going to school, workers of all kinds going to work, and everyone is grabbing a bite to eat for breakfast. I sampled as much as I could from the various carts, stalls, and small restaurants along the street.

Two to three steamed buns with pork filling, also called baozi, hot corn juice, which tastes exactly how it sounds, pork fried rice with egg and green peppers, and even what I called a Shanghai crepe, which seemed to be a very popular option. There's a big round frying plate, about the same size as the crepe makers in France have, and they ladle on a batter, spoon it around until its very thin and flexible, and then scramble an egg or two on top of it, followed by two sticks of crunchy fried dough, a ladle of a spicy sauce, and large sprinkling of green peppers, and then the whole thing is folded up in the crepe. Pretty good stuff.

Walking Nanjing road to the Bund at night is a totally different experience. You come up from the metro stop into the cool night air filled with neon and people. Shanghai moves so fast and with so much energy you get swept up in it. On East Nanjing road, one is constantly accosted for watches, clothes, girls. But you brush them off, and more turn up, one after another, and you take it in stride- after all, they're the chorus line of East Nanjing Road. The push of the people, the bounding music from the stores on either side, the tourist shops, the knockoff clothing shops, the high end boutiques all rub shoulders on this street which one classmate called "ten blocks of Times Square." There's a thrum of life here, the tourists, foreign and Chinese, excited to see Nanjing road, the Bund and the lights of Pudong across the river, and the locals, excited to see the tourists and the money and attention they're bringing. Once across the boulevard, you climb the steps up to the bund, and you're awash in the electric lights of Pudong, and the thousands of people who are taking bad flash photos of themselves in front of it.

City god temple, part of the Yu Yuan gardens complex, was an old temple in the heart of the old Chinese city downriver from the Bund. The wood is still laquered red with the upturned eaves and tiled roof, but it is now a temple to Commerce and Tourism. The streets leading to it are lined with tourist crap souvenirs, and the place itself is nothing more than a beautiful and historic mall. Dairy Queen and Starbucks take center stage, alongside the cafes and restaurants famous for their steamed dumplings. In the center courtyards, tourists from all over China and all over the world jostle with monks, shopkeepers, performers. Our student guides, friends of one of our Chinese students here, are convinced to take an older gentleman up on an offer to see a rooftop terrace. We're suspicious and on our guard, but the two girls leading us around seem comfortable. We file into the small store where you can have your picture taken with a rickshaw against an 'old' backdrop. "I wonder what they're going to sell us" we mutter, crammed into the tiny elevator.

It turns out to be the suggestion that we stop into their pearl store at the top, where we get out, and the invitation to try their tea house. We decline and check out the terrace. It's a great view of the temple and the city surrounding, and the huge towers of Pudong loom in grey silhouettes in the grey late afternoon.

Shanghai: Super Brands Mall

2011-10-30T20:17:00.004-06:00

This is a pretty terrible place, but I'm glad I went. If you've ever seen a picture of Shanghai, you've probably seen the giant tower that looks like a bunch of golf balls right on the river, across from the Bund. The egregious tower is the Pearl River Tower and the area of town it is in is called Pudong. Now, at the base of that tower is a massive traffic roundabout and around the roundabout is an elevated pedestrian walkway which makes a giant floating ring. It's a popular place to take photos of the skyscrapers around Pudong, and its also right on the metro stop. Continue around the ring and you get to a massive mall.

While its difficult to walk 50 meters in Shanghai without seeing a Zara, an H&M, or a Haagen-Daz, this is one of more upscale malls in the city. The key word here is 'aspiration'. It's all about getting the Chinese to the middle class, and the middle class to consume at American levels. The mall has 11 floors, huge, spiraling atria, a movie theater, restaurants, and almost every luxury brand store I can think of, a mix of European, American, and Japanese. Muji and Uniqlo next to American Eagle next to Zara. The grocery store in the basement is also a foreign import- when I lived in Beijing, locals shopped at small markets, stalls, or small stores, and only the westerners went to the few 'big box' western-style supermarkets. Now, shopping at the supermarket is the modern, middle class thing to do.

And these aren't Fry's Marketplaces, either. These are meticulously organized, carefully presented, elaborately finished in upscale materials. The experience of these places are like someone described the functioning of an American supermarket to a luxury developer who had never before been to a real supermarket. Tellingly, the prices were very high. Actually, quite higher than typical American supermarket prices. Considering that the cost of living in Shanghai is relatively low for the US and relatively high for China, these grocery store prices would be astronomical for most Chinese. If I was working and living in Shanghai as an expat designer- which is a high demand/high paying job for Shanghai, I could not afford to shop at this grocery store. This is less about stocking up on groceries and more about the new consumer lifestyle.

Actually, in all of the stores, the prices for the goods were higher than what I'd seen in Europe and in the US.

Cards, Books, and Clay

2011-10-29T19:05:00.000-06:00

The St.Louis cardinals won the World Series. It made the front page of BBC news international. Game 6 against the Texas Rangers was supposed to be one of the best baseball games in history. They didn't riot here, but during the game, you could stand outside and hear a common roar at the game highlights.

I think its fantastic that people get worked up over their local sports teams. Because people feel loyal to a particular team, there's this sense of communal attachment to place, of ownership. It's not the cardinals winning the world series, its our cardinals. When there's this kind of ownership, it activates the relationship between the city/community and the individual. By identifying yourself with the St.Louis cardinals, you also identifying yourself as a St.Louisian, a member of the city who has ownership/responsibility/kindred to the city, even if in a very superficial way.

Myself, I've never cared about the local sports teams, and my home happens to be where I sleep at night.

I enrolled in a 1 credit workshop over the weekend in land forming, taught by one of the professors in the nascent landscape architecture program at Wash U. The class is actually a very expensive hand workout program. We started by purchasing a week's worth of groceries worth of clay. Not just any clay:

Only Roma Plastilina. No substitutes. Number 2. Not sculpey. Not white. Not brown. Yes. It stinks. It is expensive. It gets everywhere. I know.
If you are allergic to sulphur, please contact Blick about a suitable alternative such as Prima.
It does not dry, so you can use it forever.
To soften it before use, you can cut it into slabs and put it under an incandescent bulb. Do not put it in the microwave. It will never be the same (the microwave or the clay).

Apparently it's the industry standard used by professional sculptors mostly because it never dries out and it holds it shape pretty well. Which is good, because I never want to buy any more ever again. The stuff is really quite hard. It's about as hard as a cold stick of butter. The only thing we did for two hours last night was to cut our bricks of clay up and make a level base out of it. Laborious work. People talked about how sore their hands were this morning when they came in. Because it contains sulphur, my hands reek of it that does not go away with washing.

I kind of like it as a material though. The firmness of the clay means you can get really precise with it, and if you really work it into a surface smooth, it becomes glassy and nearly reflective. Today, we took our base and made two primitives- a small low, four sided pyramid, and a conical pit which intersected the pyramid, so it looked like the conical pit was excavating the pyramid from the base. We spent hours doing this. I got up at 8 this morning, hung over and tired, and hauled my sorry butt to school to spend the entire day working with this clay model. In the afternoon, once we were happy with our work, we destroyed it, and started over, this time making whatever landform we wanted to.

In a sense, its kind of theraputic to do this kind of mindless, intuitive, manual labor. In another sense, its a terrible idea considering our midreview this friday and the video we're supposed to make etc. etc.
I do hope that the sulphur smell goes away though.

I got my passport book today in the mail. It's the new one, the one with the chip inside. The chip doesn't bother me as much as the graphic content of the passport. The pages of the new American passports are twenty pounds of contrived nationalistic imagery in a five pound bag. In 14 pages, I counted six bald eagles, not including the bald eagle watermark on every page. Yes, America as a social and governmental experiment has got some great points, but you don't see the Italians issuing passports made of pasta.

The other thing that irritates me about the new passports is that because each page is so luridly colored and completely covered with simpering imagery, any stamps you get are totally washed out. I liked the old passports because you could vaugely make out the state seals, but the primary focus was on the stamps. Now, all attention is on the majesty of the bison of the great plains with the farmer driving the plow while the waves of grain flow around the aloof and watchful head of the freedom-loving bald-eagle.

When I get to describe our trial by jury system to my Chinese classmates who don't have that right, that gets me choked up. When I remember that people are presumed innocent when brought to trial, that gets me choked up. When people who tell me that the economic system in the US is run by pathological corporations and special interest groups then tell me that it can be changed by public political action, that gets me choked up. So don't expect me to get dewy eyed with jingoistic fervor with this 'Independence day parade in small town America' crap.

Halloween party

2011-10-29T01:01:00.002-06:00

This is my 900th blog posting in about 8 years of blogging. I'm within a hundred posts of a 1000 blog postings. Just thought I'd share.

I hate going to bed drunk, it just feels odd and unnatural. So I'm going to write instead.

I just got back from the MFA(Master of fine arts)/MArch (master of architecture) Halloween party, and I was not disappointed. The MFA students do all the decoration etc and set up the space, and really all that architecture contributes is the keg beer. But that still buys us admittance to the party.

It's actually one of my favorite events of the year- everyone who goes busts out an incredible costume. After all, its architecture and art students. Tonight, my favorites were:

dinosaur topiary
Chinese cowboy (wearing my boots, hat, and serape)
both Black Swans
The letters R and W from the scrabble game
A mounted deer head

but the best costume goes to a friend of mine, who came dressed as a paper bag full of fallen leaves. It was a great costume, and kudos must go out to Mr. Andrew Buck, currently in degree project.

This year, I decided to be topical and I came as a "occupy" protester. However, I was a little concerned about coming across as too conservative with a somewhat satirizing costume, so I opted to be a "Occupy Gringots" protester. The idea was original, but someone else already had it, and actually inspired a few quotes for my sign. The costume is very simple and cheap. I superglued some foamcore signs to a long stick of wood, and wrote "Occupy Gringots" on an old tee shirt.

The signs read: "1% of magical folk control the other 99%", "Hagrid is too big to fail", "Send Gringots Goblins to Azkaban!", and "It's time to straighten out Diagon Alley"

It was a pretty successful costume, although my black hoodie kind of obscured the "occupy gringots" phrase and icon that I drew on the tee shirt with a black marker.

The party was very fun. Lots of dancing, glow sticks, socializing, and beer. It's closer to home than school which let me take the bus both ways. Actually, I had no idea when the bus would come when I was walking back. I decided to stop and wait for a few minutes to see if any bus would come, and lo and behold, but 97 appeared on the other side of the hill, and saved me maybe fifteen minutes of walking.

I would have continued the party at Matt's apartment, but by then, I'd reached my limit of beer, and with another class this weekend starting at 9, I wanted to be in good shape, so I ended up taking a pass. The party ended at 1pm and a group of classmates and I were the last ones on the dance floor.

Now, I'm just drunk and sleepy. Trying to drink a lot of water and hoping that I'll remember to set my alarm for tomorow morning's class.

no compromises

2011-10-26T21:17:00.000-06:00

Take me back to Shanghai. Please.

I have a paper due tomorrow afternoon which is supposed to be analytic and cite references I haven't read.

Friday at noon, I'm teaching a Revit class so I need to sit down and figure that out. Then, after studio, I'm helping pick up some beers for a Halloween party, followed by a two hour workshop on landscape forming I signed up for, followed immediately afterwards by that aforementioned Halloween party.

[The Halloween party, it should be said, is not to be missed. MFA (master of fine arts) students have amazing costumes and they go balls out on the decoration. Last year's party featured colored jello shots hanging from the ceiling and a severed head on a spike which spewed the red rum punch.]

And then, there's studio.

Architecture is a lot of compromise. I'm ok with that.

My studio project is a mixed use development in one of the most prominent spots of Shanghai, right by the Bund.

If my project lacked conceptual interest, I'd be ok with formal interest.

If it lacked formal interest, I'd be ok if had density and a potential for vibrancy.

If it lacked density and the potential for vibrancy, then I'd be ok if I hadn't spent that much time on it, perhaps having read a good book, seen a few good films, had some good conversations, exercised, or got outside a little.

Which is why I'm not ok. But we're working on it.

I think my project is kind of like suburbia on stilts, but without the benefit of green spaces.

"Tell me what you need," our instructor told us today, after sitting us all down and telling us he is extremely concerned with our lack of progress. Somehow, I'm not convinced it's just time.

I know I have a disturbing tendency to create three-dimensional puzzles for myself and spend days trying to "solve" them. Which is a large part of why I'm behind. At my last desk critique, the professor told me he appreciated the 'rigor' I was bringing to the task, but then I guess it does take a lot of rigor to create a 300 meter long wall of stacked boxes. At this point, I think he's pushing me to keep at it because we're effectively way out of time for new ideas. At least a gestural stage.

Oh well, if the gesture at the urban scale doesn't work, dive into the architectural scale. If it doesn't work at the architectural scale, then dive into the unit layouts, ad infinitum.

I'm seeing a pattern where this about the time of the semester where I hate my project. I think its still an improvement over first semester studio, but not by much.

Shanghai: nightclubs

2011-10-24T21:04:00.001-06:00

Dew, who spent the summer working in Shanghai, took us to the expatriate area of Shanghai, where a lot of foreigners live and where there is a lot of mixing of expats and local Shanghaiese, far from the tourist crowd on the riverside.

The Shanghaiese, with few exceptions, dress very conservatively in drab or neutral colors. Waiting for the metro, you are struck by a lack of flashiness or color. No punks. No hipsters. Nothing that smacks of counterculture. There is a modesty to their attire I haven't seen anywhere else. Two notable exceptions: their wedding clothes and the clothes you see at the clubs. At both the clubs we went to, and we went to the two most ostentatious, lurid, and over-the-top gaudy clubs in Shanghai, the male staff- greeters/bouncers/ hosts, all dressed in these greasy, shiny, slick suits with slicked hair, like it was a cabal of porn directors

The first club, No. 88, was dead when we arrived that night. Incredible decor, totally Jules Verne over the top. It's like they raided a chandelier factory. Too early. We didn't want to eat or spend money at a bar, so we hit up one of the 24 hour mini convenience stores which are all over the place in Shanghai, almost of all of them Japanese (with the exception of the 7-11s). Picked up some cheap Tsingdao beers and drank outside, stopping to peruse a DVD store.

Back when I was in Beijing, shopping for a pirated DVD, or VCD, was a furtive exercise involving a shifty looking guy who held a beat up cardboard box for you to skim through cellophane-wrapped disks while you sat at a cafe. In Shanghai, the set up is more like a blockbuster. Full cases, well organized, English speaking staff to direct you to Zhang Yimou in the 'local directors' aisle. Only slightly more expensive than the cardboard box riffle. I debated picking up a few movies and decided I'd rather spend a few bucks on a used amazon disc here instead of risking a lively debate with US customs and immigration. They are, as you know, dear reader, such an level-headed and sympathetic bunch.

Anyway, we tried No. 88 one more time. A few more people, but still it wasn't dancing. Maybe not the right night. So Dew loaded us into a few taxis and we went to Phebe 3-D.

Phebe grabbed my attention as we'd driven by it the first time. The building entry LOOKED excessive. Inside, the music was thumping, the dance floor was packed, and everywhere were more chandeliers, totally gaudy decoration with video monitors of every kind everywhere, including under the glass surface of the bar, which was kind of cool. Strobes sequenced to the music, the DJ, a girl with tattoos and a baseball cap, grooving in the booth in the front of the dance floor, the low tables with the invisible velvet ropes. We were guided to the bar at the back. One online reviewer nailed the nightclub:

Flashy. Expensive. Filled with bar-girls and jugglers and massage chairs - did I forget to mention the medieval-looking statues, their gigantic sound system, or the mini-golf course? This place's so tacky it's cool.

They made a big deal about the DJ, the video monitors said she was "DJ Yuki", and the whole booth was lit up as part of the show. Actually, it was part of the show. "DJ Yuki" wasn't really doing anything except badly pretending to be a DJ. The too-perfectly mixed music, especially for someone who never wore the cans slung around her neck, and the synchronization with the video playing on all the screens suggested that the dudes with the laptops and the headsets behind the bar were the ones actually running the show, probably queuing up last Saturday's playlist.

The bar girls were an interesting bunch. They didn't exactly wear a sign that said "Hey, Big Boy," but there were about thirty girls in short skirts standing around a long table next to the dance floor. They didn't dance, they didn't walk around. They just stayed there, talking a little bit, and doing that listless light bounce to the music. In great contrast, there was a bar girl at the bar who jumped and bounced like the energizer bunny the entire night. I wonder she didn't collapse. She didn't leave, she didn't really drink, she just kept bouncing. One of my companions went over to talk to her, and he quickly learned that she was not there to socialize. She was still bouncing when we left.

The bar girls were there for the rich Chinese guys, mostly young, to take back to the VIP tables to drink and play dice games. For some reason, dice at the bars is huge. Patrons play it with each other and the bartender and apparently there are countless versions of the game.

Towards midnight, they put on a show- a pole dancer in a fake leather suit, followed by a trio of east Europeans, two girls and a guy, who got up on the platform by the bar did their dance. Everything looked a little worn, a little tired, and little over rehearsed when you looked closely. We left shortly after. Still, it was a lot of fun to be a part of such an excessive scene, to enjoy the overwhelming submersion in the atmosphere, to see a small part of the intricacies of how the game is played in Shanghai.

Guidelines for Architects

2011-10-22T21:17:00.000-06:00

My community development class has been endlessly fascinating. At the very least, it is an enlightening and gently humbling way to remember that when an architect gets involved, all the really important decisions have already been made by people who really know whats going on.

My guidelines for architects planning on working in a community, based on our readings and lectures:

Understand how the community sees itself
Learn enough to be dangerous
Learn how to translate between specialists and residents
You are not "We"
Understand your own assumptions coming to the table
If you can find finding, people will hire you
If you can effect real change, people will line up behind you
The socioeconomic system is a game in which the rules are made by those with power; the balance of power is redistributed through politics; real change is only possible through political action.
Almost everything in the world is made through decisions of human beings. Poverty, inequality, and injustice are not accidental, but intentional.
The goal of planning and social work is to give communities the ability to self-organize and take collective action to address issues which effect them.
The neighborhood is where culture is initially conveyed- it tells children what society is, how it works, what it values, and what its aspirations are.
Semi-public > Public because people will take responsibility for places they consider to be theirs.
Momentum > individual ideas

Best of Shanghai: Cocktails at the Peninsula

2011-10-22T20:09:00.005-06:00

One of the newest buildings on the Bund, at the end of a wall of colonial British building now mostly occupied by major banks and exclusive hotels (including the venerable Peace Hotel), is the Peninsula Hotel. A very upscale, luxury hotel (rooms from around $300 a night), it also had a rooftop terrace bar, which provided excellent views of not only the bund, but also our two sites located just across the Suzhou creek.

Two of my classmates got up there during the day and took some photos from that height. To get there, they told me, one must take the stairs, because the bar is for the hotel clientele only, and the elevator requires a room key to operate.

Desiring to get some beautiful night shots in which I could place my building as a night rendering, as well as to celebrate my last night in Shanghai, I dressed up in the tailored slacks and fitted button up, and went for a night stroll to the Peninsula. I got into the hotel without any attention and got into an elevator with a hotel guest. I got off at her floor, and walked around the corner. There. Stairs. There are many advantages in studying architecture, least of which is you begin to understand how buildings go together, which means you have a pretty good idea of where the stairs are if you know where the elevators are. I went up a few flights of stairs and popped out in an quiet corridor. Poking around a little, I found my way to the elevator lobby and the entry to the sky bar.

"Drinks for one, sir?" the host enquired. I nodded and followed him out to a table with an absolutely phenomenal view of the arc of the Bund and Pudong straight ahead. It was a cool but pleasant night, and I ordered a gin fizz from the offered menu. The terrace was dark, lit mostly by candles, and the people around me looked like a mix of wealthy, older European vacationers and businessmen. Everyone looked sharp, and I was glad I'd worn something passably dressy.

The view over the glass railing was amazing. From 14 floors up, I could see the full sweep of the bund, the tiny crowds of people still strolling along it, and countless tiny bursts of light as people took photos of themselves and the scene across the river.

Pudong at night is an incredible scene. If you took the Las Vegas strip and filled in the spaces between the casinos with New York's Times Square, you might begin to have an idea of what that view is like. The river bends around Pudong, framing what appears to be an island of moving neon light. There are skyscrapers in Pudong where the entire facade is a video screen 80 stories tall. And of course, one cannot miss the incredibly ugly Pearl River Tower, that goofy golf ball tower. Fortunately, there have been several towers, including the bank building and the JinMao tower which both soar over it to distract somewhat from the iconic landmark.

The empty seat across the table made me really wish that Saori was there, to see this with me, and to share a drink and talk about all the fun we'd had in Shanghai. I finished my drink, paid the check (causing great consternation when I told the waiter that I didn't have a room number), and went to the far side of the roof terrace to take more photos of the site.

Best of Shanghai: Tianzifang

2011-10-22T09:42:00.000-06:00

Tianzifang is a lilong which is to say, a traditional neighborhood block typical to Shanghai, a kind of hybrid between a hutong and the British row houses. Very dense, with 3-4 story row houses with narrow winding alleys, and small shops and restaurants ringing the exterior of the block facing the street. These were the kind of blocks which dominated Shanghai for most of the century, and which are currently being eliminated from the city to align with the central government's plan for Shanghai which is modern skyscrapers.

Tianzifang was slated for destruction and the residents resisted- they were bolstered by a massive influx of artists and artisans, who turned the lilong into a defacto artists district, and gained enough attention and tourism to dissuade the government from carrying out the demolition. Now, it is a major tourist attraction and while many of the ground floor shops are still artists galleries and shops, most of the lilong apart from the housing above, is taken over by more touristy stores, design boutiques, bars, cafes, and restaurants. It's still one of my favorite places in Shanghai, especially on a Saturday night.

The narrow alleys are full of internationals and Chinese, there's food from around the world available and you can dine either on the alley or sitting on the second floor open air terraces, and everywhere, there is the glitter of strung lights. It's a pleasure to lose oneself in the labyrinth of alleys and passages, similar to the passages of Paris. I liked it so much, I went back twice during my stay in Shanghai. Had vietnamese Pho one night, Japanese eel the other. Good place to shop and eat and drink.

Back from Shanghai

2011-10-20T22:50:00.000-06:00

Shanghai was amazing. The most vibrant, exciting city I've ever been to, with perhaps the notable exception of Rio de Janiero. The entire city is a shopping mall, not even Dubai has embraced consumer culture to the depth and height of the Chinese. It's like they can't arrive at the middle class fast enough. Actually, it was quite terrifying in the implications. If the city keeps changing in the direction its going, it will be exactly like Dubai with nothing cultural behind the glass facades. This time, history is being erased in favor not of the cultural revolution, but a commercial one. I'm so behind now in school. I can see why people don't usually take a week off in graduate school. Not irreparable though (hopefully). I have a mid review full pin up a week from friday, when I'm also teaching a workshop, and then the day before I have a large paper due.So far jet lag not too bad. I guess I'm so wiped these days its completely overriding my ciccadian rythm. I just get loopy rather than sleepy.

Images of Shanghai

2011-10-20T06:48:00.001-06:00

last minute packing

2011-10-12T04:46:00.000-06:00

It's 5:20 AM and I'm sitting in Dew's living room, listening to the gentle sound of rain and Dew rummaging around packing up. Last night, I packed up my bags, left a note about Suki, and Dew picked me up. We swung through the grocery store and picked up some more food for dinner and Dew made us some Okonomiyaki.

We talked and ate a variety of friends came by to eat more okonomiyaki with some beer, and then around nine, another one of Dew's friends came by with four very young Japanese girls. They baked a bag of toasted ravioli and played cards with Dew until about four AM.

I took a short nap for about two hours and very sleepily attempted to learn this new version of dihinmi which has a lot of rules.

Speaking of learning things, in the excitement for the Shanghai trip, I forgot to add a day to my flying itenerary, so when I booked my hotel, I booked it for an extra night on the coming in side. Fortunately, this is a relatively cheap mistake since we're splitting a room three ways. Still, it was a stupid oversight.

Shanghai.

The cab is called, I have my passport, visa, tickets, hotel voucher, and cash. And really, with cash, all else besides the visa and passport is negotiable. I've been brushing up my Chinese.

This afternoon, I actually made my own sketchbook. I used scrap paper from the studio and gave it a stiff blue paper cover with the perfect bind. It looks really like a professionally created sketchbook. It took perhaps an hour of work and about a dollar worth of materials.

I don't think I will be able to blog from Shanghai, but I will be taking a lot of photos. It's been so long since I was there, I can't wait to go back. I think it was in 1998 or 1999 was the last time I was there. A Chinese eternity.

Los Cinco Empanadas

2011-10-10T20:38:00.001-06:00

Saori and some friends went to Mendoza for the weekend, and posted some amazing photos that looked like a ton of fun. One of the photos they took on horseback was so western, that I had to put it into a movie poster....

Oh, and I didn't get that travel scholarship I was hoping would defray my Shanghai travel expenses. Oh well, as Wayne Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Teacup architecture

2011-10-09T23:16:00.000-06:00

I found a great quote about architecture by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi

Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the tea cup, but the tea.

This resonates nicely for me in what I want my architecture to do and be. Personal, subtle, enhancing the experience. (Especially if one takes it from a Japanese standpoint, where the container, or packaging, is extremely carefully thought out and the experience of it is highly developed and cultivated.)

For obvious reasons, one cannot have tea without a container to drink it from. In the same way, architecture has a utility function- it is difficult if not impossible to have a house, a school, a store, or court without some kind of built environment- it not directly related to the function of its use, then at least to mitigate rain and temperature. But the teacup does more than hold tea.

One of Monty Python's four Yorkshiremen, in the famous sketch of how poor they were when they were young, talked about drinking tea out of a rolled up newspaper. Another replied he had to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

The teacup gives character to the experience of drinking the tea. I don't care if you're drinking the most luxurious expensive tea at the Raffles Hotel, if you're drinking out of a cracked, dirty cup, it's an impoverished experience.

I want my tea cup to provide the best tea drinking experience. I don't care if people notice the teacup. People don't drink tea to put their hands and lips on pieces of ceramic. In the same way, people don't live to experience architecture- they experience architecture in order to live.

And yet, there is so much room to experiment, to play. Look at the varieties of tea cups around the world. They all do their job, but they all put a quiet nuance on this or that aspect of drinking tea.

However, it is not that useful as an operative theory of architecture.

Rolling on the Riverfront

2011-10-09T21:51:00.000-06:00

It was absolutely not my intention to wind up exhausted, on a bike, ten miles from home in way north St.Louis at dusk. Everything follows quite naturally, as you shall see.

Saturday, I tried to sleep in, and I made it to nine o'clock.
Had a good morning of laundry, and then caught the maintenance guy doing yardwork outside. I told him about our funky faucets and together we disassembled and reassembled the faucet. Turned out to be tons of sand and rocks in the filter. Where is this coming from? Old pipes? Anyway, he also changed the light bulb in our stairwell so we no longer have to use the desk lamp perched on the landing.

It was a beautiful day going to waste, and I sat thinking about things I'd always wanted to see in St.Louis but never had the time to do, so I hit on the idea of biking the St.Louis Riverfront trail. I'd heard about it from my downstairs neighbor, who is an avid bicyclist, and I wanted to bike it. It was a gorgeous day, so I threw my beat up water bottle and a light jacket in my backpack, and hit the road. Why take the metro or bus when its only seven miles to the river?

I was cruising along Washington, north of St.Louis university, when I happened to pass what looked like a brewery. I'd been thinking about a beer, actually, so I swung around and it happened to be Urban Chestnut brewery, which makes Wing Nut beer. So I parked my bike and enjoyed a glass of beer and read about the history of beer making in the city of St.Louis, a book pulled from a shelf of books all about, surprise surprise, beer.

After the beer, I continued east towards the riverfront. I accosted a bored looking woman standing on the street corner wearing an "official guide" shirt, and asked her how I could get to City Garden, an acclaimed urban sculpture park in the middle of downtown.

"ohhhh, are you going to the Occupy St.Louis protesters?" she asked me. I was kind of flustered, wait, what? There's a sympathy movement here? She interpreted my flustered response as evasiveness and knowingly gave me directions to where the protesters were encamped. I guess I fit the protester type.

I biked down to the square where I locked up my bike and walked around. It was a small group, maybe 50 protesters or so. Small groups talking or resting, sitting on the steps. A line of about 20 stood on the street corner waving homemade placards. As if to reiterate the unfocused aim of the organization, the placards ranged from calls for forgiveness of student debt, to solidarity and recognizance of the plutocracy running the country, to outright support of anarchy. "We are all in this together" read one massive banner attached to the colonnade. It seemed well organized. There were daily schedules posted everywhere, signs reminding protesters that drinking and drugs were not accepted here, manifestos. There were several enterprising tables selling food and drinks. I saw perhaps seven large camping tents set up. No police. It was actually quiet enough that the plaza was also occupied by wedding photography parties, taking advantage of the beautiful fall weather and the backdrop of the Arch.

I sympathize with the 'occupation' movement. Our generation, and the middle and lower classes, are getting screwed- we've been getting screwed for a long time, but the facade of equal opportunity has begun to crumble. Our socioeconomic system is a game. Those with power make the rules of the game. They are only subject to laws which are enforced by the government. In theory, politics has been the means of balancing the power equation, and it has been to a certain extent in the past. But now, there is confusion and a lack of faith in the political system, and there is frustration without outlet. People are angry, but I sense they don't know whom to be angry at. The Fed? Politicians? Wall Street? Corporations? Free market capitalism? Neo-liberalism? They know they are getting royally screwed, but when they turn around all they see are shrugs and the game.

Personally, I'd tell the protesters to get political. Quit protesting on street corners, and talk to your alderman, senator, congressman. Tell them you want to tax hospitals. Tell them to tax corporations. Tell them YES for regulation. They are your voice. Yes, it's a grand hustle, but at least, in America, the cheaters at the table have a fear of the giant with the big stick.

Anyway, I'll get off the soapbox. Political ranting on a blog is like passing gas on a bicycle: its mildly obnoxious to a few people, humorous to others, but it just makes you look like an ass and really, nobody cares. No, really, this month, 75% of the visitors to this blog are searching for ways to make a dia de los muertos costume. (apologies to those who ended up here. You can find out my costume advice by using the 'archive' tab and clicking over to 'october 2010')

I bicycled by the arch, and headed down to the riverfront. More weddings under the arch. I swear, I saw at least five separate wedding groups. There, in the shadow of the amazing and fantastical ancient power and light building was the riverfront trailhead.

The St.Louis Riverfront trail stretches from the base of the arch north along the Mississippi river. Sometimes the concrete trail is on the river side of the flood walls, sometimes on the city side of the floodwall, and sometimes its on top of the earthen levees. The city of St.Louis is quickly forgetten in this strange space between heavy industry and the wilderness of the riverfront. To the left, a concrete and steel desert devoid of people, but filled with massive pieces of whirring machinery, smoke stacks, pipes, and rail yards. To the right, lush, overgrown mat of vegiation, stretching to the hidden river edge. I forget sometimes how big the Mississippi is. This is the waterway of the Americas, the historic path of conquistadors, spaniards, frenchmen, rebels, Mark Twain. Across the river, in the distance, huge mud flats, and walls of forest.

I got lost once and lost the trail. After pedalling through some industrial metalwork yards, I was able to find it again. I rode on and on. It's all relatively flat, so on my bike, I was able to just go. I followed the trail for the full 10 miles. I'd intended to peel away somewhere along the path, cut back to the southwest, or the south, since the trail follows the northwestern arc of the river. Unfortunately, that didn't really work out.

There's a portion of the trail that goes through the woods in Chain of Rocks Park. It's actually a whole series of streets which look like they were laid out, and then abandoned. Full width, asphalt streets, curbs and gutters, entirely covered with fallen trees, leaves. Lamp posts, lost in the canopy. An abandoned street in the forest. Eerie.

Anyway, I popped out in a residential neighborhood proceeded to bike the absolute wrong way. When I hit the 270, I thought, well, crap. This is nowhere. Quite literally.

I turned around and biked a few miles down until I realized it was getting very late to be bicycling and it was later than prudent for a white boy to be hanging out in way north St.Louis. I called a friend of mine to ask for directions, and to find out about how I could take the bus out of there.

I gave her my cross roads and she swore. "how the hell..." she began. "you're ten miles from home," she told me, and trying to take a bus will take an hour and a half and I can't even begin to describe the bus changes you're going to have to make." I told her it'd be faster for me to bike, and then she told me she was coming out to pick me up. I ended up locking up my bike and waiting at the bus stop. It took her about twenty minutes to get out there.

St.Louis is a city which has its streets and transit systems organized around the central axis where the money and power are. Not one but two parallel freeways service the white, wealthy wedge of Grand center, CWE, Forest Park, U city, Clayton, and the wealthiest suburbs which extend in that narrow window west. It is almost impossible to go north or south in St.Louis. There aren't even arterial roads. Which is why it takes five minutes to travel ten miles east or west, and four times as long to travel the same distance north or south.

Anyway, she picked me up, swearing the entire time, and talking about how sketchy the neighborhoods she had to drive through were. The one I was waiting in actually wasn't that bad. If a neighborhood has a real grocery store, it can't be that bad. A grocery store says that there's money and stability. Show me a neighborhood without a grocery store, or local businesses or restaurants, and I get really nervous. This one wasn't really too bad.

We ended up getting some Thai for dinner on Delmar, and she dropped me at school afterwards. It was nice, I finally got a chance to catch up.

projects

2011-10-07T21:50:00.001-06:00

What a long last couple of days! I got about six hour of sleep between two days. Yesterday, I worked from 8am to 6am, came home, slept for two and a half hours, showered, and came back to school. I actually went the entire day without eating.

We had our first review of three for the semester- this one about the urban gestures of the project in the context of programming and site. For the ton of work I put in, I didn't get much to put on my boards. My printing costs were probably under $40, which was a steal for a pin-up review. I also had a huge site model at 1:1000 scale.

We're working in the metric scale, which is surprisingly/unsurprisingly easy to use. I was always kind of worried about working overseas because pretty much the US is the only country that still uses feet and inches. It made a lot of sense back in the days when you didn't have anything to measure anything with, and you're building barns with your bare hands. (a foot divides cleanly in half to 6" which divides in half to 3," an inch divides in half to a 1/2, then a 1/4, then 1/8, ad nauseum). There's a certain kind of clean logic about the halving of things, but I think I like metric better. At any rate, you can intuitively grasp relationships of scale a lot more easily since the basic unit the same. For example, when you're trying to relate to the area of a square mile, its tough, because its some very large odd number and nobody thinks in terms of square yards. Acres are the closest approximation, with one square mile equal to 640 acres. 640? Really? With metric, someone says a square kilometer, and you think, ah, that's 100 hectares, or the area of a square with a 1000 meter sides.

It's also kind of fun because it makes you defamiliarize yourself with personal standards of measurement- for example, architects who look at drawings understand the scale intuitively because we know how big a standard door is (typically 3' wide, 7' tall). Now, I have to go back and associate the scale of the door with the measurement of 2 meters tall, for example, and to try to conceive of spaces in terms of their metric sizes.

Let's face it, it's not riveting stuff (I'm getting bored writing about it!) so I can see why it was a tough sell to get Americans excited around metric in the 70s and 80s.

Anyway, we had our review today.

Low key affair, Johnathan S (who was a graduate student less than 8 weeks ago) and Pablo were on our review in the first half, then I got Derek H and Seng, a new faculty member who is teaching a course about Japanese modern architecture. Got good comments from both of them.

My project this semester is on a huge area of prime real estate in the north Bund in Shanghai. Over 6 hectares (which is .06 square kilometers, 600,000 square meters. etc. etc.) It sits on the Wuzhou creek, and borders everything from traditional low lilong housing, midrise colonial, and high rise contemporary buildings. My project is mostly housing, with a mix of offices, retail, and dining. After reading about a massive overcrowding in Chinese pools, I added three olympic sizes swimming pools and a massive lazy river about 20 meters wide by a 500 meters long. That's a long way, that's half a kilometer. That made the reviewers really sit up and take notice.

Got some good feedback, and I might remember some of it. I'm so out of it today from the sleep deprivation.

After review, one beer at happy hour, and then I went over to a friend's for a steak dinner and we all watched Tekkonkinkreet. Good stuff.

The biggest news of the day is actually my mother's news: she passed the Arizona bar exam, the culmination of years of hard work and dedication. It's a tremendous achievement, and I'm really proud of her.

sitting

2011-10-06T20:12:00.001-06:00

Sit down in the tall padded chair in front of your desk. Crack open the laptop, hit the power stud, and power on the second flat panel monitor. Crack your neck. Feel the tiredness of your body.

Welcome...

35mm jack slots into the hole,
adjust the stereophonic headphones

And....

Adobe Illustrator spreads open in the right hand screen, an artist presents his palates and windows awaiting your gesture.

Autodesk Revit Architecture opens in the left, a crisp lieutenant unfolding its menus and commands, discreetly loading databases of data to be manipulated into form.

Spotify launches and silently queues up a familiar playlist.

Art, Power, Tempo.

Go.

This is a seat of an addicting power of design.

my schedule for the past week

2011-10-05T09:11:00.001-06:00