It's Revision Time

Gonna be another quick one today.
Photoshop class, then theory, then studio.  We worked on our diagrams and did lots of revisions, hopefully finishing them soon so we can revise our past work for the exhibition.  

I had these ready to go, but my professor had me revise them around 10, so they're not the final diagrams.  Hopefully you can get the idea, but I'll explain them in full when I get time.  Thanks for reading.

Diagrams

It's crunch time here at SDI so posts will be sporadic and short.  This week we're revising all our old projects, as well as learning Photoshop and Illustrator and making new diagrams for a set of topics about our case studies from week 1 (Seattle Public Library).  Yesterday was an Illustrator tutorial in the morning, then a lecture on Charles and Ray Eames, followed by a design log discussion and then an intense studio session.  I'll quickly say that the design log session was one of the best parts of SDI so far.  It was a relaxed environment as we went through everyone's book drafts and gave input.  The professors were joking around and it was really informative.

Today was a Photoshop tutorial, then a library workshop (UVa has 15, woah).  Then we had a talk with the architect of the architecture building, and then more intense studio work with diagrams.  I'll try and be more specific when I have time, ie, after SDI.  I don't have pictures right now, but I finished my Illustrator diagrams and should have those up eventually.

Oh also apparently I have to move apartments right in the middle of crunch time, so that should be fun.
It's game time now.  We're getting assignment after assignment with no break, so hopefully the end result will be spectacular.  Thanks for reading, and sorry for the text only, short post.

Design Log

Today was quite relaxing.  I only spent around 4 hours in studio, so I got to catch up on real life matter.

Studio time was spent revising my design log, a book of my work during SDI to be printed and bound in a week.  It's current draft is 57 pages, so I won't post it all here, but if you're curious I can e-mail you the preliminary draft.

It's hard to believe it's only been three weeks and that there's only one week left.  I'm still not entirely sure what the next week has in store, so I don't have much to report in.  I'll just leave you with some pictures I took for my book today.

These are my, uh, "professional" iPhone pictures.

Thanks for reading.

The Inevitable

"You really have no idea what you're doing" my professor iterated 4 times in the ten minute crit I had this morning.

"This drawing here shows me that you don't understand your project at all"
"You have a poor grasp of topography and how to manipulate it"
"I really don't think you're completely aware of what you did here"

These were a few of the comments I received after presenting an underdeveloped path project.  It may have been because I had three days to do it or the fact that my 2 am drawing skills are subpar, but honestly I don't understand topography, nor what was expected of me.  At my professor's urging on Friday night I changed my idea to a bike path with extreme mounds and sloping and such, and of course, in typical architecture fashion, he didn't like the idea today and would have preferred if the path was for people walking and had the structure of my old design.  Sound familiar?  It's what has happened for every single one of my crits.  I design something.  My professor wants me to change it last minute.  In the final review he prefers my old design and chastises me for pursuing an idea that is incomplete.  Part of me thinks this style of teaching is ridiculous.  I'm learning how to technically produce things, but conceptually I do not understand what is interesting or what a good design is.  If architects are so absent minded and unable to like something for more than 12 hours I might be in the wrong field.

The crit was rough.  They were tough and made sure to let me know my project was bad and that I had no clue what I was doing.  This is true, but it still stings when you've changed a design 3 times in 3 weeks and have always heard that the first idea was better.  Luckily I hated this project from the beginning, so the sting isn't so bad.  I just wish I knew what was going on.

Other people had some really cool work, and it's always nice to see other ideas, although one person showed up with one of the five required drawings and no model, but they liked her idea and I thought it was weird that they didn't care that she hadn't done the work.

 Crits finished and we had class after that, but considering only four of us got more than 2 hours of sleep, they cancelled it, which was nice.  I got lunch with people, then fell asleep when I got back to my apartment.  Of course we have homework, but I took the day off.  I'll just do it tomorrow.

The last week is coming up and I'm sure it will be the hardest week by far.  We'll be revising our previous projects, remaking most of them, and creating a book of the work over the past month.  Then we'll be getting reading for an exhibition of our work, open to the public.  Sorry I don't have pictures today, but if you're interested in something in particular let me know.  Thanks for reading.

ilovearchitecture

Good afternoon to my Russian and Asian readers and happy almost dawn to my east-coasters!

As I sit back and contemplate the almost 19 straight hours I just spent in studio, barring the 20 minute period to get food, I can't help but think about the 6 drawings my professor made me redo, the model he wanted me to remake, and the complete idea change from my original thoughts.

"I think you should redo your model, and change all your drawings" he says, a mere 15 hours before crits.

"I don't think I have time to do all that" I manage to spit out.

All my whining aside, today (or yesterday I guess) was quite the stress filled action packed angst filled day.  I never ended up redoing the model I spent hours setting up and laser cutting, mostly because of time issues and partly because I'm really lazy.  I did redo the drawings, made new sections, and changed the entire premise of the path I created over the last few days.

I feel like this is a trend in architecture.  They'll tell you your idea is good for a few days, then at the last minute say it's bad and to redo it.  My favorite(?) part was when I made topography changed and had elliptical and circular hills as banks for bicyclists and skateboards and such, to which my professor said that it was too round and curved.  So I went and redid it, making jagged edges and sudden turns, to which my professor said that it needed to be rounded and curved, like a circle.  I find it difficult to understand what he wants.  So I went back and redid it, making it a combination of both.  He came back around midnight asking how I was doing, but I refused to show him my drawings because I don't think I could handle him telling me to restart.

So my day was spent doing stuff like that.  My path now weaves downhill with massive hills to bank off of.  I did the physics and it doesn't work.  It's actually not possible to climb these hills, but for whatever reason in architecture school it's not about designing something feasible it's just about designing something "cool."  That's nonsense to me, but we'll see.

I have some quick pictures of the stuff I'm presenting tomorrow, and I'll give a more detailed explanation of it tomorrow, time permitting.  For now I think I'll get a couple hours of sleep before crits later today.  Thanks for reading.

Root Systems

Today was more of the same.  I had drawing class in the morning, then a Rhino tutorial about making topography.  There were pinups during studio time where people explained their paths and the root systems that hap mapped out.  It seemed pretty disorganized, but my pinup went alright.  They liked the style of my path, which weaved around roots systems, then cleared out an area of small trees and brush.  It wraps down a hill and around a house, opening up into a view of University Ave.  After that it follows the sidewalk and roads until you get to the destination.  Nothing exciting about the end, but I wasn't worrying about the stuff far away.  I've got some AutoCAD drawings of trees and root systems, so have a look.

And here is the overall look at the area I'm dealing with.  It's pretty difficult to see what's going on.

Overall I'm still not sure what's going on and what we need for crits on Saturday.  For now I'm focused on minimizing the effect of my path on the roots, other than the smaller trees.  The focus of my design will be on navigating the topography changes going down the back of Carr's hill (second image), and how I can weave a path throughout it.  I don't know if it's possible to see, but I have a blue and a cyan path mapped in the last picture. 

I'm not sure if this picture helps clear things up or if it makes it more confusing, but you can look at it all the same.

This project is still not very interesting for me, but that may be because there does not seem to be much direction and I don't know what's expected of me.  For now it's not too enjoyable, but hopefully that will change on Thursday and Friday.  Thanks for reading.

Pathing and Topography

My work this week is landscape architecture, where I will be designing a path from the A-School to a house about a mile away.  There are many rules to this assignment, but the main ones focus on diagramming the trees and root systems, working around them, and never going about a 6% slope increase or decrease (as per Virginia building code).  I'll have to level some of the ground and then carve my way through trees and the UVa ground, eventually weaving through side streets before reaching my destination.

Luckily, the head of the landscape department realized how absurd it was to assign so much work for 3 days, so she has simplified the assignment a tad.

Today I had drawing in the morning where we did tonal diagrams, axons, and perspectives.  Then I had a Rhino class about elevations and how to put those into AutoCAD from Rhino and then use those to laser cut material, making a topography model.  Studio time was spent walking around outside measuring the diameter of tree trunks, the canopies, and mapping the root systems underneath.  The directions are really unclear so I don't know what I'm doing and can't really tell you much.  Here is a little AutoCAD work from today.

I really don't have much to say because I'm not a huge landscape architecture person, but I'm hoping to weave my path through a forest that cuts through a frat house and then wrap that around the main street.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing tomorrow other than drawing in the morning then more Rhino modeling with the laser cutter, but we'll see.  Thanks for reading.

Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob

Today's post includes 58 pictures!  I'll try and explain my trip to Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob with pictures.  We left around 3:00 on Saturday for Somerset, PA.  About 4.5 hours later we arrived and walked the streets with our models.  The town was small, and we ate at one of the only places that was open.

This is a few of us with our models at the restaurant.  

Night on the town with my good old buddy

In the hotel room

We woke up around 7 and drove to Kentuck Knob for our first tour.

At Kentuck Knob, a house built by Frank Lloyd Wright

The Visitors Center -my model with the Iguodala Cemetery 

Door to Kentuck Knob, 6'5"

Kentuck Knob was built on a hexagonal grid

My model on the terrace

The outer patio area (you can see more hexagons)

The backyard

Hexagonal skylights

Triangular light fixtures with modern bulbs

The family installed this (it was not FLW) so that it sounded like Fallingwater

Outside area

A short walk in the backyard leads to this view, possibly the best part of the house

About 1/2 a mile down a hill was their "Sculpture Meadow"

My model with my favorite sculpture, about 300 red people

No pictures were allowed but this is from the outside looking into the dining area

I wish I could have taken pictures of the interior.  The space was tiny.  Nineteen inch doorways, which I could barely get through, and low, six foot ceilings, which I could fit under.  The interior was classic FLW and everything was meticulously kept in order.  The tour guide was stale and robotic, but that's probably because she's given thousands of these tours.  My favorite part of the interior was a tiny bathroom, built on a slant and formed into a hexagon.  The shower sunk into the ground and the toilet was wedged in the triangular corner.  It was a tiny space, but wicked cool.

After Kentuck Knob we drove 15 minutes to Fallingwater, whose real name is the Kauffman House.

My first view

The house is small, even though it looks majestic in pictures

A small pool area that leads to the house, a really cool area

The famous concrete cantilevers 

The classic stone supports

A view to the guest house

Guest swimming pool

The servant quarters

Super cool drainage system built into the forest, but not designed by FLW

Gotta have my photo-op

There is a lot to say about the building and I'm sorry I don't have interior pictures.  I had to do an assignment while I was there so I couldn't really enjoy the building in the way I would have liked.  My face was in my sketchbook, unfortunately.  The tour guide was fine.  He knew a lot, which is to be expected.  The interior was beautiful, there were cool window fixtures built into the furniture, rocks that went into rooms, water that could be heard from all throughout the house, moveable functional art installations, and more.  Although the air circulation was pretty bad.  And it was raining so I couldn't enjoy the terraces very much.  

Then we drove back to Virginia and we've got a massive assignment for Saturday involving topography and building paths throughout the Grounds at UVa.  It sounds horribly difficult and impossible, but then again so did my other assignments.  Hopefully it won't be too painful to do some landscape architecture.  

I could talk for a while about the buildings, but I'm exhausted and am gonna go to bed while I can.  If you've got questions, let me know.  Thanks for reading.