Architectural Fallout

Cynical

2011-08-15T20:47:00.008-04:00

I said, "Someday I'm going to make my way into the West. I'm going to go to America and ride the 'South 40' with my .45 on my hip and watch the sunset." . . . When I came here, I was so disappointed. [He laughs.] But I stayed.

- architect Charles Choi, 2004

This card and many others like it was part of an exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, which I saw during a 2007 visit with my brother Bill. I cleaned out my wallet the other day, finding it had faithfully stayed exactly where I put it four years prior. [Art-stuffing: it's a great way to fatten up your wallet on a budget.] The exhibit contained many small cards with various mood on the fronts and quotations on the backs. I couldn't resist this one for the quotation on the back and its architect author.

And while I don't think the sentiment on the back expresses cynicism as it claims, it's more about disappointed expectations and embitterment, tempered with eventual self-effacing humor. Which are probably much, much more valid emotions for architects, now more than ever.

PROCRASTINATION

2010-02-23T16:22:00.010-05:00

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

This really sums it all up. The narration is marvelous, providing a very real qualification of the experience of procrastination. Johnny Kelly: you sir are brilliant (and apparently cured, having produced this.) More of Mr. Kelly's work can be found here.

Whether or not this is the necessary kick in the pants to get going already remains to be seen. The last exam (Structural Systems) has been put off for months and months. I'm getting married in the fall and there's planning involved with that, but it's not a productivity-hobbling time consumer. But it is a subtle professional motivator: I'd feel a whole lot better if my future wife was marrying an architect, instead of some jerk intern "yes, I get paid " architect, which in my experience, remains a title no one can understand without the obligatory and horrible explanation!

"Smellya Later, 2009"

2009-12-31T14:46:00.006-05:00

[via someecards, of course.]

Happy New Year! I've got high hopes for 2010, and so should you. Hell, maybe I'll even blog a little bit. Now go celebrate!

-Mike

Draft Catalog #2: "Inman Square: A Visual Summary"

2009-08-30T08:00:00.006-04:00

Originally drafted 12/21/2008:

[via catbirdseat.org]

When you play Hipster Bingo in my neighborhood, everybody wins.

Ted Kennedy

2009-08-28T08:00:00.004-04:00

[at a 1978 Healthcare Policy Workshop, via boston.com]

I'm really going to miss Ted Kennedy. I miss him already. He was my senator for these first 27 years of my life. He was always there, and as I went from a kid watching him debate inferior Senate challengers in election years to a politically-conscious adult respecting and identifying with his dyed-in-the-wool proud liberal ideals, I developed a deep admiration for his commitment to public service and faith in the American experiment. I believe Massachussians like myself were truly spoiled by such effective representation.

As great an influence he wielded nationally, he certainly left his mark here in his home state. As he is laid to rest this weekend, his body returns to Boston, the political birthplace and cultural homeland., before being laid to rest beside his brothers at Arlington National Cemetery beside. Below is a map showing the path his procession took today through Government Center, Southie, and finally to the JFK Library in Dorchester, representing the indelible mark he left on Boston, Massachusetts, and the United States as a whole. Thank you Senator, and rest in peace.

Boston.com has a wealth of information about his life and death here, and a l ist of dignitaries attending his funeral Saturday.

Draft Catalog #1: Birds v. Buildings

2009-08-27T21:50:00.001-04:00

[via treehugger.com]

Originally drafted 12/18/2008:
At Boston.com I there was an article by Bina Venkataraman about the effect of buildings [glassy sustainable skyscrapers, specifically] on birds, both migratory and otherwise. Lately it seems, however, that bird strikes involving aircraft, [see US Airways Flight 1549 back in January.] are much more in the public consciousness than bird strikes into buildings. When it comes to building strikes, the figures are staggering: over one billion birds are killed each year by accidentally flying into buildings, with migratory and often endangered bird species bearing a disproportionately high segment of the birds that fall victim to building strikes.

I could paraphrase the rest of the article, but it might make more sense to just rattle off some basics from the article about this "disagreement" between the avian population and modern architecture.

Annually, between 100 million (100,000,000) one billion birds (1,000,000,000) are killed by striking buildings. This figure is greater than the death toll from cats, cell phone towers and windmills combined.
The above figure represents approximately 5% of the total world bird population.
Bird strikes are the second leading cause of avian deaths -- the first is destruction of habitat.
When a bird strikes a building, there is a 10% survival rate. [I have to assume the survival rate for the building is nearly 100%.
Some species of migratory birds navigate by way of the stars: city lights can prove to disorient and cause bird strikes during their evening flight. Last year some buildings in Boston, including the John Hancock Tower (Boston's tallest skyscraper) joined a campaign to dim their evening lighting to reduce the negative effects. [Since Boston does not yet keep track of bird strike data as well as other cities such as Chicago and New York, it is unclear how effective these efforts have been.]
Green roofs, an effective and popular sustainable building element, are especially deleterious: they provide inviting habitats for birds that often collide into walls flying to or from them.
Cities such as Toronto and Chicago have adopted bird-friendly design strategies such as fritted glass, patterned glass or other visual barriers to prevent collisions.
The USGBC is being lobbied to include bird strike prevention methods to be incorporated into the LEED program.

It stands to reason that as we build more buildings, and more transparent buildings, that this problem will only worsen as time progresses. What we do from here is something of a mystery, but it should be obvious that however sustainable a building may be from an energy conservation standpoint, there is always room for improvement and further consideration of the greater ecosystem.

Two good articles on this topic are here:

"Fatal Reflections" by Bina Venkataraman for Boston.com
"Glass-walled buildings can mean death for birds, killing 1 to 5 percent of them a year." by Karen Knee for physorg.com

Draft Catalog

2009-08-25T21:52:00.011-04:00

Though it seems a little foreign to me now, the platform this blog runs on, Blogger, offers a pretty easy system for bloggers to write and save quick drafts, either to later materialize into posts or to wither away in the queue. My case is very much the latter: since I hadn't posted anything since March, a lot of various things worth exploring and later writing about got posted to the draft bin. Maybe resurrecting or at least mentioning these posts will make the time elapsed between substantial posts a valuable tool of retrospective, rather than a complete waste of time. Here's a list, and hopefully I'll revisit some of them in greater depth.

Date ______Title
12/18/2008: Birds v. Buildings
12/21/2008: Inman Square: A Visual Summary
01/15/2009: The Tennessee Coal Ash Spill
01/21/2009: Solar Panels Over the Pike
01/27/2009: "It's Not All Bad, Except When It Is."
01/28/2009: Robert Campbell to Obama
02/25/2009: Peter Schubert: A Good Stimulus For Design
02/25/2009: Saving the Suburbs
02/25/2009: On the Upside, Now I Know What a Bangle-Butt Is.
03/06/2009: State Will Require Regulation of Insulation Contractors
03/06/2009: IOTA: Inland Office for Tomorrow's Architecture
03/10/2009: Studio Culture Wars
03/25/2009: Scott Van Voorhis: Really?
08/29/2009: Draft Catalog

Oh, Right!

2009-08-23T21:30:00.010-04:00

[something excellent being assembled in May outside the GSD, now a mile from my home.]

It suddenly occured to me that I have [or, had?] a blog. Fear not, it has not disappeared completely, just gone way, way dormant. Banging out four more exams [only one test--Structural Systems--remains.] and having a pretty busy summer peppered with weddings, barbecues, and our two new kittens has rendered my free time/mental output almost nil, so consider this a placeholder for posts to come.

While many noteworthy things have gone on in the world of architecture since my last post in March, the only thing that comes to mind that I would have written about would be the ReBurbia competition held by Dwell and Inhabitat, which sought entries for revisioning the suburbs and their many non-sustainable qualities. The top entries selected by the jury were not my favorites, but all the entries in the Top 20 finalists were pretty great, and are definitely worth a look.

So here's to a more productive fall, and if anyone still reads this bad boy, I hope you all had a great summer.

You Know It's Bad When AR Becomes a Pamphlet

2009-03-05T22:27:00.006-05:00

Yeah, so I've been busy with my face jammed into my study material lately, [as my friends and family would surely attest, I've had absolutely nothing else to say for myself for the past 9 months or so.] but I guess I needed to post something up here. Thankfully, the new issue of Architectural Record, entitled "Surviving The Recession: The Strategy Issue" arrived in the mail today. The name explains it all, and while I'm dedicated to not reading anything not ARE-related, I had an observation that didn't require reading any of the articles or features.

This month's edition of AR is damn near two-dimensional. It's only 148 pages. If I had to guess, I would say the average issue is pushing 300 pages. Mostly ads of course, [and to be fair, most industry periodicals are] but it's an especially heavy, bloated piece of print. So the dearth of advertising dollars coming in would disproportionately affect the girth of the mag. So maybe it's perfectly expected that the issue detailing the sorry state of things is physically reflected in the printed object -- It would stand to reason that the magazine is suffering as much as the industry it covers.

That's all I've got so far. But if you see a copy of Architectural Record, make sure to pick it up, feel the heft that's conspicuously absent. And enjoy. As it was well-put over at a great blog, "Why Architects Drink", it's not exactly a timely collection of advice.

Let's Build a Barn

2009-02-20T15:23:00.010-05:00

Found an interesting passage in the Boston Society of Architects' 2008 'Homeowners Project Handbook' concerning the rights of Intern Architects, small structures...and barns.

"In Massachusetts (as in most states), these architecture-school graduates who are not yet licensed and architects from other nations not yet licensed in Massachusetts are permitted by law to design structures that are not larger than 35,000 cubic feet—and that includes almost all single-family and two-family residences as well as farm structures not designed for human habitation (barns, silos, etc.)." [page 7]

And here I was thinking that I couldn't design so much as a doghouse without a stamp...

V-Day Time Machine: Siena

2009-02-14T17:03:00.009-05:00

Susan and I have been together for over 9 years. That isn't to say that the romance is gone, but occasions like Valentine's Day have taken on a different function, as I wrote about last year. For example, as I write this now, Susan is typing away on her own blog and we are sitting comfortably in near silence, yes, on Valentine's Day. To the outside observer, it could seem either strange or totally hilarious.

Getting to the point, it's been 5 years since I was abroad in Rome, and have been thinking back to where I was at this time in 2004. This particular weekend, for example, my fellow Italian Templars Andy, Andrew, Jess, Jay and I traveled to Siena on one of the several weekend trips to the cities and hill-towns of Lazio and Tuscany.

It was an amazing 2 days, but it stands out as the weekend where we started taking an extreme quantity of 'people-pictures', but it was also the scene of a rather epic argument/conversation about the nature of Valentine's Day, and whether or not it was worth a damn. It was really entertaining. The verdict, if I remember correctly, lay somewhere between indirect condemnation of artificial means of romantic expression, and an abiding tolerance of some of the more worthwhile aspects. Looking back, it was rather inconclusive, but as I mentioned before, good for a laugh. Here are a few artifacts from that weekend of overanalysis and overexposure. Happy Valentine's Day, whatever that means to you.

Oh, and I managed to find some photographic documentation of that great debate, at the Siena train platform, headed back to Rome:

Architecture 5¢: Opening a Dialogue

2009-02-01T10:16:00.003-05:00

[the booth in action, image by Mohini Patel Glanz of http://mangopowergirl.com]

Seattle-based Architecture 5¢ is a strange beast. Part profession-public interface machine, part marketing device, it consists of a booth, a can (to deposit the eponymous nickel) and a man. Anyone can approach the booth, make their deposit, and hash out their design quandaries with intern architect John Arthur Morefield, principal of J. Arthur Design.

While I'm sure many architects would scoff at his fee schedule, I think it's genius. His project breaks down the financial and professional barriers that I can assume keep many people from enlisting to services of design professionals. It gets people actively engaged in the improvement of their built surroundings, [namely their homes] and it makes a case for the benefit of good, intentional design. A better-educated public which is more interested in design will benefit all.

It reminded me of the quote by Frank Gehry, describing a similar situation as the ideal interface between the public and his ideas, and to see what is pretty much an execution of that sentiment is great. [Of course, Gehry was talking about charging $25 at a mall kiosk, so we're talking about a real bargain here.]

It's hugely significant for architecture and architects in general: a profession which, in a state of constant misunderstanding with the public, is becoming less and less relevant to the very people it needs to survive and maintain an important, necessary role in society, especially small practices, which comprise the bulk of the profession.

I only wish I was anywhere near Seattle so I could see his operation in action. His website features an online version of his In the meantime, check out Architecture 5¢ if you ever find yourself in the shadow of the Space Needle.

[image via architecture 5¢]

Yep, Potholes.

2009-01-30T20:23:00.012-05:00

Having recently moved to the city, I have a new found hatred for potholes. About a month into living in Somerville, I busted into a pothole crossing the bridge on Western Ave., and had the unique pleasure of changing a flat in the veritable no-man's-land that is the Mass Pike on a rainy December night. It could be for this reason that I think the map at Boston.com above is so great.

It's a user-editable map on the Google Maps platform, where people can mark the location of potholes, as well as a description of the pothole and other helpful advice on how to avoid it, if possible.

I don't know whether it's the fact that it uses the power of Google Maps to potentially put the screws to the Public Works Departments,or if it just feels good to let the C.H.U.D.s know we're onto their massive asphalt pilfering scheme [that's how potholes are formed, right? I was late to class that day.] It's an interesting method of visualizing the Boston metro area, by way of road hazards. It reminds me of the S trange Maps blog, which is just what it sounds like, and definitely worth checking out.

At any rate, it's good to know that people can let each other learn from their experiences and provide a warning to others headed out on the roads. Especially with potholes out there large enough to warrant their own news item.

Habitat for Humanity: HabitatLearns

2009-01-28T20:45:00.002-05:00

The mention of Habitat for Humanity brings to mind images of volunteers on a construction site, in jeans and hard hats, carrying insulation and swinging hammers, sometimes awkwardly. The extent of what I know about the organization has led me to this idea of low-tech and small-scale. Almost akin to an Amish barn-raising [plus Jimmy Carter]: a small army of volunteers from within a community or region to provide shelter for a family through the non-specialized labors of many. I don't typically think of a unified knowledge base, or system of standards setup for accomplishing construction-by-volunteer.

Enter HabitatLearns. In the form of free, public online courses, this web portal supplies various information useful for the program, ranging from construction fundamentals to organizing a build. It makes accessible a modest amount of knowledge -- it's almost a much more humble, and less exotic cousin to the Open Architecture Network.

Volunteer-based construction teams will always need project managers with experience and skill to direct them, but think of the possibilities of a large-scale volunteer corps with all the on-line training they can handle? Essential knowledge that was once only available at an orientation-type program [presumably in-person] could be infinitely more accessible. A volunteer workforce with these online courses under their tool belts could drastically improve the effectiveness of volunteers, and give way to faster, smoother and safer project completions.

I like to think that what could really be transformative about making this information more accessible is that one day, roving bands of guerrilla construction workers might rove the streets of their communities making repairs, weatherizing houses, and building additions, [maybe whether property owners ask for it or not.] There could be productive minutemen that assemble and execute projects with the speed of pragmatic flash mobs, bypassing permits, building codes, and yes, architects. It could reshape cities and suburbs alike by way of incremental, constant and localized acts of volunteer construction.

Granted, these are far-fetched hypotheticals, but one never knows where these things could lead. With President Obama's [it feels great to finally be able to type that, by the way.] call for a return to public service and volunteerism, who knows what changes could take place. If the everyday citizen becomes re-equipped with the modern equivalent of the basic skills -- mechanical and otherwise -- that were commonplace 200, or even 50 years ago, we might feel less compelled to rely on the hired help of professionals, and more inclined towards lending a hand ourselves.

All this being said, back in the real world, through my limited personal experience with Habitat, [which involved signing up for a build group through Temple Architecture, which then couldn't get on a build,] I am convinced that the one resource which Habitat for Humanity and all charitable organizations ever really need is, predictably, cash.

Libeskind on the Chrysler Building

2009-01-26T20:00:00.005-05:00

There's something to be said for high-profile architects speaking in admiration of the work of others. It seems much more valid than pontification on one's own work, without ulterior motive, lending their hard-won artistic clout to appreciate what else is out there. Maybe egomania is a more rare condition than we think. In the case of the brief interview above, in which Daniel Libeskind discusses the Chrysler Building, for a couple minutes he delves into what he makes the edifice so personally significant, focusing on the building's spire. He begins by celebrating the apparent whimsical, impractical skewer, but gradually reveals how this element is truly useful, as he closes with a rather poignant sentiment:

"[The Chrysler Building] incorporates our dreams, and what better thing to do to make a building sustainable, than to make it dependent on our dreams. It is one thing to make a green building, which is dependent on water and sky, but go the one step beyond: make it sustainable on our memories, a building that will therefore never vanish from New York's spirit."

Libeskind also talks about the George Washington Bridge. These interviews [and others with Bruce Fowle and Deborah Berke, Robert Ivy, etc.] are part of Architectural Record's : "My New York" Project on their RECORD TV website. As with the aforementioned interview, they feature well-known figures in the architecture world speaking in contemplation of Gotham's landmarks. They are good viewing, in that they are brief and they often go deeper than the buildings being discussed; the urban presence of these buildings and landmarks: how they shape the city through time and memory, the city often returning the favor ten-fold.

Jeanne Williamson: Artist, Author, Curator.

2009-01-08T21:15:00.003-05:00

[12 x 12 x 12 Series January 2009, Jeanne Williamson. (See other quilts from the monthly 12 x 12 x 12 Series here.) Top two images are front and back progress photos, respectively, with the final product below. Images courtesy of the artist.]

Jeanne Williamson is an accomplished artist and author based outside of Boston. Her art typically takes the form of quilts: detailed fabric works with complex layers which are both stitched and printed and/or stamped, with results that are abstract, idiosyncratic, tactile, and even spatial. Architectural, even. [Disclaimer: I may be slightly biased, since I was lucky enough to have Jeanne as a neighbor for the better part of three decades while I lived at home.] Nevertheless, her work is fantastic, and I must emphasize: pleasantly unique.

[Jeanne Williamson: Orange Construction Fence Series #54, from the Construction Fence Series. (Featured in 'Mixed Media Fiber Art'.) Image courtesy of the artist.]

Jeanne is currently involved in an exhibit at the Danforth Museum in Framingham, MA entitled, "Mixed Media Fiber Art." She also has a piece in the exhibit, which opened yesterday and runs until March 1st. Mrs. Williamson will be speaking as Guest Curator at 4 PM on Saturday, February 7, with a reception following from 5PM - 7 PM. I highly recommend checking it out.

Further, additional examples of Jeanne's work in varied media can be found at her blog here and website here.

NCARB's e-EVR: "Yes, it is Very Good."

2009-01-07T23:29:00.016-05:00

Last week, after fighting off the typically skepticism that accompanies anything I hear from NCARB, I filed about 5 months of IDP work experience via their new electronic Experience Reporting system. NCARB calls it the "e-EVR", and even though I'm not sure where they got the 'V', but it sure makes the acronym a lot more in-your-face, which I love. Maybe if I listened to my own advice and actually watched the webcast which I cynically wrote about last month I would have known that already, but I'm only human.
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As it often happens, I write before I think. I incorrectly assumed that since I started my NCARB council record before the end of last year, that I would not be able to take advantage of the online system, but I was very wrong. It was incredibly easy. Essentially, you input the accrued IDP experience units into the online form, exactly as you would use the paper Form 123. Then, NCARB sends an e-mail notification to your supervisor, who electronically confirms the hours your input, and off it goes to NCARB for the third degree.

[partial e-EVR screenshot, just minutes after submitting the online form to NCARB.]

The entire intern-end of the process appears to have become much more streamlined, though I can't say whether or not NCARB treats the forms any differently than paper ones when it comes to processing speed. It is encouraging to see your recently-submitted training units appear immediately on your electronic file, instead of sending them off in the mail and wondering whatever happened to them. Somehow, the electronic, intangible IDP units have become much more real than the ones you could 'feel' on paper...

...Not that you could ever really feel them in the first place, unless it was the feeling of getting old and wonder when and why you will be an architect someday.

[That being said, when the training units are fwooshing by your head at electronic speed, you won't have time to worry about the point of it all, so there's another great reason to try it out!]

'Goodbye' 2008, 'Hello' Whatever It Is That Comes After 2008

2008-12-31T15:12:00.003-05:00

God Bless This [Economic] Mess

2008-12-30T09:56:00.010-05:00

[a Boston Globe photo from 1962. from the Sep./Oct. 07 edition of ArchitectureBoston, an issue dedicated entirely to reimagining City Hall.]

Well, not really -- if there's a level of expertise below that of layperson, it is from this vantage point that I can speak of current or future state of the global economy. From down here, it appears to be an unmitigated disaster which has not yet hit bottom, bringing hurt to every socioeconomic bracket out there. That being said, if there's one good thing about the shriveled economy and dearth of new construction [something I am personally experiencing], it appears to have saved Boston City Hall, at least temporarily.
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Mayor Thomas Menino has shelved the initial $2M planning budget for what since 2006 has been an obsession to move City Hall to the Fan Pier area beside the new ICA. The article details some other priorities the Mayor has shifted his focus to, such as $15M in pedestrian accessibility upgrades, as well other more urgent spending areas...presumably snow removal, if the recent snowstorm was any indication.

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Most of the "man on the street" commentary about the building is negative in this article. It brings to mind the question, can a building [especially a public building] be considered good architecture if it is almost universally hated? Even though it was recently crowned "World's Ugliest Building", I don't feel that it is universally hated -- I feel like it evokes incredibly strong, polarized responses.
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They inspire, be it positively or negatively. It seems that some of the best projects are the most hotly debated, while more milquetoast architectural efforts become accepted gradually by a public that want buildings to be pretty, if not ignorable.
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It's true that it needs something -- but that something will be in the form of a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. This graphic essay from ArchitectureBoston has some very intriguing conceptual proposals for re-envisioning City Hall. Some of these designs slice away, some add on, but most importantly, all substantially maintain the existing building and use it as a foundation for new ideas about civic space that make more sense to this century.
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Or, to put it more clearly, from the Boston Preservation Allianc e:

“A sustainable revitalization of the existing City Hall could be as innovative today as the original construction was in 1968,” said Mark Pasnik, a designer and director of the gallery pinkcomma, which hosted an exhibition last year on rethinking City Hall. “Boston is missing an incredible opportunity to implement a creative and responsible plan that will revitalize the existing structure, while keeping our government offices in the heart of downtown Boston.”

Madoff = Gehry?

2008-12-16T21:06:00.010-05:00

Bernard Madoff is someone I had never heard of until this week. He's the infamous [now notorious, I'm sure] fund manager I probably would never had heard of him if he hadn't just been caught running the largest Ponzi Scheme [go ahead and look it up, I did. It seems to be a pyramid scheme shaped like a wagon wheel...or something.] in history, defrauding many prominent investors of a sum approaching $50 billion. It has been revealed that his scheming swindled charities run on behalf of the likes of Steven Spielberg and New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenburg.

However, when I read an article or two about this guy, it wasn't these unfortunate famous people I was thinking of. The only person I could think of was Frank Gehry. [Whose birth name was actually "Ephraim Owen Goldberg". Thanks, Wikipedia!] I know that the elderly begin to take on similar physical traits as time marches ahead, but I almost can't tell them apart. I set up a few side-by-side images, so that you could enjoy the phenomenon as well.

I hope you enjoyed that. If you couldn't tell, Gehry is on the left. [The hard hat should give it away.] No need to thank me. But if you can learn anything from this, give your money to Frank Gehry, not Bernard Madoff. If you can tell the two apart, that is. One might be in a brightly-colored jumpsuit soon, so that might help.

An Architect in the Cabinet*

2008-12-14T19:31:00.007-05:00

I just watched a segment of President-Elect Obama's weekly address [above], concerning views on the economy relative to the housing crisis, as well as his appointee for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Shaun Donovan. Not only was he the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing under the Clinton Administration and NYC's Housing Commissioner, he is a graduate of Harvard's GSD.

That's right -- an architect as the new HUD Secretary, pending Senate approval. He has spent his career focused on increasing access to affordable housing in various contexts, and at first glance seems to be an ideal candidate for the job. Between this appointment and Obama's emphasis on the importance of building a green economy via infrastructure and green building, he's off to a good start.

*I believe he's a registered architect, though I'm not totally sure, as his wikipedia page [just about the furthest extent I am willing to research] doesn't mention any activities in the private sector. That being said, he's close enough to being an architect for my needs. There's another bio from the NYC HPD website that says he worked as an architect in New York and Italy, so that sounds good enough.

Sapporo Space Barley

2008-12-12T13:29:00.017-05:00

[photo via cosmosmagazine.com...those might be the strangest-looking astronaut suits I've ever seen, by the way.]

Yep, that's right; Sapporo Space Barley. And no, it's not the name of my failed prog-rock band. Apologies if it got your hopes up. I've had a Sapporo or two in my day: it's appealing in the giant silver can, and sometimes I'll buy one to start things off before I plow through about a dozen Ipswich Ales (which are far better). It's like Japanese Budweiser, sort of in the way that Peroni is Italian Budweiser -- a reliable lager that is good enough to drink yourself into a stupor with. I have more affection for Peroni, though, because it was a close companion during my Rome semester, and I got to know it well, as Bud-ish as it may be. Strange though, you buy a case of that in an Italian supermarket and the cashier will be flummoxed. Trust me, that's a travel tip you can take to the bank.

Back to the point, my good man [and fellow Peroni connoisseur] Andrew kindly pointed me in the direction of Monday's post at BLDGBLOG, which deals with Sapporo's latest innovation: beer brewed with barley that was aboard the Russian space station for 5 months. The beer does not taste any different or have any unearthly qualities as a result of this, so I'm wondering why they did it. And they're not selling it, though they are offering a taste to 30 couples via lottery. I don't know what the appeal is, other than the novelty.

But apparently there is a larger purpose at work here, as many countries are introducing seedlings into the upper levels of the atmosphere, [or even in full-on orbit in the case of the space beer,] in hopes that they will become more disease resistant. "Space-breeding", as it's referred to, has been going on since the '60s, though what little I've read of it fails to address whether or not it works. All that I know amounts to this: that "Space-breeding" is not as sexy as it sounds. And at some point it begs the question, "Are we just shooting stuff into space on a giant rocket for the hell of it?"

Forget the rocket, and just put the barley in that space mirror from Superman II. You know the one I mean.

Maybe the space idea came about because of another reason. Maybe the Sapporo higher-ups were sitting around at the end of the week, having a few cans of their product and realized that it was conspicuously rocket-ish. The cans have a slick taper to them that suggests they'd rather be orbiting the earth at high speed, don't they? Maybe it makes perfect sense after all?

In all seriousness, it is fascinating stuff. And whether or not space breeding actually helps anything, it illustrates just how valuable and fragile our natural resources, food and otherwise, are and how they will become even more so in the face of potential worldwide ecological imbalance...the Svalbard Global Seed Vault comes to mind as well. Ok, I'm going back to thinking about beer now.

NCARB Webinars

2008-12-11T13:30:00.004-05:00

It isn't often that NCARB gives stuff out for free. Don't believe me? Check our their extensive fee schedule for their many services--it's extensive. That being said, NCARB will be offering three free webinars on their new mandatory 6-month reporting rule, t he new electronic reporting system (e-EVR) and some tips for intern Supervisors. They will be held in the afternoon next week on Wednesday and Thursday. I'm not so sure they're pertinent for most intern architects, however. Since from what I've heard, the mandatory 6-month training unit reports will only apply to people opening council records next year...I think. And I think the electronic reporting system, while probably convenient, will only apply to those who are held to the six-month rule. All I know thus far is that it begins at the end of this year. And finally, the Supervisor webinar doesn't even come close to applying to me...so these might be useless.

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If you're still interested, you can register for the three webinars at the respective links above. And if they fill up, they will be downloadable (still for free) some point afterwards. I'll probably download them eventually, since when NCARB gives something away, it's a rare and beautiful thing, even if it's something you don't want.

Contract Language No-No's

2008-12-05T13:38:00.004-05:00

I've never prepared a contract for architectural services. I probably won't for a very long time, if ever [Some very good and unlikely things would have to fall into place.] But we had a seminar with our insurance guy last week regarding contract language and the resulting situations of liability. And I got a little bookmark-shaped thing that had all these dangerous words red-flagged, as not to use in a contract, lest you get your ass sued, arbitrated or otherwise beat up on. Basically, stay away from absolutes...and avoid using verbs of any kind, apparently. You'll notice that there is no profanity called out in this list. I'm taking that to mean it's fair game? If so, I can not wait to write some motherfucking contracts!

Anyway, here's the list:

Administer
Advise
All
Any
Approve
Assure
Attest
Best
Certify
Complete
Control
Direct
Ensure
Equal
Every
Final
Full
Guarantee
Inspect
Insure
Maximize
Minimize
None
Optimize
Oversee
Periodic
Safe
Shall
Sufficient
Suitable
Supervise
Total
Warrant
Will

That is all.

Field Operations at Fresh Kills

2008-12-03T21:59:00.006-05:00

[via fieldoperations.org]

The first and only time I (and many others outside of NYC, I suspect) have heard of Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island was when they took the debris from the 9/11 attacks there to be sorted and examined. Before that it was known as being one of the largest landfills imaginable: 2,200 acres with over 150 million tons of garbage, arranged in 20-story mounds, numbering so many that they were given distinct names. But things are changing there. A lengthy but worthwhile article from New York Magazine deals with what is probably the largest landscaping undertaking this side of Dubai: the new masterplan for Fresh Kills by Field Operations, a NYC-based landscape architecture firm.

[Fresh Kills in 1990, via nymag.com]

The end result of this very long term plan, (devised to be flexible in the face of inevitable future budget cuts and red tape) will be a public park three times the size of Central Park, complete with sprawling vistas and rolling hills (of former garbage). the scale of which only exists in the wilderness. This is Staten Island, mind you. And in time, it will become an amazing place. I had more to write about this, but I read the article last week before thanksgiving, and three days eating turkey and drinking booze, philly friends stopping in to see some star architecture at MIT, a friend's bachelor party, and an inexplicable bout with the flu soon after, I find myself at a loss for any additional comment. Be sure to give the article a look, as I am sure this is a project we'll be hearing more about as it develops.

[Fresh Kills Future: images by Field Operations via nymag.com]

and elsewhere:

_@ Metropolis, w/ additional renderings as well as discussion of Field Operations' renovation of NYC's High Line
_On archinect
_And a similar industrial site turned public park: Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord
http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=83102_0_24_0_C

Philly/Pass 3.0

2008-11-24T22:21:00.019-05:00

Returning to Philly this past weekend was like going home, and a great time as usual. The pass letter for Building Technology in the mail tonight was an added bonus, since I had real doubts about it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Greenbuild 2008

2008-11-19T22:51:00.009-05:00

The workshops at BuildBoston were good and informative, but also dry enough to make me want to head straight home afterwards. As a result, I didn't see Greenbuild. There were plenty of BuildBoston attendees sporting the Greenbuild complimentary shoulder-tote-things, (which are a considerable upgrade from the recycled shopping bag-type things they have at BuildBoston and Residential Design & Construction). And though I didn't go in, I drove right past the immense cantilevered entrance to the BCEC, where it Greenbuild was being held while I was looking for parking, which I found about a half hour later, in a garage deep beneath Legal Test Kitchen.

But getting to the point, if you're like me and won't get to Greenbuild, (which goes until Friday) they are webcasting some of their keynote speakers -- so they're probably worth a look. The link is here. Some of the higher-profile people already spoke today; I'm sorry that I missed Van Jones, whose organization, Green For All, is a promising and especially pertinent one, making the crucial link between sustainability and the economy via job creation to create green homes and infrastructure. Another good one to see would have been Stefan Behnisch, (son of Gunther Behnisch) principal of Behnisch Architekten. (oh yes, they're German.) The others will still be good, I am sure. So check them out--You won't get a flashy tote bag, but you'll probably get some knowledge. Try not looking hip with that slung over your shoulder.

Ancient Rome in Google Earth

2008-11-17T22:12:00.018-05:00

Courtesy of Google and the Rome Reborn Project, Google Earth's new 3D Ancient Rome layer is up and running. It's dense, vast, and worth a look. I had the great privilege of living in the Rome of 2004 A.D., but the Rome of 320 A.D. is pretty great. I didn't see any barbarians lurking around, so I suppose it's a good sign.

To find the Ancient Rome layer, open Google Earth and go to the "Gallery" menu at the side of the screen.
Click on "Ancient Rome 3D". Once the layer loads, the pertinent icons will appear.
Click on one of the yellow building icons to bring up a menu about the particular building.
Click on the links at the bottom of the menu to load a.) Ancient Terrain, b.) Ancient Landmarks and 3.) Ancient Roman Buildings [in that order.]
Explore. There are over 5,000 buildings modeled along with the terrain of Rome's fabled hills.
I don't know why I felt the need to spell this out in list form--it's pretty simple--but what's done is done.

There's an awful lot of information, and it's a cumbersome model, but it seems more than worth the time it takes to load and maneuver in this thing to discover the wealth of information within.

I took a few minutes to explore and found some things I particularly enjoyed -- click on the images to enlarge them.

1. The Mausoleum of Hadrian, now better known as Castel Sant'Angelo:

In 320 A.D.

In 2004 A.D., the Castle built atop the ruin of the Mausoleum.

2. Basilica of Constantine: I always heard this referred to as the Basilica of Maxentius, but it's actually "The Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius." Not that it matters now.

In 320 A.D.

And some 1,640 years later, the massive concrete and brick shell of the building remains, preserving the great indoor space it has always provided.
3. And of course, the Pantheon.

Same as it ever was.

...And now I miss Rome. Thanks for nothing, Google Earth. Meanwhile, I should have something to post that's chronologically and geographically closer to the present day: BuildBoston 2008 [and I may attend GreenBuild, as well.] begins tomorrow.

Rage That Knows No Bounds

2008-11-15T10:40:00.018-05:00

Maybe it's gone on ever since it was built in 1968, but lately it seems that every 3 months or so, some publication or politician beats up on the Boston City Hall building. As I've written before, Mayor Menino seems hell-bent on demolishing the thing, and relocating the city's civic administration to South Boston, namely the Fan Pier, in an effort to spruce up the stalled-out development going on there.

_
But it wasn't Menino this time; the most recent insult to the building is this: VirtualTourist.com ranked the building #1 on its "World's Top 10 Ugliest Buildings." What's interesting as well, is that this list apparently has a lot of pull, as it got picked up by Reuters and Boston.com. The particular [and brief] criticism levelled at the building this time highlights its "dreary facade and incongruity with the rest of the city's more genteel architecture." It's not all bad news though, apparently it was "hip for it's [sic] time."
_
Is this what cities are meant to be, unbroken seas of incongruous genteel buildings? Sure, the building is the rough in a mound of diamonds, but it provides a confrontation and counterpoint to its stuffy, reserved context, in a way that makes cities dynamic and exciting and worth living in. It is an effective piece of architecture. I would have expected a more thoughtful and insightful argument for the #1 building on such a list -- this is no deep condemnation, it's just another piling on of the same tired critiques. Maybe my real frustration is that such a list has been so well publicized.
_
However, as I made my way down the list to the runners-up and was impressed with some of these obscure picks, which I suppose is a credit to VirtualTourist.com, despite the fact that with the exception of Boston City Hall, all the buildings are in Europe, and mostly hideous. But it seems so geographically restricted: was the dismal Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea too politically controversial to add to the list?
_
Because that thing sucks:

[via eikongraphia.com]

The only other enraging part of the list was #8: The Scottish Parliament Building, by Enric Miralles, a Spanish Architect who died in 2000, whilst in the prime of his career. I was able to visit the building in April of 2004, which was just before its completion in September of that year. It's a fascinating building that responds to its historical, political and geophysical contexts in a way that helps explain to me why architecture is a useful, worthwhile undertaking. It could be that I'm biased because I've been to see it, but it's an amazing building, albeit a little goofy. That being said, all we were able to get into at the time was the exhibit explaining the building, and I missed the impressive space of the debating chambers and such:

[images via wikipedia]

Sadly, I don't even have my own photos of the exterior. My brother Bill and I seemed to have misplaced a sizable chunk of our Edinburgh photos, which included some tripped-out photos from the strange and wonderful Camera Obscura...All the same, here's one of my favorite photos from the building nearby the Parliament building, which I think is the white tensile structure you can see in the last photo above.

[I think Andrew took this one. The building won this battle handily, by the way]

Radiators, Constructocalisthenics

2008-11-11T21:06:00.000-05:00

Living in the new place has been great thus far. There's been some noteworthy exploring, namely Cambridge's Central Square, our new neighborhood of Inman Square, and getting lost on my way to and from work, in a different way each day (thereby negating the benefits of a shorter commute distance -- in fairness, this is not only due to Somerville's dearth of street signs, but also my "I think this is the way...sorta" navigation style).

_
The driving's not all bad: I stumbled upon this while sitting at a red light near Union Square. Yes, it's a radiator store. The photos on the website don't really do it justice, but from car-level, the sea of radiators resembled a dense urban skyline, but one from another era -- that being the future as it was envisioned back in the age of the 1927 film "Metropolis" (the one with the sexy robot.) Looking at them individually, they're definitely architectural...they seem to have the verticality of Gothic Cathedrals and the sculptural quality of Post-Modern skyscrapers, a la Philip Johnson's AT&T (now Sony) Building. I promise to capture a photo that better relates this, don't worry.

_
You might have noticed that I haven't written about architecture much. There's a good reason for that. It begins with "I'm lazy," and ends with "this economy is about as fun as a swinging bag of donkey shit." So consider the lack of post relevance a subtle form of protest against the sad state of the industry. That being said, BuildBoston is next week, and I've got a few workshops lined up, so maybe that'll re-kindle the interest in a field that's become prickly at best.

Meanwhile -- enjoy these exercising construction workers, courtesy of Boston.com! (click on the video to play or pause)

Election Day Predicto-Bots

2008-11-04T13:45:00.009-05:00

Happy Election Day. Don't forget to vote, or you'll enrage the predicto-bots.

A.F.'s Official Endorsement

2008-11-03T13:43:00.009-05:00

Anybody who knows me knows I don't like to rush things. A relevant and current illustration of this is the fact that I just this past weekend moved in with my girlfriend (of 9+ years.) I am employed in a profession where things cannot be rushed. Designing buildings takes time. Getting buildings approved for construction takes time. Building them takes time.

However, while it didn't take very long to make this decision, it did take a while to post it here. (It should be stated I was once Chris Dodd joy-boy.) Election Day is tomorrow. Something like 150 million Americans are registered to vote (75% or so of people between 18 and 70). Over 10 million have voted already in states that allow early and/or absentee ballots. This is gonna be a big a day, one that Americans can be proud of, no matter the outcome.

That being said, the one-man editorial board of Architectural Fallout hereby official endorses Barack Obama for the 44th President of the United States of America.

Boston By Design

2008-10-24T07:20:00.011-04:00

WBUR is a great local NPR affiliate here in the Boston radio market. Not only can you get yourself informed, you can get yourself bored and possibly asleep, too. Joking -- there's a lot of great stuff there. And when Toucher and Rich aren't on the radio, it's what I'm listening to. Susan pointed me towards their "Boston By Design" series a couple weeks ago, and I'm finally listening to it this morning. I've gone through Part 1 so far, and it sounds good. The segments are only 5 or so minutes long, and they load almost instantly, so give them a listen.

Part One:

The disappointed Moshe Safdie and others discuss the Rose Kennedy Greenway and its apparent failures due to its discontinuity, and its unrealized potential successes. It is perfect? Certainly not. Is it a drastic improvement? Absolutely. And is merely "an improvement" that good enough for this fair city? Probably not. Have we seen the last iteration of the project? Not a chance. Do I love self-imposed, rapid-fire rhetorical questions? You betcha. Like many elements of successful urbanism, these things occur in layers through evolution over time, and shaped by many, many hands.

Part One closes with a profound quote by former Big Dig planner Hubert Murray:

"How we did it is going to be soon forgotten one generation on. What it looks like? I take the view of Chairman Mao of what he thought of the French Revolution: he said, "It's too soon to tell."

Shipping Up to Somerville

2008-10-21T20:24:00.009-04:00

There has been some "slacking on my pimping", if you want to put it that way, (and I do) when it comes to writing here lately. I've been pretty distracted by many things: the Red Sox season that is now over and the election that is almost here. Add a little post-exam decompression to that, along with not really knowing yet which one to take next. Throw in the arrival of the seasonal fall offerings by local brewers like Harpoon, Geary's and Sam Adams. Pile on top of that the historic financial shenangians taking place and their effect on architecture firms, including the one where I do stuff that, at first glance, resembles work.

There's a lot going on that has prioritized the blog out of the picture. But perhaps the most important and best thing that has taken up my time and mental energy has been that Susan and I are finally moving into a place together. Oh, and moving out of the house at age 26. Shameful, yes. But moving on -- starting in a week or so we will be in a much more "metro" part of the metro-Boston area: Somerville, MA. And that's "metro" as in "metropolitan", not "metrosexual", for now at least.

For those of you who don't know Somerville, it could be compared to an unused clump of grey matter sandwiched in the brain cavity between MIT and Harvard from the South, and Tufts from the North. [If this is an inappropriate neurological analogy, feel free to correct me.] It is often referred to as "Scumerville" or "Slumerville", though things are better there these days. In an urban area where there is, by law, at least one college campus per city block, I can't think of a single college with a Somerville zip code. That just occured to me...but that's actually good, because I can't stand Boston college kids -- the Philly ones are much more tolerable!

So I'll be kissing suburbia goodbye, and not a minute too soon. It's a good place to grow up, but not to spend your twenties...which are less here than they are gone.

Future CAD

2008-10-10T13:44:00.011-04:00

It must be through some fine coincidence that I came across this via Archinect -- I software program called ILoveSketch, because it has some pretty startling similarites to Mr. Sutherland's 'Sketchpad', as previously posted, as both use a stylus and a touch-responsive screen to develop and manipulate digital drawings, yet what the difference in what they are capable of is staggering.

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

And I will give an update on my Building Technology exam from yesterday, which was an absolute beast. My brain just needs some time to process what happened. Celebrate Columbus Day the right way this weekend -- hug a random Italian-American. Or don't.

Ancient CAD

2008-10-02T13:31:00.008-04:00

Here's a video I found on a thread on Archinect a while back, and if you use any kind of CAD software on a daily basis, it's sure to give you a heavy dose of technological perspective. It should also give you an appreciation for the more advanced software we have today, that despite its advantages, is inevitably rage-inducing on occasion.

This video is from the 80's but its subject is 1963 demonstration of Ivan Sutherland's 'Sketchpad' software..er, machine. I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and it turns out that 'Sketchpad' was also referred to as the "Robot Draftsman". Which means that the two of us have something in common.

So check this out -- and remember that your CAD ain't so bad.

And if you're still not convinced, here's a few more videos of Sutherland demonstrations.

Demo 1/2 and Demo 2/2

Another Round of Horrible Images

2008-09-29T22:40:00.014-04:00

The exam pump [my brain-piece] is being primed once again. I am going to take Building Technology this week or next...so I feel the need, once again, to share the horrible with you, in all its...well, horror. And since this baby is a six-vignette, six-hour beast, there's a whole lot of them. So enjoy.

Mechanical/Electrical Plan:

Building Section:

Stair Design:

Structural Layout:

Roof Plan:

Accessibility/Ramp:

Did you make it all the way to the bottom? If yes, congratulations--now I pity you.

White Light/White Heat/White Roof*

2008-09-25T20:27:00.011-04:00

[via swepdri.com]

When the sun shines on most surfaces, black is hot, white is cool. It sounds simple enough, but it is this simple principle, applied [literally] to roofs, that could make a big difference in the inordinate amount of energy consumption [and therefore pollution as well] attributed to buildings. There was an article in Machinist last week that piqued my curiousity enough to paste a little excerpt from the article below.

Hashem Akbari, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley lab, just released a study showing that the average American 1,000-square-foot white roof could offset 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
According to his data, roofs constitute 20 to 25 percent of urban surfaces, while pavement is about 40 percent. Therefore, if all of those surfaces were switched to a reflective material (or color) in the 100 largest urban areas in America, his calculations show, this would offset 44 metric gigatons of carbon dioxide. That's more than all countries emit in a single year. Further, that's worth about $1.1 trillion at current carbon trading rates.

It's rare in life that something again, literally, superficial can have such a profound impact on something more tangible like energy consumption and pollution. Again, it's something that seems obvious, that roofs and paved surfaces combined cover more than half of city surfaces, the resulting heat island effect is something you can actually feel, but somehow swapping such common, accepted urban materials [black EPDM roofing membrane and hot hot asphalt] for something with lower albedo [Or is it higher? I think it's higher, but I can never remember] doesn't seem as obvious.

Since 2005, California has mandated that every flat-roofed commercial building must have a white roof, and next year all new residential and commercial buildings must employ roof surfacing that reflects solar radiation. Nothing yet on roads or otherwise paved surfaces, but it's definitely a start.

Back to thinking about this idea applied on a small scale, here is a case study of retrofitting a hurricane-damaged house in Florida with a white metal roof. When it comes down to it, it's all about reflecting solar energy, which happens at the surface of a material. That being said, it seems like another solution could use a simple re-surfacing of whatever the roof surface happens to be made of, be it the metal roof in this example, or the ubiquitous asphalt shingle roofing that adorns any and nearly every suburban house.

Many sustainable products and methods require much more of an investment, and this appears to be a quick, relatively cheap fix for the all that it could potentially deliver. So grab some white paint or sheet metal, or even call the number at Conshohocken PA's very own coolroofcontractor.com and get going. Just don't call me when you need money for eye surgery in a few years, after the glare coming off of every white surface everywhere burns out your retinas. Ok? Deal.

*Apologies to Lou Reed and Co. for my awful Velvet Underground reference. did anyone catch it, by the way? Pretty slick, huh...No one? Nobody at all? Ahh, shit. Well, would you accept "White Room (and the roof which is similar by which I mean to say is white as well)", "Up On the Roof (which I painted white)", or "Paint it Black (or, on second thought, we're all out of black, how about using a few coats of this leftover white primer)"? Ah, that's more like it.

__________________________________________________________

And now, to reward your patience and diligence in making it all the way to the bottom of this post...some fantastic before-and-after graphs, showing the temperature difference that a white roof can make.

PASS 2.0

2008-09-15T19:41:00.005-04:00

The mail was kind to me today; I passed Site Planning.

Only 7 to go.

CERN Update, or, "You're Reading This, So the World Hasn't Ended."

2008-09-10T07:34:00.010-04:00

[giant blue magnet? check, via The Independent]

Atoms are being smashed as we speak, and since the last post was a little silly, here's an article to The Independent's coverage of the CERN power-up. Another one here. There's a video from Reuters below with more news and less nerd-rap than the previous one. Enjoy.

World's Greatest Atom Smasher Goes Online Today

2008-09-10T06:30:00.000-04:00

[And you thought there were only filthy Cro-Magnon bones under there! (via newscientist.com]

There are many things in life I enjoy without having a firm understanding of them at all. Now that I just wrote that, I can't think of any. But I was going to say that physics is one of them. Anyone who went to college with me can vouch for the lack of a "firm understanding" about physics. Even so, I saw this big news, and it is big. Really big. The European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN [the same outfit featured prominently in Angels and Demons, if you remember] is going to put their Large Hadron Collider, king of all atom-smashers, online tomorrow. They are going to use something really huge to find something really small; the Higgs Boson, a.k.a. "The God Particle."

The project is a 17-mile long particle accelerator complex located in a loop beneath France and Switzerland. The fact that it spans 2 countries makes it seem all the more grand. CERN are slated to do the first 'shoot', 'blast', 'zam', 'plunk' or whatever they do with the beams, tomorrow. Sorry, I got carried away with the Adam West-era Batman style onomatopoeia. So tomorrow is the big day, which, in Europe, happens faster than it does here.

In celebration of the big day, here's a video explaining the project below -- but you deserve a warning: the instructional, musical video below is no School House Rock. And it may even be more lame and less educational, which really isn't the direction you want to go, but I'm pretty sure that CERN didn't make this themselves. Otherwise the atom smasher isn't going to smash a damn thing.

Somewhere in The City This Blood is Real.

2008-09-07T21:37:00.013-04:00

[some graffiti from a New Orleans sidewalk, featured in last week's Architecture School which was interesting enough, but it mostly reminded me of some prominent stencil graffiti that I remembered from several places around Rome... "the dirty ghost"...outside of the obvious allusion to The North Face, I have no idea what it was all about. I don't remember it fazing me at the time, since there were art students doing weird shit all over the place in the one building that is Temple University's Rome campus.]

Update: 01/30/2009: I found the source of the "Somewhere in the City..." graffiti, here's a link to the flickr page. It's something of a relief to know the source, though tragic circumstances brought it into being.

What to Make of Mattresses

2008-09-03T19:57:00.007-04:00

Regrettably, I've never taken a crack at a design competition. At the very least, they can be extremely creative design exercises, at the most they can be a large-scale tool for gathering maximum design innovation from a productive public. From Architecture for Humanity's Open Architecture Network and Rubicon National Social Innovations comes a quirky but potentially fascinating design competition.

"Discarded Dreams" seeks to find a commercially viable re-use for the millions of mattresses that are discarded every year and relegated to landfills or elsewhere. The end product is rather open ended, while the means are more focused: recycled materials and a sustainable process. Also, there is an emphasis on designing a commercially reproducible product, which is pretty intelligent: if the end product is as much a mechanism for recycling waste as it is a product in its own right, then the product would result in a revenue stream to provide an enduring way to acquire and process waste mattresses and create new product to be sold. Fantastic. Especially now that I think back to the kind of hideous street furniture my roommates would pull off the curbs of North Philadelphia during college -- no matter how gross a couch might be, mattresses were always considered beyond untouchable, so if there was a way to completely repurpose these, everyone benefits.

Some information about the competition is below, from the Open Architecture Network...give it a look: $25 entry fee, first prize is only $1,000 but it could just be that foot in the door to that industrial design career you've always wanted.

What can you do with a million mattresses?
Mattresses are our friends. For years, mattresses selflessly serve our sleeping pleasure. We should all be grateful for our mattresses; after all, most of us were conceived on one.
Why, then, are our mattresses being abandoned in dumps and left to the seagulls? Every year in the U.S. 40 million mattresses get thrown in the trash. Don’t our mattresses deserve another chance?

_
The problem is, the nature and construction of mattresses has made them difficult to dispose of. They often end up in landfills because they cannot be broken down and their component parts are hard to utilize. Until now:

_
Challenge
Architecture for Humanity and Rubicon National Social Innovations invite entrants to create innovative ways of converting used mattresses into useful products. The competition aims to encourage entrants to form groups capable of creating a consumer product, instructions detailing how to make the product, and a plan for production on a larger scale. Entrants must create designs that take into account the volume of mattress waste generated each year. Groups are encouraged to utilize local resources, including existing manufacturing facilities and other waste products.

_
Design Constraints
Design Teams should consider the following:
80% of final product must come from the mattress itself. Preference will be given to entries whose product utilizes all mattress parts and leaves minimum unused materials.
The designs will be judged on over-all product design, low-cost deconstruction and manufacturing, and innovative re-use of materials to create an amazing, affordable consumer product.

_
Additional materials may be included, but must be recycled and/or waste products. No “virgin” materials.

_
Processing and production needs to be replicable at a large scale (approximately 10,000 mattresses per month per facility).

_
Entries must include a detailed description of de-construction and production process either by diagrams or text. Entrants are encouraged to use readily available tools and industrial machines.

_
Size of mattress may vary and can be decided by the entrant. See 'Resources' for technical information.

_
Teams are limited to up to 5 individuals.

_
Priority will also be given to designs with cost-effective manufacturing processes.

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The Super Prize goes out to the team that has the most fun!

Making Other Schools Look Like Jerks.

2008-09-02T20:14:00.007-04:00

[photos via Inhabitat]

Susan sent me a link last week from Inhabitat, showcasing Penn State's new building for their Stuckeman School of Architecture, certified LEED Gold. The building was designed by Overland Partners. A photo gallery can be found here and here. It looks like a pretty cool building, and while I doubt I'll ever travel to Penn State to see it myself, it seems like a pretty great building to learn to make some academic architecture. Enough to make Temple's College of Architecture and Engineering Building, [where I spent what must have been thousands of hours between 2000 and 2005,] look like a complete jerk.

_
That being said, a new Tyler School of Art building [by Carlos Jiminez Studio] is under construction [it may actually be done at this point, and I haven't seen it yet, but some construction photos can be found here.]

I still have no idea whether or not the Architecture Program will be incorporated into the new building, despite the fact that Architecture was absorbed into Tyler in 2004/5 or so, shortly before I graduated -- I can't say there's any discernible benefit to the incorporation, other than piggybacking off the prestige that Tyler has, and subsequently undermining the Architecture Program's once rather suspect technology credentials...As far as I know, Architecture still happens in the top two floors of the old CEA building.

Amazingly, I can't find a photo tonight of that horrible place, but maybe that's a testament to how much time I spent inside the 9-story bleak-bricked monster, designing things that never were. If anyone can scare up a photo of the old "College of Engineering and Architecture" [technically an appropriate name, though unfortunate in practice] building, give me a shout and I can post it up here in all its brick glory. In the meantime, here are some street level photos via Google Maps and Tyler's website.

[an aerial view of the new Tyler building; seeing as how it's this far completed on Temple's website, it could surely be finished by now.]

[a view of the new Tyler building's steel frame going up, that's architecture building is in the background.]

[there's a lot of horrible to do with this building, but I will probably always love it, and there's actually some interesting qualities about it. It was across the street from the ugliest building on campus, so I think that helped too.]

Public Architecture

2008-08-28T21:45:00.003-04:00

[Rendering of the Day Labor Station, via publicarchitecture.org

In last week's Boston Sunday Globe Ideas section, "A Blueprint for Good" discussed the work of a firm dedicated to providing architectural solutions to social problems. Public Architecture, an organization created by architect John Peterson in 2002, designs projects for those often overlooked in the age of high-profile, high-cost architecture. On a grander scale, the firm initiated "The 1%": a group of architecture firms committed to donating at least 1% of their billable hours to pro bono work, specifically with non-profit organizations.

The 1% is catching on quick: based on the annual report of the program, released a few days ago, over 400 firms across the country have signed on, with over 80% of the firms contributing beyond the 1% threshold. A PDF of the press release for the 2nd Annual Firm Survey can be found here, including additional statistics and firm reactions to the program.

One of PA's own projects featured in the article concerns the Day Labor Station. The urban areas where day laborers, typically gather are outdoors and adjunct to big-box hardware stores or gas stations. In addition, these places are often plagued with violence due to lack of adequate police attention. This project aims to provide an minimal, effective, and semi-permanent location where day laborers can seek shelter and gather while they wait for work, buy food from a vendor and manage hygiene, get educated or hold informal meetings. In addition to the Day Labor Station, PA has design more effective hospital rooms for children with chronic illness, and several other projects that engage public and community spaces.

Architecture is often executed at considerable cost and resources, putting design services out of reach of those who perhaps need it most, for whom architecture can make the most drastic impacts. This is really important work, and these guys [and others such as Architecture for Humanity] have the right idea.

[plan diagrams showing the flexible uses of the day labor station, via publicarchitecture.org]

Throw Away Your X-Ray Specs

2008-08-26T22:30:00.007-04:00

[a scene composed of multiple x-ray images, by Nick Veasey via WIRED. click to enlarge]

Thank goodness for Gmail webclips. This article from WIRED showed up this afternoon and provided some much needed work-time entertainment, with some pretty sweet images from X-ray photographer/artist Nick Veasey. Common objects, especially the mechanical ones it seems, speak volumes once you can see beneath their surface.

Some of his images are plain old x-rays on film, but he often composes detailed images [as in the office building w/ skeletons above] from multiple x-ray images and a dose of photoshop. Some images are done for companies looking to display their product in a new light in ad campaigns, while others appear to be personal projects. He claims to have x-rayed over 4,000 different things, ranging from people to airplanes, and is currently building a massive x-ray studio where he'll be able to get a look inside pretty much anything. The article only has about four photos, but if you go to Veasey's own website here, you can see a portfolio of over 30 images.

[x-ray image of a vaccuum tube, by Nick Veasey via WIRED]

Architecture School Episode One: "The Big Idea"

2008-08-25T14:18:00.016-04:00

Well, I don't get the Sundance channel. However, Susan does, and we watched the series premiere of Architecture School last Wednesday. To say the least, I found it enjoyable and nostalgia-inducing. Maybe what was more interesting was watching it with Susan, since she's not a card-carrying survivor of the ridiculous, rigorous cauldron of learning that architecture school is -- but the good news is that she enjoyed the show as well, and maybe even gained some insight into what I spent so much time doing for a half-decade.

So if you're like me and don't get Sundance, you can watch the episode right here, [or stream it directly at hulu.com, where you can watch it full-screen] give it a look and enjoy!

_________________________________________________________

P.S. Some highlights of mine, if you do watch it:

1. The hippie-type kid from Georgia (I forget his name) announcing his plans to spend the weekend rock climbing, directly after the Mouton gets done telling them how much work has to be done, then negotiating with him to stay for another half-hour. This kid is a little ridiculous and he doesn't express himself clearly [which is perfectly normal!] but he knows how to carefully slide his finger along a piece of chipboard to make an thin and evenly-glued butt joint.

2. Talking about the realism, struggling with concept. The naming of things. Branding. Examples: Salk Institute, Guggenheim New York ... Looking for an IDEA; these kids have no concepts ... ideas about spatial performance relationships not external concepts.

3. The mixed and passionate [on both sides] response from the largely black neighborhood; something all to common an experience to any Temple student. It seems half of our studio projects seem to be located practically within a 50' radius of our studio building, and quite often, residents around our prospective sites had serious opinions to offer bout their lives and their neighborhoods when they'd hear about our latest project for a transit village, community project or whatever it might have been.

4. The best line of the episode, a completely factual statement, from one of the girls at a review/jury: "You know if they're complaining about the way something's drawn -- then it's crap."

"Shut the Hell Up, the TV's On!"

2008-08-20T07:20:00.005-04:00

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I think I get the Sundance channel on my TV. If I do, I'll probably watch the premiere of their new series, Architecture School, which follows a fourth/fifth year design-build studio at Tulane University. The students design and build housing prototypes in response to the [still] devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. The program will hopefully give some insight into the world of architecture school and maybe how easy/not easy it must be to actually build something of your own design. It should make for good watching, and it's on tonight at 9.

A Triumphant Return

2008-08-19T22:30:00.007-04:00

The Site Planning exam last Thursday was like a cheap, enjoyment-free version of SimCity, without the instant gratification of seeing how your plans worked out. I should find out the results in about two months. Despite being graded by computer, they take six times as long to get the results. Now it's on to Building Technology, although I'm making this process sound all very smooth and linear and easy -- pending a fail, I'll be right back where I was in May.

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A lot of things have gone on in the past few months that were worth writing about, so here's a little list of some things that, given more time, could have made it into their own posts.

1. Tim McDonald/OnionFlats on Planet Green: While the Planet Green channel seems to embody the components of sustainability that irritate me the most: the idea that celebrities and consumerism can save the world...(don't get me wrong, I have an odd fascination with "Living with Ed" starring Ed Begley, Jr. running amok)...But Planet Green's show Renovation Nation deals with architecture and I caught an episode that was pretty great. It detailed the 2006 Rag Flats project in Fishtown, Philadelphia [just a long, half-drunken shuffle from Temple University's campus] by the McDonald Brothers' firm, OnionFlats.

Planet Green's own Episode Guide is incredibly brief and vague, but it can be found here. The OnionFlats website does a better job explaining: the program consists of 11 dwelling units, a 32 Kilowatt photovoltaic rooftop array, rainwater retention system and in-situ planted roof, among other sustainable credentials. Hence the TV show thing.

But, from what I can tell, it's a spatially compelling, well-crafted project providing spaces for interactions within the community. And all with an architectural vocabulary that could be by IKEA, if IKEA designers were brawny Swedish construction workers, and not Swedish anemic turtleneck hangers with giant eyeglasses. Now that it's been completed for 2 years or so, I'm interested to see how it's performing, and whether or not Philadelphia, the gravelly Tom Waits of Atlantic Seaboard cities can sustain and nourish more innovative developments like this one.

That being said, the home page for the show itself shows the host in front of a photo of the Rag Flats project, so I guess that's something...But the rounded point I'm trying to make though, is that the project is great, and Tim McDonald, who is a Temple grad, makes excellent stuff. When I was in school, he would come in as a guest critic at juries, and had a serious reputation as "the guy who thought up great stuff and actually built it" [or something to that effect,] and seeing him and his work on basic cable was definite thrill.

So check out the OnionFlats website and find the Rag Flats project under the "Work" and "Built" categories; there are dozens of photos of the project and many articles written about it. Below are some photos grabbed from their website to wet your see-whistles, or "eyes" if you want to be anatomically correct. Since the photos don't really do the project justice, just go to their website.

[all photos from onionflats.com]

2. Item #2: Thinking back, it seems that when you promise a list, you're implying more than one item...now, as the above item of said list got a lot longer than I thought it would, this is all..for now. Are you feeling teased? I sure am. A little.

p.s. a fun workplace aside: I don't attend client meetings often, but I did today, and after substantially reviewing the design, the client said, "Wow...you guys have the best job in the world, don't you?" My boss and I both understood the rhetorical nature of the question, but felt compelled to muster a semi-enthusiastic agreement to her implication, which was strained at best. I told her "I only took this job because my ideal job of cheeseburger-scented-cologne beta-tester" doesn't exist." Yet. And besides, I didn't really say that out loud, because I don't want to get my idea stolen.

Summer in 16 Pictures

2008-08-07T23:33:00.030-04:00

So, I have returned. And while I could use words to explain what the hell I've been up to since, say the end of June, I'd rather do so with images, with thanks to NCARB's rinky-dink CAD software, which I have been using to work on practice vignettes for my upcoming [but presently unscheduled] Site Planning division of the ARE. Thankfully, the fine folks at AREforum have been very helpful providing practice insight and feedback for these practice problems. And I feel that these images below are a fitting medium for telling the story of my summer, [sure, I've thrashed in the waters of Nantucket Sound and collected my standard summer's complement of horrible sunburns, but this is what I've been up to a lot for the past week.] because as tedious as they were to design, Susan tells me they are even more painfully boring to hear about. So enjoy.

Site Design

Site Zoning

Site Grading

Big Up Yourself, Temple!

2008-07-07T22:15:00.007-04:00

Taking a quick break from not writing, I thought I'd share the good news of the results of the annual and long-named Delaware Valley Green Building Council Student Sustainable Design Competition: Two 3rd-year students from Temple University's Architecture Program have brought home the first-place Platinum Award.

From a field of nearly 100 entries from many area colleges, [including Temple's Architecture's major rivals in the city, Penn and Drexel,] Muhammad Hanif-Azly and Jeremy Kaltrieder emerged victorious with the winning scheme for an urban agricultural high school. A PDF of their design board can be found here. It should be noted that Temple students also won the platinum and silver in both 2007 and 2006. Not too shabby.

Well done, Muhammad and Jeremy, I salute you!

Paul Goldberger on the Colbert Report

2008-06-26T11:03:00.009-04:00

The advertecture posts got me thinking -- why read or write stuff of your own when you can just find TV and post it up here? Here is the fruit of my labor, by which I mean watching last night's Colbert Report. His guest was Paul Goldberger, who is an architecture critic at the New Yorker. And the conversation was actually about architecture, too! They had a lighthearted chat about the state of American architecture, [skyscrapers and high-profile buildings specifically,] in the face of explosive, high-profile developments overseas in places like the U.A.E. (Dubai), Russia and China.

Goldberger claims that America is not building big because "it doesn't make any money and we've got a lot of good ones already" or something to that effect, but I don't really buy that. It's certainly not a critical look at the way things are going stateside.

In fact, his claim that we've got all this stuff is made even stranger by the recent news of foreign interests taking advantage of the anemic American Dollar and buying up this country by way of its companies and property. Recent news of Budweiser facing a buyout from a multi-national Inbev, more relevantly, the Chrysler Building, [a building that Goldberger references by name in this video while making his case for our side,] facing foreign ownership, it should be cause for some kind of alarm. But then again, Goldberger was on the Colbert Report, not 60 Minutes and it was a fun, humorous interview. I was just glad that he came on the show at all.

A recent article from BusinessWeek.com deals with the same issue of the West falling behind in the giant, eccentric buildings game.

Advertecture 2: Headaches of 1987

2008-06-19T20:26:00.010-04:00

"Hey, bring in the drafting table next!"

Thanks to Youtube, I found this 1987 Advil advertisement while I was searching for a Mastercard ad I just watched. The Mastercard ad was pretty silly, because from what I recall, it basically showed a guy sitting at an otherwise nondescript office desk with a pen and a pad next to a big model. No computer, no nothing. Just a guy and his little building, pondering each other.

The scale-model is a pretty recognizable and distinct symbol of the architecture office setting, and therefore, how the profession is represented within the realm of advertising, [along with the ubiquitous 3-foot roll of drawings.] Maybe that's why architects are featured in so many ads; you can take any regular office setting, throw a couple glorified dollhouses around and all of the sudden, you're marketing yourself as sensitive to the particular needs of your potential customers. See? They know you're an architect and what your specific needs are -- "Heck I know you're an architect-- I can see your little buildings right on the desk there!" Maybe I'm just bitter because in the two years I've worked in an architecture firm, I've only seen one model, and nobody walks around with it doing commercials for name-brand ibuprofen.

David Byrne Plays the Building

2008-06-16T21:55:00.007-04:00

[more images of the project can be found here.]

So i ripped off yet another story from the New York Times. Here goes: all in all, David Byrne is pretty great. The former front man for Talking Heads and one-time RISD architecture student has an affinity for the strange, in all its forms. Often, his explorations focus on architecture. [A line from the Talking Heads song Don't Worry About the Government: "People need buildings to help them along," is among my favorite song lyrics.]

[one of the motors, strapped to steel bracing. again, more images here.]

Byrne's latest project, titled "Playing the Building" takes New York City's now-defunct Battery Maritime Building and rigs its rusty metal shell with small imbalanced electric motors attached to various parts of the structure. The motors are then wired to a second-hand organ, and the building can be played, as an instrument. (The keys don't correspond to particular tones, so the organ has its own musical logic.) All buildings make plenty of sounds on their own, but this deliberate coaxing of sound from the materials and spaces of an otherwise unused building makes for a compelling project.

There is a video below. Much of it deals with Byrne and BBTV's Xeni Jardin exploring the nether regions of the Battery building and just being his weird self, but there is some music to be heard. I had the great opportunity to see a David Byrne concert in Rome in 2004, at Renzo Piano's Auditorium Parco della Musica, which is an incredible building. The building complex is beautiful but ironically, the acoustics were terrible, and possibly even worse than Byrne's Maritime project.

Spider-Men Apparently Love the New York Times Building

2008-06-10T22:25:00.010-04:00

[Brooklyn resident Rey Clarke, climber #2, scaling the ceramic louvers, via nytimes.com]

Flipping between the Game 3 of the NBA Finals [I have to admit it was only the second Celtics game I've watched all season, despite how dominant they have been,] and MSNBC, "The Verdict with Dan Abrams" came on, and the show's eponymous host interviewed one of the two men that climbed, independently, the new 52-story New York Times Building, a Renzo Piano joint circa 2007.

Abrams interviewed Rey Clarke, the second man to climb the building last Friday, dealt mostly with his rationale for the climb and its consequences. Clarke had planned the climb for some time--to raise money to battle malaria in the developing world. He was inspired to do it on that particular day when he saw the Frenchman Alain Robert on the news, and when he reached the summit, Clarke was greeted by a big group of cops, [presumably from what must now be the NYPD Building Climbing Division] arrested and charged with a misdemeanor.

The interview was sort of interesting in its own right, but what struck me about this whole thing was how this must have been a rather easy building to climb: the video footage showing Clarke in-climb showed him working his way up the round ceramic bars of the extensive louvers, which compose the outermost part of the building's facade. It was essentially a 500+ ft ladder.

During no part of the interview did either Abrams, Clarke or Clarke's lawyer speak about the architectural features of the building that were apparently instrumental to Clarke's climbing effort. And now that I think of it, I've never seen an architect brought into the studio for some network news-ish show for their expert opinion. Had there been an architect on-hand from Renzo Piano Building Workshop, or any competent architect, builder or engineer for that matter, he/she could have explained the sustainable function of the very building elements used in this high-profile event.

But this is more than another missed opportunity to inject architecture into public discourse: I learned a new word from this whole experience. "Buildering." As in the act of climbing on or up buildings. The word actually sounds like they're climbing up builders. If this were up to me, I'd probably re-word the term to "buildinging." That's much better, no? Because "buildering" also sounds like what a four-year old would think that architects do every day at work--and in my world, that little kid would be exactly right, and ceramic sun-shading devices would be making it into the news cycle.

[Alain Robert, the first climber, being met with minimal fanfare, via NYTimes]

Digital Drawing Board

2008-06-08T18:46:00.010-04:00

[I don't mean to brag, but I drew the anatomically-incorrect skeleton and the huge arrow.]

Since I am waiting for study materials to arrive for the next section of the exam I am taking, Site Planning, I've started to dig through various item's I have collected but not yet put up here.

For starters, Eric Deis is an artist/photographer based in Vancouver. His online digital drawing board is something I found via archinect over a year ago, and I figure it might be worth checking out. Without question it is much more interesting that the digital drawing board I am all-to-familiar with, otherwise known as AutoCAD.

As the name suggest, it's a digital drawing board, usable by several people at once. It's pretty interesting as you see the confluence of multiple ideas and mouse-dragged expressions, interacting in complimentary, indifferent, or fully combative ways. Anonymously, people draw or write things which are largely unidentifiable, since drawing with a mouse is a little tough, but it's pretty interesting to arrive at the website and see what turns up. Mr. Deis' photography of the Vancouver urban landscape is excellent as well.

Transition This!

2008-05-27T19:37:00.009-04:00

[from NCARB.org. This thing might be legible if you click on it. Otherwise, there is a link below.]

Now that I've got a division [or is it a section? I don't really know what they're called] of the exam under my belt, I'm on to the next one. The main motivator in the decision-making process is primarily driven by a desire to not get re-screwed by the man -- in this case, almighty NCARB. In June 2009, everyone taking ARE 3.1 will be transitioned into the new version, 4.0. Depending on what each candidate has completed, s/he may have to essentially retake stuff, at additional cost, of course. I have heard from an old classmate who is about half-way through the tests that the graphic exams are crucial to get out of the way before this happens.

Here is an interactive version of the chart above. I have read that the new exam won't necessarily be harder, though it will combine subject matter differently and certain exams will combine graphic vignettes and multiple-choice questions, which are now fully segregated.

Seeing as how this at least sounds harder, I am pursuing the path of least resistence by trying to bang these out as fast as possible, which will ideally be around one a month, or every six weeks or so. With the inevitable future fails and their corresponding six-month purgatorios, I should be in decent shape this time next year. We'll see. I guess I'll have to put off that extreme nude parasailing trip among the Himalayan lakes I had planned until next year.

Well, I actually didn't plan such a trip, but I did want to use that time to get some more sleep.

PASS

2008-05-25T19:58:00.006-04:00

On Saturday I received the good kind of four-letter word from NCARB. I passed the Pre-Design exam from a few weeks back. I had avoided discussing it here in depth, most likely because if I had failed again, I surely would have felt like an incompetent jackass. So I'm pleased, but not overjoyed, because my feeling during the exam and afterwards was that I understood the content and felt well-prepared. The broader range of study materials which I used for this test, [which included three books and a dynamite set of flash cards,] and a slightly contracted study schedule [4 weeks instead of 5 to 6] inevitably helped me to this positive result.

There will probably be more to come on this topic in terms of a recap, but for now I just wanted to post the result here in a relatively current way. For now, I'm locked into ARE 3.1 until July 2009, and have broken into some success on the exam, which was starting to seem pretty elusive following my previous fail. Now it's on to the next one, though I'm not sure which that'll be just yet.

This Would Make a Fine Title

2008-05-04T09:48:00.008-04:00

It must seem like I've quit this blog. Or maybe, that I crawled into a shame-hole after my last exam failure. But I assure you, this blog endures, as does its creator. The past month has been busy. I have traveled both North and South, to an annual Reggae Festival in Maine, and to my academic homeland in Philly. I was even fortunate enough to go to the Sox game last night with Susan -- a birthday present better than any I can imagine. In-between, around, under and beside all of this fun, I have been studying for the Pre-Design Exam.

With perhaps the same intensity as I studied for Construction Documents + Services, though it seems less rigorous somehow. It's far less arcane than the contract-speak that I studied for the exam previous: much of it concerns the basic concepts of architectural design, site planning, and the basics about project delivery, some of it almost matching my material from the CD exam nearly verbatim. It covers a broad range of material, and for this reason, the conventional wisdom is that it be taken either as the first exam, so that it can provide a knowledge base for the other exam sections that follow, or as the last exam, so that by the time you get to it, you've seen everything already.

The relatively broad-and-shallow exam content might actually benefit me in this situation, seeing as it's sort of the Jeopardy Method.* Know five things about everything. Just ask any of my old roommates from Philly, it's impossible to sit and watch Jeopardy with me, because I get most of the answers, and fast. I'm told it's incredibly annoying. And don't think this is bragging--It's not because I'm intelligent: whether I'm looking at Alex Trebek's now gloriously bare moustache-zone or not, I retain and dispense nothing but useless trivia. It comes from a lifetime of absorbing only the very least important facts from any given set. Perhaps in this one moment in time, this could prove to be a useful thing.

So fear not, this blog endures. For as long as I remain an unending font of pedantic, whiny nonsense, this shall be my outlet. And there's plenty more to come.

*Patent-pending, 2008.

Meier on Meier

2008-04-08T22:54:00.009-04:00

I read Salon.com on a daily basis, though it's typically for news and political commentary. I also avidly read Salon's columns How The World Works, Machinist, as well as Garrison Keillor's weekly offering. One thing they lack as part of their organization is some kind of arts/design/architecture column that the New York Times does really well. Because of this, I was surprised to find the above interview of hero architect Richard Meier, (I think 'hero architect' is a little more awesome sounding than the overused 'star architect.' I don't really consider most of these people heroes, but I'm trying to build an industry-wide brand to get the public on board here.)

At any rate, it's a brief interview but it manages to ask some of the more fundamental questions about Meier's work--an important question asked of any designer--why it is the way it is. In Meier's case, "Why all the white?" receives a thoughtful answer to reconsider his buildings, which can easily be construed as blatant objects in space, confrontational to their surroundings, as responsive to both site and user. I am pretty well convinced of his explanation.

Questions like this one are always especially intriguing when posed to architects that have evolved into their own, easily-defined "style". The word "style" usually irritates me, but in this case, I'm not sure what else to use--when certain design elements see repeated usage throughout many projects over an extended body of work...think of Frank Gehry's undulating surfaces made from thousands of titanium panels. Architects seem to develop trademark techniques, and I'm not so sure it's a good thing creatively, though I am sure it is good for public recognition and therefore, good for business. Meier's equivalent of this tell-tale strategy involves griddy volumes in stark white. See below from the Getty Center.

Except of course, at the Getty Center, where there's a great deal of beigeyness infused into the expansive sea of 30"x30" metal panels and stone pavers. I learned this in 2006 when Susan and I made a visit to the Getty during our trip to various spots in California. It's an amazing place, and it's arranged in a progression that forms a uniquely fulfilling sequential experience via a dialogue between interiors and exteriors. I was especially glad to visit it, since another of his recent high-profile projects, the Ara Pacis museum in Rome (the first building in something like 80 years to be built within the ancient city) was an inaccessible construction site when I was studying there in 2004.

Meier talks about the Getty with a great deal of pride, and that's great, because many of us hated no projects more than our own back in architecture school. If an accomplished guy like Richard Meier can't be completely satisfied with his body of work, who can? The video's not too long, so give it a look. It's a good opportunity to briefly get into the mind of a high profile architect. And here's a photo from my 2006 visit to the Getty, just for kicks.

[urban analogies in cactus @ The Getty Center, L.A.]

"No one can live there except for the odd stable boy or footman who gets permission to sleep in the hayloft."

2008-03-31T12:33:00.012-04:00

Being an election year, stories about the widening gap between the rich and poor enter the news cycle more often than usual. The gap, and its effects on urban space are undeniable: gentrification is a powerful force, re-shaping cities across the country. But what about the gap between the rich and the jewel-encrusted, ermine-swaddled, monocle-festooned aristocracy? One of my favorite news sources, The Onion, speaks truth to power with this important story. Enjoy.

Report: Nation's Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization

Fail!

2008-03-23T10:56:00.009-04:00

Well, I got the news from NCARB that I apparently failed the bejesus out of the exam I took two weeks back. I know the relative severity of the failure, as a brief description of it was included in my result form: of the four competency areas, I appear to need improvement in three.
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The three areas I "need improvement in" (translation: failed) are:
1. Codes and Regulations
2. Environmental Issues
3. Construction Drawings + Project Manual

The one area that was above the minimum competence is:
4. Project + Practice Delivery

I didn't feel unprepared when I sat down to take the exam, but there were certainly aspects of my studying that didn't focus enough on ADA design standards and the broader family of AIA A201 contract documents. This isn't such a big deal, and as I've said before, I'm only out time and money (oh, and pride too) and I will retake this part of the exam in six months. At any rate, it is a blow softened by 25 years of life peppered with this same sort of "Ah, Fuck!" moments.

So it's on to the next one for now. I'm not sure what that will be, but I think either General Structures or maybe Materials and Methods...Something more visual and more tangible might be easier to get into. And the pressure is on a little more so, because not passing at least one test by May 13th, 2008 would mean I'd have to transition directly to ARE 4.0, and therefore be required to wait until this July to begin again--hopefully it won't come to that, so I'll get going on the next one this upcoming week, I think.

Ed Begley, Jr. & Co. Drop Some Knowledge

2008-03-19T22:00:00.007-04:00

[trailer for "Who Killed the Electric Car", via YouTube]

I just finished watching "Who Killed the Electric Car", a 2006 documentary about well, you know. Like other excellent documentaries I've recently watched, such as SiCKO, or No End In Sight, I found it enlightening and infuriating. I was going to highlight some of the main points once I had made it about a third of the way through the movie, but now having finished it, there are way too many to list. Just get a copy of it and watch the thing. As you could probably guess, it's yet another tale of extreme corporate power and its coercion of the federal government manages to thwart scientific progress, political and environmental responsibility, common sense, and ethics. Regardless, like many documentaries of a critical nature, it ends on a cautiously optimistic note. It is not alarmist, but it is a metered, rational explanation of what has happened to electric vehicle technology and what the future could hold for it, given some positive changes.

As for who killed the car in question, the film lays it all out: oil companies, auto companies, the government, the California Air Resources Board, and hydrogen fuel-cell technology, and even consumers.

The movie is an important chronicle of how [save some massive change in the federal government's relationship with industry, namely the auto manufacturers and big oil,] this kind of nonsense will continue exactly to the point in time where oil runs out. It's ridiculous and pathetic to think of, but it appears to be the path we are on. Responsible, renewable energy technologies exists today yet it is stifled by the powers that be, in favor of the more destructive and more immediately lucrative status quo. Hopefully this year's Presidential and Congressional elections will change our trajectory.

And just remember: this stuff is not science fiction, nor is it exclusively for uber-liberals, be they naive wide-eyed dreamers, know-it-all blue-bloods, creepy foreigners, or even rotten, stinking hippies. This stuff is real, and it is right, and it is happening. Here's how the problem gets fixed. Enjoy.

DIY Gas-to-Electric Conversion

What Would Jesus Drive?

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Advertecture

2008-03-18T22:24:00.007-04:00

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Since I said goodbye to college and hello to leisure time, it seems I've been watching more and more TV. Something I've noticed for a long time now is that for all that architects seem to be misunderstood by the public, they are represented in a heck of a lot of television commercials.
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Keep your eyes open, and you'll find them sooner or later. It could be the young dude in a suit carrying a thick roll of drawings down a hallway; or is it the group of well-dressed thirtysomethings huddled around a basswood model--look, there's one gnawing pensively on the heavy black frame of his glasses! --They're out there, for sure.
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At any rate, I had at one point intended to dedicate an entire post to this phenomenon of seeing architects on TV, and mostly in ads, but here's a start. On one hand, it's perfectly understandable, as many of the ads seem to be for small-business credit card programs where a montage of small businesses are shown, and the majority of architecture firms are small businesses. I would link a stat to that effect, but alas, I can never find this stuff when I need it. But wherever they are shown, you can always spot the architects: occasionally with glasses, usually well-dressed, and always, always, with models on tables and/or drawings under arms.
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This particular ad by Kohler takes on the idea of the exotic, genius star architect more so than the 'hip-young-gunslingers' caricature, but it's yet another facet of the profession's public representation. I'm not saying these are unfair or inaccurate representations, but it's cause for a double-take, to see it so often when most people think we "do bridges or something."
_
I have had trouble embedding videos lately, so I think I'll put them up as I find them. Enjoy.

[Of course, this idea isn't restricted to TV alone: here, via Gawker, is

a clip from a Banana Republic print ad, showing some high-style

geniuses, though they're not wearing a thread of black cotton...]

Aftermath

2008-03-13T21:02:00.010-04:00

So I'm back from my first exam attempt. It didn't go great, and it didn't go so badly. Right now all I can do is wait the 10-30 days it will take to hear back whether or not I pass or fail. There's not a whole lot riding on that result; but it was a pretty stressful experience all told. If I fail, I am out $102, and I have to wait six months to re-take the same exam (same subject matter, with different questions.) So it's a matter only of time and money, which is no big deal, since I have plenty of both, er, one. In the mean time, pass or fail, I am on to the next exam. I'm not sure which one it'll be.
_

The testing center was the strange lovechild of a recording studio and a top-secret room at the Pentagon. I say the recording studio bit because they had these really effective noise-cancelling headphones in each desk station, and the Pentagon bit because of the several confidentiality statements I had to sign, stating I wouldn't divulge any of test content, (in the unlikely event that anyone would ask for it!) Frankly, the headphones might have been the best part of of the whole deal. They were pretty great. I felt like you could go pheasant hunting with them or jackhammer some concrete if you had them on.

I can say that there were 115 multiple-choice questions, and I spent about two hours of the three allotted me to work them out. Of the 115, I would say that I was completely lost on about 20 questions, I knew about 20 questions for sure, and the remaining 75 were somewhere in between prayer and educated guesswork. It wasn't completely difficult and I don't feel that I was ill-prepared. So we'll see...I am realizing that the more I mention the test the more liable I will be for the result, so I'll wrap this up, and post the result here when I get it.

It's 9 PM and I feel like I just got out of a jury, as exhausted and apathetic and thirsty. (Of course, coming down from an architecture jury is said sensation on a completely different, much more intense scale.) The similarity is probably in focusing and spending all your time working towards one thing, then staring into the vaccuum when that thing is done. It's a strange and familiar feeling. I really can't complain though, because by Saturday morning at 8 AM, I will be watching France and Wales duke it out via satellite in Brighton and getting plenty drunk--and that is a test I pass every time.

T-Time

2008-03-12T16:34:00.002-04:00

(The "T" stands for "Test", get it? Ok.)

I will be sitting down to take my first exam of nine tomorrow afternoon at 4:30, about 24 hours from now. After that, I will probably emerge from under the rock I've been living for the past month or so. That is all. Oh, and if you ever want to know anything about Construction Documents and Services, you just go ahead and ask me, you know, because it's the most boring shit on Earth.

Explosivo

2008-03-06T22:32:00.013-05:00

[image from NYT]

This news story caught my eye that would have been otherwise unremarkable this morning. A small bomb was detonated at a U.S. Armed Services recruiting station. (Nobody was injured and the explosion appeared to only smash a glass panel on the front end of the building. Video here.) It's a well-designed recruiting station, that I recognized from back in school.

One of the principals of the firm that designed it, NYC-based ARO [Architecture Research Office], lectured at Temple back in either 2004 or 2005, speaking about several projects including this interesting little recruiting station. The lecture showcased many of their projects, but this one stuck with me: I thought small projects like this one only existed in early-year design studios...there don't seem to be as many opportunities to design buildings that are as small, concise and elegant as this one, from what little I know so far. There are always doghouses, I suppose.

The firms' website doesn't seem to be functioning properly, and I was had trouble finding any good information online about the building, [it has been published, however] but here's a link to pushpullbar that has a few of images and information about the project, with a couple of others from ARO as well.

[As for the explosion itself, there's no word if a 'crimes

against good architecture' charge would be leveled

against the bombing suspect in addition to the pending charges.]

Enjoy This Fine Diagram!

2008-03-05T23:30:00.006-05:00

[give it a click for a larger view]

I found this great diagram on the FTP site of areforum.org, where people who have gone through the exam process before are gracious enough to post whatever resources and distilled material that proved helpful to them, and hence, to me. I don't know who to attribute it to. And the diagram itself is too convoluted to be useful, but I think it graphically conveys just how complicated the contractual relationships between Owner, Contractor, and Architect can be. It's all I've been reading about for the past 3 weeks or so. It's boring, but I can't complain: I finally booked my appointment for the first exam, which is next Thursday. It feels much more real now, but I feel reasonably prepared.

A Short Note on What I'd Rather Be Doing

2008-03-04T23:20:00.010-05:00

So here's a quick note on something other than studying that I'd like to be doing, but probably won't. I've been fascinated with rugby since Susan began playing (extremely well, I might add) during college. It's an amazing sport I think I would have enjoyed being able to play, had I not bound myself to a parallel edge for my half-decade at Temple. [We did, however, manage to put together a fiercely competitive co-rec softball team for 8 semesters--even making it to the City 6 one year--the tournament for the upper echelon of Philadelphia college clown-show softball teams.]

But that being said, the 6 Nations Rugby tournament has been going on in Europe since the beginning of February, and continues through this and next weekend. I am going to be taking my first exam next week, and hopefully I'll be able to watch the matches next weekend. If anything, it's a little extra incentive to get it done by then.
_

The matches typically are in the evenings, local time, meaning it's a beautiful opportunity to go to a bar at noon or 9 AM and drink beer with the countless Irish expatriates that typically swarm to this type of televised sporting event. Last St. Patrick's day we watched two matches starting at 9 AM in a bar in Brighton that was packed with happy drunks, myself included.

The only other St. Patrick's Day that could really equal that was my last year of college, 2005. That year, deep in the trenches of our thesis projects, and for reasons I can't totally explain, some of my classmates and I ventured to the campus bar and drank beers in the morning, had our meetings with our thesis advisers that afternoon, and returned to the bar to swill Guinness and talk architecture with one of our more enlightened professors.* As fun as it was, it didn't help my thesis worth a damn...Half-sauced pontificating about architecture (or anything, for that matter) is something I find really enjoyable but rarely productive.

*[An important thing to know about architects (or at least architecture students) is that they will often attempt to distract you from their irritating, unmitigated nerdiness by boozing it up whenever the constant demands of work will allow.]**

**No wonder my thesis project ended up the hobbled shit-show that it was.

Waiting for Urbanism

2008-02-27T22:26:00.015-05:00

[the northernmost park on the Greenway, (nytimes.com)]

The New York Times online has some great slideshows on their site periodically...This week features an article on The Big Dig and its most visible urban byproduct, the Rose Kennedy Greenway. I've written about this before, but as the project unfolds, the possible successes and failures of this massive undertaking are slowly becoming discernible. Whatever the verdict, it's a project with loads of unrealized potential. Right now, it's pretty damn barren.

[a carefully designed, but empty parcel along the Greenway, from NYT]

It seems that there is the nervous anticipation about the thing to see whether or not it will become a vibrant part of the city. Ideally, the final details will include a good manner of time for people and vegetation and neighboring buildings to become acclimated to the new space so that it will be a useful thing. An artery for public life mimicking the path of the new artery carrying vehicles directly below. Between this project, the ICA, and star architecture at MIT, there is actually a lot going on in a city that has a reputed allergy to towards architecture without fancy bricks and brownstone.

Thanks for Nothing, Mr. Gellner.

2008-02-25T22:47:00.014-05:00

I, again, am not studying tonight--It's amazing what dinner and a few drinks with old friends will do to derail these efforts. However, I found this article on SFGate by Arrol Gellner which unabashedly adds fuel to the fire of conventional wisdom that says [we aspiring] architects are self-absorbed hacks: faking the funk and making the world awful to live in and look at. I just found out that Arrol Gellner is an architect, too. All he has done in this brief article is to compound the general misconception the public holds about architects--what they do, and what they are.

He appears to cite the well-known Franks in this profession, Lloyd Wright and Gehry, as the epitome of what all architects aspire to, only to fail and become resigned to designing the horribles. Since the title of his article is "Sorting Talented Architects from the Poseurs," is he suggesting that only the two most famous architects in the past 100 years of world history are "talented architects?", while the hundreds of thousands of others who aren't Frank Lloyd Wright or Frank Gehry are "The Poseurs"?

There's little dispute that Frank Lloyd Wright was a brilliant mind, but he was also a brilliant self-salesman. And he was notorious for a controlling stubbornness that most architects cannot afford. Does Gellner mention the many conditions and parties involved to bring a building into existence? He does not. He perpetuates the myth that the architect is the sole perpetrator of architecture, and therefore, should bear all the responsibility for the success or failure of the built environment.

The tone and angle of his article give the impression of a jilted client, pissed-off engineer, or someone who feels somehow slighted by the status quo. This piece of writing is a petty piece of garbage that undermines the entire profession. His role as writer/architect affords him the opportunity to educate his readers through both critique and education--this article does neither. With architects perpetually misunderstood as they are, Gellner is missing a crucial strategic opportunity. [Crotchety old ex-Boston University President John Silber's recent book, "Architecture of the Absurd: How 'Genius' Disfigured a Practical Art." doesn't help architects' public image, either.]

Finally, to employ the Oscar Wilde quote at the end of his own article, "Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.", Gellner's trite screed is better left unread. Done.

Hallo Spaceboy

2008-02-18T16:28:00.016-05:00

[Scott Listfield, To The Moon, 2004]

I couldn't tell you who my favorite artist was a few months ago. There are painters whose works I admire and probably misunderstand--like Van Gogh, Dali or Mondrian-- but in general, I'm pretty lost in the world of art critique. Which is fine for me. I typically end up being fine with just looking at the stuff. But I have found a painter who is making art now, who I think is my current favorite: Scott Listfield of Somerville, MA. I found this article on him from WIRED in my gmail webclips back in December, and had forgotten to write about him then.

Long story short, he's got an astronaut in pretty much every painting he makes. And while that alone is pretty great, he often places him/her/it in a strange, sometimes whimsical landscape of megacorporate logos and architectural landmarks. It makes for a fascinating investigation into our politics, our culture and the built environment it has shaped.

Living in the same town as the 12th largest mall in the country by some estimates, I can sympathize with Listfield's astronaut [or maybe terranaut?] visiting Earth, maybe looking for symbols or landmarks or meaning but often finding only the corporate idols we have come to worship. [That sounds a little morose, so don't get me wrong: it doesn't stop me from going to the mall on occasion.] At any rate, check out Scott Listfield. His paintings are great; so give them a look.

[Scott Listfield, Intelligent Design, 2006]

Better Than Studying

2008-02-14T22:39:00.015-05:00

[a few of my Grandparents' tenants.]

This was an unconventional and enjoyable Valentine's Day. Since Susan is on vacation with former college roommates in California, I had the day to myself, without the coercive rituals of this near-faux holiday. One of my aunts is visiting from Oregon and we had dinner at my Grandparents' house. I ended up having a long conversation after dinner with my Grandfather that began with politics, worked its way through the economy and the housing market, and settled on business practices and building your own home.

In his 81 years, he has built eight houses and nearly as many barns for his family as they moved frequently throughout the Northeast. And the thing is, he's not even a full-time farmer--it's just something that's meaningful to him. He was a business computer salesman at a time when computers were the size of SUVs. I don't know a more pragmatic nor productive human being, and I've learned much from him. It was most likely the countless afternoons and weekends I spent on their farm that led me to architecture through an interest in construction, or at least, taking things apart and/or reconfiguring them.

What was most important to this rare, lengthy chat we had was that I had the sense that this a moment when human knowledge and human tradition were being handed off. My Grandfather isn't going to build any more houses; he took this opportunity to educate me, not through instruction or procedure but through his own experiences. This was in some way an equivalent transaction to the way that essential knowledge was passed down from generation to generation, before a time when it could be documented in books or accessed via the internet. There was a time when this was the only way to gain knowledge beyond your own exploration. Tonight, this was meaningful. [Truth be told, LOST was on in the background, on mute, and I have to say it was sometimes a strain to stay focused.] But I felt a real connection tonight with this man whose footsteps long preceeded mine, and I'm thankful for that.

And so it appears impossible to escape this day without being sappy, sentimental or otherwise lame. But let it be known that I made it through without chocolate and flowers and hackneyed romantic greeting cards. Happy Valentine's Day.

["And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands" -Woody Guthrie]

Retroactive Financial Aid, Anyone?

2008-02-12T23:43:00.007-05:00

Good old Temple University recently received $5M anonymously in yesterday's mail. $4M of it is intended to fund women and minority scholarship programs, while there's no word if any of the remaining discretionary $1M will go towards the Architecture Program.

Heat Corn and the Suburbs

2008-02-12T12:31:00.000-05:00

[from nytimes.com]

_
News items about the suburbs usually catch my eye. They're where I came from, where I left to go to college in Philadelphia, and they are to where I have now returned (hopefully temporarily.) They are politically compelling spaces and for many they embody the essence of this country and how life should be here. Architecturally, they are a fascinating counterpoint to cities. They are habitually (and often correctly) demonized in architecture school. At least they were at mine. I attempted to fan that fire with my thesis document, which sought to challenge the basis for how people think they should live in the suburbs. Single-family, detached homes are the iconic cornerstones of suburban life. They also use up incredible amounts of energy, infrastructure and materials, when compared to their attached and/or more compact counterparts.

A couple of articles about suburbs and energy crossed my path today. First is an article from the New York Times today detailing energy consumption of suburban dwellers versus their urban counterparts. No surprise, the suburbanites, particularly those living in single-family detached homes consume considerably more than those living in multifamily buildings. The story highlights a suburban community's response to this: 70-member fuel-corn cooperative, providing a fuel alternative to regular oil burners.

The real potential of making the suburbs more ecologically responsible is the very thing that makes them so bad for the environment: all the open space. The open space, say, required to put up a 25-foot corn silo. There is enormous potential in all the unbuilt area that exists in the suburbs, and hopefully ideas like the corn silo will be explored further. Even the archetypical American suburb, Levittown, NY has launched a green initiative. [The website is here, though it doesn't seem to have any real content yet.]

The other article, "Can We Unmake the Suburbs", also from NYT, talks about similar issues. The article itself doesn't say too much, but it links to the 2006 documentary, "The End of Suburbia.", and to an in-depth, very long paper on Retrofilling, a concept which expands this idea beyond the residential zones of suburbs and applies it to myraid building types and situation. I did not read it, but throw a sweet prefix like "retro" in front of anything and I'll probably give it a look eventually.

I had hoped for more from the second article, execution-wise, though the two stories are closely related. In order to unmake the suburbs, ideas like the corn silo in the first article are going to have be thought up and carried out. But I think even more crucial than a housing for corn is a housing for people. Though it is going to require comprehensive change among municipalities and mindsets about how we live.

Density is going to increase, big lots will become small lots, and there will be people and buildings in the far reaches of the backyard where you grew up playing catch. Prefabricated dwellings will be set in place and your neighbors will arrive soon thereafter. Or maybe it'll be a branch of the local library system, or a great bar. Integrating disparate uses would surely reduce automobile use, reform sprawl and make the suburbs useful and convenient. Regardless, the benefits and drawbacks that living closely to each other can bring will be made evident. But the unsustainable way many of us live out here in the suburbs is going to change our landscapes and ourselves drastically, it's probably just a question of when.

Taking it to the Skies

2008-02-11T23:16:00.000-05:00

[from Studio Lindfors via BLDGBLOG]

A quick note: I didn't mean to be too much of a downer with all the talk of trash in the ocean, but just in case things don't get any better in the oceans, or on land for that matter--there is always the sky.
_
Well, it's actually more of a flimsy pretext to link to two recent findings about inhabiting the skies, one from BLDGBLOG about living up there semi-permanently, or in the event of catastrophes, and one geared more towards whale-shaped hotelling, the latter is from spacemart.com, [it's where I get most of my space news.] And while you're up there, why not harvest a little wind?

[via spacemart.com]

"Salty Plastic Gumbo of the Sea" or, "We Need a Plastic Magnet of Considerable Girth and Effectiveness"

2008-02-05T11:03:00.000-05:00

[via www.independent.co.uk]

An article in today's The Independent reminded of something horrifying and largely unknown outside of environmentalist circles, lurking in the northern Pacific ocean. I first learned about this last fall, and it crosses my mind every time I leave the supermarket with my hands full of random groceries because I once again left my reusable cloth bag in the car, and I now can't bring myself to use a plastic bag.

It is so substantial that it has two official names: "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch", and "Trash Vortex." While the latter title sounds like some failed punk rock experiment, it is in fact two swirling masses of plastic flotsam, each the area of Texas, floating from the surface down 30 feet or so. This is a result of the North Pacific gyre, a slow-moving, doldrums-like area of the Pacific.

_
The article does not propose any solution, but describes the problem in detail. Do we wait it out as we gradually phase out our hyperconsumption of petroleum products, as they have done with plastic shopping bags in Ireland? The remaining 46,000 pieces of plastic waste per square mile of ocean would probably decompose over 50-300 years, endangering wildlife and entering human bloodstreams through tainted fish and other animals as plastic slowly breaks down.

Or is there a massively serious, man-made solution to this massively serious man-made problem? Humans have excelled at using offshore structures for the procurement of the very oil used to make this wayward aquatic garbage--can we utilize any form of this technology for the processing or collection of this waste? What about superindustrial fishing by way of deep bottom trawling? Certainly, the scale of the Trash Vortex is such that an endeavor like this would take decades or centuries--but the cynic in me has concluded that our dependence on petroleum is not going to effectively end until it has all been obtained and consumed. However, my former roommate and classmate Andrew has assembled some intruiging images of marine structures that speak to the potential for a mechanical solution for all this goddamn trash.

In addition, this topic reminded me of a recent post in BLDGBLOG about the possible Pacific tectonic plate unexpectedly pulling apart, and how this could affect any potential landmass that could eventually emerge. Could the sites of this swirling garbage eventually become some form of colonized, mid-ocean temporary construction for the duration of the clean-up? Is on-site reprocessing of this plastic, into usable forms even possible, powered by massive-scale solar array? Given the monstrous scale of the raw material floating around, perhaps the very structure of this facility could be created by reclaimed ocean plastic.

_
In lieu of a real answer to this very very big problem, I couldn't help sketch what I have realized equates to a child's glib solution to a complicated problem: This is some kind of barge-type vessel with a big open end to intake, store, and compress or otherwise process his plastic trash:

[Before you call this childish and irrational, please note the radar dish, solar panels and rather sweet helicopter. It was when I found myself drawing the helicopter that I realized I was right back in 6th grade study hall. And also check out the break-mark (in black, for the unfamiliar) added later to indicate the potential hugeness of this contraption. ]

Shortly after drawing this bad-boy, I realized I had essentially sketched [by accident] the ocean trawler that Mr. Burns enlists to make "Li'l Lisa Slurry" by netting and pureeing any and all ocean life, featured in an episode of the Simpsons...thank goodness I'm not in charge of taking care of huge garbage vortices, it make sense to me that ingenuity we possess to plunder the ocean could be used to restore it.

[Trawl filth, not fish.]

Updated 2/12/2008: Inhabitat has posted a project that could easily apply to self-sufficient offshore waste processing facilities.

[via inhabitat.com]

I ARE Studying, Day One

2008-02-04T23:04:00.000-05:00

My Kaplan ARE exam prep package came via UPS today. I decided to start with the "Construction Documents + Services" division of the exam...I've read on areforum.org and archinect that this is an ideal place to start, because I've had some exposure to this stuff at the office and the material on this test appears on several other divisions.
_
I ran through the first chapter of the study guide, and it's presented in a pretty accessible and straightforward way. I successfully took a little quiz at the end of the chapter. The stuff is pretty dry, (a lot of info about specifications, contracts and the legal/business end of the deal,) but besides needing to know it for the test, it appears as if it'll help build towards everyday competence at work. "So I got that going for me, which is nice."

I need to pass at least one division before April, so I'm planning on scheduling this one for the end of the month. Hopefully a solid 4 weeks will do the trick.

Again with the Politics

2008-01-28T22:56:00.001-05:00

[image from nga.org]

I was dumbstruck not minutes ago by something I had never seen before on a major network. After watching the final State of the Union Address by George W. Bush, I left NBC on. Following brief interviews with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democratic Response by Kansas Governer Kathleen Sebelius aired. Not only did she preternaturally address the fact that mainstream media would be consumed with the most minute reactions and sitting/ standing/applauding/ yawning of key members of Congress during the President's speech, she brought up two words I hadn't heard before on "the news", [by which I mean network news].

"But more than just recover - the Kansans who live in Greensburg are building green - rebuilding a better community for their children and grandchildren; making shared sacrifices, and investments for the next generation.

Greensburg is not alone. You and I - stand ready - ready to protect our environment for future generations, and stay economically competitive. Mayors have committed their cities to going green; governors have joined together, leading efforts for energy security and independence; and the majority in Congress is ready to tackle the challenge of reducing global warming and creating a new energy future for America."

For all the coverage of global warming/climate change I have heard on the news, and to be fair, it is receiving increasingly appropriate coverage, [though it is well documented that this topic has been largely ignored by the mainstream political talk shows, which I consider non-news.] Governer Sebelius made the first mention of GREEN BUILDING that I have heard on television, outside perhaps of the DIY network, or say, Discovery Home. She mentioned it twice when speaking about the reconstruction in her state of Kansas in the wake of a tornado there last summer. Energy production is a significant factor in making the shift towards post-carbon technologies, but it is how that energy is consumed that is the real determinant in setting our goals. Most of the dialogue surrounds the automobile industry, but it is buildings that have been critically overlooked--especially since they consume considerable amounts of energy resources [and therefore, pollution] in this country. This is an urgent situation that needs to be addressed with the same intensity as that of the automobile or power industry.

Thanks, Governer Sebelius, for injecting the national political dialogue with a call for green building!

The full text of the speech can be found here.

Street Legal

2008-01-23T19:21:00.001-05:00

I got the above piece of paper in the mail yesterday. I am officially authorized to take the ARE. This is great news, but I don't know exactly what I'm in for. I do know that my world has been opened up to a great deal of opportunity. And when I say opportunity, I don't mean the opportunity to take and pass the exams required to become, finally, an Architect. I mean the opportunity to pay an average of $119 nine times to sit for the exams. That's not including the roughly $1000 of study materials that will be necessary to pass these exams when all is said and done. See below:

_
One popular myth is that being an architect makes one a lot of money, but it seems that becoming an architect merely costs one a lot of money. Other fun myths include mathematical skills and being even remotely interesting people. [ For you laypersons out there, just so you know, these are all hilariously false.] I have a feeling the correlation between architects and money is probably the result of some centuries-old idiom from another language and culture that has been horribly perverted by time or translation. Maybe?

_
On the upside of things, I noticed something funny at the bottom of the paper. This authorization to test is good until June 1st of 2079, [when I will be just over 97 years old,] I think I just might have enough time to get it all done.

Requiem for a Dodd

2008-01-08T22:43:00.000-05:00

_
I'm watching Chris Matthews incoherently jackass his way through the New Hampshire primary results as Sen. Barack Obama gives an eloquent concession speech. My political main man, Sen. Chris Dodd, has since dropped out of the race as of last week's Iowa caucuses, and I thought it was necessary to make a note of the passing of his candidacy.
_

Even though he's a true Senate dinosaur, and among the ultimate Washington insiders, he seemed both qualified and prepared to be the next president. He never broke the double digits in any poll, (surely the fact that but I thought he was great. He reminded me in a lot of ways of what I admired in Howard Dean, in an "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more!" Howard Beale-from-Network sort of way.

_
So, here's to Chris Dodd: at any rate, he is a damn fine Senator and will be able to continue this work full-time. So get to it, you beautiful, white-haired bastard!
_

[If more people saw graphs like this, maybe it could have been more than a three-way race. Fuck mass media and the 24-hour news cycle, by the way. I do plan to return to writing about stuff that's at least remotely architectural...but on that end I am beginning to get ready for ARE preparation, by hunting down my information on Prometric and bidding on and eventually losing a bunch of used test materials on ebay. It's a start, right?]

Meeting Martha Wainwright

2007-12-06T22:17:00.000-05:00

[image from marthawainwright.org]

As the title might suggest, I met Martha Wainwright. [Brother of Rufus, daughter of Loudon III.] She opened for The Swell Season at the Orpheum on the night before Thanksgiving. Both acts were excellent, and if I had written this sooner after the concert, perhaps I would have remembered it in more detail. At any rate, Wainwright was hanging around in the lobby as the concert was getting out, and Susan coerced me into approaching her and offering a handshake and a rambling, half-drunken "Hey, thanks for the great concert," or something to that effect.
_
The only other well-known person [I wouldn't say celebrity,] I have encountered is Daniel Libeskind, whom I met in 2004 before he gave a talk on a museum/cultural center design he was working on, sited on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, which is the long strip of land where I-93 used to cut downtown Boston off from the harbor. The museum might not be built; it is engaged in a competition with some other potential cultural projects for that parcel on the Greenway. Meeting Libeskind back in 2004 was a bigger deal than it seems today, because at the time he still actually had some involvement in a competition he did win, the World Trade Center/Freedom Tower/Whathaveyou.
_
Oh, and I met Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown of VSBA, back in college. A friend somehow managed to set up a meeting with her for a planning project he was working on, and since I had a car and offered to drive, I was able to sit in on his meeting with Scott-Brown. The profoundly strange Guild House came up in discussion more than once. I have to admit that I had no idea what they were talking about for at least 90% of the time, but it was somehow good to sit in and absorb what little I could.

BuildBoston 2007: Day Two

2007-11-15T22:37:00.001-05:00

[ecoluxury condos will redefine the site of the Bread & Roses]

I only had one workshop at BuildBoston today, but I was able to meet up with Karl again and shoot the shit until it started. This workshop was a case study on the rehabilitation of the Wood Mill in Lawrence, MA, pertinent to it being marketed as an "ecoluxury" residential complex. Ostensibly, this project isn't very different from the Hingham Shipyard project, in that it involved the rehab of an existing giant industrial site into a mixed-use (though predominantly residential) greenish development.

Wood Mill, which was the largest industrial building of its kind when it was built in the early 20th century, will become 600 condominiums plus some tasty retail on one end. At any rate, it was interesting as the focus of the workshop was focused heavily on the geothermal heat exchange system that provides 70% of the heating and cooling that the building will require. This is something I had heard a lot of, but never really learned anything worthwhile about. So the engineer who ended up spearheading the presentation got into some depth about the implications and potential of this type of system, along with a few quotable words, as noted below:

"A ham and eggs breakfast takes a chicken and a pig: The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed."

"Architecture is like pornography to me: I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."

The guy was an excellent presenter and I ended up learning quite a bit about geothermal stuff, and combined with the shipyard seminar from yesterday, I feel it was a productive two days. Time to pack, Philly's waiting.

BuildBoston 2007: Day One

2007-11-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

[that's (future) Senator Franken to you, pal]

My second-ever BuildBoston began today. In brief, I had two workshops. The first was a case study of the Hingham Shipyard redevelopment project. As the name suggests, this project can be described as a redevelopment of Hingham Shipyard. The official name was "From Shipyard to Backyard." I dunno, the title's pretty vague and yet cerebral, so I'm still trying to decipher it relative to the content of the workshop. I had actually pictured a father teaching his son to ride a bike while dodging giant cranes put ships' hulls together, booms swinging every which-way w/ ironworkers cursing in the distance...And, we're back. So it was actually pretty interesting; not necessarily for the finished product, but because of the vast complexity of the process required to actually get a project that giant completed.

Boiled down, it is essentially an 100+ acre mixed-use development involving several different clients, 4 architects, 4 developers, the state and local governments for the incorporation of multiple existing mass transit hubs and marina while maintaining open space, and adding acres and acres of parking, affordable apartment homes, townhomes, retail, and commercial including a small cinema all whilst giving a nod to the historical character of the site's former function as a World War II era shipyard.

Oh, and it had an amphitheatre too.

The second workshop I had (which I am convinced I was enrolled in by mistake), was entitled "Clear Communication for Design and Building Professionals" is easier to relate: think of fictional motivational speaker Stewart Smalley. Now think of real-life motivational speaker and suspected pituitary giant, Anthony Robbins. Now think of their lovechild run amok. That was the second workshop. The speaker (who was actually very competent,) even mentioned Mr. Smalley...And a few things were useful, but there were dozens of interesting workshops going on that I could have benefited from attending.

I have another workshop tomorrow on ecoluxury developments, I have big expectations. More so about the "eco" rather than the "luxury," but we'll see.

And I finally saw SiCKO last weekend; it was fantastic. I have seen few films so moving, horrifying, enraging, dismal, and hilarious. So go rent it, it's out on DVD now.

Pre-BuildBoston

2007-11-14T01:03:00.000-05:00

I met with my IDP mentor last week and had the last 5 months or so of IDP approved on his end. This meeting also roughly coincided with NCARB notifying me that they had finally received and processed the experience hours that I recently sent them, 5 months ago.

As it stands, I have about 244 of the 700 required units, just shy of one-third of the way done after 18 electrifying months. So I made a graph to that effect. What I really wanted to do was to put a little widget on the sidebar that would show my unit quantity on any given day, but I haven't found such a thing and I'm not about to write the code for one myself. So I'm not sure why I decided to do this graph above, but I did, and now I've got a graph. Sure it's blurry, but if you click on it you can unlock its wealth of informative content.

_
I also wanted to get a quick post in before I head to BuildBoston tomorrow for a couple of seminars. They're nothing special, but there should probably be something worth writing about.

Also, I have another trip back to Philly coming up this weekend. Let's hope there aren't any complications this year.

A Quick Note

2007-11-08T23:35:00.000-05:00

[image from wikipedia]

Fear not, this blog endures.

Like the negligent father skipping a young boy's birthday, I failed to post on the anniversary of this little baby of a blog. And things worth writing about have actually been happening!

Work has been [relatively] busy. This is a good thing, however it has contributed to the lack of production on this little site. So while this is essentially a placeholder, there have been a few things that I will most likely be writing about in the near future. Frank Gehry's Stata Center at MIT, one of the three Gehry buildings I've visited (the L.A. Disney Hall and 360 Newbury Street in Boston being the other two) has generated a lot of buzz within my tiny social circle, meaning that everyone from my older brother, college roommates, and mother have brought a particular news story to my attention:

The $300M Stata Center has a leaky roof, and MIT is suing Gehry Partners LLC.

What struck me the most while being notified about this by so many people was that, as my brother emailed me the article from NYTimes.com, I noticed that it was the 3rd-most emailed story as of this morning. Which kind of blew my mind. It's rare that works of architecture get such attention, (unless perhaps they are attached to events of larger importance, such as say the Green movement as a whole, or perhaps the Hurricane Katrina reconstruction) and this seemed like an opportunity for everyone outside the profession, and maybe from within as well, to beat up on architects that don't make buildings that look like buildings.

As far as current architects go, Frank Gehry doesn't get me going perhaps as much as, say, Morphosis or Peter Zumthor, but he seems to have assumed the role of the primary poster boy of all architects--and while lawsuits over buildings' performance are somewhat common in this industry, this particular situation is seems like it'll be bad for architects in general. Maybe I'll talk about this more in depth (or in more clarity) later.

It should be noted, that despite the building's functional shortcomings coming to light, it has been well-established that the program of the building, to foster better spaces for scientists of disparate disciplines to interact and complement each other's work, has been an overall success. This should be the true measure of the building. Even though it should be the most basic requirement of a inhabitable structure to keep the rain out, buildings can do more, and this one fulfills greater requirements. So we'll see how this plays out, and it's sure to make the Everyman on the street think even less of architects and what they set out to do with their lives, but that's that.

At any rate, I'm back, baby.

Where's my de Botton?

2007-10-15T23:35:00.000-04:00

I read an article by Alain de Botton last Friday in a magazine I typically loathe. I can't find this article either in print or online, so I'm starting to question whether or not I actually read it. All the same, he had a short little piece in Architectural Digest, which I consider to be an almost complete misnomer. I would name it some sort of hybrid of "Lifestyles of the Fabulously Douchey" and "The Drapery Report".

I am not spouting off on without reason, you see: I received a subscription to AD from a family member who mistook it for Architectural Record, a much more appropriately named rag. It's about architecture (or building, rather) to a fault. But because of this innocent mistake, I had a chance to preview the Digest, and have come to know what I know of this unnecessary magazine. That being said, Susan's mother subscribes, and I can't resist picking it up whenever I see it. It was probably a morbid curiosity about how words like taste get tossed around like imported, handmade throw pillows by people who can actually afford architectural services, and what becomes of architecture when it's executed by people who should know better. And that people think that this is what architecture is all about.

The de Botton editorial was a quick piece about how people relate to their surroundings based on their childhood environments, and come to understand the basic elements of architecture. de Botton's own perspective came from his Swiss (I believe?) boyhood in a spare, modernist home, perhaps a worthy progenitor to an IKEA showroom, that would come to frame his opinions on architecture. What I recall about the article trails off from here, (the Sox were on, and en route to victory in Game 1 of the ALCS vs. Cleveland), so what I'm left with is the elementary psychological conclusion that situations in one's upbringing color their perspective when they reach adulthood. I know there was more to it than this, though I cannot recall it exactly. I think the author went on to posit that this connection is very strong and is the reason why many people in this country resist living in residences that suit their times.

It is not mere nostalgia at work here, but nostalgia that has become actively ingrained in the mind and evolved into an aesthetic filter for the built environment. We cherish and worship new technological innovation and the next big (or little, in most cases) thing. Even in houses--innovation, though typically reserved for electronics within, fills the spaces we live in. Yet they remain dressed up like their recent ancestors. There are powerful forces in play that I wrestled with for much of my thesis, and I still can't grasp the many reasons why we feel compelled to live in homes that are artificially reaching backwards in time. Don't read Architectural Digest.

I Finished the Gin: Now What?

2007-10-06T23:17:00.000-04:00

[I didn't even get the Bombay!] As the title might suggest, there's been some drinking going on. The gin I purchased in anticipation of last weekend's visit by some old Philly friends has now been thoroughly consumed, and, the "now what" remains. It has occured to me that it is nearly a year since this little blog got going, and it it appears that I have accomplished less than one post a week. A few have said, "hey Mike, cut the length and post more often: surely this will help people stay engaged and not forget all about this little turd of a blog."

I had some great visitors last weekend: a trio of friends from Philly, [a city whose distance seems to increase with each visit, whether it be my going there or their coming here.] We toured the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum [and personal belonging prison], a place I had never been and have now been thoroughly introduced to: although they seem to take a secret joy in prohibiting visitors from enjoying their facilities all that much. [Personal bags in excess of a fistful, and leaning beyond the vertical plane of the courtyard's perimeter seemed to be way out of bounds.] In their defense, they did suffer a massive, unprecedented heist not too long ago. All the same, I'm not likely to make off with a two-thousand year old sarcophagus anytime soon. I kinda dig how old Roman sarcophagi are used for everything but their original purpose once they are exhumed. Example below, taken while walking the Via Appia:

[all Romans know that any old sarcophagus can make a sweet-ass drinking fountain]

One excellent thing that my friends and I came to appreciate was the dearth of explanation of the museum's artifacts: the lack of explanations made it so much easier to make hypotheses and unadulterated guesses about the origin and intentions of so many art works that we'd otherwise try to interpret through some breathy, explanatory index cards affixed to the side these works of art. Less reading more looking and more seeing. Despite the overly strict guardspersons at the museum, the overall curation [or lack thereof] made critique so much more accessible, so much more personal, and much more meaningful. And my second visit to the ICA was a little more critical than my first visit: after all, who wants to shake hands with a someone's ass? [the second trip to the museum helped me to crystallize my exact my precise displeasure with the layout of this "sweet shit, aren't we edgy" museum, courtesy of DS+R. There's plenty I like about it, but it does little without revealing the overeager machinations of too-smart academic maniacs. Or something like that.

[check me out, the front of a cultural institution, or is it some grim industrial alley: you decide!]

This is the front of the building. Oh, and where's the rest of the gin?

Geeking Out with Mr. Brian Dennehy

2007-09-25T21:31:00.001-04:00

[Denver Art Museum Addition, Daniel Libeskind]

OK, so I'm back. And as the title might suggest, I'm back with quite a vengeance. It's been a long time and some interesting things have happened that should have been typed about. I went to Denver to visit my brother Bill, and checked out Daniel Libeskind's new Art Museum and the Monolith festival at Red Rocks. Spoon and Flaming Lips headlined. Both were amazing. Also some other stuff has happened, I'm sure, but it's probably irrelevent.

[ "I'm interested in bellies. We've all got bellies. Look, you've got a belly right there." -Brian Dennehy as Stourley Kracklite ]

But now, as I type, I am watching "The Belly of an Architect," a 1987 film starring an actor I admire for no particular reason, Brian Dennehy. It's about an architect, set in Rome, and for these two reasons alone, I really couldn't resist hijacking my mother's Netflix queue, and putting it on. Yeah, I still live at home. And I don't like it any more than you do.

Anyway, back to Dennehy and his titular belly: this film is proving itself to be a love letter to the actor's torso more than the city of the film's setting. His character, Stourley Kracklite, is an American architect who travels to Rome to spend a great deal of time clutching his torso, and soaking in a giant marble tub. This is due to an ulcer of some kind, and he pulls his shirt up and vomits a lot. These things are alright with me. The unnecessary nude shot of Brian Dennehy jumping into his bed, however, was, well, unnecessary. I will say that it was shot from far enough away to be tolerable, and there are enough pleasing images of Boulee's work to cancel out the images of that pasty torso.

Aside from that, it is proving to be an intriguing film that makes beautiful use of its Roman backdrop (which in 1987 was vastly more yellowed than the just sandblasted and scrubbed post-Jubilee city I lived in for the first half of 2004). In addition, Kracklite's character is in Rome to assemble an exhibition of Etienne-Louis Boulee's work, and a dialogue evolves between Kracklite and Boulee through his analysis of Boulee's projects and Kracklites' gastric distress.

Oh, and his wife is bedding the Italian architect that is also working on Kracklite's exhibition. All doubt that an (American) architect's life is one of futile toil and psychological self-immolation. In summation, some truths I have known for a long time have been reinforced: Brian Dennehy's giant, hairless belly is worthy of its own film, and Rome is an beautiful and endlessly fascinating place on this earth. And that architecture is a sure path to physical, psychological and professional implosion, often accompanied with self-sabotage of one's personal relationships. I am not a movie critic, but I'll give the first hour of this flick a solid B+.