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<------ does not work well with others   
09:24am 01/02/2006
  this makes me sick . let the bullshit engine persevere

Paratheses is a symposium addressing the evolution of the architectural thesis project -- from the individual manifesto to collective research ventures. Although not new, research within the profession of architecture is nebulous ground and within the last several years, this mode of collective research has become a distinct pedagogical direction within graduate schools of architecture. Collective research labs proliferate as educational models for innovation. Harvard's Project on the City, UCLA's LA Now, Architecture Association's Design Research Lab (DRL), RMIT's Spatial Information Architectural Lab (SIAL), Penn's Non-Linear Systems Organization (NLSO), Columbia's CLab, as well as Stanford's new " d.school" all claim a collective initiative for production. The architectural thesis project, which has historically served as a litmus test of forthcoming theoretical and aesthetic changes within the discipline, is currently being questioned, edited, and even eliminated altogether from graduate schools of architecture. While the independent thesis project exemplifies the image and model of the Architect as a heroic individual, unconstrained by exterior influences, the emerging "think-tank" type model instead engages reality in order to produce researched "options" or "findings" to table for discussion. But does this collaborative "think-tank" model jeopardize the independent thesis project and dilute its pedagogical aims? What is at stake in embracing these collective models of architectural research? What new direction is offered to the discipline?

Speakers:
Denise Scott Brown <--- the mother of postmodernism. i hope she dies .
Brendan Moran
Mark Jarzombek
Sarah Whiting
Roemer van Toorn
Jeffrey Inaba
Brett Steele
Sylvia Lavin
Keller Easterling
Mark Wigley
Reinhold Martin

Organized by Jonathan Lott, Brian Price, and Dominic Leong with Columbia GSAPP		  
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oh dear god   
12:16pm 10/10/2005
 
music: disappointed
( someone please pay for me to go to this :: (it's only $485) )


[i'm too lazy to link my own pictures]

The next step of Buggitecture is on hold until I can find 1/2 inch wide bass wood strips that
are @ least 48" long and have them delivered. i'm building a circulation system within the
previously posted bug, that look like continuous antennae almost. working drawings as usual
will be a bitch but according to my studio teacher

"all this weird stuff is better off outside your head than in it, don't you think?"

my other subjects have fallen behind & this past few weeks i've had a break thanks to jewish
holidays but also a HUGE motivational problem... i find myself more willing to study brain
architecture than to work in the studio (doing well in psych after being allowed to make up
a few - killed a test worth 1/3 almost of my grade in under 15 minutes)... perhaps i'd make
an excellent psychologist but only a good architect? i might choose the psych stuff just to
have something that i feel competent in while i study in studio (psych as a minor of course..)

there may be some complications regarding getting in-state tuition - basically if your parents
are from out of NY & you're under 24 you stand no chance, even if you've lived in NY more or
less since you were 18... total bullshit i know, and i'll have to submit police reports proving
domestic violence as well as my mom's felony paperwork to maybe be given "independent" status
& free my scholarship money from the death grip of out of state tuition.. ironically, florida &
maryland would also charge me out of state - meaning i dont belong to anywhere at all... this
sort of beauracracy makes me want to KILL

i got yelled at for yelling at a tech guy in front of a client (who i didnt know was a client, but still)

i'm stressed out here, but help is on the way		  
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11:55am 05/10/2005
  ( flyer made today for impromptu marketing at Johnson Design )  
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aes project 1 sans working drawings, avec last minute mutation   
11:51am 30/09/2005
  Project: Using a 24x36 piece of cardstock, without cutting any pieces away, use orthagonal scoring patterns to depict your idea of a "threshold"

my definition of a threshold was a borderline, a place of becoming, though i wanted to leave some earlier themes i had explored of "threshold of pain" and the like. I also wanted to explore the tension between digital vs analog - this began with the "becoming" themes [before, after and a quantum jump in between, hence the 'threshold' being the moment of jump] I want to post earlier versions, but basically i came up with a 'structural system' of strips cut in opposing directions interlocking. I ended up with a box which I "pinched" at the bottom to create the central chamber with ribs (before the "pinch" the project was very orthagonal, and I got a lot of "m.c. escher" comments.. after the pinch a lot of "santiago calatrava" comments... DEFINITELY an improvement, I think)

Anyway, here's the distorted product of my mind... its supposed to be the tension between the mechanical and the emotional, and it happens to make some cool spaces too, depending on the scale on which it's seen (project conceptual, no scale given )



( the final version, process to follow )		  
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01:10am 10/05/2005
 
music: [listening to music that only the two of us could hear]
so my mission should i choose to accept it is within a few days transform a few meager pictures and a crude floorplan of richard meier's hoffman house into less crude .dwg files and presentation sketches... i really had a minimum of information to work from but here was me trying to wrap my brain around this thing, like speculating about whats inside a closed box.. actually most helpful was a birds eye view of the site plan which cast roof shadows; without that tiny tiny 1.5 inch little image id have never put it all together... thats what i get for picking a rather obscure work that doesnt even exist as it was built anymore... an acad plan, a presentation el or two later, and a failed isometric and failed perspective later, i still say my little preliminary thumbnail sketch had the most 'soul'... damn

good thing i didnt try to go out and see this thing since they put a bunch of additions on it.. of course you look at the floor plan (it makes more sense with the first floor as well) and you can totally see it coming... not everyone can handle tight spaces the way i can, i guess.

on the summer reading list are foucault's discipline and punish and christopher alexander's urban-planning 'bible', a pattern language. which tells you those obvious things that are so obvious they are overlooked. i am a total slave to this for the next week and a half then i get more freedom than i could possibly want or use.





( what first made me decide to do Meier, even though i'm still not sure how i feel about his work.. its sometimes rather predictable )		  
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01:58pm 05/05/2005
 
mood: .
music: smashingpumpkins. inmybody


hold silent
you were my violent snow
in my life
just for the moment
and then the young die
so you can die
i was alive
i was alive
in my body
you'll never find me
you'll never pull me in
in my body
the lonely creatures
the lonely creatures scream

 
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03:13pm 09/03/2005
 

scrawled somewhere over the atlantic ocean . an attempt to make a cognitive map of where i need to be . but where to begin .

some books, by category . although its more like a continuum than any discrete categorical order . really the field i picked categorically impinges upon everything else . so this is all just wanking .

history

a critical history of modernism
100 yrs of architecture
the seduction of place
corbusier in the u.s.a

theory

visual thinking for architects and graphic designers
form, space and order (ching)
pattern languate (alexander)
living city (frank lloyd wright)

tech

details of modern arch books 1 and 2
construction science 1 (find the others!)
why buildings stand / fall

communication

mastering autocad
autocad for engineering
photoshop cs (req'd)
arch dwg (yee, req'd)
free sketching / prismas
mastering watercolor wash

industry

morphosis
arch record (done deal)
pushing the limits (petroski)

other things - place studies . building type studies (transportation interchange first? not the easiest building type but the most fascinating to me) .

how can i learn design on my own ? i can saturate myself with information but until i get into a dialectical, PROFESSIONAL studio atmosphere

i'm just fucked .		  
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konstruktsiia
 
 

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