7 Things I Want To Do Before I Die:

1. See every Corbusier building.
2. See every Kahn building. (well on my way on to this one).
3. Sail the Atlantic.
4. Teach.
5. Play guitar.
6. Watch my portfolio double and triple and quadruple and so on.
7. Make a mix CD of the songs to be played at my funeral and write all of the speeches for my friends to recite, so I can ensure that I am properly honored.

7 Things I Cannot Do:

1. Dunk a basketball
2. Play guitar.
3. Operate a thermostat.
4. Trigonometry.
5. Bite my tongue.
6. Go to sleep early.
7. Wake up early.

7 Things That Attract Me to the Opposite Sex:

1. Dark hair.
2. Uniqueness.
3. Sex on a first date.
4. Good music collection.
5. Individualism.
6. Leave me alone.
7. I’m busy.

7 Things I Say Most Often:

1. Evs
2. Player.
3. Holler at your boy.
4. Word.
5. Word. Life.
6. Word. Born.
7. Respek.

7 Celebrity Crushes:

1. That chick in Meet Joe Black and Basquiat.
2. That chick who sings for Eux Autres.
3. That chick who sings for Rilo Kiley.
4. Yo-Yo
5. MC Lyte
6. Roxanne Shante
7. Mona Lisa

7 People I Want To Do This:

1. SB
2. CY
3. JJB
4. EMB
5. NWA
6. EPMD
7. Marcus Shankandburg

The Salk Institute by Louis Kahn in La Jolla, California. For my money, this is the finest building in North America.

A view of the Teak fronted offices for the scientists. I could write a lot about “truth” and materials here, but I will save that for another time.

A beautiful detail of the poured in place concrete. There are so many moments in this building where you can see the “hand of the artist”. Kahn was such a master of materials that this building which was built over 50 years ago has withstood the onslaught of the salt-watered air and several earthquakes. His recipe for concrete has aged incredibly and, remarkably, there is not a single crack in the building. In the new addition, completed 10 years ago, there are cracks spanning entire walls.

This is the only Teak that has been oiled. Kahn asked that the building age “naturally” The concrete is as-is as well as the teak. Kahn, like many of his contemporaries was obsessed with ruins and envisioned his buildings as such. The natural aging of the teak has given the building a monochromatic beauty. Also, teak stands up very well to the elements (and is nearly extinct and unusable nowadays). Anyhow, about 15 years ago, some poor cleaning man thought that the teak needed oiling and began to do just that. He was able to finish just one panel on the deck of the library before I imagine someone ran out and tackled him. And then Lou Kahn rolled over in his grave.

A study model. NURBS design made physical. I tried to create shadows that would make it difficult to differentiate structure and shadow.

Same study model viewed from inside the library it is growing into.

The ribs I had laser cut from the NURBS design. Designing like this is easy(ish) in the computer and incredibly bloody difficult in the physical world. Again, looking at shadows.

My studiomates and I all bought mini-fridges so we wouldn’t have to dine out as much.

I am up to my ears in academia and I need a break. I need to do something stupid. I need to dress up as an animal, or a singer or something and go ask for candy.

Alas.

I have too much work to do.

However.

If I was to dress up, it would be in one of these modes:
a) Lindy England AKA Leash Girl
b) Prof. Griff and/or an S1W
c) My Armenian studiofriend Sipan who wears nothing but Sean John and has OCDly spiked hair.

Academiaville.

In the past week I have presented a project that I wasn’t happy with but salvaged my presentation with some good drawings, diagrams and Rhino/Flamingo renderings. Did I mention that I became a Rhino maestro in the past two weeks? Here are a couple of images:

My presentation board. A detail. Front and interior perspective shots. And some views of the tunnel that pierces the structure. *Note the chair that I designed in my last project showing up in the CG. Word.

Today I wrote a critical essay on the Jean-Luc Godard film Alphaville. I argued that surrealism will save us from the dystopia created by rationalist modern architecture, which is weird because though I am neither a modernist nor a surrealist, I am definitely more of a modernist. Breathe. There were plenty of Paul Eluard quotes in the paper and at one point I think I wrote that love doesn’t live in the world of concrete, glass and steel; it lives underneath the bread on Salvador Dali’s head. The paper is actually quite good (toot-toot) but it is the title that I am really proud of: A Machine For Living. Anyone who knows the film and knows Corbusian architecture will agree that that is a goddamn good title. I am a Titleist.

Silence. Logic. Safety. Prudence.

Don’t have your laser cutting done at the ironically misnomered Carpe Diem. Par my experience, nothing there happens in a Diem, even if that is what is written on the paper that you sign. Instead try the wonderful George at Penpoint in South Pasadena. He allowed me full access to his laser cutter many hours after he was closed. Cheers to George.

I am so glad that a new studio project has begun. The last one took it out of me. It is much harder to stay up for three days straight at 31 than it was in my twenties.

The new project is for a satellite campus for the Fashion Dept. at my school. The site is (where else?) in the Fashion District of Downtown LA. The shape of the site is interesting. I will post images of the site model/analysis when I have them complete.

I have three other classes for which I have tons of work also. When does it stop? I have a pretty intense detail to draw for Materials & Methods….and the phrase that is in my head is “Goddamn, why did I choose to work with Polygal and why on bloody earth are there so many little connecting pieces….”

And.

Can anyone teach me Trig? Yeah. That thing most people take in high school. Yeah. I’m doing it in my 30’s. Bringing that shit back. I don’t understand a radian of it. I am going to learn it tonight no matter how many degrees, minutes and seconds it takes me.

And.

Remember a post or two ago when I mentioned that I needed both money and a new computer? One of those two problems has been remedied. Thank you to the world’s greatest dad.

So now in my Digital Fabrication class, I am CNC’ing an aluminum arm that operates on some bearings and holds my new flatscreen monitor. And I am design/building a breathable secure box to house my new CPU under my desk.

And penultimately.

Happy Birthday to Sacha.

And ultimately.

Happy birthday to the World’s Greatest Mom. If your son wasn’t a broke college student, he would have sent you flowers or something. I’ll get you something bigger when I graduate to make up for it. I love you.

Cheers to everyone. Hopefully I will be able to update more soon. But you can rest assured that if it were summer or something I would be having a fucking field day with the debacle after debacle after debacle happening in the Bush admenstruation.

Word.

It is 4:26AM and I am just getting home to try to get about 3 hours of sleep. I think we have all learned that during school I am a sporadic blogger, at best. Every minute of my life is full right now and that isn’t some silly exaggeration. I really need to upload some photos soon. I went to Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute on Saturday. I may have already mentioned that… I’m not sure. I think that it is the finest building in America. I could go into detail, but I won’t.

Work is insane right now. I have to go to the laser cutter first thing in the morning and then do a million drawings and then work with fiberglass and resin and try not to die from inhalation and then work in the woodshop and then build an enormous model and then do a 1/2″=1′ “thick drawing” and then diagram my parti and then redesign my site entirely with orchards and vineyards. By Tuesday. The thing that I always hear from architects and professors is “design is never complete, it is just what work is finished by the deadline” and that is never more true than now. I feel like I have too many idaes/schemes and too little time to implement them all. Oh. Add to my previous list that I need to design a piece of furniture by 1:00PM tomorrow. It isn’t going to happen. I don’t think.

Speaking of furniture. I have an offer to sell my chair. I will go into it more later, when I have more details (and when the chair is a little more functional). But I need to tweak the design and make a couple more for the gallery that wants to show it.

Umm. Send me money, I am going broke. Today:

sci-arc supply store: $123.00
lowes: $50.00
plastic depot: $75.00

this project so far: approaching $500.00
previous project: well over $700.00
next project: at least $500.00

i need new computer(s), like right this second. My computer can’t handle the work I am putting it through and i need to address this very soon: :$1500.00

parking tickets: $200.00

Amount of money I have made this semester: less than $400.00 There is no time to work.

So if you do all of that math, I am at least a million dollars in the hole this semester; and that isn’t even factoring in necessities like food and porn.

Good nightmorning.

It is exactly 3:27AM, and I am just getting into bed. I had a long, productive day and finally worked through the design block that had been ailing me on my project. The solution is simple and obvious, it just had to be worked out.

Anyhow, just saying hello. Here is a list of things that are making me happy right now at 3:29AM:

• Not having to wake up to an alarm. It is a rare occasion, but it happens tomorrow, and I couldn’t be giddier about anything right now.
• My car not being towed and/or there not being any tickets under my windshield wiper which happened 3 fucking times last week. I heart LA.
• Sufjan Stevens. I admittedly was a little late recognizing how good he was, but I have been loving Illinoissince my drive back to California a couple of months ago. I played it for my studiofriends who are all a little bit mainstream (though open-minded) and they were blown away. That was exciting.
• My studiofriends. Their work, their opinions, their drunken idiotness. I love them.
• Harvesting. I will upload some photos of my Sunday. Studiofriend Danny has a vineyard and invited all of us to join his incredibly Italian family to pick grapes. There was a lot of picking, eating, drinking and laughing. We worked for about 11 hours and picked enough grapes to make 3500 bottles of wine. Yeah, 3500.
• Rhino 3.0. Though it is a little bug-infested still, it is the Cadillac of design programs. it has freed me from the constraint known as AutoCad. I honestly think that I have opened AutoCad only once this semester. All hail NURBS.
• Realizing that Rapid Prototyping and CNC’ing and Water jet and Laser Cutting are all well and good, but not life changing and that nothing beats an X-acto and a straight edge.
• Sweaters tied around my neck and being ultra-ultra preppy.
• Thinking about December. Seeing my family and hopefully going camping with my sister, brother-in-law, nephew, nephew and niece. I miss them all very much.

More later, and some photos. Cheers everyone.

It’s 7:21PM and I am going home. I have been working my cock off this week and it is time to relax for an evening and watch last nights episode of Arrested Development that I am currently downloading.

At closing today, I am about 4% down in the Stock Market. I added a few new symbols to my portfolio, so we will seem how they perform tomorrow.

Trading stocks is interesting. It’s even more interesting/complex when you are a leftist who has read and understood and agreed with a lot of Marxist thought. But somehow I am totally into capitalism, and totally totally into the stock market. I was talking to my friend Danny earlier about our investment principles. I was saying how I would never invest in companies with terrible business practices. I admit there is no avoiding it completely, but there are lines to be drawn. I would never invest in a tobacco company. Nor would I invest in a company like Halliburton. Even though the energy sector has been going through the fucking roof lately, I won’t invest in oil. I will, however, invest in new energies as long as they seem sustainable (don’t burn yourself on the hot buzzword) and responsible.

Which leads me to this Motley Fool article I read about Socially Responsible Investing [I can't find the bloody link right now and I am too lazy to go searching for it.] But anyway, SRI’s, so hot right now. I usually stay away form mutual funds, but I may buy a few shares of this SRI-approved fund: CNVAX.

I am going to make a few small changes to this site soon-ish. I am going to get rid of the “reading, listening, watching” stuff on my sidebar. I will let you know in posts if I read, hear or watch anything good. (Right now: Arrested Development, The Verve’s Urban Hymns and a million architecture books including Delirious New York) I may also change the theme, since I am no longer totally into sailing. I kinda like the anchor so we will see.

I had a few drinks at a friends party last night and I am paying for it today. I have been in Studio for about 6 hours and accomplished nothing, aside from buying a small fridge and stocking it with Trader Joe’s goodies.

That’s the site model for the project I am currently working on. The model is solid and huge and weighs a few hundred pounds. The site is here on campus between the Library and the Library Annex building. It is a long open rectilinear area with a few cypress trees and two grapefruit trees. I have to design a pavilion for fruit selling. My Studio instructor told me to consider productive ways of growing/harvesting fruit here on campus and the environmental impacts of that production. I am thinking of a couple of roof gardens, an orchard where the seldom used soccer field currently resides, and growing some vines on the existing buildings. I have an idea for the space/structure, but it is all of the other aspects of fruit that I need to research. I know absolutely nothing about horticulture, and I don’t even know if that is the right word.

This is why architecture is the greatest field. Understanding building techniques and good design is, I don’t know, maybe half of architecture. For every project you have to truly understand the functions/actions that will occur in your space. Or you will be a shitty architect, it’s that simple.

So tonight I am going to research fruit growing, harvesting, storing, juicing, consuming and water reclamation and roof gardens and energy reduction and and and and.