Building your Architectural Library

It seems we've been told since nearly the beginning of our architectural education of the extremely important concept of building our architectural library. I actually do have a good number of architecture books, but most of them are gifts from aunts and uncles who don't really know what a good book is for an architecture student. Therefore, my architectural library mainly consists of general architectural history books with a handful of Frank Lloyd Wright books and bios sprinkled here and there. It's not that I don't appreciate those books and don't enjoy thumbing through them, it's just that it kind of feels like receiving a subscription of Architectural Digest for your birthday instead of Architectural Record. Inspired by the Barnes and Noble giftcard I found in my wallet and the prospect of returning my second copy of 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School (both had been gifts) for some store credit, I set off in hopes of expanding my architectural library with a book or two more relevant to my studies than the secret life of FLW.

I eventually found the architecture section, and realized I had been quite naive in my hopes of finding something along the lines of Vers une architecture or Delirious New York. There were only about 6 ft worth of architecture books, and even more sad was that these were mixed in with the interior design books. Really, the majority of the books in that section seemed to be about home improvement. After much sifting I eventually settled on two purchases: The Architecture of Happiness and From Bauhaus to Our House. The former is about the philosophy of the importance of our architectural environment on our personal psyche and the latter is a critical satire on modern architecture. Neither is written by a big name in the architecture world, and I seriously doubt either is on the list of recommended books given to us by our freshmen studio profs, but I look forward to reading them nonetheless and hope to gain some unconventional architectural wisdom.

"Football O Saurus"

...is the name of the game.

In the spirit of RAWRchitecture and the upcoming World Cup, a fast-paced, vigorous and controversial game has come to my attention.

Named... Football O saurus. It is exactly what you hope and expect it to be.

Football and Dinosaurs.

The aim of the game is to captain a team of vibrantly coloured Titanosaurs and win against another team of dinosaurs in soccer.

"Football-o-saurus is a fast paced game of 5-a-side dinosaur football...The computer controlled dinosaurs are all very intelligent and will run into space when their team has the ball, and mark their opponents when they are defending so you have to put together a good move to score a goal. The computer football game is networkable so up to 10 people can play against each other over a local network or the Internet."

For those of you who have taken lpap125 will know that space is key to winning the game of soccer, so the fact that these dinosaurs understand that shows that they are indeed very intelligent.
Also, a ten player game? To me this sounds like a perfect game to play in that environmental class we have to take next semester. If you think you can take on team Kiwisaurus-rex.

Down with SC... Up with Football O saurus

Singapore Police use Facebook to try to catch criminals

I can remember a time when it wasn't that ridiculous to ask a young person if he or she had a facebook account.  Now, the social networking site is ubiquitous and is changing the way people interact with their computer and each other.  Singapore, always trying to make the city-state a more harmonious place, is using facebook to host security cam stills of suspected criminals in hopes that netizens will call in with tips or leads.  While people use facebook for all sorts of things, I am on one hand impressed by the Singapore Police Forces resourcefulness, and on the other hand somewhat put off that facebook is becoming a huge electronic wall, where anyone can anonymously pinup whatever they feel like.  Perhaps, however, this is just a case of Singapore being Singapore, something that I realized when I found this image:

Its caption reads: "Police are looking for the man shown in the picture to assist with investigations into a case of theft of bicycle at Blk 55 Geylang Bahru on 15 March 2010." 

Hmmm, I wonder if they ever found the guy so that he could "assist".  Nonetheless, at least 25 people like this!

 
 
More candid camera culprits can be found here.

Paris in Review: Sainte-Chapelle

Well this seems redundant, but I guess this will be for those too lazy to rummage through the images themselves or those who like the sound of my sweet written narration. Anyway, onward.
One of my favorite places was Sainte-Chapelle. Here is a Wikipedia brief to prepare you for my comments after the break.


"The Sainte-Chapelle, the palatine chapel in the courtyard of the royal palace on the Île de la Cité, was built to house precious relics: Christ's crown of thorns, theImage of Edessa and thirty other relics of Christ that had been in the possession of Louis IX since August 1239, when it arrived from Venice in the hands of two Dominican friars. Unlike many devout aristocrats who stole relics, the saintly Louis bought his precious relics of the Passion, purchased from the Latin emperor at Constantinople, Baldwin II, for the exorbitant sum of 135,000 livres, which was paid to the Venetians, to whom it had been pawned. The entire chapel, by contrast, cost 40,000 livres to build and until it was complete the relics were housed at chapels at the Château de Vincennes and a specially-built chapel at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In 1241, a piece of the True Cross was added, and other relics. Thus the building in Paris, consecrated 26 April 1248, was like a precious reliquary: even the stonework was painted, with medallions of saints and martyrs in the quatrefoils of the dado arcade, which was hung with rich textiles"

Remember Paris?

I know it has taken a while, but I've finally found a home for the stupendous amounts of photos I've taken.
Here is the flickr link. It's not fully on there, Days 1-4 are on right now, I will try my best to put them all up there in a jiffy.

Rem-ember me?

Thus begins my summer in Beijing.  While I am going to continue to post on RAWRchitecture, I am also going to start another blog focussing on things I do, eat, and see from day to day.  You can find it over at http://www.zhi-nal.blogspot.com/.

My life as an intern: week 3: overtime

It feels quite weird that it has already been tree weeks since I've started working as an intern. One of the things that reallly gets to me is how relaxing working for someone else really is. I mean, sure it has its disadvantages, such as the stifled creativity or the face that you basically get to do all the boring stuff and really non of the fun things. Yet, doing non of the fun things is actually kind of great. Being a part of the grind means I don't have to worry about anything other than just doing what I'm told.

It surely isn't how I want to live out my life, doing work for other people, but as a break in-between school, it's absolutely fantastic. I work set hours and overtime means working till 12. At school, work really starts around 12. What I do isn't life changing or rediculously rewarding,like curing cancer in a third world country or saving cute endangered animals while the sun beams down on my strong muscled shoulders.(jk I'm pretty scrawny) I am however learn a ton about how to manage my own workflow and how the creative collaborative process works in a corporate enviroment. If I can do that while not expending every ounce of energy in my soul then I consider this a tremendously rewarding summer activity. Before I babble further, I should talk about what this post is about: working overtime.

Working overtime is pretty sweet. Free dinner, free cab, and coworker bonding not to mention the extra pay. The last time I worked overtime, I was still jet lagged, but this time, I could fully appreciate its good sides. Usually at school, working towards a deadline usually means working my ass off on my own project, usually with the company and the support of whoever else really needs to get stuff done and happens to be there In studio. At work, I found oddly a strong sense of teamwork. I guess that's what all those team building exercises companies spend money on is for. Not that I'd like to work overtime everyday, but once in a while, I feel like it is really valuable.

Shanghai EXPO! Danish Belgian and UK(ish?)

I don't think it needs much explaining, so here are a bunch of pictures.

The Need for LEED

Frank Gehry recently had some controversial opinions regarding LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a system for rating buildings on their "greenness") . Gehry is quoted as saying in reference to LEED, "I think the issue is finally a political one...a lot of LEED is given for bogus stuff." This seemed to have caused tremendous unrest in the heart of Susan Szenasy, who wrote a letter titled "you are so wrong, Frank Gehry", in which she writes:

"With buildings known to produce more than half of the world's carbon output, surely those who design and build them have to shoulder some responsibility. But not, apparently, Gehry. He cavalierly called out LEED ratings (and thus the many efforts made every day by architects and designers to make our world less toxic, use available energy and water more carefully, pay mind to the site and its proximity to public transit, etc. ) as 'political' and 'bogus.' This is unfortunate for everyone concerned, and everyone must be concerned. But I'm not surprised, though I am saddened no end."

Fred Bernstein architecture writer and critic countered Szenasy with the following

"One example is CityCenter, the Las Vegas complex that contains more than 5,000 hotel rooms, plus casinos and shopping malls and restaurants and nightclubs - altogether, 18 million air-conditioned square feet smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I can't imagine a greater environmental disaster than this complex (which, in addition to requiring vast resources to build and operate, is designed to draw travelers from around the world). And yet it was awarded LEED Gold status." 

Building Comedy

Almost all forms of art have a comedic genre, yet such a category doesn't really pop-out in the world of architecture.  However, I've started to think about this quite a bit.  First, can architecture be funny.  Secondly, if so, should it be.  I think it's fair to describe goal of architecture, at least in one way, as the pursuit of improving the human condition through our built environment.  Now it has been shown that laughing causes people to live happier and healthier lives, but should we be content with our diet of laughs coming from the things and people like youtube, Judd Apatow, and Flight of the Conchords, or should our buildings help crack a smile too.

My Life as an Intern: Week 2

Week two was truly as about inspiring as the title of this post. After last week's overtime and then days off, this week made me realize what the "grind" really mean. I didn't work any overtime this week, nor did I have any desire or need to. There was a project meeting on Monday followed by the assignment and reassignment of boring projects. Whereas last week there was always something I needed to finish, this week was full of me trying to figure out what I should be doing. Why can't the project manager actually manage the project or at least give me some resources to learn something?

My Life as an Intern: My boss, my boss' boss, my boss' boss' boss

Last week was my first week working an architectural Intern. Having only just completed my sophomore year, I could not possibly have known what to expect. The firm I currently work at is a division of one of the largest firms in the world (or so they claim). It definitely feels big. Taking up the entire 22nd floor of a very funky yet corporate looking building (and parts of the 21st) this monstrosity of an office as only one part of a huge web of offices is hard to imagine. Timesheets and overtime approval forms and software licensing forms aside, I did feel like I signed my soul away today when I signed my contract...

Home3d app and why the future is full of terrible looking homes

Inspiration for this article can be found at www.home3dapp.com
I recently got an iPad. I am very happy with the purchase. However,
today everything changed. I was blissfully browsing for apps as usual,
looking for things to put on this beautiful piece of machine. I don't
know what possessed me, but I typed in "architecture" into the search
bar. Then, everything I believed to be good In this world changed
drastically when I came upon his app. This abomination of a bad idea
and whatever posses these people to produce it and bring it to light
makes me want to rip my eyes out.

dress like an Architect: black

It has been a while since my last post and since I've been at home for 2 weeks now, I can't use school as an excuse for being busy. I have, however, been able to reflect on the original point of this blog, as lighthearted means of journaling observations on architectural. Expect more of this sort of thing along the way as summer begins to come full swing and sleep loss from the school year has been redeemed.

There is no doubt architects are characters. Perhaps it stems from the attitude that accompanies a "maker", that they have an inherent power to create and decide, and thus a license to be slightly different from the average salary making professional. Yet with all of there quirks, why does the stereotype connecting architects to black clothes? They are supposed to creative people, no? So why the simple palette?

Shanghai and the Shanghai EXPO

Well, to all five people that read this blog, I am heading out to Shanghai tomorrow. Due to blogger being banned, I'll see what work arounds I can use to post. I will be in Shanghai for an exciting three months. While I am there, I will be working as an inter as well as visiting the hell out of the EXPO. Shanghai is going to be awesome, so expect posts about buildings, food, and more buildings. (or no posts at all, if China upped their game)

-Laters y'all

IBM City One

IBM is releasing a "serious" game that seems on the surface to be a Sim City like game. The goal is to build smarter more sustainable cities. One of thing things IBM is doing towards its "smarter planet" goal. Look Forward to it in the fall of this year.

Arty

To perfect to pass up for RAWRchitecture, dinosaurs in architectural landscapes. Not to mention how inherently architectural dealing with issues of scale, representation, and photography vs drawing is. More at Original link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/sets/72157623723956821/

Images by Ben Heine