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?