I Admit, I Like Pretty Buildings

Reading 9

Phenomena: This big theory was very appealing to me, at least the way it was explained and analyzed. It was a great Reductio ad Absurdum argument, which is the type of argument paper I am studying now. Ozayr’s lesson on phenomena seemed very relevant to this theory, where all experiences are interconnected in your “image” of the world. I loved it.

Webs: The way all was interconnected in this paper in this paper made me think of giant webs of intangible associations we make for all the tangible things we encounter. It was a nice way to think of our world.

Questions: How does this affect our thinking as designers? When have you encountered something that caused a fundamental change in your “image”?

Reading 10

Over-analysis: While this reading does have its bits of wisdom, I felt like it sounded absurd at times. Obviously, we don’t exist purely because the sunset’s reflection needs someone to look at it. The over-analysis in this reading made it lose its credibility with me.

Questioning: The character in this piece, Mr. Palomar, questions his surroundings with insane detail. Personally, I’m glad I can just look around me and accept my surroundings. I would rather accept them and let them add to my “image,” as in the first reading.

Questions: The part about the topless girl at the beach was very interesting, even in its paranoia. Doesn’t this prove that you can’t remove the emotional meaning of an object and treat it apathetically? What is the value of trying to do this? This all proves Ozayr’s lesson on phenomena. Can a thing ever truly be disconnected from all its frameworks?

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Historically, some of the world’s most famous architects have been self-trained. It sometimes makes me wonder why there are such steep requirements to become an architect, especially when you are allowed to just get a master’s of architecture degree regardless of your undergraduate education. I mean, if the math majors and the dance majors are going to catch up to us in grad school anyway, why are we even putting ourselves through the intense undergraduate major of architecture? So if I was freed of the obligations of design school, would my heart be broken? No, I might actually feel more able to pursue the other things I want to devote time to en route to becoming a majorly successful architect.

First: writing. I believe my strongest skills lie in writing, and that is where I have the most opportunity to change the world I live in. Professor Angelo Volpe (we just call him “Volpe”) has trained me for three semesters now in expository writing and argument. My first semester of college, he was the one who started me down the path of social awareness. The papers I write are always on topics that interest me, usually having something to do with the messed-up relationship skills of my generation. It certainly is a far cry from the work I do in architecture school, but I know my writing classes has benefited me as a person to a huge extent. I think people don’t realize that a good writing teacher doesn’t teach grammar or style, but they teach their students how to think. Combined with my passion for story-telling, I think my expository skills could lead to a second career telling stories with significance, with meaning. I live for good stories, and I know writing them will always be a part of me. No matter how time-consuming my career in architecture may be, the writer inside me will never stop coming up with characters, plots, settings, and life lessons. I think since it takes so much training to become an architect, the world will always consider me an architect first and a writer second. To me? Maybe it will depend on the day.

Second: traveling. There’s no way to learn about the architecture that already exists on our earth better than to experience it firsthand. It truly takes a three-dimensional experience to discover a building’s essence. Architects need to know historical precedence like the back of their hand. An architectural history class can only get you halfway there. Wouldn’t it be super cool if architecture school consisted of traveling around the world for four years with an architect and studying famous and vernacular buildings? Maybe that would just be too cool. Everyone would want to be an architect.

A picture I took of Le Mont St. Michel in France. I definitely learned lots about architecture just from a day trip to this extraordinary village.

Third: hotel designing! I’ve always had an insane obsession with hotels and resorts. Someday, I want to design them for a living. I know I’m supposed to say my ultimate goal is to create affordable housing and sustainable buildings, but why not work those things into my true passion: the hotel industry? The Four Seasons on Koh Samui by Bill Bensley has been hugely influential on my future career. Bill Bensley got onto Architectural Digest’s 100 top designers list by designing this ritzy resort that doesn’t interrupt the environment in any way. He literally built the cabins around the palm trees. They come right up through the bedrooms, bathrooms, lobby, etc. How more exotic, yet obviously sustainable, can a resort be? I want to be that kind of designer when I grow up.

Bill Bensley's totally amazing Four Seasons resort that I wish I had designed.

Another of my secret ambitions is to design for Disney. Yes, it's sad but true. I want to be a more whimsical Michael Graves. If it were allowed, I would make a semester at Disney World be a mandatory part of architecture school. There really isn't any other designed environment in the whole world to make you deliriously happy. Every inch of Disney World is highly designed to be beautiful and fun.

A picture I took at Disneyland Paris. You can see the magical architecture that is absolutely lovely.

Michael Graves' corporate Disney building in Burbank, California.

Posted by stead024 at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Playlist:

-“Hello Helicopter” by Motion City Soundtrack: This song has a pretty strong message about how war messes us up. It’s about how no one wins in war, which is one of the highest contributors to child mortality.

-“What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong: Has there ever been a song that better inspired us to preserve our world for the children who are growing up in it?

-“This Land” from The Lion King: Sierra Leone has the highest rate of child mortality in the world, and this instrumental song beautifully captures the essence of Africa’s landscape. It makes you feel like you are there, witnesses the sadness of that place as well as its energy and beauty.

Quotes:

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.

Children are one third of our population and all of our future.

(from http://www.quotegarden.com/children.html)

Do, or do not. There is no 'try'.

(from http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/quotes.html)

Posted by stead024 at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://www1.umn.edu/stadium/images_stadium/east_rendering_lg.jpg

Sorry I’m a bit late on this one…

Bridges Vs. Stadiums: Who gets it?

After The Bridge collapsed, there were countless issues we had to deal with in our great urban backyard of the Twin Cities. Is our infrastructure really in the great condition we thought it was? Should we brace ourselves for a death fall every time we cross one of our apparently weak bridges? Who’s fault is it that this happened? On and on…But one group of Minnesotans let out a huge collective groan when we realized just how much money we were going to have to pipe into our bridges’ conditions…

The sports fans.

It’s been a long, hard road that our hard-core football and baseball fans have been traveling in Minnesota. If you think about it, it just doesn’t make sense that a popular state like Minnesota just doesn’t have great sports stadiums for its pro teams. Every congressional session, the stadium issue pops up in the news. How likely will it be to pass a Vikings stadium? A Twins stadium? We finally got our Gophers stadium, after years of my dad getting his hopes up every time the issue came around.

It’s a difficult issue, since not everyone is going to support the new stadiums. But anyone who’s been to the Metrodome knows it’s been a temporary solution for what, like 25 years now? It was cheaply built, it’s ugly, it’s inadequate, and it houses three of our most important teams. I’m not a huge sports fan, I’ll be honest, and I’m definitely not picky about where I see the Gophers play, but I do know enough to know that putting a baseball team in with two football teams is just unacceptable.

Which is why I am always the girl telling my friends they are totally ridiculous for whining about the new on-campus stadium here. Me, I’m pumped for open-air football, even in this miserably cold state. But lots of people don’t see it as a new, exciting turn of events for our school’s atmosphere. The Gophers just anger lots of students, and I constantly hear them groan about the money it’s costing us to build a new home for them.

As if the whining weren’t loud enough already, the bridge collapse seemed to bring the anti-stadium people to a deafening level of uncertainty. Now, we are faced with the endless cost of fixing up our shockingly poor bridges. They say that our very own Washington Avenue Bridge was rated as being in the same condition as the fateful 35-W Bridge. Can you imagine all those pedestrians walking across the bridge between class, and then being tossed into the river? Ouch. But then again, the WAB doesn’t have the level of traffic the other bridge had, and it has the support of those pylons in the middle of the river. But still, it is scary to think about how much in need our bridges are of some maintenance.

So how are we supposed to decide who gets the money? The sports arenas will certainly encourage economic growth around them, helping out businesses and leading to development. But the bridges benefit everyone, and let’s face it, it would be quite embarrassing if the Twin Cities were to face another failing of our infrastructure, let alone devastated by the tragedy.

I’m from Anoka County, which is about a half-hour north of the Cities, and we’ve long been a frontrunner for the location of a new Vikings stadium. As a humble (though huge) suburban county, we have this “Who, us?!?” attitude towards the proposed stadium and we try not to get our hopes up too much. Though I really do not support the Vikings, I can see how investing in a new home for them might draw some better players and bring them to the forefront of pro football. It’s the same reason I love the new Gophers stadium: build it, and the good players will come. You need to put money into it in order to improve the team.

And so I am torn on this issue. As un-glamorous as it is, we do need to channel money into our roads and bridges. Immediately after the bridge collapse, the editorial page of the Star Tribune newspaper said, “There can be no doubt that today, the adequacy and safety of the rest of the state's roads and bridges is Minnesota's No. 1 public policy concern.” The paper said a week later that it would cost us 1.4 billion dollars to repair all our failing bridges. But if that’s what it takes in order to ensure our safety and confidence on the roads, we have no choice but to cough up that money over the next few years to make our Cities safer.

And I am confident that down the road, the Vikes and the Twins will be happy, too. There’s simply too much pressure on the government to ignore the cries of desperation from that outspoken minority of avid sports fans.

Posted by stead024 at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reading 7

indistinction: This reading clarified the distinction between professional and academic architecture, then showed how they should really rely on each other. In the end, it asserted that it is most beneficial to combine the two and find a happy medium, or at least a happy intersection.

uncertainty: There is clearly a discrepency between the views of the different academics, as demonstrated by Julia Robinson's opposing views in this article. They can't seem to decide where academic architecture should fit in, and there is no clear answer.

Questions: Does side research enrich your education, or can too much of it burn out a potentially great designer? How much value should we place on research this early in our education? Are we equipped with the knowledge possible to gain new knowledge for the field?

Reading 8

encouragement: This was obviously written by someone who is very familiar with how design school works. As a probably survivor of it, the writer offered words of encouragement to a current design student. Most of it was sort of obvious, but it's not a bad thing to hear it again. Sometimes we forget how important it is to give it our all in school.

realism: This reading didn't glorify design school. It told us how it really is, and how hard we will have to work if we want to excel at it. Most academic architects admit that architecture school is demanding, but they rarely acknowledge all the extra work we will have to do if we want to be the best.

Questions: The reading doesn't account for those of us that have other academic priorities, say a minor in another subject. Will those other commitments be worth it in the end? Will they help/hurt us in architecture school? It also doesn't address having a personal life outside of design school. How much do they expect us to put into it? Won't we be better designers if we spend significant amounts of time outside of the design world?

Posted by stead024 at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within.

-Andy Goldsworthy

In the urban environment that we live in here at the University of Minnesota, sometimes the concept of "environment" gets confusing. Surely anyone would automatically assume that word is describing a natural setting, a wild and rural place. Is a man-made cityscape of concrete and plate glass the sort of environment we so often discuss in architecture school? Would Andy Goldsworthy consider our surroundings to be sufficiently soul enhancing?

As a naturalist, Andy Goldsworthy gravitates toward the untouched parts of our earth. But in the quote above, he uses the word "material." A warehouse is a material just like a tree is a material, so I wonder if he would ever consider working with a city as if it is a forest. Interesting. Certainly the urban forms around us have energy and space around them, as well as within them. I mean, take a look at the Minneapolis skyline. It inspires feelings in me, as well as in many others, that tell me it has a spirit just like any of Andy Goldsworthy's favorite natural materials that he uses.

Having lived in the suburbs, the city, and up north at my cabin, I can see the energy and spirit that each environment has. While Andy Goldworthy values the natural, however, I think people give a great sense of energy and motion to whatever they create themselves. As magical as a forest is, I think the city deserves some praise for how magical it is, too. People living close to one another and leaving their mark on a place, that's cool. Think of everything that goes on in the city, how much interaction goes on, and how that makes the fast city a great place to be. While I can see how the peaceful rural areas are exciting because of the small things that happen and have great effects on the rest of the ecosystem, I have to appreciate the more large scale happenings of the city. To each his own, I guess.

The video did have a big message about environmentalism, though, and it conveyed it well through its views of how delicate nature can be. It is intriguing that us city dwellers often call ourselves the hard-core environmentalists, but we stay far away from the truly green parts of our world. I like this quote from Goldworthy, because while we do want to preserve the natural parts of our world, it is the energy contained in them that is what matters the most. Lose that, and we have killed things we won't be able to get back.

Posted by stead024 at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)