I really don't mean to question these groups, i really am no place to call people out, but i really felt like i was getting corporate bullshitted. I've spent all year learning about how wrong the "green revolution" was, and to listen to this group describe how we should "educate" these people how to grow cash crops of all things...PEOPLE SURVIVED MILLIONS OF YEARS BEFORE THERE WAS AN ECONOMY AND WE FED OURSELVES FINE. I think we hear too much these days about treating problems without looking at why they're problems in the first place. take hunger - why are these people hungry? well for starters the population is way over what the land will hold, so teaching them to grow your flowers isn't gonna help. better use their resources? so producing your products is a better use, than simply using them for themselves? i don't really get where this group was heading. Take for example the OXFAM example, of teaching them to grow cash crops, sure the guys are making five times as much, BUT THERE ISN'T ANY WATER LEFT. all these people are going to die by the way of dehydration in little over a year if current use keeps up. and irrigation? what is more wasteful than growing a crop somewhere it can't naturally?!?! sorry, it isn't the answer. it didn't work 40 years ago, it won't work now. I AM TIRED OF WATCHING PEOPLE RE-TRY THESE TERRIBLE SOLUTIONS. sorry guys, with all due respect, that presentation was a load of crap. in my humble opinion. sorry. really i am, good job, but everything i've learned in my life time tells me its us that have to change - not them.

I really couldn't believe that 2/3 of the deaths were in sub-suharan africa, or the amazing infection rates there of the HIV virus there. It was pretty astounding. I was a little confused by the "education is the answer" that the group presented - i guess it was a little unclear what we were educating them about. protection? treatment? i assume its using condoms and things, but all things said and done i was surprised that they focused on the architectural response if education was the answer. but if that's what gets the money, then run with it. If these programs are truly lowering rates, or at least leveling them out i can't argue. I guess i felt still really left in the dark, hopefully they went in more depth in the packet, because the 15 minutes wasn't really enough time to go in depth to the level i wished for.

i guess i would have liked to hear more about what happened to that HIV vaccine that was initial testing last year, that failed miserably. it sounded like the next big thing, but i missed the follow-up. how come it ended up increasing infection rates in mice? i wonder if a vaccine is even possible. I guess humans have finally found their predator.

what does style mean? i guess its what it looks like, feels like, the idea it gives. maybe we should print all our stuff onto leaves. write it on the wall with mud. that's style. bring in some animals, the chimps can interpretive dance it out for us. we can write it on the wall with honey and let ants crawl down it.

i don't know, i guess i'll just keep things clean, but i oh so want to do something wierd and different. i keep forgetting that this is design school, not art school. damn. guess i should have been a sculptor.

this project's style should be clean, because the project isn't. the project is messy and loose enough for itself. there isn't a right answer.

I think the house itself is a part of me, it always seemed different than where other people lived. not because i lived there, but the building itself had an effect on me. In other people's houses i never felt an opinion, i just felt the presence of people. in the house my you feel like the house makes a statement about how people should live - in some sense. It isn't particularly environmentally friendly, but it is never wasteful. it was built twenty years ago.

you move down into a living room, tall ceilings, two to two and a half stories tall, with massive windows. the clockwork, every morning i came down and laid in the sun before breakfast. 6:30, 6, whenever - it was a pleasure to wake up and just stare out those windows at the woods every morning. to sit in that sun. Its changed my identity for sure. even now in college, i'm up with the light everyday. its part of me. the first thing i do is look out the window and stare.

the most engaging opposition of the house is the small deck off my parents bedroom. yes - its entirely illegal due to building codes. they told my dad he had to put a three story column under it to support it - he said he did. i'm glad he didn't. going out on that small deck made me feel like i was in the jungle, up in the canopy, as it stuck out into the yard, and was up in the leaf level of the surrounding woods. it was always the spot for the momentous power turn. during snowball fights, we often snuck through and bombarded the backyarders from above. perhaps it only opened my world a little, but its always intrigued me. you see the small deck hanging up there, without support - as the joists are extensions of the floor joists. i love it.

there are so many parts of the house, i don't know what more i can tell you without cheating out other parts.

the porch, is one of my most precious places. the creation of something i imagine as its own little world. this porch feels in its own league, i've never been in one like it. it has two skylights, and is all cedar, beautiful smelling cedar. it has a couch and chairs, places to sleep, live, spend time outside. for one summer i lived out there, with the porch as my bedroom. the sheer prospect of it enamored me. somehow, i survived the summer, in one piece, loving it even more. the frame built around me reminded me of the woods, this structure not that separate from my fort, this embracing of the outside obstructions letting the air in.

my all time my proud detail of the house, the thing i love the most, is the floor. its nothing special, just tile. heavy tile. solid tile, laid down in concrete, finished. its rough but smooth, solid but inviting. its not the ground floor either - its the middle floor. it defies gravity, this million pound floor. it created an amazing effect within the house. normally speaking houses these days aren't too thick and you can hear people wherever they are. because of this magic floor, sound didn't transfer in our house. each floor was seperate, it made the house feel like its own entity, not a thrown up box shelter. i loved the feeling coming in for dinner, the cold stone on your feet. i've never seen tile like it, in any other building. i don't know where it came from, and i don't know if i could ever replace the feeling of that floor. it made the house. its in the details i guess...

the house does have its shortcomings. the doors are all cheap and hollow, the windows needed to get replaced this year - although they did last 20 years. i feel like i'm part of this house, and that's even before i remember that we were both built together, and we were finished about the same time. i came home from the hospital the week after my father finished painting.

i love this place, it is me. in many ways.

i don't have the amount of pictures i wish i had of the house, and it dismays me. my parents are going to sell it once my brother has left for school, and with me goes a part of who i am. after break i'm going to go home just to take pictures of everything, to hopefully capture that piece of me on film, so that i can keep it with me.

"MY BIRDS MY BIRDS"

oh, note to justin. i have logan's run on DVD, just in case you would like to not work in section this week, i'd be happy to bring it.

To be honest, i hate the structure of school more than anything else i have to deal with on a daily basis. The reason i got interested in architecture wasn't drawing or one of those stupid skills surveys, or a need to build skyscrapers, it was me getting fed up in buildings, getting tired of spaces i didn't like and didn't want to be in. Places that didn't show the human hand that built them, anymore than the suit who they are built for.

When we were young, there was only one place that we could experiment at our own devices - to really push the boundaries of how we wanted things. two words: the woods. When I went outside to play in the woods, i had all the materials i needed, a place of my own to build, and the will to construct something of my own. The childhood drive to build forts is their cry out for their own designed spaces - because crayon on the wall isn't allowed. The ceiling can be vaulted, walls can be twisted, but at the same time, they deal with real constraints that architecture deals with today. You can only carry so many sticks, only find so many, only pile them up certain ways to keep them stable. Kids must work around constraints in the same way, so in some ways, i feel like i was closer to being an architect when i was eight years old. I'd sit for hours inside on rainy days, drawing possibilities, planning our next move. Every detail of the fort is always under scrutiny for improvement. It is the ultimate building project.

Children will even move to touch every possible material, in every effective way. They will not just stick to sticks, but will find cardboard, scrap wood, snow, stones, anything left in the trashpile at the end of the driveway. They will use all these objects in new creative ways - at least to them - and every material will be tested fully and pushed to its limits. Children will scavenge what they need, in the true art of sustainable building. We often went as far as to steal things that we knew my parents never used, and they never noticed.

Those who are most creative on this earth are the tinkerers. That is who i am to discover. Those who will build of their own accord, work to shape their environment through their own choice. They may choose to dance in the woods, may choose to write poetry, and all those others would be acceptable. I'd look only for a drive to do something - one who focuses only on the task at hand (survival) will never survive. Those people will go mental in a week, they stress out, they don't realize they can shape the world around them to make it become something more inviting. After forcing the students to spend a month tinkering in the woods under hidden observation, we'd have a review. Taking those who would like to continue, we go back to the woods at put them there again. they'd stay there, sending ideas back to an office by carrier pigeon. Those would be my architects. If commissioned, we'd put them at the site, and let them be again, waiting for them to tinker out a solution. It may be a slower process, but inevitably one comes out with a much greater product.

I find it so disturbing the way children of today hide behind the opaque glow of the television, the computer, the game system. They are great tools undoubtedly, but parents should realize that once i take over the school of architecture, their children may not have a place. Those who have been thrown outside without their accord, those who have already experienced for themselves what i believe to be architecture to be, who have escaped to the woods to build that fort, those who have experienced creation and design as part of their lives, only they will continue to do it again in their adult lives. Those who lived in the glow of screens will loose the creative drive, those who live in the fluorescent light of schools will never regain the intuition to build and change the environment around them.

Throw you kids outside, and teach them to be people, what makes us human is the drive to create! Throw them into the woods, move out to the woods, escape the suburban beigevilles. I grew up in trees, i climbed them, i grew with them. The woods are a creative temple. Go outside. Now! Your true education is waiting for you, just out that back door!

The songs that influence my values towards development goals aren't any different than the ones that influence my values from day to day. Truthfully, I'm sometimes a little downtrodden by where I think we're headed in this world. Music is often a clarifying element and Milk Punk will always be my favorite genre, mostly because of the feeling it gives me. I always feel hopeful, upbeat, a smile on the darkest face - even if the lyrics lead a different way. Sometimes the culture of a music can express things the lyrics can only scrape. Milk Punk is almost always defiantly hopeful, and its members often lead lives of poverty, travel, adventure, and thrill seeking. They lead lives of happiness, without concern for those who hold them down. There is an emphasis on being hopeful, and sticking it to those who hold things away from others. Sometimes it can be a little too romantic of things, but when we think of hopes and dreams, we are always romantic. Dreams are important to these people and they never let them die. Perhaps Milk Punk will never preach of helping others - like many other genres do- but Milk Punk is full of inspiration, which one must never leave home without. Let's move on to some examples:

2. Boy Meets Girl - Ghost Mice
listen
Simple, sometimes you've got to be happy where you are, just to get through till better times. Sometimes feeling good about yourself is the only thing that gives you enough confidence to step up and help others. "Anyone without a dream must be dead, if you ask me."

3. This is What I Want - This Bike is a Pipe Bomb
listen
This one doesn't need a quote, just take a listen. They want equality, are hopeful for it, and expect it to come by telling everyone that it is. Can't be much more hopeful than that.

Picture by Marc Johns

How did i meet Chuck?

I met Chuck down by the river.

Chuck asked me to leave his home.

His home is the culvert, down in the woods, underneath the stone arch bridge.

Chuck is very scary man.

Chuck is destitute.

Every day of the year, hundreds of people walk over that bridge, and nobody notices.

Obviously we're not doing things right if Chuck lives under the stone arch bridge, in a culvert, down by the river. Chuck also gets arrested every winter, normally for shoplifting, so he has somewhere to go during the winter - his culvert isn't heated.

I find it astonishing that there are homeless, meal-less people hiding under our bridges.

I met Chuck on 10/22/07.

Chuck is probably still homeless, and will be when he gets out in the spring.

Anything can have flow. Look for yourself. Many parts of the city are designed to flow like their natural counterparts.

Every curve in the city must flow, to adapt to the boundaries where it reacts to nature. The city must be ready to fight back to maintain its place.

Energy constantly radiates from each city block. How can it not, when there are millions of living beings crawling through it. Cities are concentrations of life.

The city's glow is often my biggest reminder. The city is so full of energy that it does not simply sleep. It creates light like nature does, creating its own world in the darkness given to it.

Transformation happens everywhere in a city. During the day, many surfaces remain hidden. They lurk in the dark, waiting for night. During the night everything becomes a different animal.

Fog is an interesting beast, allowing the city to transform into something much more mystical.

Reflections allow the city to double its size, to grow, and move in ways it doesn't move without the addition of water.

An added note about energy: its amazing what someone can do just by speaking about the same things we all hope for on a daily basis. Shamelessly for Obama? Damn straight I am. Has anyone else seen that much energy in the target center at any other point this year? Not a chance.