2AeM is a cooperative design effort composed of the 3 young Midwestern-sprung, spread-the world-out, out-and-out Architecture student-architects: nicholas m. reiter, Jessie Wilcox and Peter Nguyen. The team base was originally Milwaukee, WI but since has become a mobile abstraction or a state of mind. 2AeM is sometimes physical, sometimes sober, partially virtual, usually vocal, and all-the-time IN-it.
We are track jumpers, demons, villains and observing you right now. Design is the New and so are the Stakes.
Heres an interesting design build project that recently caught my attention. while my search for the holy grail I found myself looking at Voronoi geometry. of course I can't say I understand it since I am still in the beginning process of learning parametric ideas, But... I can say I like it :P heres something on the side that reminded of what I was looking at.
the project is pretty wild yet simple, all the extruded (Packed) pentagons point and bend towards a certain object in the exhibition. and on top of that changes thickness from top to bottom I'm guessing for structural reasons.
There is a simple 3 and 4 prong solution that holds the pieces together. I have also recently ran into a plugin for rhino called Rhinonest, its used for so for to unwrap models and tag them for fabrication, maybe in a couple of months I'll figure it out so we can use it for something interesting :D
heres the link for where I found it originally. and heres the link for their own blogs and updates.
legos have been receiving a lot of love recently. everyone it seems is using these building blocks that have powered so many of our imaginations growing up.
there's james may's lego house.... sadly destroyed.
then there's Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's, a famous fashion designer, accessories strutting down the catwalk.
but, this project absolutely blows my mind. while i maintain a personal nostalgia for these little modular building blocks this project utilizes these tiny pieces in combination with light to create amazing works that shape shift before your eyes.
"the program called shadow art is an amazing new computer model that allows designers to create objects based on the multiple and highly specific shadows that those objects will cast when lit from different angles."
i don't quite understand how or what these designer/artists are doing, or how they are able to combine images into a three dimensional work, but it's an amazing process with equally supreme results.
While I am away in Europe studying, I set up a blog for my trip. the entire blog is filled with images I have taken and is updated almost daily until now. so I hope you like it, and I'll be back in the states in roughly two weeks. maybe then after we'll do another competition in celebration of my return??? :P
finally a tool that allows you to draw in the digital world, and i'm not talking about cad people! With the combination of a track ball and tablet this program allows us to draw freely in euclidean space, i can only image the fun things nick and jessie could dream up. is the gap between hand drawings and digital accuracy dwindling? or am I just day dreaming?
I excited to see what happens next, that or maybe we'll just have to take the exploration into our own hands. :D
This video on TED is a good illustration of howPlay is important. However, the short lecture made me think further on several things. One, the man giving the speech, while most likely a veteran public speaker, seemed very much at ease. He was not simply sharing and spewing his passion, he was enjoying himself as well. The images he chose to show, too, were designed to be playful... visually playful anyways, and hitting something in a collective consciousness of pop culture. His allusions to animals seemed more astute, but it wasn't until Homer shows up on screen that people actually participated in laughter. The topic of work and academic-frameworked play was especailly interesting to someone like myself, thinking of the way in which we 'work' or create. I wonder if those students who made that great movie about an alternative form of meeting dressed in a suit and tie and lived ina bad office building while they came up for schemes of the film, or ideas about what a "meeting" was. Putting Csikszentmihalyi in there, too, made me think. The philosophy in "FLOW" is very appropriate to an individual's outlook on whatever task he or she is doing, but my problem with using it in the interpretation of this film is that it is still somewhat protestant in a way. One can experience FLOW in anything, but there is also something to say about finding what gives you FLOW. Did the character in that film enjoy working in a suit and sitting at a computer all day? Well, maybe he did, but the fact that a mundane office beauracracy like a "meeting" had to be turned into a FLOW experience, makes me wonder if the task of sitting at a desk all day could be transformed bodily to give it more of a FLOW experience for this young man. Professional firms like Google, Apple and IDEO seem to respond to this principle.
This could open up so many more conversations, then, about creating for yourself, creating for many, the biological political/systems impact on the workplace and on what we consume.
the beauty of nature touches us as something great that goes beyond us. man comes from nature and returns to it. an inkling of the measure of human life within the immensity of nature wells up inside us when we come upon the beauty of a landscape that has not been domesticated are carved down to human scale. we feel sheltered, humble and proud at once. we are in nature, in this immeasurable form that we will never understand and now, in a moment of heightened experience, no longer need to because we sense that we ourselves are part of it. i look out into the landscape; i gaze at the sea on the horizon, look at the masses of water; i walk across the fields to the acacias; i look at the elder blossoms, at the juniper tree and become still. she is bathing in the sicilian sea and dives under water. her heart misses a beat. a huge fish passes close by silent and infinitely slow. its movements are untroubled and powerful and elegant. they have the self-evidence of millennia.
after a long night, some strange thoughts flicker through one's head.
my roommate and i have endeavored on a new experiment with the qualities and synaesthesia.
the idea is to play an in congruence with an instrumental piece of music as a driver for another, secondary spark of creativity. quick writings, inspired by vibrations. a dialogue built between two, could be infinite, furthers depth, weaving the tapestry into focus...
play while reading. play while writing. play while thinking....
[push play]
[read] the music rises and falls, undulating like the surface of the sea. am i lost? am i on a nautical navigation to some sort of distant destination?
Mother nature, evident in the Midwest. Harmonies exist between men and their mothers. Inland America, the statistical average of the sea to shining sea. Are we forgotten? Is our fate nothing else but to be mocked by the 'united citizens'?
the horizon breaches... a glimpse of a tail dives back beneath an azure blanket. comforting...
Another day dawns upon us. Who are we? What are we? What are we capable of? insecurity threatens our existence like a cold war - when will we dispose of our preconceived notions? when will things change?
central park yelps. rat dogs. slow rain. heavy drops dance across the window pane...
I see a crane. Is development to be taken literally, or figuratively? Is it a mere coat of arms for a society or something more?
bring your coat, we're going out. to where? its not about the destination.
It's about the journey. Imagine an apple core... how did it come to be? Where did it come from? Who harvested it? What were they like?
eyes squinching shut on an undersized couch. no comfort. head spinning. gaining bearings, smacking lips, cotton mouth, nothing to do but wait it out.
I can't sleep. Am I awake? There's nothing I can do but shake.
on the edge of a cliff. waiting for gravity to release me. wind steals droplets from my face. the hike down through pine canopies, yellow stones, chipmunks, squirrels, into the unknown. don't feed them, just jump in.
Please leave a comment on how the two work together.
eco-architects, Mitchell Joachim, Lara Greden, and Javier Arbona, designed the structure combining contemporary digital technologies with some great concepts drawn from various vernacular sources. The result, a living, growing structure: a microcosm of ecology and high technology.
TerreformONE, the collective, is a non-profit design group... wow. according to the site, "Terreform ONE is a unique laboratory for scientists, artists, architects, students, and individuals of all backgrounds to explore and advance the larger framework of green design. The group develops innovative solutions and technologies for local sustainability in energy, transportation, infrastructure, buildings, waste treatment, food, water, and media spaces."
this post is long over due, but i'd been helping construct uwm's first entry into the solar decathlon. this is building competition that 'joins 20 college and university teams in a competition to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house.'
the project is the culmination of two years of design and execution. i jumped in during the last 6 months of the project as a builder. not really having much formal training in carpentry, i learned on the job, fast. we all did. the house was showcased in dc from october 9 - 18, 2009.
the project - meltwater - uses nature as a model. much of the region around milwaukee has been shaped by glacial forces. the earth's shaping strength is articulated in the butterfly roof and along the south facade. the design was stimulated by a desire to harness the limitless power of solar energy and our finite fresh water resources.
the rain screen ungulates over the surface, giving depth and allowing shadows to paint its surface. 'the topographical facade sweeps across the front of the building reminding the building and its maker where we come from, and our indelible ties to our region.' we worked closely with the aldo leopold center, many of the materials used in the house were sustainably harvested from the foundation's grounds - including the rain screen.
the form and potential of the home takes on the strength characterized by the natural process that reworked our regional landscape.
we constructed in multiple locations around milwaukee, including our newly renovated kenilworth building - with historical ties to milwaukee's long tradition to industrial processes - and the courtyard of the school of architecture and urban planing. we had eight days to reconstruct the house on the mall - the heart of washington dc. we were in the early morning shadow of the us congress and the evening shadow of the washington monument.
there, we ran into some snags and our competition scores reflect. it began after we were re-routed around indiana and later getting into washington dc. the deliveries put us two days tardy... growing pains. it's all a learning process.
