similarities & differences

el lissitzky_ proun 5a

vladimir tatlin_ counter relief

mitzi pederson_ from: i'll start again

the chair

lebbeus woods

the GREat rant.

[found as image when searching "GRE criticism." Apropos.]

I am also bitter. Check out the deep-sea news blog's post on the GRE and you will too. Is nothing sacred from becoming a corporation any longer? Or is the corporation now sacred. But I am not just bitter from my feeling of being used by corporations like this, or that the GRE is antiquated and unsuccessful in doing what it claims, but becasue educational institutions, both public and private, while knowing all of these things, still require it. And while New York State took steps to regulate their practices in their public primary schools, they still subject their students to do them, and their places of higher learning require the test for admission. Not all states, programs, or schools do, but most. And why? And if certain schools use the scores to toss out a percentage of applicants before looking over any further information about the applicant, are they not necessarily throwing out a student who could bring honor and achievement to the school? The answer is yes. What is education anymore? And how are we measured by it and for it?

I feel this is my least intellectual posting, but it is one that houses some deep-seeded frustrations. Further to come, is a brief analysis on class-status and the ability to not just perform on the test, but to take it at all.

[presenting]

many of you may know about the little endevour i got myself into for about a year before i left the third coast and sojourned to the east coast:


i now proudly present: studio deep end.

we're off an running - have been for some time - the group is set, the build out works, and the galleries are ready to fill! last friday the deep enders launched analog blog: our gallery space. the show: Nostalgia, Logic and the In Between runs from 10.8 - 10.22. the show holds various objects with a range of themes. mostly incorporating objects with wry commentary, they are aimed at evoking a broad range of emotional responses using minimal materiality.


the opening night was really exciting and we're looking forward to keeping the engery flowing and doing what we can to inspire milwaukee!


please keep visiting. we will continue to fill the webpage and introduce the [digital] blog as the weeks go on! rock on!

appeal [for] the real

i didn't know what to expect sitting down in woord auditorium to hear a lecture titled; appeal of the real. my interest was peaked - i guess - by the fact that i have a few freinds getting their degrees at MIT and since speaker sheila kennedy is a faculty member there i'd try and make some connections between our two institutions.

she says the title of the lecture is a little mis-leading, but i think it works - she shows projects that take very theoretical concepts and [attempts to] makes them concrete. maybe the title should have read; appeal for the real. the projects she chose to show dealt mostly with the fine line between prototyping and production and "explores architecture, digital technology and emerging public needs."

her firm, KVA; MATx boasts a large r&d department - which is a little unorthodox for a mid-sized firm - generally. it works though, MATx is producing some truly incredible and liberating design concepts; the interactive wall @ PENN's SOE, the east river ferry project, their ocean [in]sight competition entry, the portable light initiative, and their soft house competition win -for example.

a few highlights were;

the portable light initiative. it seeks to replace the fire as a source of illumination is rural and developing areas. the technology utilizes flexible pv panels in a modular, flat packed assemby that soaks up the sun during the day and gives a family light at night. new versions now incoroprate usb plug-ins for recharging phones. now the idea is being adapted all over the world from applications in handbags, to hospitals blankets.

yeosu; living ocean comp. the marcus prize group - silofill will like this one. the repurpose a set of silos in korea with emphasis on advancing knowledge and technology concerning the oceans and coasts. it's a really bold proposal. the inhabitable space is surrounded up ocean water that is pumped up via pv and creates a visually stunning effect. it also reflects the local vernacular of rooftop water towers prevelant in the area. it's called ocean[in]sight

lastly. they've recently won the iba hamburg competition with their proposal; soft house. it's pretty incredible infrastructure for local energy generation. cleaver and seductive in the design - it uses pv embedded curtains to generate power as well as a LED display to simulate the wind [similar to the PENN project].

happy hunting.

A4001: CORE I studio: assignment ii_ backpack purification

A4001: CORE 1

our second studio assignment deals with the scale of the body, water, air, edges and boundaries.

WHO estimates the number of people without access to clean drinking water at 1.3 billion. everywhere from the deserts of africa, to the himalayan mountains.

CHARGE: the backpack is a water purification system able to supply purified water from most non-saline water sources. water can be drawn from ponds, rivers, lakes or standing water that may contain chemical and biological contamination.

THESIS: a central task of architecture is to create enclosure, separating a within form an outside. the relationship between outside and within is evident through the use of section: a 2D tool, invented about 500 years ago to give determinacy to the relationship between inside, outside and also the tectonic transition of the two. one of the central tasks of this tectonic articulation is to keep the weather out: water and air. Water is especially tricky to keep out since it is in constant search for it gravity bound horizontality.

LOCATION: bhulbhule, lamjung province, nepal.

REFLECTION: the incredible potential in the sun's rays is amplified through a dramatic shift in elevation [mountains]. bhulbhule provided a unique case study: isolated [broken transportation networks], lacking of basic needs, natural hazards [water table pollution], difficult topography [extreme cyclical weather patterns], a culture of carrying [sherpas]. these conditions mean that many are left with running water 1 in 4 days, susceptible to 16 hour power cuts. regular and recurring transportation strikes leave people stranded on the road, lacking food, without clean drinking water.

so, if you're stranded in the mountains, on the muddy roads, or caught in a himalayan monsoon, fill up your pack and let the sun help you purify while you sojourn... or your nomadic migration.

EDITORIAL NOTE: after all that... i realize my section is missing [stated in my thesis]. well, missing from this post [it's not worth sharing yet - YIKES]. should give me something to work on for a bit. keep you posted.

Musings on Contemporary Design

The details and delineation that have, in our recent past, defined us and our environments— pieces, originally made to sit side by side, categorized, are rusting together and inside of one another. Nothing is separate from one another-- neither in physical expression nor in thought.

I have begun to read my home in such ways. There was a time when, growing up in the spreading out of the Midwest, I saw it as one set of pictures with the same caption. But, I see its pieces now, no longer separate. Each piece and picture is an identity that gives way to identities. They are changing and moving. And in this change it is not that they require new environments, but simply new environments come about, and dialogue is begun. We belong, as designers, to a landscape of dialogue. A landscape which pauses, reacts. We cannot examine space, program, structure as singular, as individual and timely choices. Design is now, more than ever, about complex relationships, their identities and intensities. The city is experiencing the complexity effected by a substantial rusting.

This set of identities is not unique to Milwaukee, but to today's City itself. There is nothing I find more interesting, nothing more cross-disciplined than the study of cities and the participation in them whether that is walking down a street or designing in its context. It is important for me to be part of that dialogue as a critical and conscious observer and doer. I need to be plunged into new intensities, to understand different identities and their relationships. It is a concept to me, that seems, once understood completely, to govern the spaces that will change everything. But it is dynamic, quick and growing. It is large and small. It brings to mind movement and a designer's need to move with it-- literally. Extending limbs, touching, drawing-inward, outward, running, being-in. This exasperation, this shortness of breath is then, a design of participation and it is design through which I can hope to participate in this movement.

art of unemployment 1: Vegan Cow

Quitting my final service job in order to devote a couple months to grad school preparation was not without its dry consequences. I do not want to do my portfolio all the time, nor can I make myself do it. Along side my responsibilities to express myself well enough for my top-choice schools, I've begun several art projects to keep my mind in the sanity zone. Here is a sample: Vegan Cow.



Vegan cow sculpture uses one of the most plentiful materials known to me in the upper midwest: Common Bluegrass. Yes, lawn. In order to raise a cow, it needs around 167 lbs. of grass per day (25 lbs. of dry matter). I used substantially less. The sculpture is based on a unit system, the unit being one blade of grass, each being braided into long strands and held together with tension (thread). The process was time consuming and done in a few choice places representative of my unemployment: the park, the bed and the bus. Finally, it became a gift to a vegan friend, a perfect expression of folly on raw energy, time and the consumption of grass by livestock.