native states of america

new show that just went up.

[picture forthcoming]

riding off the intense foreclosed: re-housing the american dream (a whole other post) one week to fabricate and install!

Annie Siris Coombs and Zoë Malliaros present:
Native States of America: Lakota Housing, Infrastructure and Economy

after winning the Percival and Naomi Goodman Fellowship as well as a couple Kinnie awards the two spent some time out in the good old midwest, on the reservations.  interviewing, recording and investigating the complex, convoluted relationship between those on the reservation and outside forces (mostly the government).  a few case study projects are on display along with a couple short films and an awesome glowing map.

check it out.  down on the 200 level of Avery Hall.

experiments in motion

EiM

an advanced studio option for the third years @GSAPP is partnered with Audio of America to seek answers to the questions: "what is the future of our cities?"; "what is the future of mobility?"


there's some great interviews following the link, and a nice shot of my boy e.Ben Brichta
this is highly curated, which is terrific to see.  lots of collaboration.

a year behind, but still asking the same questions, our studio is concerned with the same site....
let the conversations begin.

i argue poetics over motion, but that's still motion.  i guess it's a question of pace, and scale...
an argument for slower over faster maybe.

VOTE4CENTRIPETAL

vote here!

singing- ringing tree

insanely beautiful.

Centripetal_ zoomscapes

 2A_eM collaborates with Situ Studio.

today's technology (the camera) allows one to experience architecture through a new medium (film) at new speeds beyond the human experience. we can replay, distort and adjust reality along new trajectories at various elevations and perspectives creating new opportunities for experiencing space, the city and the architecture surrounding us.

this is the result of an exercise in design fabrication. a prototype was constructed using CNC technology combined with reclaimed bicycle parts to produce a mechanism to rotate a camera about a Y-axis. the revolutions combined with a forward vector produces a loopty-loop or corkscrew condition.

occupying a subway, we shot these clips looking across and down the tracks out the side and front windows (respectively) of the J train. the result is a disorienting experience of the city.

here is a link to the vimeo album.  

a short edit is up for voting in the videotect architectural film competition,NOW!

buffalo: then and now

reminds me of detroit, or the american economy.
ugh. the ugly side of urban 'progress'

short article of buffalo then and now.  one hundred years pass, and a whole lot of mistakes to show for it.

Reassuring

News... Some good. Some bad. So, architecture is apparently the highest in unemployment for the newly graduated. That's great (pick up my sarcasm please). But, the bright side; our unemployment rate is still under the national average at 7.7%. Let's hope 2012 sees some turn around... For everyone. Seriously

A-Periodics?!?! NO....just A tile.

Finishing up my final studio project this quarter for the M.Arch 1 program and this is what i'm left with. 1) a piece of code for danzer tiling, 2) Connection points to make clean connection among tiles, and 3) 100 extra pieces I was never able to put together.....

The built portion of this project consist of roughly 6oo surfaces glued together (4 straight days of building)....the process was a difficult one due to the scale of the pieces. Its a little odd to say that the 1 to 1 scale mock up might have been easier to build then this 3/4 model was...but time will tell after break. Hopefully I'll be able to build this during break! Wish me luck!!

ice cube celebrates the eames

yes! meet your new meme

the [dark] cloud

so.... a few days ago we were thrown for a psychological loop.
here's why:

winy maas came to lecture in wood auditorium and two days later a studio mate sent us this link to "the cloud" MVRDV's new project.  basically, it's our housing project [but, of course we like out gesture more...].  so, in an attempt to maintain our design genius we - jokingly - said winy must have seen our project and stolen our idea.

i hope that's not the case, but it helped us feel better about our work.  then, look what pops up on msn's homepage [not mine] and being hotly debated.
seriously?! get over it people.  support the arts, and optimism!

[update]: housing studio

a little more tweaking.  can't wait to get the unit models in there.
whoa.  get ready folks.  we're coming for ya the 14th!

 corner of 125th and lexington

 look up!

 porosity | pixelation



hovering corner

marketplace bridge

[update]: housing studio

live : work

in full on production mode. learning to tame the vray beast....

semeseter is wrapping up [wrapped for most]

i want to keep working with my partner!

a reluctant enemy

a reluctant enemy

#occupywallstreet

occupyprints

UCLA Project 3 so far.

BentSpace:
A project based on bending plywood....right... I threw material study out the window for the start of the project. Instead I took a stab at A-periodic tiling and this is where i'm at.

The system lends itself to make pockets of space.

these pockets have different variables to create new atmospheres within one system. [not shown... :(] But what is shown here is refinement on how these tiles come together. No more Crazy Angles connections!!!



so far...is this what they want? I have no idea :P.

#occupywallstreet

below is a preview of some of the poster art i've been putting together. 
monday's rally should be epic!

a few more details to polish up and they should be ready to print.

"the status quo has got to go" (2011)

"who are you protecting?!" (2011)

"brutality" (2011)

...more to come.

#occupywallstreet

some reading for those wanting to know more about what is happening

paul krugman: nytimes
matt taibbi: rolling stone
reinhold martin: design observer
jd sachs: nytimes

data visualized: by the gaurdian


charts, charts, charts


...and this ariticle highlighting the bat signal of the 99% that showed up at the 11.17 rally.  first across the federalist buildings in the financial district [the cops caught wind and coralled everyone marching from folley park across the brooklyn bridge].  it was a much needed inspirational lift at the time... and then to see it occupying the verizon tower facade. remarkable!

ofuro

custom japanese ofuro [bath]
bath made of wood.  so nice.  i soak a while in that.
apparently, baths don't come in endless varieties like shoes.  too bulky to store in warehouses and keep on show room floors means only the strongest [sellling] survive leading a lack of diversity.


this deep cedar bath is an elegantly crafted solution for an applicance that takes up plenty of household real estate.




some other examples of ofuros can be seen through custommade:ofuro.

#occupywallstreet

r. black

OWS week of action.  student and laborers. shut the city down.

massive canvassing @GSAPP [just in time for zaha].  this is a call to action.

earth

this video happened to catch my eye walking past a friend's desk!  i could sit and watch this for hours (due to school, i've calculated many minutes, approaching an hour - but best believe i will return again and again to this clip!)


view here.... the embed didn't work for some reason.  but seriously, do yourself a favor. take a break and make on more click!


a camera attached to the outisde of the international space station captures some riduculously amazing imagery of cityscapes illuminating darkness, storm systems dancing across the arc of the horizon, and the most spectacular dance of the aurora borealis i have ever seen!


serious props to ron garan, michael konig and crew!

tree sketch

trees

jim kazanjian

wow. these images are absolutely fantastic! photoshop mastery.

untitled (implosion), 2008

untitled (structure), 2007

untitled (facade), 2010

more, more, more!

Occupy Wall Street Architecture

Occupy Wall Street Architecture
Frederic Levrat – Nov 4 2011

Controlled space

Space is currently defined by a controlling mechanism ofproperty right. Investment companies acquire land through leverage andspeculation, then rent it for a profit to the real user of the space, whiledisenfranchising the community as well as the individual from the most basicright to occupy space.

The main maps we have of the city – such as the Sandbornregister – are black on white definition of property right,only stipulating theowner and its property for insurance purpose on profit on the  increased value of property. There is absolutelyno indication of existence of trees, of community activity, of the density ofhappiness, noise level, social interaction or any human quality. It is a purerepresentation of the controlling power of a few individual over what used tobe public space. Everything is about money and control, about property and the precise/legaldefinition of it.

Questioning these types of boundaries is essential but notentirely a new struggle. The history of the nomads, violently repressed by thesettlers in the North American genocide, the North African Touareg, theaboriginal tribes of Australia is a long history of confrontation between thehoarder of the land for a profit against the actual user of the land. Morerecently, some alternative thinking produced some interesting re-mapping of theurban context, with the French Situationists trying to remap Paris based onsubjective perception of space rather than objective state-issued maps.
We need to rethinkspace in general, and public space in particular.

It is not surprising that the drum circle is the mostcontroversial element of the OWS camp. It challenges the notion of enforceableboundaries. Unlike the physical presence of the occupiers, the sound travelsfree in between the buildings and through the air. The physical bodies areconfronted to metal fences and police forces closing space down at every turn.The police are enforcing every possible law – and many interpretation of it –to claim territory and mostly to deny the freedom of assembly andmovement.  But there are other ways tooccupy the space, to break boundaries, to circumvent the solid edges the powerfuland its legal sub-system has been erecting. An ephemeral occupation of thespace needs to be engineered, with temporary banners, video projection and soundprojection.  We need to rethink our environment, as a flexible and adaptable one, where boundaries are allowingpeople to meet rather than to separate or protect the dominant from the dominated.

blow up the school; pi san animation

with the nytimes reporting of increasing censorship by the communist party in china they've also produced a supplementary piece that outlines the creativity and pointed criticism of the government's actions.

animator Pi San's cartoons are a "mordant swipe at the educational system." One of his first animations of the wordcloud-headed character, Kuang Kuang apparently was viewed 3 million times on its first day posted. government officials reacted by slapping the artist with a fine for "inappropriate content."


here's the Pi San's first animation called: blow up the school.


there are many more available via youtube


* interesting editorial note:
the video is posted by an online chinese magazine called danwei; which is also a type worker house_ this term is connoted with the period of chinese history under heavy socialist influence.

#occupywallstreet

ideas

the results of an exchange of information after a rather awkward platform for discussing [@gsapp] the events that have surrounded the occupy wall street movement.

[yates mckee was terrific; articulate and insightful!]

see you on friday.

math = cool

proof that math is cool!


15 uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.


for more details see science demonstrations


the period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. the length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. the length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations.

this apparatus was built from a design published by richard berg [am j phys 59(2), 186-187 (1991)] at the university of maryland. the particular apparatus shown here was built by our own nils sorensen.

caffeine

excellent animation! simple architectural axons put to good use - taking on a life on their own.... a scary, gattaca-esque life.