Missing you.

It's been sometime since I've posted. More to update later.

In the mean while- I have been asked to take part in the Gestures Show at the Mattress Factory.

More to come soon. I am working with a collection of folks.

check them out!

Nina Marie Barbuto - maker who energizes an architecture which needles and challenges self definition. http://ninamariebarbuto.blogspot.com/

Dee Briggs - artist who works with fearless lyricism in raw material. http://www.deebriggsstudio.com/about/dee-briggs/

Nick Durrant - interactive designer who thrives on strategic thinking. http://www.plotsite.net/

Jeremy Ficca - architect and educator devising news ways to construct forms of elegance. http://www.cmu-dfab.com/

Pablo Garcia - artist, architect of the conceptual investigation, seeing no media as too new or old to be passed through a prism. http://www.pointprojects.com/

Jenn Gooch - artist who bears clear witness to the world we recognize but dare not know. http://www.jennifergooch.com/

Ling He - specialist in a world of architectural fiction and fantasy.

Matt Huber - architect-thinker and writer who will refine all definitions and leap to new conclusions.

Nick Liadis - architect of sound, theorist searching for a tectonics of music.

Transformazium - creative collective rooted in Braddock with revolutionary practice. http://transformazium.org/

Gill Wildman - activist skillfully capturing the imagination and generating fresh forms of engagement. http://www.plotsite.net/

Spike Wolff - artist, architect, educator who continually provokes new readings of our reality.

a second year architecture student project for sale on craigslist....

WTF?!!! Who built this?! How awesome? and I am in awe- its on craiglist....

no future in green architecture?!...

Thanks dwell for keeping my dreams alive!

presto chango

This awesome project by Gary Chang, a Hong Kong architect, is quite insperational. He transformed his pint-sized living space —a typical Hong Kong cramped 330-square foot apartment— into a super-efficient, super awesome 24-room bachelor pad with the help of an ingenious system of sliding walls, panels, and gizmos.

Recently, the New York Times profiled Chang and his amazing mini-mansion. Great way of downsizing! When Chang talks about the living conditions of the apartment when he was a child is quite shocking in comparison to his home now.

Via YahooGreen.

THOM MAYNE was never called an asshole...

Thank you Modern Lovers. Thank you more Thom Mayne. Thank you Spike Wolfe and Matt Fineout for bringing him to Pittsburgh To lecture. This is his TED lecture from 5 years before. I am very cynical about architects and one thing that I wrote in my notes was "THOM MAYNE IS NOT AN ASSHOLE." His lecture was extrodinarily hopeful and I must say it was better than any E I could swallow. After the lecture, I sat and talked with my old boss and teacher Art Lubetz, and I recently sent him this email...

I hope the Lecture monday night was a wake up call for the students at CMU archtitecture. The field has changed and is changing rapidly. Not because it is monetarily funded to do so but since it is not, now is the time for architecture to catch up to technology and the social specturm. The public's understanding of Architecture has not "changed" drastically in the past 10 years. Things are still built with archaic standards due to convenience and affordability.We as architects rely almost on what the construction industries unions and workers inputs on the facility of implementing the building. The words brick/ply/block are over expressed jargon easily digested by anyone who goes to a Home Depot. Due to this lack of inovation, I believe this has lead to the populous disregarding the architect or "architecture" when building. "Why have an architect if you can build it your self?" Good point if I say so myself. Architecture to relate to its historical roots attempted to create awe with buildings that could not be built by the average Joe. If not for the grand scale of space of Notre Dame then the simple mathematics and engineering behind Villa Rotunda. At those times, designing and building a building occurred due to wealth and education. (Education directly related to wealth and social standing.) As we are now in 2010, we have to realize that the direct relation between wealth and education has disolved as information is mostly free and readily available with in minutes of a BING or Google search. Even beyond that, information sharing and open source programs give way to a democratic knowledge base. " It's all out there if you want to know it (or have the time.)" So this brings me to the the new and present Architecture education presented to students who are paying 40,000+ a year with some monetary aid to facilitate the aftermath. What is it we at Carnegie Mellon University are teaching our students? As campy as this statement might be, we must consider them as the future future generation of architects. Not architects for the first 5 years they leave school but for the 5+ years afterwords. As a rule of thumb to buildings completed now, architecture runs in a 3 to 5 to 7 year cycle. What has been happening is that highly creative minds have seen this lacuna of life filled it up with rapid works. This has been infiltrating the architecture offices pushing the limits. "Avant garde" is just working smarter and creating "archtiecture" that the public values as such. Morphorsis is a prime example of this.

The language of architecture has changed. It is no longer simply bricks/ply/block but actual code, similar to computer programing, computational biology, and genetics. Buildings are not "inspired" by nature as to resemble them as they did in the Art Nouvea and modern times of Gaudi, but can mimic "growth" of a living system and adapt to its forces (nature/environment/

inhabitants/commerce/etc). Scripting and BIM modeling (not just revit models) are used as tools for actions. Drawing in the traditional sense is a representation. It has become the afterthought, no longer the action. A prior design is dead and uninteresting. In other words, who cares what you think a blender or a bracelet or an office building should look like. The times of just "making up" forms is over. Actual reaction is applicable due to the technological advances. Architecture and its teaching needs to acknowledge this. Most prominent schools are already on the band wagon. Where is CMU?

I believe with integrating scripting, new media tools, and utilization of rapid prototyping CMU architecture could be on the same playing field as others from competitive schools. By having studios that encourage students to not just look at the past ( I feel that yes students should still know how to draw and how architecture was created before) but should look to 10 to 50 years beyond their current times for their creations. Students should be encourage to be apt to present knowledge and current events, not just arts and archtiecture but biological and other technology. The undergrad should be experimenting and utilizing the graduate school as well. Amazing projects come out of the intelligent workplace and yet no one is aware of the work. The Brahmans are disconnected from the Vaiysas and Sudras.

When we live in a world where most people have a connection to the world wide web in their pockets, we should have students who design with this in mind. Presentation and application should also be integral to the work produced at the school.

the simpsons and architecture

Maggie is an architect.

pre post mod?

This is the pre-Napoleonic (1758) proposal by Charles Ribart for an elephant-shaped building on the location of the current Arc de Triomphe. OH those French. Imagine if you actually live in an elephant.

Stuff IT! You're Full of IT. I've Had Enough!

Old news, I know, but this could be the next great wave of graffiti, edible graffiti. Though it could also be considered just a prank or a malicious act (but really only if your a diabetic or an anorexic or have some food phobia), pieing really is a declaration of space and occupancy much like graffiti. This is a different way of tagging but actually marking the figure. It's saying "have your cake it and eat it too you jerk." From Wikipedia:: Pieing is the act of throwing a pie at an authority figure, politician, or celebrity as a means of protesting against the target's political beliefs, or against a perceived flaw — arrogance, hubris — in the target's character. Perpetrators generally regard the act as a form of ridicule to embarrass and humiliate the victim. In some US states 'pieing' may conform to definitions of battery, but not assault.
Now there is also caking which involves cake. Here is a healthy list by wikipedia as well of those who have been Pied. These delicious acts have been carried out not just by individuals but by brigades as well. Some to note are Les Entartistes,Biotic Baking Brigade, and Bakers Without Borders. An infamous one is the pie throwing anarchist Noel Godin. "We only attack the wicked--the great and the wicked," aka all politicians. When French Rally for the Republic party bigwig Nicolas Sarkozy visited Brussels in February, he was pursued through a downtown conference center by 30-odd people carrying pies and equipped with cameras. He was hit three times. "People are mad today, and this form of burlesque terrorism hurts nobody," says Van Hiel, Godin's companion and sometime accomplice. "The cream pie is the arm of the weak and powerless."

I was thinking how over architects I am. How pompous most of them are. How cocky they are. How many cocks they try to shove off as architecture.... I feel the time is now. YES NOW. For the people of the world to give them their "just desert." I am starting on a new mission. And it starts here::

Who's with me?

also...

on the edge of awesome nesss.. here are some sneak peaks of what im making now specifically for this art book im doing with kendo. we are trying to blow minds. and not design anything. or architect for that matter. My work that I will be putting in will be analog collages, a sewing paper piece which has a name that i forgot, and some digital mash ups from images that I made during my architecture educational career, specifically undergrad. So here are some of the images:: Please tell me what you think. The CAAAAAAT one is more of a joke.

my next move

After meeting with Sonny Coates earlier this week, I've realized that I have made a lot of awesome artifacts but since they weren't perceived as the final object (aka the architecture) they have been passed aside and put back in to the hard drive.

I count this lack of "being enamored with the immediate object" with my architecture education. More specific that that, my first week in freshman design studio my professors Tim Hadfield and Marsha Berger took us out of the studio and we followed them to the student center at cmu. There a group of Tebetian monks were making a mandala. I was 18 and had never seen anything like it before. It was beautiful. They were finishing it up and then the ceremony began. And what happens is that after hours and hours of laboring on this beautiful sand sculpture, the monks push the sand into piles, mixing the vibrant colors back to a mush. And as trippy as this might sound, Marsha said one of the most important things that I have kept with me to this day. And to paraphrase, it is to remember that you have to walk away from your work and its in some one else's hands. Someone will destroy your building, aka some one will kill your building. And its not for you, its for those who you make it for. (Wink wink.. how does this relate to my Inhabitable Organism??!!!!)

This video is very similar to the mandala experience I had. I used to have some of the sand and now I am kicking myself because I have no idea where it has gone to through all my moving about. But the sand is just an object as well.

So back to my little story. I am putting a book together with Kendo of our work. I am putting images I have made and am making now. The long story short here is that my architecture training has taught me over the years to not just make. For art, that's how I do alot of it. You can just make due to its rapid turnaround and monumentality. Architecture needs to be stripped of 1. the pretension that soo many folks have in its community and 2. its permanence. It's time we loosened up and got more like Picasso. (and to quote.. art can only be erotic...)

flash backkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkks

When I was younger, my dad would watch this over and over. I was always fustraited with it because I felt nothing was happening. Just another stupid car movie. But as I grew up(!) I re watched it and recognize it for what it is:: a beautiful movie about the city of Paris, it's movement and flows. It's quite architectural and urban indulgent.

Some info on this film:: This beautiful example of cinema-verite', it was SO REAL that in 1976 he was arrested after this 1976 film, properly titled C'était un rendez-vous, was publicly shown. The car reportedly featured was a Ferrari 275 GTB being illegally driven at speeds approaching 140 km/h through the streets of Paris by a Formula 1 driver. Though recent claims by Claude Lelouch admit that he infact was the driver and it was only his Mercedes-Benz 450sel 6.9 and dubbed the Ferrari. Yes, the whole soundtrack is just the engine rev-ing.

This movie never really left my mind but a friend had it posted on his blog so it re-invigorated my memories. Check out preAMP! This blog is pretty fantastic.

What other car movies are at this caliber or zest? This is reminiscent for an assignment that Ed Keller gave us back in his seminar in Fall 2007. We had to record a linear progression through Los Angeles. My team of all cramped into my beetle with Valentina Vasi hanging out of the sun roof. We drove up 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th streets downtown, from bridge to highway on ramp. The most beautiful on ramp is the 4th street exit off the 110 going south. I have to re rip this footage. It's all on tapes in my room.

illegal ambulance

Earlier in August, I helped my buddy Karl Eicher with documenting his thesis project. Below is his thesis::
Illegal Acts of Architecture

Vandalism is usually considered a ruthless destruction of property, including spoiling anything beautiful or venerable. Like most forms of defacement or property damage, it usually involves the destruction (removal) or covering up of existing matter, creating what some refer to as an “eyesore.” In some cases, however, the eyesores are the legally created constructs, or the willful neglect of existing property. These are far crasser than anything graffiti or other street works could possibly claim to be. There are other forms of unlawful works of architecture as well, including the squatting and illegal housing that makes up nearly 1/3 of the world’s population. But these things, along with most things in our environment, go unnoticed. This thesis attempts to break people out of this form of complacency, or what Guy Debord refers to as the ‘spectacle.’ This is done through the radical reorientation of the environment that allows people to be reintroduced to their surroundings. This hyper-awareness, created through illegal acts of architecture, will reestablish the authenticity of daily life and critical thought. What makes an “Illegal Act of Architecture” is that it is illegal through its implementation within the city. It is set up without permission or even the acknowledgement of the city. It is a gift to the city, gifted through the sabotage of its immediate surroundings. It lacks permits, and can be seen as a form of vandalism, but does little to no harm and doesn’t diminish its surroundings. These works illegal works of architecture give more to the environment than it takes away.

The part that I documented and edited was his third installation of the Illegal Acts. These were a set of 12 medicine cabinets installed throughout downtown. Medical cabinets are objects typically used in personal/private space within a home. Here they were put into the most public spaces in town. Inside the cabinets a mirror and a toy that corresponded (ironically most of the time) to its surroundings.