2008 obsession?

I MUST learn how to make these USB critters! My USB stick is a dull grey rubber. No fun at all!

Is this what US politics have come to?

I saw this piece of "news" on MSN after logging out of hotmail. This is truly disgusting. I take this as representative of the depths to which the right-wing press will stoop to blaspheme their opponents. Poor Obama. I'm afraid that the worst might still be yet to come....

My Summer Vacation

During my recent visit home to the States, I got to enjoy just about all the Americana I could fit into 2 weeks.
We drove out to NY, where we visited my sister's college; she'll be attending the Equestrian Science program at Morrisville State College. My grandpa asked if her horse was accepted as well -- Beau will be moving to Morrisville with Alice, but he won't really be "attending" as such. Only the college's horses are really part of the program. Those guys seem to have a good life out there -- lovely stables and huge fields to run around in.

I went camping with my family in the Adirondack mountains of New York State. Such a beautiful area! Unfortunately it was too cold to go swimming in the area's many lakes, but we went hiking a few times. I picked the 7.5 mile hike that almost killed us all with its steep inclines. But there were beautiful views of the whole area at the top!

We also got to visit some family. It was great to see Gimma, Gimpa, Alice & Alex, and Janice!

Angel of the North

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/gormley/
I went to see Antony Gormley's cool cool exhibition yesterday at the Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre. I love huge installation work, particularly if it's interactive and/or technically impressive -- this was all of the above. Gormley uses the body as his starting point -- his or those of others -- and experiments with spatiality (and thus somewhat with perception). The Blind Light piece was pretty crazy -- a glass box filled with fog that you can explore and walk around in. You really lose the sense of your surroundings -- after about 10 minutes it got quite disorienting.
Another really fascinating one is Event Horizon, in which 31(?) cast-iron life-size models of Gormley were placed on top edges of buildings, bridges, etc. around a 1km+ area of the gallery, so, stepping out on the roof (or even from the ground), you can see all these human figures observing you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2007/may/03/art?picture=329805771

Also, the Southbank Centre is really cool. But more on that later.

One small step for the computer lab, and a small step for the users as well

FINALLY, the AA computer lab has banned students from rendering during the day in the computer lab. While I am greatly relieved that we will again be able to use the computers in the lab, I still have my complaints about the printers.

rendering
"In computer graphics, rendering is the process of generating the pixels of an image from a high-level description of the image's components. Rendering is important in both 2D and 3D computer graphics. " (thank you wikipedia)
"The process of creating life-like images on a screen using mathematical models and formulas to add shading, color, and lamination to a 2D or 3D wireframe."
(thank you www.directron.com/videoglossary.html)

This process takes HOURS AND HOURS. The process of converting to the slickest-looking, hi-fi image takes FOREVER and requires so much power that people often end up using up to 3 computers (don't ask me about the technical details) for one image. The programs they use for this probably wouldn't even open on my computer, or at least I certainly wouldn't get very far.

Anyway, this is more-or-less interesting, depending on how many computers are not in use for me to print my simple measly word document or pdf. Often, the rendering process would render about 5 computers out of service as well, rendering me infinitely frustrated.

Well, as I've nearly completed all the things for which I'll need to use the computer lab for a long while, it matters not to me.

Silly Signs

A review of silly signs I've encountered recently:
In Berlin, in an airport, on the innards of a jet engine:


At least you can still smoke.

If this is a 4-star rated toilet....


You are not part of the scenic experience.

SillyFor reasons of procrastination

For reasons of procrastination, a short list of silly things from the past few weeks:

• I bought these headphones in Spain that had a super cool coil action thingy, so that the cord was rolled up automatically, preventing that terrible moment when i pull them out of my purse along with all the other things they've gotten tangled up with: odd pieces of paper, keys, pens, etc. Other than the cool spring action, I bought them because they were cheap, like 6 euros. But, of course, the spring action kept getting the wires all tangled inside the containment contraption, (a smaller-scale version of the same problem that happened in my purse), and, of course, I pulled too hard and the spring action broke. hooray. At least the sound still works, but the cord continues to get mixed up with keys, etc. boo.


• Note: I think this was the first time I ever bought fresh fish on my own.
  I went to this fresh fish shop the other day (what is that called? a place that sells meat is a butcher shop...), and got overly excited by their bargains. I got 2 bags of snapper for 5 pounds! What a deal!! When I arrived home, I realized that, silly me, I didn't notice that the fish were neither gutted nor scaled. hmm.
  Since I have no problem with gross things, I gutted the fish myself. Very exciting, though I'm sure my flatmates were less than pleased :) First time! So, of course, I cut my hand because I had no idea what I was doing. Not badly, but I kept hoping someone would ask my what had happened to my hand so I could tell them that I was gutting fish. So weird. Unfortunatly, I never got that opportunity and the wound is healing.
  As for the scaling, I just baked the fish and took off the skin. Scaling in the kitchen is a little too much... also because I'm not so keen on cleaning up a kitchen scattered with fish scales, though I don't mind the counter covered in innards.

Somewhat-subject-related photo from this cool seafood restaurant in Barcelona, where you choose your own fresh seafood, which is then cooked immediately. Not only great because you can see that your meal has not been previously frozen and is fresh and maybe still alive moments before you eat it, but also important when your Spanish is really bad, so you can still be somewhat confident of what it is you have ordered.

p.s. I apologize for my lack of... ability to think of the right words. I've been writing all day and my brain is tired.
p.p.s. I am not actually an idiot, and if anyone recounts these events to me in order to poke fun, I will vehemently deny their occurence. Please, these are a few events out of my otherwise brilliant existence, small slip-ups from my mind-like-a-steel-trap. Please.

Thesis turmoils

I've been trying to come up with a suitably interesting and specific thesis topic, but am having a really hard time. I had a seminar today where I was supposed to present my topic so we could all discuss it, but I did a really terrible job and thus got little feedback. I'm just having a lot of trouble focusing it.... Anyway, here goes:
This term I focused much of my research for the design workshop in housing forms and their performance in the block, so I thought I would continue this as a line of research. In particular, I'm interested in the ways in which we deal with the transition between the private spaces of the home to the public space of the street. This change is marked in some way, indicating the difference in spaces, uses, ownership, etc., through vertical and horizontal planes: walls or fences as vertical, different levels as horizontal.
Recent trends in urbanism towards opening up the interior of the block for public activity, (though of a different character than voids that consist of blocks on their own), have led to additional tactics to differentiate residential private spaces. When they're moved to the upper floors of a building, what happens to the ground floor? Sometimes we convert this into commercial or office space. How does this then affect the fabric as a whole? Are we going to get a fabric that is just entirely commercial space on the street level?
Ok, if we're experiencing a return to the center, a return and rejuvenation of urban center housing, combined with the opening of the block, we'd need to consider ways of reconciling these. But we already have many ways of doing this!

Ok, fine, but what's the problem? where's the problematic? I have none right now.
My first attempt at pinning this down somewhere was to try to look at housing in regeneration, then in its role in urbanized innovation environments, neither of which I was clear enough about to make any sense. So....
I dunno, but I'm tired.

Shanghai workshop

Dearest friends,
Our Shanghai urban study workshop is over, presentation completed yesterday. As I mentioned previously, our site was an area on the inner periphery of Shanhai, near the river, and our brief was related to the creation of urbanized innovation environments based on an existing biomedical research cluster in the area. This is a hot topic within urbanism right now, and brings up a really quite interesting discussion of the relationship of the urban environment to work spaces and networking. We worked with some planning students from Tongji university here in Shanghai, which was interesting and also really challenging. Not only was language a strong barrier to communication, but perhaps moreso was the problem of extremely different pedagogies and understandings of urbanism and the role of planning and design.
The workshop was held near the site, in the French concession area of the city, but yesterday's presentation was held at the fantastic campus of Tongji university. The drive to Tongji was really really amazing, because the elevated highway is so incredibly high off of the ground (I think we were on the 4th or 5th level of road?), and the road goes right through some of the most enormous buildings I've ever seen in my whole life. really impressive.
After yesterday's presentation, we had a great dinner with a few of the Tongji students, and then went to a karaoke place, where we managed to convince our tutors to make fools of themselves with us. It's quite amazing; you get a private room, and waiters bring you drinks and food. Much more fun, silly, and enjoyable than the American version of watching other unknown people sing sad country songs on a stage.
It's been interesting to get a glimpse of contemporary Chinese culture, and the influence of western cultures on it.
Next week a group of us will be in Beijing, which I hear is an even larger city than is Shanghai, much more sprawled.

Shanghai galore

Dearests,
I have little time, so I'll simply write some thoughts.

I am in a crazy internet cafe in Shanghai. There are about 100 gaming computers in a huge hall on the 2nd floor (1st floor UK), with a foot massage parlor on the ground floor. hmm. Gaming is tiring for your feet.
There are people smoking in the hall, and each computer has an ashtray.

We arrived last night at the Music Conservatory dormitories, where we're staying. The men stay in the guest hall, where they get a room with an ensuite bathroom and freedom to move around whenever they like. The women stay in the girls dorms, where we don't have keys to our rooms, and have an 11pm curfew. The rooms are simple, which is fine, but not very clean. The bathroom is a bit upsetting, with an open shower and toilets on a little platform -- I fell out of the toilet stall last night onto the slippery tile floor, which was scary. I'm very upset about this curfew and lack of key thing, and, in particular the fact that the guys have freedoms that we don't. For some reason the dormatory staff won't let us move to the guest house. We're trying to figure out something more suitable, but it's frustrating for the time being.

We had our first group meeting today, with introductions to the site we'll be working on, in the Fenglin district of Shanghai. We walked around the area this afternoon a bit, but weren't able to see very much.

Hong Kong was lovely. The weather was heavenly, and the island was beautiful. We went to the beach and went swimming! hooray! It was a really interesting city, and I had a great time walking around.

More later

Term 2 Essay Abstract: The Architecture of Domesticity

In his book, The Minimum Dwelling, Karel Teige makes the point that the bourgeois dwelling does not fit with the reality of formats of living, situations, and lifestyles.

Taking this argument as the starting point, I would like to examine the conceptions of individual and collective as a critique of societal norms through two buildings whose creators attempted to, for very different reasons, respond to the need for a different setting for different styles of living.

Teige questions the degree to which modernist homes are really radical in challenging the existing social and socio-political orders. In both the Socialist-led housing project Metzleinstaler-Hof in Vienna and Aldo Van Eyck’s Orphanage in Amsterdam, both represent an ideology and a conception of new ways of living. Implicit in both the design and in the ideological aims of their designers is a strong sense of the importance of collective life, (though again for very different reasons). As critically examining these ideas of living, how do the Metzleinstaler-Hof and the Orphanage address these formally, programmatically, spatially, contextually, and in their organization?

How can we read these spaces as representative of a social order and structure, and how do they critique the existing and provide alternatives?

How might we apply Teige’s critiques to these buildings? What can we glean from the attempts of these two projects and an understanding of Teige’s critique of the bourgeois household towards a redefinition and heightened understanding of the reality of domesticity and domestic life? How might we apply this to an understanding of collective living today, and to collective housing?

Proposed Bibliography

Blau, Eve. The Architecture of Red Vienna

Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution

Strauven, Francis. Aldo Van Eyck: The Shape of Relativity.

Teige, Karel. The Minimum Dwelling.

comme ci comme ca

I returned last night from a semi-whirlwind tour of Paris. In the manner of my experience of Paris (a continuation of my year abroad there), it was both hectic and slow, exciting and boring, fun and really-not-so-fun.


As a study trip, I spent most of my time visiting housing projects (collective housing) throughout the city as well as parks, museums and other public and cultural buildings, etc. Walking through the streets is also an important aspect, as you get to see how the streets "work"; having many pedestrianized or pedestrian-friendly streets, Paris's streets have many varied functions. Also, sometimes you just have to sit in a cafe and see how the streets are working, cafe in hand.

It was interesting to re-visit the area in which I used to live, because I was able to start to grasp why it is that the 15th district really sucks. I still can't quite figure out the whole reason, but the lack of employment and activities contributes greatly to making this district a total bore (in my not-so-humble opinion).
On a similar note, we visited some interesting social housing projects on the outskirts of the city. Of note to me was that the design and layout wasn't actually so bad, but the total lack of maintenance plus the lack of facilities and activities seem to have really contributed greatly to the social and economic problems of the resident population as well as a general unhappiness with the living conditions. Although the problems I noted in the 15th were greatly exacerbated in the social housing projects, I did see a connection in the lack of activity and economy there.


I lost my wallet on our first day there, and had a not-so-fun half-day trying to track it down (I must be delusional to think I could find it again in such a crazy city), and then reporting it at the police station. At a low point I declared that I never wanted to return to Paris. But, that opinion changed quickly when we had a fantastic dinner. My selection of lamb with goat cheese and spinach proved the most fabulous choice. I ate more duck than I thought possible, which made me really happy; pastries still run through my blood; my pores might start to excrete chocolate.


I visited one lovely lovely little market, Marche des Enfants Rouges (red children? communist? I dunno), where we got some absolutely fantastic crepes, and where I got to stare at food for a few hours, which always makes me happy as can be. :)

Circle-fan or Teeth?

Back in December, our washer (aka washing machine) wasn't working in the intended manner, in that it would stop right before the spin cycle, leaving the laundry in a pool of water.

During this several week period, I got to trek all my soiled sundries 1 mile to the launderette, where I was greeted by toothless Cockney service woman. Apparantly "most people" pay for the laundry service, which means that you don't have to sit there ensuring your clothes are not stolen through the washing cycle, but some of us students would rather eat than waste money on service charges.

There was something very odd about reading very serious academic books about urbanism whilst the attendant smoked half-cigarettes and watched the soaps. This turned out to be a bit longer than I'd hoped, as I chose to spend a few more pence to dry my clothes a bit rather than lug home an additional 5 pounds of water weight.

I felt rather ridiculous about the whole ordeal, particularly when it turned out that our washer wasn't so much broken as the pipes were backed up. The pipes, that run from the sink to the washer, were blocked with a delicious backup of sink gunk and limescale, a wonderous substance present in London's hard water. I was indeed present when the plumber pulled out what looked to be a solid grey turd. lovely. In the coming months, we plan to clean out our pipes a bit more thoroughly.

I should mention too that learning to use the washer and other appliances has proven somewhat challenging as well. Our washer has several numerical settings, indicating a type of cycle. I suppose this is relatively straightforward, though I do prefer the nearly-failsafe American system that we have on our washer at home in Oberlin: whites, darks, delicates. However, I've seen other washers in London homes that allow you to specify the RPM of the spin cycle. While I understand why one might want such a feature, one friend's washer fails to indicate what these numbers in the thousands indicate; we joked that the washer doubled as a kiln.

Actually, I believe that the reasoning behind this lies in the intention of producing universal products, e.g. that can be used anywhere and that overcome language barriers. Ovens that I've seen, for example, use both temperature and a symbol to indicate the type of heat. On our oven, a three-pronged fan with a circle around it means convection, and a jagged zig-zag seems to indicate broil.

Though I think it a wonderful idea to provide universal symbols, I had a difficult time deciphering the meanings of these symbols, and found myself asking my flatmates whether I should cook something on "circle-fan" or "teeth". Our oven also has "plain-fan" symbol, but this function no longer works.

Additionally, there are still quite a few interface issues that make it all the more difficult to figure out. The oven in the flat my parents recently moved into required that the clock be set before you could turn on the oven, regardless of the fact that you might not even be using the timer during your cooking process. I appreciate the thought of trying to make things universally accessible, but create a few difficult operations, and once you've lost the guide and some foreigner moves in expecting to be able to cook things, all hope is lost.

Frayed Ends

2 weeks into my second term of study, I'm finally finishing up my term 1 work
(no, I'm not late, these were the deadlines). I turned in my papers on Monday, but haven't really stopped thinking about them. Apparantly the AA is under review this year by the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), so they'll be reviewing our papers as well. Actually, I'm unclear on whether this review of student work happens every year, or if it's part of the RIBA review. I should say that the AA is not an accredited institution in itself, but is accredited by this group called the Open University. That almost makes it sound like I attend some crazy "school" set up by someone in their backyard to make money. If that's the case with the AA, they've got quite a scam, and have thousands of people convinced of its wonderous merit. This just reminds me of an episode of Mr. Show which follows the events of several separatists who declare independent nations within the U.S., and then hold an Olympic Games. Such nations include:

• "Freemania",
• "The New Republic of Gary",
• "Hank Dobson's Mini-Mart and Country"

Certainly such comparisons indicate that I obviously don't understand how accreditation works.
Well, I must say, I do work awfully hard for an institution I'm not sure is "for real". My design workshop group really worked hard on a booklet of our term 1 work, and I think it shows, thankfully.
In my individual work, I'm starting to focus on urban housing forms. To save myself a few moments, I'll just cite my individual work essay-thingy:

"Though my interest in urbanism and the study of cities has grown, so has my interest in how people live in the city. To my mind, this is not simply a question of housing, but of making a space, in the larger sense of the entire city, in which people want to live. In Public Spaces Public Life, Jan Gehl discusses the importance of quality and location of public spaces surrounding housing forms for the success of the housing.

I think that looking at the issue of housing is another way in which I can use my background in and understanding of sociology and cultural studies in order to determine and further design. Through this programme, I want to begin to move away from a strictly cultural, socio-political approach to these problems, as I have stated previously, and attempt to address such issues from a design perspective. Panerai et al call this the "relative" autonomy of urban design: though we might consider it to be the most important aspect, social, political, and economic factors play smaller yet still integral roles in the workings of the city, its growth and production. Yet, no factor is sovereign in the production of the city, and neither can any of these factors be disregarded. I trust the actuality of this reasoning, but I want to continue to test and develop in my own research. "

Well pardner, I'd best mosey on over to that "school" I'm throwing all my money at.

A Short Diatribe on Airplane Manners, and Other Things

I know I said I would try to avoid rants and pointless banter in this context, but I will break my own rule this time, probably because I'm overtired and possibly delirious.
I just awoke from a much-needed nap, after arriving late this morning from my overnight flight from the states. A young man spent the entire night blabbing on about his many exploits in life, including his brush-with-death-track-race and other tales, which he somehow managed to have made sound like a lifetime of death-defying adventures despite his being only 17.
I attempted to listen to music while I slept, but something about the timbre of his voice carried extraordinarily well, which was very unfortunate for me and anyone within a 15-foot radius who was trying to sleep.
I probably should've said something. But, he kept starting and stopping his stories, such that just before I would fall asleep, he would start talking again. I'm surprised that no one else said anything, either, but he seemed to be surrounded by young people who generally wouldn't dare to ask someone to be quiet. Actually, I think someone did ask him to pipe down, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. By the time I was just about fed up with this chatter, the flight attendants announced it was time to wake up. boo.
Also, one last complaint: there is no elevator/lift at my rail station/tube stop! Horrors! I had to help some woman carry her baby carriage -- with baby inside -- up the stairs! As well as my own suitcases full of books!
Well, that's certainly enough of my complaints about unimportant things. Call it procrastination, avoidance from the things I really need to do. But I'm tired.