02 February 2009

an overview + recap

for the past few months, people have been asking me one or more of the following questions:

1. how's school?
2. do you like it?
3. so...what do you guys even do there?
4. how come you don't sleep?
5. can i see your projects?
6. do you ever have free time...ever?

the answers, in brief, are:

1. intense, challenging, but generally good - in retrospect
2. usually, when i'm not so sleep deprived
3. take classes and work in studio
4. because of #3
5. yes, if you keep reading this blog
6. erm....sometimes...on occasion...maybe?

but to be honest, i'm tired of my one sentence responses and the looks of deep sympathy i often get when telling people how things really have been. yes, arch school and mit are a recipe for challenges and sleepless nights galore, but it's also been much more than just those hardships. hopefully a new start at shooting words into cyberspace will help clear that up (or, maybe reinforce them...who knows).

in between, hopefully i'll get around to inserting some thoughts on cool design things, piquant articles, places traveled, and photos taken.

and, as a recap for last semester:

1st project: the bridge
create a bridge by designing a single unit to be aggregated (aka stacked together) together. and did i mention it had to be made of paper? by slicing the strip of paper, i was able to stack and nest the units in a fan-like way.







2nd project: the student center
given a "campus" (more architectural of a site, but still placeless and vague) with 3 buildings of all different floor height levels, design a student center to connect them together. the center had to incorporate stairs, ramps, and an elevator. my project blurs together the boundaries of the existing buildings, creating a new "living room" or "mixing chamber" of sorts.







3rd project: the system
design a system also through the use of a unit, which would be able to turn corners to create walls, ceiling, and floor. it also needed to be able to allow for openings. mine was a set of interlocking pieces that could slide to modify the size of aperture and attaching leg.








4th project: the annex theater
this time we had a site - in south boston - and a program, aka defined purpose for our building. here, the task was to design an annex theater for the ica (institute of contemporary art) w/ 4 different theaters. here, i designed the theaters entirely out of steps so that the program and circulation through the building were integrated.




my summaries are really sparse and don't really explain it fully...but ask me later for more detail if you're actually interested. it takes too long to flesh out sometimes.

so...onward we go. 2nd semester starts tomorrow - joys!

3 comments:

  1. The work is amazing! My little sister is so talented...

    ReplyDelete
  2. these are so cool! thanks for sharing these treasured pieces!

    ReplyDelete