Current Coursework

By Michael Young

If you have been keeping up with my last posts, I have been updating you on my thesis project. For this weeks blog I planned on informing you on what we are currently working on in all our classes. This week was our first thesis presentation with our whole committee. I have been programming all the spaces on each level for my arena, I now need to jump into the second part of my project and that is designing a master plan around the arena creating entertainment and an experience for the game. In our professional practice course we have been working on creating an Ethical Statement. We were to read a case that dealt with structural failure and weather or not ethics should trump personal embarrassment. For our next assignment we are to generate a revenue projection for a project at a firm, which is due next Wednesday. For Dr. Davey’s class, Arc 532, we are supposed to pick a non-western building to write our 20-page paper on. I decided to do the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is one of the most famous buildings in the world. It is a white marble mausoleum located in Agra, India. The word Taj Mahal can also be referred to from the Persian and Arabic language meaning the “crown of palaces.” In 1632 the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan wanted to house the remains of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The mausoleum is recognized to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World. This building is a great example of Mughal architecture; it combines Islamic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Indian architecture styles. The construction process began around 1632 and was completed 22 years later. The projects chief architect was Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. During the construction phase it employed over 20,000 artisans and craftsmen throughout the empire. We also had to choose which building we wanted to do our structures project on. For the hand built project I chose to reconstruct the Louvre. It is one of the world’s largest museums and historic monument. Being a central landmark of Paris, France, it is located on the right bank of the Seine in the 1^st arrondissement district.  The Louvre Pyramid is a large glass and metal pyramid, surrounded by three small pyramids. Nicolet Chartrand Knoll and Rice Francis Ritchie engineered the pyramids structure. It consists of glass segments reaching a height of 71 feet.