By Matt Owens
So I was perusing Arch Daily the other day which I do from time to time, and something caught my eye. As I was scrolling down the page when I saw the heading “In Progress: Kukje Art Center / SO-IL.” A couple things ran through my mind right away; where is there is an art center being built in Southern Illinois? and Arch Daily is featuring a project that is being built in Southern Illinois, cool. I was a little excited about this. That excitement only lasted for about a second, or about the time it took me to scroll down just enough to see the next line: “In Progress, Seoul, SO-IL, South Korea.” Obviously this art center was not in Southern Illinois, it was in South Korea, and probably has nothing to do with Southern Illinois at all. The name should have clued me in from the beginning, Kukje Art Center, probably not something you would find around this area, but you never know. Anyway I was fouled into a split second of excitement.
After a slight feeling of disappointment I still had to investigate a little further. What was SO-IL, the architect? So what did SO-IL stand for, obviously not Southern Illinois? SO-IL is a New York based firm, and SO-IL stands for ‘Solid Objectives –Idenburg Liu.’ Mostly an idea based firm, they have done work all over the world. The web page is pretty interesting, and they have done some pretty interesting work. The projects are divided into four categories, live, play, work, and reflect. Most of the work they do is in an urban setting which may be beneficial for some of us grad students to check out, as we are trying to define some of these spaces in our projects now.
In the end I suppose I could not be too disappointed, although it would have been cool to see a project in Southern Illinois featured on Arch Daily. It did catch my eye and made me check out a project and a firm that I may not have otherwise looked at.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Death by Architecture
By Joel Wallace
In a job market that remains a bit down, one way many architects and students are staying fresh and getting their names out there is in the world of competitions. Competitions raise great opportunity for creative freedom , as well as involvement in projects and problem solving we may not be lucky enough to become commissioned for.
For those not familiar with it, the creators of www.deathbyarchitecture.com have dedicated themselves to organizing such competions in both timeline and category. Competition levels include student only, international, professional, and regional to name a few. Below is a brief explanation of the creation and history of how it came about and how it remains a powerful tool in the search for new challenges and opportunity…
Death By Architecture (DBA) began in 1995 as the personal web page of Mario Cipresso, an undergraduate architecture student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. By 1997 Death By Architecture had become the preeminent site for architecture competition information on the internet. Joining with several other like-minded sites in Europe, DBA was a founding partner of the International Competition Network in 1998.
Enjoying a solid presence on the net since those early days, Death By Architecture needed to grow beyond just one individual to truly realize its potential, to serve its loyal users and to pursue a more meaningful goal. After securing an all too critical grant from the LEF Foundation in northern California, the Los Angeles based interactive media design firm of Garden Digital was approached to begin this first of two phases.
The forthcoming second phase intends to produce an unparalleled catalog of competition information and entries as well as expand Death By Architecture's content and feature set.
Considering sponsoring a design competition? Death By Architecture has over 12 years of experience with the participation, management and promotion of design competitions. We bring valuable and unique insight and resources to the competition process, ensuring your event is a success. For more information on how Death By Architecture can manage your organization's design competition, please contact Mario Cipresso mario@deathbyarchitecture.com.
Please note: Although we do make every effort to ensure our competition information is reasonably accurate and complete, it is the responsibility of the competitor to verify all conditions and requirements.
In a job market that remains a bit down, one way many architects and students are staying fresh and getting their names out there is in the world of competitions. Competitions raise great opportunity for creative freedom , as well as involvement in projects and problem solving we may not be lucky enough to become commissioned for.
For those not familiar with it, the creators of www.deathbyarchitecture.com have dedicated themselves to organizing such competions in both timeline and category. Competition levels include student only, international, professional, and regional to name a few. Below is a brief explanation of the creation and history of how it came about and how it remains a powerful tool in the search for new challenges and opportunity…
Death By Architecture (DBA) began in 1995 as the personal web page of Mario Cipresso, an undergraduate architecture student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. By 1997 Death By Architecture had become the preeminent site for architecture competition information on the internet. Joining with several other like-minded sites in Europe, DBA was a founding partner of the International Competition Network in 1998.
Enjoying a solid presence on the net since those early days, Death By Architecture needed to grow beyond just one individual to truly realize its potential, to serve its loyal users and to pursue a more meaningful goal. After securing an all too critical grant from the LEF Foundation in northern California, the Los Angeles based interactive media design firm of Garden Digital was approached to begin this first of two phases.
The forthcoming second phase intends to produce an unparalleled catalog of competition information and entries as well as expand Death By Architecture's content and feature set.
Considering sponsoring a design competition? Death By Architecture has over 12 years of experience with the participation, management and promotion of design competitions. We bring valuable and unique insight and resources to the competition process, ensuring your event is a success. For more information on how Death By Architecture can manage your organization's design competition, please contact Mario Cipresso mario@deathbyarchitecture.com.
Please note: Although we do make every effort to ensure our competition information is reasonably accurate and complete, it is the responsibility of the competitor to verify all conditions and requirements.
Writing
By Laura Thomas
What have I been doing this semester? Research and writing and a lot of it. Much more than I was anticipating or wanting to do. I'm constantly writing parts of my thesis, multiple papers for my Project Leadership course, panel information for our architectural Systems course, blogs every two weeks as part of my graduate assistantship, research documentation for my research assistantship with Shannon McDonald. I'm always writing and I'm tired of it.
Unfortunately for me, I'm not the best writer. I have a hard time coming up with what to discuss, how to argue it and how to stretch it out so that it fills up the proper amount of pages. It also takes me a while because I'm not the fastest reader and English was never my strong subject. I'm a very simple, straight forward, get to the point, person. Here it is, it sucks because of this, it can be fixed by doing that - great, let's move on. That is not acceptable though. It must have precedence, it must be substantiated by what is already out there, proven through multiple examples that something does or does not work. This provides insight, educated design that leads to a solution that improves upon the negative, pushes the boundaries of the existing and is the direction of the future. That is what our thesis is trying to accomplish, raising the bar.
For my thesis I have chosen to propose a solution to provide better hospice care than what the other options can currently provide. I selected this topic as it has great personal meaning to me so I enjoy the time I spend working on it. I have collected resources through Morris Library and their I-share program and now have several books at my disposal. I find that my resources are somewhat limited though as Hospice is a relatively newer topic of discussion having become more popular in recent years. I'm finding little precedent studies and where mentioned in a peer reviewed architectural magazine or journals it usually only mentions it's construction method or awards won for sustainability. Nothing that discusses the design and what works, doesn't work so I must continue researching.
For those undergraduates who will continue into the Master's Program I have a few suggestions. Start thinking about your thesis now. Discuss with your instructors different topics that you are interested in. Schools, hospitals, arenas, skyscrapers, residential, commercial - pick a topic and start. Begin gathering information, read it and start some documentation. Don't become overwhelmed with books of research that leave you wondering where to begin. Now that another blog is done, I'm going to continue writing another paper for another class.
What have I been doing this semester? Research and writing and a lot of it. Much more than I was anticipating or wanting to do. I'm constantly writing parts of my thesis, multiple papers for my Project Leadership course, panel information for our architectural Systems course, blogs every two weeks as part of my graduate assistantship, research documentation for my research assistantship with Shannon McDonald. I'm always writing and I'm tired of it.
Unfortunately for me, I'm not the best writer. I have a hard time coming up with what to discuss, how to argue it and how to stretch it out so that it fills up the proper amount of pages. It also takes me a while because I'm not the fastest reader and English was never my strong subject. I'm a very simple, straight forward, get to the point, person. Here it is, it sucks because of this, it can be fixed by doing that - great, let's move on. That is not acceptable though. It must have precedence, it must be substantiated by what is already out there, proven through multiple examples that something does or does not work. This provides insight, educated design that leads to a solution that improves upon the negative, pushes the boundaries of the existing and is the direction of the future. That is what our thesis is trying to accomplish, raising the bar.
For my thesis I have chosen to propose a solution to provide better hospice care than what the other options can currently provide. I selected this topic as it has great personal meaning to me so I enjoy the time I spend working on it. I have collected resources through Morris Library and their I-share program and now have several books at my disposal. I find that my resources are somewhat limited though as Hospice is a relatively newer topic of discussion having become more popular in recent years. I'm finding little precedent studies and where mentioned in a peer reviewed architectural magazine or journals it usually only mentions it's construction method or awards won for sustainability. Nothing that discusses the design and what works, doesn't work so I must continue researching.
For those undergraduates who will continue into the Master's Program I have a few suggestions. Start thinking about your thesis now. Discuss with your instructors different topics that you are interested in. Schools, hospitals, arenas, skyscrapers, residential, commercial - pick a topic and start. Begin gathering information, read it and start some documentation. Don't become overwhelmed with books of research that leave you wondering where to begin. Now that another blog is done, I'm going to continue writing another paper for another class.
Monday, October 24, 2011
The True Meaning
By Matt Owens
Since we just had mid reviews in studio I found this appropriate. I recently came across a blog article form ‘the all nighter’. The blog must be under construction or something because it does not look too good, unless that was the look they were going for? The blog is appears to be done by architecture students, although I could not figure out form where. They even have a Facebook page, but I could not gather much information from there either.
Anyway the particular article if found was about critics during reviews, and what your critics were actually saying. This could also be applied to your professors in studio during those desk crits that happen every day too. It’s about the hidden meaning behind what is actually being said. It is kind of like reading between the lines, sometimes your prof. or jury member is just trying to sugar coat something, or maybe they just feel inappropriate saying what they really want. Either way sometimes what is said is not actually what is being said. The list provided below is from the blog article form the all nighter. This may be helpful for all of us to decode the language of the review we just had and all of the critics in the future.
“That’s interesting”
Cool!
“Hmm interesting”
I can’t comprehend what you are saying so I am buying time
“Wow”
Wow
“What’s that”
Thats gotta go
“Holy Shit”
This is visually pleasing but its shit
“Check these buildings out”
Good ideas. Look these things up to expand
“You should read these books”
Your ideas suck. Read these books.
“That’s very impressive”
I am going to steal this
“Now you know”
I told you so
“Awesome”
I no longer think you’re braindead
“Talk to so and so for help”
I am tired of dealing with you. Go talk to my brown noser.
“I want five study models”
I know you only have time to produce 3 good ones and 2 shitty ones but do them
anyway for my amusement
“We communicate through our drawings. That is why I am so hard on you.”
Stop sucking at drawing
“Do you have more to show me?”
I know you don’t but I wanna see you squirm
“You should oranize your desk”
Throw out your old models. They’re painful to look at.
“You’re not being aggresive”
You’re a wimp
“This project can be more dynamic”
You’re being a wimp and your work shows it
“Get some sleep”
You’re not being productive and starting to smell. This greatly offends me.
“Where did you go for undergraduate?”
I probably went somewhere better
Since we just had mid reviews in studio I found this appropriate. I recently came across a blog article form ‘the all nighter’. The blog must be under construction or something because it does not look too good, unless that was the look they were going for? The blog is appears to be done by architecture students, although I could not figure out form where. They even have a Facebook page, but I could not gather much information from there either.
Anyway the particular article if found was about critics during reviews, and what your critics were actually saying. This could also be applied to your professors in studio during those desk crits that happen every day too. It’s about the hidden meaning behind what is actually being said. It is kind of like reading between the lines, sometimes your prof. or jury member is just trying to sugar coat something, or maybe they just feel inappropriate saying what they really want. Either way sometimes what is said is not actually what is being said. The list provided below is from the blog article form the all nighter. This may be helpful for all of us to decode the language of the review we just had and all of the critics in the future.
“That’s interesting”
Cool!
“Hmm interesting”
I can’t comprehend what you are saying so I am buying time
“Wow”
Wow
“What’s that”
Thats gotta go
“Holy Shit”
This is visually pleasing but its shit
“Check these buildings out”
Good ideas. Look these things up to expand
“You should read these books”
Your ideas suck. Read these books.
“That’s very impressive”
I am going to steal this
“Now you know”
I told you so
“Awesome”
I no longer think you’re braindead
“Talk to so and so for help”
I am tired of dealing with you. Go talk to my brown noser.
“I want five study models”
I know you only have time to produce 3 good ones and 2 shitty ones but do them
anyway for my amusement
“We communicate through our drawings. That is why I am so hard on you.”
Stop sucking at drawing
“Do you have more to show me?”
I know you don’t but I wanna see you squirm
“You should oranize your desk”
Throw out your old models. They’re painful to look at.
“You’re not being aggresive”
You’re a wimp
“This project can be more dynamic”
You’re being a wimp and your work shows it
“Get some sleep”
You’re not being productive and starting to smell. This greatly offends me.
“Where did you go for undergraduate?”
I probably went somewhere better
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
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