1st _____ Building

By Andrew Wyne



After some thought of a topic for this next blog, I suddenly had the thought of what is the first building ever constructed. After about five seconds of research I found out that there is no possible way anyone could know, simply because humanity didn’t have the technology to document that event and more than likely it wasn’t anything to scream about, just a simple hut or living space of some sort.

After those five seconds I thought it would be more interesting to find out what building was first built with steel as its frame and was considered a skyscraper; we also had appropriate documentation of that event. I chose steel because even though it is an old system of building it is still one that is utilized today more than most types of construction (for skyscrapers). The first skyscraper made out of steel was actually the Home Insurance Building. It was constructed in 1884 in Chicago, IL. and stood until 1931 where it was torn down to make room for another building. The Home Insurance Building wasn’t any more amazing then any of the other builds around it. It was ten stories tall and by no means was the tallest in the world or even the first skyscraper. It simply utilized steel construction for the first time as its frame and no other skyscraper had used that type of system before.

If you want to read more about the Home Insurance Building check out the website where I got my information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Insurance_Building) the website talks more about who the architect was and how tall it is and where the steel came from and different aspects of the building. As well as giving you different links to take you further in depth with the building.

Back from Break

By Laura Thomas

I had every intention of working on my Hospice Thesis over break. I packed several books to read, I was going to complete my program, do a schedule for the semester, do a site visit and analysis. Out of all of these, the only thing I managed to do was the site visit. Between family and friends, Christmas parties, New Year's celebrations, catching up on sleeping in and trying to relax my time was quickly eaten up.

The "work" time that I did have, I used on my parents house as they have decided to do a massive kitchen / family room renovation that includes tearing out a majority of the original house exterior bearing wall. My first recommendation to them was to hire professionals for the entire process and not to depend upon me or my drawings and definitely not to take on this massive remodel on their own. This is not to say that my parents are not intelligent or that my father is not capable of the labor that it would take to do this but that we as professional architects, interior designers, plumbers, electricians, and all other trades have the experience, knowledge base, and liability insurance to handle this project in a more efficient, timely manner to alleviate the stress from them.

I did do some ground work for them by doing the field measurements, photographing the interior and exterior of the house, modeling the house in Revit and doing several proposals for them to start to bringing their ideas to life. They were able to see the limitations of the small existing kitchen, consider additional ideas, and started to realize this was not going to be like the shows on HGTV where the remodel is done in a weekend.

We scheduled a meeting with Distinctive Designs out of Springfield, IL and spent several hours talking about ideas, looking at cabinets, taking about the length of the project, and the cost of the project. Everything we discussed was parallel to how I would take on a project with new clients but I knew they were out of my league. I don't design kitchens other than general layout. I've done million dollar homes but always consulted a kitchen expert to detail out the kitchen. My parents are going to be spending $50-60,000 on this renovation and they need the best to make it worth their money.

Mom came away from the meeting with a new appreciation of everything I had tried to explain but didn't believe until she heard it from them. I sent Distinctive Designs what drawings I had created to utilize in any way they could. The only down side to this meeting was that I noticed the designer had used the same idea or concept in every example she showed us. I realize that everyone has a style but I warned my mother not to fall for the designers vision but to make sure the designer realized my parents vision. To protect my parents from this I told them to send me everything to review, so I could throw my opinion in and perhaps give them some inside information.

I hope to write a follow up to this in a few months if the planning and design get implemented before my father's BBQ cookoff season begins. If they can't have it completed by June, it will have to wait until October when the season is over. Check back for updates.

Back to the Ole Grindstone

By Zachary Collins

Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a good break. I feel like the month off flew by! I was definitely busy most of break. I was still working at my part-time job at SIH, was best man at my cousin’s wedding, had multiple Christmases, and spent 5 days in Chicago for New Years –that last one was more of a vacation, than being busy. It was my second time in Chicago in my life, the first being a day trip for a class in high school. This time, it was a lot better. I was able to see downtown where I visited Millennium Park, the Bean, Marilyn Monroe’s statue, and I had my first “real” Chicago-style hot dog-it was delicious. I also attended a New Year’s Eve banquet with a friend. It was the first time I ever attended such an event, and it was amazing.

But enough about my break, as of right now the architecture graduate students have a big semester coming up. I will say that I am definitely not ready for this semester to begin. In one aspect, this semester will be easier because we have a lot less “class” time. I will only be in class 2 days a week. But on the other side of the spectrum, I won’t have much free time. As graduate students, we are expected to work on our Thesis project on our own time. I for one will have to really schedule my time accordingly. I had planned on working on it during break, but with my schedule I didn’t have the free time I thought I would have, and when I did, I really didn’t want to do school work. So I accomplished nothing thesis-related over break. But that’s fine, that’s what we are to do all spring semester.

I am really excited about my thesis; a hotel/casino high rise in Las Vegas. That project “name” is definitely just the tip of the iceberg. Once I brainstorm more about my thesis, the program itself will develop into more than just a hotel/casino. There will be more discussion on that once I return from Las Vegas. I am heading out there on January 26th and will be there for 4 days. I will be doing my site analysis and conducting “people” research. I will be logging my experiences in a journal the whole time as well as taking extensive notes on how people interact, react, and engage spaces in this city.

My next blog will be about my adventures in Las Vegas so be looking forward to that next time. I’m hoping to learn a lot with the personal experience of being there, and I can only speculate, but I believe I will have some interesting stories to tell once I’m back.

Thesis site visits and more....

By Micah Jacobson



I hope everyone had a good break. My wife and I were able to spend time with family in Columbia Missouri. We were also able to visit Bloomington, IL, Kansas City, MO, Paducah, KY, and Lake of the Ozarks, MO. For my thesis project I have selected a site in Kansas City, MO. This is the first time I have been involved in the site selection process. I selected the site based on the need for my program and the geographical location to the city and other buildings. My wife and I visited Kansas City to do site research and it was a great experience. I was able to access my site and retrieve a lot of valuable information. I am looking forward to this next semester and eager to dive into my thesis project further. It was good to have a little time away from work, but I am always glad to get back.

While in Kansas City we were able to visit the National World War I Museum. It was a great precedent and experience for my wife and I. The Liberty Memorial, large spire in middle, was built in 1921, it was closed in 1994, due to structural deterioration. In 1998 a tax was passed to fund the restoration of it and for the addition of a museum. The new building was built under, and around the foundation of the Liberty Memorial. It is an 80,000 square foot facility. Visitors are allowed to ascend to the top of the 217 foot memorial tower to a 360 degree observation deck. I was able get excellent site photos from this location.

Overall it was a good break and a fun trip to the site. If anyone is in Kansas City they should visit this museum along with many other remarkable structures, such as the union station.

http://www.toddlandryphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/world-war-1-museum.jpg

New study shows ARCHITECTURE DEGREES yield HIGHEST UNEMPLOYMENT rates!

By Sean Koetting



"A recent study released by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce states that students who have recently graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in architecture have experience the highest rates of unemployment. The information was gathered using 2009 and 2010 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Undergraduate architecture students are reportedly facing 13.9 percent unemployment rates, compared to the other struggling majors in the arts at 11.1 percent and the humanities at 9.4 percent. These numbers are significantly higher than the 8.9 percent unemployment rate of recent graduates with Bachelor’s Degrees. Health (5.4 percent), education (5.4 percent) and agriculture and natural resources (7 percent) were among the majors with the lowest unemployment rates.

The statics are stirring up more debates over the value college, questioning whether the increasing cost of higher education is worth the investment. However, when compared to the 22.9 percent unemployment rate for those with only a high school diploma the numbers start looking a little better. Furthermore, the Georgetown press release suggests considering a graduate degree. Recent Architecture graduates with a Master’s Degree are reportedly experiencing only a 7.7 percent unemployment rate."

Aeroponic systems...

By Erik Illies

So how about aeroponic systems and what makes them different from hydroponics...
Aeroponics are pretty cool in a lot of ways, specifically the efficiency in which they foster high/ healthy yields of plants. Even more specifically, the fact that they use zero soil to foster plant growth! The system is comprised of a growing medium platform that uses a mesh-like material plant roots can attach to and pass thru. Now we have a dual sided panel of life, which on one side is bathed in light (either natural sun or artificial) and the other is showered in a nutrient rich spray/ mist. The plants themselves don't seem to notice or care where or how they are receiving the basics for life, they just care that they get them. Because of this capability of the technology, we can utilize these systems virtually anywhere and on any scale. This system is very similar to hydroponics in the sense that soil is replaced by continuous nutrient migration (using water as a medium), but that medium is the specific big difference between the two. And what a difference that is!!! Statistically, aeroponic systems use up to 70% less water than hydroponics do because they utilize a fine mist as opposed to a constant stream of water.
Fortunately that advantage is multi-faceted. Since so much less water is required there is now less space taken up by system infrastructure, and more effort can be applied toward yield. Also, plants can be grown in even more diverse locations... like space (which was a huge emphasis, driven by NASA, on the development and utilization of these systems since there is very little space to store excess water much less grow plants in a space vehicle/station.

Wow, what a neat world we live in and how great our opportunities are in a myriad of different places to make a brighter cooler neater world in the future!
Please take 4 minutes to watch the link below for a more entertaining description of the system.

http://vimeo.com/4923987

Where did you go over break?

By Audrey Treece




Welcome back everyone! I hope everyone had a stress free break and is ready to get back to school mode.

I have always enjoyed the breaks throughout the academic school year. It is guaranteed time that you have where you can plan trips, explore new things and take care of unfinished business. I truly do not know what I am going to do when I have to enter the “real world” and work forty hours a week All. Year. Long.

That being said, one trip that I took over break was to Key West, Florida. It is one of those places that I would have never purposely visited without the influence of my father. I can say that it was nowhere near my preconceived expectations, but I can also say that it did not let me down.

I will be an advocate of Key West and say that it is one place that I think every person should visit at least once in their lifetime. The island is only a few miles big but has a lot to offer. You can see the southernmost point in the United States, the home of Ernest Hemingway or you can browse up and down Duval Street to check out new restaurants, bars and hidden shopping centers. On the other hand, there is a working port and marina which is a new experience in itself. If you are looking for a beach, however, you are headed to the wrong place. There are only two beaches on the island that are MAYBE the size of one of the architecture studios.

If nothing that I listed sounds of interest to you, I highly suggest visiting just to see their architecture and the way the spaces work. It is filled with indoor and outdoor spaces that are truly unique to their location which you will never find here in the Midwest. Although many of the spaces are truly open air “shacks” there is a valuable lesson to learn on how the space is utilized. Buildings that we would find unacceptable here in Southern Illinois flourish in Key West.

Key West is incredibly hard to describe. It is one of those places you truly have to visit. If I was forced to describe it…the best I can come up with is a mixture of Bourbon Street, Las Vegas and the Lake of the Ozarks in a tropical setting.
Just take my word for it and visit! If you want to check out live footage on Duval Street: www.liveduvalstreet.com/.



Photo credit:
Visualphotos.com
visit-florida-keys.com
traveladvice.hotels.com

Thesis research - Possible References

By Molly Moran

Hawken, Paul. (1993). The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. New York. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

The book begins with a powerful statement about business and the world, “Businesspeople must either dedicate themselves to transforming commerce to a restorative undertaking or much society to the undertaker” (Hawken. 1993. Pg.2). It is a do or die statement that sets a serious and ‘real’ mood for the rest of the book. By listing the problems or issues that equate to, “waste equals food, nature runs off of current solar income, and nature depends on diversity” (Hawkins. 1993. Pg. 12).Explaining the consumption and reuse system that the world runs on. That we as consumers do not consumer as much as we put out. A product produced may takes more material to make then is actually in the product and that the waste of some products are reduced to a harmful form instead of something that can breakdown back into nature. Even products that can be broken down back into nature may be over produced to such a concentration that it can’t be absorbed back to nature. Business handles these environmental issues with, “the concept of ‘environmentally sound’ landfills and toxic waste incineration is attractive to industry because it requires the least amount of change and preserves the status quo with respect to industries’ goal and ambitions, while boosting the waste disposal industry. By focusing on the immediate problems involving the disposal of waste, industry is able to say that it is responsive to rising public concern. What it is actually doing is avoiding the fundamental issue, which is the creation of waste” (Hawkins. 1993. Pg.45).

Paul Hawken gives several cons and statics on waste incinerator plants, the initial concept for my thesis, that I feel is best left the contexts he provides in his book:
"What about waste incineration, the method of choice for dealing with most other forms of waste? First, keep in mind that the incinerator industry rose from the 'ashes' of the nuclear industry. As costs and safety concerns began to erode nuclear power's allure, the companies that had most benefited from building the plants-Bechtel, Westinghouse, Combustion Engineering, and Babcock & Wilcox- got into the 'resource recovery' business, also known as 'trash to cash'. But the energy resource recovered through burning trash to run steam turbines is a minute fraction of the total energy required to make the trash in the first place.

Incineration does not eliminate garbage or waste, it merely changes its form. Emissions are spread across town and country, which is why they have tall smokestacks. (New Jersey example of average yearly emissions) For every 100 tons of trash, incinerators produce 30 tons of fly ash, a granular substance that contains most of the toxins from paint and plastic, as well as mercury, lead, cadmium and other heavy metals. The fly ash is then trucked to a landfill where it has to be enclosed in a plastic liners for many thousands of years."(Hawken. 1993. Pg. 46-47).

Moving on from the negatives of business and industry on the environment Hawken begins to explain what efforts it will take for business to turn around it distcrutive ways and provide a healthy environment for the future. "Restoration is not a business term. But then, neither is degradation." (Hawken. 1993. Pg.58). This quote infers that business must act and conduct itself in a way that not only reduces its impact on the environment, but enriches the future environment and society.

The book then goes on exploring ways and examples of corporations and industry actively reducing and reusing waste and the pros and cons of those examples. Such as, Kalundborg, Denmark where thanks to geographical proximity a wide verity of major industry reused nearly all of each other's waste without prompting from the government. It accrued thanks to business cooperating and ultimately saving a buck. Then again, many other examples and suggestions urge government to give a more persuasive push toward sustainable business by making more economical to reduce and reuse material and waste.

Back to work!

By Matthew Owens

Winter break is over and it is time to get back to school, kind of a bummer right. I hope everyone took advantage of this month long break since it will most likely be the last. After this summer we will graduate and for most of us I am sure we will be heading to work in an office somewhere. That means no more month long winter break, spring break, fall break, or summer break, unless of course you enter education as a professions. It is most likely we may never again have one month off work until we retire, if we retire. I know while I was working in an office the most time I ever took off was a week and a half, which was a long time and it only happened once, because of a surgery. Other than that I would usually take off a week for a vacation, and the odd day here or there for whatever reason. So this is it, what will be the last winter break for most of us.

So good bye to long breaks, they do not exist outside of education. Although it’s not to say that we didn’t have anything to do at all over break and we just relaxed the entire month. No I am sure some of us took advantage of not having class and got a jump start on this semester by continuing thesis work. Of course getting anything done is difficult with the holidays and spending time with family, and we all deserved some time off after last semester. Anyway I hope some of us grad were able to get some work done, I know I didn’t get as much accomplished as I would have liked, but it was break. I ended up doing some unexpected traveling which was excellent!

So back to school, back to the books, back to the crazy hours of an architecture grad student. I must say it is hard to get started after such a long break. We get out of the routine, we get out of sync, and we form new habits and patterns over such a long break. Even when I was working and coming back from a week long break it was slightly difficult. Having to get up to the sound of the alarm, getting back to the grind, and getting back to work. The one thing that I can say is different about time off in school to work is that once a semester is over it is over, but at work the projects keep moving forward even if you aren’t there. So at least we will not have to come back to an inbox full of emails or catch ourselves up to what we had missed during any vacation time. So maybe going back to school after a long break isn’t as difficult, but none the less it will be somewhat of a challenge to get going again.

Hope everyone had a good break. Now let’s get back to it.

We Are Generation Flux…

By Jason Skidmore

In the latest issue of the magazine Fast Company the main article was entitled, “This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business.” It is a great article highlighting modern business and how professionals are succeed in the modern economy. Rather than summarize the entire article, which would be a crime to the article itself, I will quote the entire article for your reading pleasure. My interjection is that the world of doing business has changed and is changing. As professionals we have to make ourselves marketable in anyway necessary. The following is an excerpt of the article out of the magazine Fast Company, written by Rober Safian.

Be Not Afraid

“What's "a bitch" for companies can be terror for individuals. The idea of taking risks, of branching out into this ambiguous future, is scary at a moment when the economy is in no hurry to emerge from the doldrums and when unemployment is a national crisis. The security of the 40-year career of the man in the gray-flannel suit may have been overstated, but at least he had a path, a ladder. The new reality is multiple gigs, some of them supershort (see “The Four-Year Career"), with constant pressure to learn new things and adapt to new work situations, and no guarantee that you'll stay in a single industry. It can be daunting. It can be exhausting. It can also be exhilarating. "Fear holds a lot of people back," says Raina Kumra, 34. "I'm skill hoarding. Every time I update my resume, I see the path that I didn't know would be. You keep throwing things into your backpack, and eventually you'll have everything in your tool kit."

Kumra is sitting in a Dublin hotel, where earlier she spoke on a panel about the future of mobile before a group of top chief information officers. She is not technically in the mobile business; nor is she a software engineer or an academic. She actually works for a federal agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, as codirector of innovation for the group that oversees Voice of America and other government-run international media. How she got there is a classic journey of flux.
Kumra started out in film school. She made two documentaries, including one in South America and India, and then took a job as a video editor for Scientific American Frontiers. "After each trip to shoot footage," she says, "I'd come back and find that the editing tools had all changed." So she decided to learn computer programming. "I figured I had to get my tech on," says Kumra, who signed up for New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. She then moved into the ad world, doing digital campaigns at BBH, R/GA, and Wieden+Kennedy before launching her own agency. Along the way she picked up a degree from Harvard's design school, taught at the University of Amsterdam, and started a not-for-profit called Light Up Malawi.

"So many people tell me, 'I don't know what you do,'" Kumra says. It's an admission echoed by many in Generation Flux, but it doesn't bother her at all. "I'm a collection of many things. I'm not one thing."

The point here is not that Kumra's tool kit of skills allows her to cut through the ambiguity of this era. Rather, it is that the variety of her experiences--and her passion for new ones--leaves her well prepared for whatever the future brings. "I had to try something entrepreneurial. I had to try social enterprise. I needed to understand government," she says of her various career moves. "I just needed to know all this."

You do not have to be a jack-of-all-trades to flourish in the age of flux, but you do need to be open-minded. GE's Comstock doesn't have as eclectic a career path as Kumra--she has spent two decades within GE's various divisions. But just because she can dress and act the part of a loyal corporate soldier doesn't mean Comstock is not a GenFluxer. She's got a sweet spot for creative types, especially those whose fresh thinking can spur the buttoned-up GE culture forward. She's brought in folks like Benjamin Palmer, the groovy CEO of edgy ad firm Barbarian Group, to help inject new ideas and processes into GE's marketing apparatus. "We're creating digital challenge teams," she explains. "We're doing a lot more work with entrepreneurs. It's part of our internal growth strategy. It creates tension. It makes people's jobs frustrating. But it's also energizing." Comstock, once president of digital media at NBC, is now one of CEO Jeff Immelt's key confidants. "I've always gravitated to the new," Comstock says, in trying to explain her comfort with change. "Part of it is who you are. I grew up in media, in news, and developed almost an addiction to go from deadline to deadline. It's intoxicating." And profitable. Comstock is the architect of Ecomagination and Healthymagination, GE initiatives that have helped reconfigure the company during this financial crisis. While it's too early to tell what Healthymagination could produce, the Ecomagination group has to date accounted for $85 billion in revenue.”

If you would like to read the rest of the article you can visit: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/162/generation-flux-future-of-business.

Palestinian Museum in Birzeit

by Joel Wallace




Below is an excerpt from the World Architecture News and is presenting a large scale museum project in Palestine. With crunch for thesis development already here, this project could set as a nice example of masterplanning, design, and cultural significance that most of our topics may require attention to. Designing to respect the past, present, and future are what drives our biggest challenges and projects like this are a good reference for how this may begin to be accomplished.

Through an extensive selection process The Welfare Association is intending to appoint architects to masterplan and design the Palestinian Museum which will be located in Birzeit in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The selected architects will be responsible for masterplanning a phased development of the Palestinian Museum on a very important site within the overall campus of Birzeit University, near to Ramallah.

The Palestinian Museum will be a unique cultural project and is being developed to become the primary and authoritative source of knowledge and new thinking about Palestinian history, culture and contemporary life. Such a space does not currently exist. The Museum is conceived as a thematic rather than simply a narrative museum, in which many different aspects of Palestinian history and culture will be explored in innovative and revealing ways, creating debate and discussion about both past and contemporary themes.

The Palestinian Museum project has been in gestation for over a decade and has gone through a number of different stages of debate, thinking and rethinking. After a great deal of internal discussion and external consultation, the Welfare Association is now totally confident that the overall strategy and concept direction allow for the Palestinian Museum to be built.

Because of the nature of the Palestinian reality, where a majority of Palestinians are today living outside historic Palestine (i.e. Israel and the Occupied Territories); and because of the barriers and checkpoints erected by Israel which prevent the freedom of movement of Palestinians living under occupation (and prevent most Palestinians in the Diaspora from even entering any part of their country), the Museum is conceived as a hub which, in addition to catering to the population in the West Bank, will also serve a network of branches and associated centres, sharing with them information, research, web-based material and touring exhibitions, as well as human resources and expertise.www.worldarchitecturenews.com

Data Centers

By Jason Skidmore

One of the most interesting projects I feel that architects get to be involved in at this time in history is the creation of data centers. This type of architecture in many ways is cutting edge and relatively new to the profession. It seems as if the requirements are easy enough to understand. It most be in an area that's mostly cold year round and has easy access to water. It makes plenty of sense, because if you have ever used a computer of any kind you know how much heat they can put off. There is one Norwegian data center that is in a cave and kept cool by water which is accessible because of a nearby fjord. If you would like to read more about the data center please visit the Gizmodo post at http://gizmodo.com/5870367/this-norwegian-data-center-is-built-in-a-cave-and-cooled-by-fjords. It is a rather interesting read. I hope that in the development of these data centers, that not only is the security, efficiency, and utilization optimized, but also that they are aesthetically pleasing to look at. It would be a shame for such a mark of our time in the grand scheme of humans not be interesting to look at.

Happy Holidays!

by Audrey Treece

Happy Holidays!

I was having a hard time trying to figure out what to write for this blog entry. I think you all can agree when I say that as of 4:00PM on Friday, December 17, 2011, my brain went on strike. It told me that I was not allowed to think or work on anything until I got sleep and my body readjusted back to a normal schedule and/or routine.
I began by using my best friend, Google. I started typing in different words for architecture to see if anything struck my interest. After several attempts, I ended with “Christmas Architecture.”
Here are some humorous things I found:
Twelve Days of Architecture
On the first day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
A study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Second day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Third day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Fourth day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
a four-sided building,
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Fifth day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Fiiiiiive Computer screeeeens,
a four-sided building,
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Sixth day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Six clients not paying,
Fiiiiiiiiive Draaaama Queeeens,
a four-sided building,
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Seventh day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Seven cups of coffee,
Six clients not paying,
Fiiiiive Rennnnderiiings,
a four-sided building,
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Eighth day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Eight concept sketches,
Seven cups of coffee,
Six clients not paying,
Five more rendered sceeenes,
a four-sided building,
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Ninth day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Nine interns drafting,
Eight concept sketches,
Seven cups of coffee,
Six clients who are still not paying me,
Five Perforaaaaaated screeeeeeens,
a four-sided building,
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Tenth day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Ten roofs a leaking,
Nine interns drafting,
Eight concept sketches,
Seven cups of coffee,
Six clients still not paying, and I’m sending the invoice again, I don’t care if it is Christmas…..start paaaaaaying me!
Five R.S. Means,
a four-sided building,
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Eleventh day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Eleven-hour work days,
Ten roofs a leaking,
Nine interns drafting,
Eight concept sketches,
Seven cups of coffee,
Jesus, these stupid six clients will never pay me,
Five more minutes to refresh this screeeeeeeeen,
a four-sided building,
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
On the Twelfth day of Christmas,
my Architect gave to me
Twelve interstitial spaces,
Eleven-hour work days,
Ten roofs a leaking,
Nine interns drafting,
Eight concept sketches,
Seven cups of coffee,
Six clients didn’t pay me,
Fiiiiiiiive Gold—-en Meeeeeeeeeans,
a four-sided building,
Three French Curves,
Two turtlenecks,
And, a study guide for the A.R.E.
.
Merry Christmas,
pay me
www. archdaily.com/193884/twelve-days-of-architecture/
and this:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/read.php?CATEGORY_PK=&TOPIC_PK=1844

I hope you all have a nice holiday season and most importantly a healthy and restful break.

See you next year!