2nd draft of application essay

I just finished a revised draft. Thanks to everyone who emailed me or commented on the blog, it was infinitely helpful. For this draft I added a little background and revised some wording, and it should be pretty close to final. The next part of the essay will map out my academic plans and how i hope to formulate the rest of my curriculum based on my desire to communicate more effectively. I may or may not post that stuff tonight, but i will be posting the whole thing after i submit it - in a more blog friendly format (links and pictures!).

The architectural education emphasizes a limited, albeit effective approach to communication. We are formally taught how to express 'architectural' ideas to our potential clients using a handful of architectural tools and graphic expressions. This is adequate if the discipline retains its current, narrowly defined role. But that is not what architecture is, it is not what we learn in our education, and architects do not always act upon this capacity. Between the widespread momentum of the environmental movement, the technological advances and availability in three-dimensional computer software and the staggering unemployment rate, there is a competitive advantage to be more responsive and adaptive to the role an architect plays in a project. Supplementing these factors is a general undercurrent, noticeable in the profession and unavoidable in our particular student body, that design should not be available only for those who can afford it. Architects have an increased incentive and responsibility to change the general public's perception of their roles in the pursuit of a better built (or non-built) environment. Those who are willing to take a more active role in response to these changes are the ones who will shape the way our profession is defined in the years to come. They are using their skills as problem solvers and extending their reach to become problem identifiers. To do this, they need to be experts of communication - not just of traditional 'architectural' communication, but of communication to a vastly diverse and ever changing audience - in order to help make more informed, better educated decisions about the implications of their clients’ actions. 

Again, grammar and style edits are still welcome!

Part 1 - How does the architectural education emphasize communication?

Taken from the application:

"This fellowship derives from an endowment created to provide support for graduate students with financial need who are pursuing studies that emphasize communication, especially writing skills."

So the first question I have to answer is, how does the architectural education emphasize communication (to someone who has never been a part of it), and how can I explain it quickly enough to allow room for my academic plans in the same 1-page essay? Here goes nothing...

The architectural education emphasizes a limited, albeit effective approach to communication. We are formally taught how to express 'architectural' ideas to our potential clients using a handful of architectural tools and graphic expressions. This is fine if the discipline retains the narrowly defined role it has built a reputation around. But architects do not always play this role. Increasingly they have more responsibility and incentive to reevaluate their roles, and more importantly to change the general public's perception of those roles in the pursuit of a better built (or non-built) environment. Architects are taking a more active role in their relationships with clients. They are using their skills as problem solvers and extending their reach to become problem identifiers. To do this, they need to be experts of communication - not just of traditional 'architectural' communication, but of communication to a vastly diverse and ever changing audience - in order to help make more informed, better educated decisions about the implications of their actions. 

Does this even make sense to people who are not currently heavily entrenched in the architectural education? It feels like I am taking the last year and a half of observations about our education and pinning them down to one paragraph. I have no idea if everything else in my head is making this appear successful to me, or if it really does convey the information I want it to (ha! this is a small representation of the most essential skill we are being taught; how to absorb an overflow of information and communicate it effectively to a given audience).

lecture Series - John Peterson and Public Architecture

poster by andi solk, m.arch option III student and head of the lecture series committee

When possible, I try to catch the guest speakers we are privileged to at the University of Oregon. It can be exciting to see people who are fully dedicated to professional practice speak about their work, and most of them know how to keep their audience captivated with interesting stories and sexy pictures. If nothing else, when a guest lecturer visits the school, it provokes students to go out of their way to look at some unfamiliar work. This in turn broadens our education and sometimes I walk away from a presentation having found a major influence and inspiration. Some favorites of mine have included Kengo Kuma, Anna Maria Orru, and James Wines.

It's not always easy to get architecture students and professors to attend these lectures, which is part of what made Friday night such a nice surprise. John Peterson of Public Architecture came to Lawrence Hall 177 and spoke to a rather enthusiastic, comparatively large crowd of students and professors at 5:30 pm - a time when most people in Lawrence are either burned out from a full week of studio and headed to happy hour, or anxious to get home and crash because they've only slept six hours since Wednesday. I think the attendance at John's lecture speaks partially to the caliber of the work his firm has accomplished, and volumes to the common interest in our community revolving around design as a means for social activism. John Peterson is the founder of the 1% pro bono design program, an offshoot of his private firm, Peterson Architects.

John's presentation was a really nice way for me to cap off the last few weeks. His message, his firm's work, and his passions were clear and admirable. But it was his delivery and the intentional, often successful strategies he used to communicate the importance of an idea to the audience that most impressed me. I have spent the last seven or eight months trying to understand the role of architecture today and how I possibly fit into it, or what I am doing with this education. Over the last few weeks I have done my best to narrow my interests in order to articulate them for a fellowship that I am applying for through the University. What excited me about John's lecture was not only that the work he does is making an enormous impact on the way we define and understand architectural practice, but his presentation was so obviously representative of the skills we are trying to learn in the architectural education - whether we know it or not.

Between now and Friday I need to have an essay written to map out my academic plans over the next year and a half. I will be using this blog to help write that essay. Any feedback, critical or not, would be extremely helpful this week - even from my mom, who will undoubtedly tell me how much she likes my work :)

TED Talk - Joshua Prince-Ramus authoring processes over objects, the Wyly Theatre

For a little background, Joshua Prince-Ramus was a founding partner of OMA New York, the American affiliate of Rem Koolhaas' Netherlands based firm, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Shortly after the success of the Seattle Public Library, JPR separated from OMA and renamed the firm REX.

He is part of the TED brain trust, and gives a damn good presentation that speaks to a pretty wide audience. The latest one is about the Wyly Theatre Building in Dallas. His intro is about the schism between creativity and execution, authoring processes versus objects, and the relationship between the architect and the client(s). Chronologically, these are some highlights:

1:00 - "We are for decorative purposes only" - referring to the state of architects and architecture today.

3:47 - both owner and architect alike are empowered to critique architectural manifestations based on positions taken. This leads to 'the lost art of productively losing control'.

5:20 - a diagram showing how agenda should fit into the projects and the clients' constraints (seen below)

9:00 - Diagrams

11:25 - three basic configurations for the theatre, the technologies used and some renderings to show the different uses.

16:36 - time lapse video showing the building change configurations

"If we are so good at our craft, shouldn't we be able to conceive of an architectural manifestation that slides seamlessly through the projects and the clients' constraints?"

-Joshua Prince-Ramus

If you enjoyed this video, check him out in an earlier TED talk while still with OMA:

And finally, here is the timelapse film from Stewart Mayer on Vimeo adding some clarity and music to the film shown in JPR's presentation:

Wyly Theatre Timlapse, Dallas Arts District from Stewart Mayer on Vimeo.

diving right back into it

Well hello my beloved friends and family. For the last few weeks I have been wondering how to jump back into this blog thing. In my head I thought I would write this monumental, all-inclusive post that would serve to summarize the past 5 or 6 months. The longer I searched for the theme or the style of this formidable resurrection post, the harder it was to write.

Part of the hesitation was that I want to change the focus of this blog. I had been using it periodically to show my own work and our life in Eugene, but since last fall I have taken an interest in writing as a medium to express architectural themes and spatial properties. It is an overlooked and undervalued component of our work here, so I would like to start using this blog more frequently as a means to articulate the process of my education (which I had been doing a little) as well as track my own interests and inspirations as they come to me. Every term there are dozens of projects, people and events that inspire me, so I would like to pass them along and figure out what they mean to me by articulating my thoughts to you. With that said, I may disable the email function of this blog, as I do not want to overcrowd your respective inboxes.

So today, instead of trying to catch everyone up at once, I will write this post as if there was no break. Every so often I will do my best to post some work from the fall term, but until then I just want to get started reviving A List of Books.

Here is a project I came across the other day while reading dezeen. It is not my own work and it is only indicative of my education as it happens to be a beautiful project from the mountains of Japan.

The Kuri at Chushinji by Katsuhiro Miyamoto & Associates. A Kuri is built to house the priest and his family, as well as provide a space for intimate community events.

The concrete roof was formed first. It reminds me of the roof at Le Corbusier's Ronchamp. Concrete is one of my favorite materials for its flexibility and strength - both structural and aesthetic. Despite the high carbon emissions produced by its main ingredient (cement), there is room for improvement through the use of byproducts such as fly ash and recycled aggregate. It is also one of the most widely available construction materials around the world, making it applicable to a range of projects.

The roof is meant to play off the traditional temple form. Many of these temples last hundreds of years thanks to impeccable care and sanctity of use. Over time the interior walls and layouts of temples go through modifications and renovations, but the roof form remains constant. This roof was designed with the intention to last 100 to 200 years.

photos courtesy of the dezeen site, taken by Takumi Ota

Traditional Japanese architecture and Buddhist teachings emphasize an awareness of the seasons. This picture shows the blurring of the boundaries between interior and exterior environment. If you look closely you can see the interior wood framing touch the roof without any layers in between. The gaps left over by this process visually and physically connect the occupants with the elements. The visible, single roof element also serves to unify the individual chambers which are partitioned by interior walls and screens.

I love this section drawing. This project exemplifies the type of scale that I would like to work with right now. The further I get in school the harder it is for me to grasp designing large buildings. There is an approach to space on a small scale that I can feel. Perhaps it is something that will change over time as my abilities develop, but if I want to evoke emotion through architecture, I have to be able to put myself inside the building during the design phase.

Final Review, Osaka, Tokyoooo

A lot has happened since my last post, so I'll break it up into a few posts while I wait in the airport for my flight to Beijing. On a side note, I am waiting for about 6 more hours than I was supposed to thanks to my brother and I both missing our respective flights this morning - it was my fault as i was the one with the alarm. We were pretty terrified that it would cost us both the rest of our savings for the trip, but his ticket had no charge fee and mine was only a hundred dollars. We got pretty lucky on that one!

So last Monday was our final review for the term (pictures here). This was a group studio project so I worked with three classmates and the other groups had anywhere from 4-6 members. One of my partners is a landscape architect student in his final year, and the other two are architecture students. It was a pleasure working with them and we ended up with a nice project. We all added something different to the group, but the best part was that we were able to communicate with each other rather effectively. It was a great group dynamic. For our design we focused on an important intersection in downtown Kyoto called Shijoomiya and developed it with a planting design, urban park space and commercial center to connect the existing transportation and commercial fabric to the street level. This used to be a pretty busy hub for commuters and businesses, but a train stop was removed several years ago which has caused the area to lose its appeal.  Our group found a lot of inspiration from the Lotus flower (which is obvious when you see the boards). We presented six boards showing our design:

The students on the floor, professors and visiting reviewers in chairs

Professor Ron Lovinger during another group's review

The first four boards

The last two boards

A detail of the first board - an introduction to our presentation. I painted this to reflect the style of scroll paintings in Japan and China. Everyone responded so positively to this painting, especially to the koi. After dabbling in art on and off since high school, it was the first time that one of my pieces triggered such a visible, positive emotional response in such a large audience. It was a really nice way to cap off the term and the work we had been putting in during the first four weeks. 

This was our final board, after the plans and sections were presented. We decided it would be a good idea to show the impact of our design by creating a comic strip that responded to the Japanese culture of Manga and Anime. The board illustrates a narrative of the four group members taking different routes of transportation to the center of this intersection. The main idea of our design was to create a meeting place for people, a recognizable center for Kyoto amongst the different modes of transportation (a center that the city is currently lacking). The comic really helped show this idea. Michael Bowles drew the whole thing up over the course of about a week (which was pretty amazing if you ask me), then we all traced it onto the paper and the two of us water colored each character's journey in a different color. The response from the students and professors was inspiring. I really enjoy the idea of representing architecture in a non-traditional manor. Often we are taught very limited methods of representation to capture the feeling of a building such as doctored photographs, realistic renderings, plans and sections. Architecture is such an emotional, artistic and imaginative response to a given set of circumstances that in order to communicate a proposal there must freedom of expression and interpretation. I'm not saying it has to be completely abstract or on the other hand without any of the practical components, but my favorite presentations include both the realistic details as well as the conceptual motivations. 

Our professor Daisuke translating for our guests


Caitlin's group presenting their project


Peter Baker and Ali McQueen


Quin and his group's boards



Ron explaining something about a Cheetah?

Off to Beijing! More to come, probably not until I return to the States!

Final Media Review

This summer term is broken down into three classes, one is studio, one is a special studies class and one is a media class. The media class consisted of daily water coloring class as well as individual lessons from two of our professors. We had our final on Monday and we were expected to have about 14 completed paintings. 

One of the main reasons I chose to come here was to develop my water coloring. After spending about 6 weeks focusing on it last summer I knew I would not get much better unless I dedicated a large chunk of time to it. I have been a little frustrated because I am not improving as fast as I wanted, but we are only half way into the trip and I think I am starting to see signs of the improvement I was looking for. 

I took pictures of all the work I showed at our final which you can see if you click here. 

They chose 3 paintings from everyone to show at school in the fall and these are the 3 they chose of mine:

We made this stop on the way back from Nara

This is a view of the Katsura River in Arashiyama. This place is so beautiful when the sun goes down. My friend Caitlin let me borrow her camera and take some pictures after I painted:

Caitlin working on a masterpiece!

This one is on the way up to the top of a mountain that overlooks Kyoto. 

I knew I would enjoy water coloring, but I also want to be better at freehand sketching, so I have been trying to capture some of these places with quick sketches. I really enjoy the way these have been developing:

This one is inside our temple complex at night

The temple garden at Kongbuji - in Koyosan

This is my favorite of all the work I have done here. I used my ink pen, a little bit of water, and then added some color at the end. It is at the entrance of Daishen-In.

Koyosan and Nara

Hellooooo,

It has been a while since I have posted anything because A) they have kept us very busy and B) I don't know how to possibly narrow down everything into one post at a time. Instead, I have been posting pictures every few days and waiting to write about specific topics or themes as they build up in my head. We had our midterm review on Friday, which means we were in the temple for four days working to put together our presentation, but then we got the weekend off so I caught up on some water coloring, sleep and Karaoke!

Last week our professors and the head monk at Daishen-In took us to Nara for 3 days. On the way we were privileged to a night in Koyosan which is the headquarters of the Shingon sect of Buddhism. Koyosan is a town of only about 4000, 2/3rds of which are monks in training. The head monk, Osho, trained here as a child before changing sects. We left Myoshin-ji at 6 in the morning in order to get to Okunoin by mid morning. Okunoin is the largest cemetery in Japan, and it surrounds the mausoleum of the founder of Koyosan, Kukai. 

This was truly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life. The trail leading up to the mausoleum is 2 km long and dates back over a thousand years.  Yes, the scale was impressive, the textures and colors were intense and the sense of history was overwhelming but the timing was the most powerful part of the morning. We were so lucky to see this place in the most dramatic setting imaginable. Fog had moved in and deepened as we progressed to the mausoleum so that each grave, tree, fountain and offering was more emotional than the one before it. On any given day this place would be beautiful, but that day was a once in a lifetime experience. Every person I talked to that night felt emotions they had never felt before. 

Here are some pictures from the morning:

The beginning of the trail, before the fog really moved in. The trees in this cemetery were some of the largest and oldest I have ever seen.

The bibs are used in prayer of children who have died, or to protect the living 

This might be the best picture i have ever taken. 

towards the end of the trail

When we reached the Mausoleum we walked into the main temple where a monk was leading a chant, then gathered with Osho in back of the temple where he led us in a chant of prayer and thanks in front of Kukai's tomb. I was not allowed to take pictures back here, but it was a moving experience that made several people on the trip lose it. At this point I was more in shock than anything else or I'm sure I would have done the same. I watched a sparrow fly down from above, right through the Torii gates leading to Kukai's tomb.  It was the first time I have ever been so moved by a piece of architecture. Had the gate not been there it would have just been another bird following a seemingly random path. Thanks to her route from directly above us, through the middle of these gates to the other side (a side forbidden to all of us), she represented something much more meaningful and put the final touches on an experience I will never forget. The emotional response to architecture is something I have yet to really understand, but it is the primary reason I want to study it. I know happiness can be created by architecture, but it can never just be about the building. The context in which the building is experienced has to be valued just as much if not more than the building itself. Or maybe there should be no differentiation between the two? The minute the two words are separated they become isolated elements. Anyway, This guy has a nice write up about Koyosan, including some great pictures. I don't know him but he has some good info about Buddhism and the town. 

After we loaded back onto the bus we headed to Nara for the next two nights. Nara was really fun but I will save the writing for tomorrow after we have our final review for media. We need to have 14 water colors done, and 40 by the end of the trip, so I will probably start posting some pictures of that stuff. 

I Just want to leave you with some highlights of Nara:

Freakishly small deer 

The largest wooden structure in the world

More cute Japanese kids (mostly for Kaitlin :0) )

Tea ceremony with a view of the city in the background and the garden in the foreground

Ok I'm off to bed, but I hope people are enjoying these pictures. If you really like any of them, or want me to explain any of the ones in my albums, email me!

 Love you all and Happy 4th of July!

Off to Nara

Hey all,

I uploaded a few more pictures from yesterday.  They are from the temple we are staying in (six of us from the University are staying here while the other 20 or so are staying at Daishen-In, a different temple in the Myoshin-Ji complex). Highlights include our jacked priest, Taka, our meditation room, paintings on the walls, and the gardens of the temple which are really beautiful. 

I will be in Nara for 3 days without internet, but will be back with another post sometime next week. I hope everyone is enjoying summer! I miss you all. 

Temples, nightlife, rivers and vending-machine Sake!

The last few days have been unbelievable! I don't have a lot of energy to do a full post thanks to our first night in downtown Kyoto (and the Kama River at 4 AM), so I am just going to put up some pictures with captions. I'm not sure how much I am going to be able to blog just because we are constantly on the move and we will be doing a studio project soon, but I will definitely be keeping up my picasa album. 

So far we have toured a few temples and gardens, water colored on the Kamo River, swum in the Kamo and the Katsura Rivers, ridden bikes all over the city and walked through a bamboo forest. It's tough to decide which things I share on this blog because the whole trip has been so exciting. 

This is a room in the temple that most the students are staying at, Daishen-In. 

The buddhist breakfast served to us on the first two days was delicious.

Part of a ceremony that only happens once a year at Miyoshin-ji

Bicycles are the main mode of transportation in Kyoto. It's great seeing the wide variety of bicyclists on these roads. The style of riding is so much different than at home. It's a really strange, organic chaos on the streets. Despite the speed, the number of riders/drivers and the lack of proper bike lanes, I feel very safe riding around because no one feels entitlement to their specific path and everyone is very aware of their surroundings as they ride. 

No real purpose to this photo, I just like the colors and the funny character. 

One thing we can't quite understand is their process of putting completely random words in English on their bikes. Some of our favorites are "Feel Garden", "Parsley", and "Hand Clap!!"

The group swimming in the Katsura River after a long, hot day. Only Westerners swim here and it is really funny to see the locals' reactions as they pass by on the river. 

Wow Asian babies are cute.

The best vending-machine sake in town. It also doubles as a perfect water cup for painting! 

This is the Komo River. It runs right through the heart of Kyoto and is home to dozens of local fish, birds and animals. At any given spot along the river there are several bird species (cranes, egrets, herons and hawks) flying around overhead or fishing the river. We sat on the banks and painted here for a while, then a few of us came back for an early morning swim after going out downtown. 

This is a picture of The Time's Building designed by Tadao Ando. I don't know if I've ever been more impressed by a building before. I will probably do a separate post on the Ando buildings that I visit while in Japan. 

This place is fun!!