Fall 2006- Lottery Results

I came out pretty well getting both my first picks: Neil Denari for regular studio and Thom Mayne for the research studio. The rest of my schedule will be a theory course taught by Michael Speaks and a tech class taught by Jason Payne.

Today consisted of presentations by all eight studio professors (research and regular). Everyone actually showed up except Thom Mayne, hopefully thats not a sign of things to come. After we turned in our forms we played the waiting game for quite awhile as the committees sorted it out. Then the results were posted and everyone rushed to see their assignments.

Once the dust settled, our studio met with Denari and discussed the project further and assigned research assignments for the weekend. It will be an intense studio because we are doing two projects this quarter. Under my last post you can find a link to the course outline. The title is Air Tight/Water Tight and to sum it up its two projects exploring fluidity in architecture through precise program-driven relationships.

Fall 2006 Course Outlines

The first outlines for the fall line-up have been announced:
http://www.aud.ucla.edu/~jkies/F06Outlines/F06Outlines.htm

Looks like some good choices, plus none of the big names are taking sabbatical this year which is great. I'm still trying to decide my first and second picks for the studio and research studios. The big lottery is Friday. For Research Studio I'm leaning towards Thom Mayne or Greg Lynn and for regular studio I want to take Neil Denari, but of course as the profs turn in their outlines, I may change my mind.

Studio- Other's Models

Here are some shots of the other groups models, 7 groups total. People took a variety of approaches in achieving "stickiness". I felt the jurists often focused in a conventional manner critiquing form rather than physics.

Studio- Final Boards

We presented three 24x36 boards. Its easy to produce alot of drawings from the 3d models so groups tend to overload the boards with excessive diagrams and sections. We attempted to keep the boards clear and have a large exploded axon as the centerpiece. Since my partner did all the airbrushing I focused on putting the boards together. They were constructed in Illustrator with most of the drawings produced in Rhino and AutoCAD.

Studio- Other Models

Here are the other models we presented. I have posted some of them before. The hold detail pieces I refined a few so they worked better and I came up with a new hybrid detail and that allowed two rings to connect. It was an attempt to break some of the rules we established and propose what the direction the study could continue in. Overall I tended to work and the micro level and my partner focused on the macro models and drawings. While we started really strong in our macro moves, I agree with the jury that the strength in the end ended up being at the micro developments - articulate detailing and the hybrid hold which they flet had a lot of potential.

Studio- Final Model

For the final model we enlarged the scale to improve the joints and simplified the curvatures. All along, the prof was pushing us not to consider these things finished when they came out of the printer. He asked everyone to consider coloring them as an analytical tool to emphasize relationships. We ended up being the only group to airbrush our models. Limited experiece with color or airbrushing probably led to our models being too vibrant and garrish but I'm glad we gave it a shot.

Studio- Final Review

Tuesday was our final review. We had six outside jurists, most being our Professor's former students that now teach or work at various places in LA plus Hernon Diaz who teaches at Sci-Arc and currently has a show at SFMOMA. Every group presented multiple boards along with the finished 3d prints.

Tech- Exhibit

Overall there were seven groups, here are the highlights. The jurists seems pleased with the level we reached in just over five weeks, although they lambasted everyone for not articulating their project's ideas. Part of it was lack of sleep and the other part is it was the type of class where we just worked through the prototypes exploring the ordering of form by glow. There wasn't as much preconceptualization as you would find in most studio projects.

Tech- Final Installation

Final installed model turned our pretty well but it took us all night to install. The mounts at the ceiling and wall were a bit last minute but consisted of twisting and warped panels that received the wires. The difference between the two systems reads pretty well both through the forms and how they are lit. While the jury liked our parts they felt the whole was a bit disjointed. This was inherent in the chain approach, but we probably should have evolved the modules more for generalized movement.

Tech- Final Board

We had our final review for the tech class yesterday which is why I haven't posted in awhile. Tech classes can be as demanding as studio so you really have to watch your time. Along with installation of the working piece we each pinned up a 24x36 board showing the final scheme as well as early iterations. As you can see ours changed quite a bit from the early schemes I posted. We used the chain orientation to explore the struggle between the overall movement and the modules that create it.

Theory- brief 5

Here's my final brief for the thoery course. The topic was Program and Projection and the week's reading was Supermodernism by Hans Iberling. The discussion focused on the recent trend of Proposal Architecture with a rendered or even animated architectural proposal becomes a cultural magnet and a new generation of the 1960s paper architecture. In both cases there was a critical approach towards program and not just form. One glossy proposal discussed was the WTC proposal by United Architects, see http://www.imaginaryforces.com/if.html

(under environments-WTC-view animation)

Also reviewed were OMA proposals print and animated.

Theory- Brief 3&4

Due to a class cancelation last week lectures and briefs 3&4 were combined for this week. The week 3 topic was a society's dependance on software. The reading was Paul Virilio's Open Sky. Week four proposed that transparency is now episodic and staged as spectacle because we so rarely know the sources of things. The reading was Keller Easterling's Enduring Innocence.

Studio- 3D Detail Prints

Here are some prints of our hold details. As stated earlier, the focus of the project is studying mass and the interaction between surfaces based on their internal and external structures. We have focused the study on these four attachments. As stated earlier each responds not only to the vertical weight of the attaching piece but also torque from the cantilevering action.