mOrphosis

Today was my first day of employment at the Santa Monica architecture firm Morphosis. The principal Thom Mayne was my professor for the Madrid studio at UCLA and this position at Morphosis looks to be the perfect extension of my research in graduate school. I'll be there part-time till teaching at USC ends in December and then switch over to full-time. Until December, I'm excited to be playing a large role in a forthcoming Morphosis book. For those less involved in the architecture world, you can get a sampling of the firm's work at the website: http://www.morphosis.net
(You can also look for me in the webcams.)

Madrid Project- New Titlepage

For our section of the publication, I created a new title spread that quickly introduces people to the central idea and its relevance to the broader issues of the city. We were critiqued in the final reviews for not linking our ideas to a larger story and not explicitly stating our values. This spread is our response. For those wondering, the text is doubled because there will be two bi-lingual editions: English and Spanish, and English and Mandarin.

New Madrid Renderings

Two new renderings for the book publication using the V-Ray engine

Joining USC Faculty

As of today, I have joined the undergraduate faculty at USC. I will be teaching a first year studio for the 2007-2008 school year. We had a preliminary faculty meeting today and the students start next Monday. I'm very excited and looking forward to building upon the teaching experiences I had at UCLA this summer.

Studio- Final Boards

studio- full board layout

I would still like to post all the individual boards, but in the meantime here is an image of all of them assembled together. They were designed to flow a certain way to lead the presentation. Grey areas are analysis with the design proposal in the center.

Thom Mayne Interview

For those not familiar with my studio professor from this year, here's an interesting interview done last week at a Starbucks outside his office. It has an interesting casual tone and he mentions our studio.
http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=61129_0_23_0_C

Fizzle video

An exciting thing about the projects I have been a part of is the life they have had post graduation. The installation on Hollywood Blvd will continue to be on display through Labor Day. In addition, it has been selected to be in a forthcoming book about digital fabrication by Lisa Iwamoto and was recently selected to be in an exhibit in a gallery in Washington DC. The video above was assembled by my partner Jono, and the exhibit in DC will feature a similar video.

The After

And now comes the after. I'm currently fortunate to be able to teach this summer at UCLA. Its a post-grad school digestion period. Work on the studio project continues in preparation for two publications: a book this fall focusing only on our studio and then another book next winter put out by the school on current research projects.

Superglow Installation Update

A few of my teammates had a chance to continue on the installation since it was not complete for the opening. Its not quite done, but enough to put it aside till after studio final reviews next week. The theater manager has promised to keep it installed now until Labor Day. Its a great project to see in person, but even better to capture in photographs as an open shutter seems to really draw out the glow effects.