A Little Freakin’ on the Weeken’

This post won’t mean much to anyone but T-Bone.

My graduation reward will be one of the following programming projects (addendums provided by T) :

1.) Redo gViewer. More flexible. Better visualizations.

2.) A Java3d version of Dustbunny.

3.) delicious/itunes but for youtube videos. queue, timestamp tag, and annotate using youtube. (many similar things exist…but we’d be making this for us… more like the notepad app)

4.) Some hedral packing thing for the workshop.

5.) dvdThing. This one seems to be out, because there’s too much like this already going on.

6.) That’s actually all I can remember, which is why I should have written this list down earlier.

Filed under: programming

What kind of spider understands arachnophobia?

Lately, I’ve been listening to “Grown Backwards” in the car. Even after not hearing it for a while, the album is still immensely pleasurable. Most of you probably already know that David Byrne has a blog. I’m late to this party. His radio show (podcast) is great mix of songs. This month’s selection is called “Unusual Contemporary Pop Songs” (… doesn’t unusual make it not pop?)

The other day I watched the movie “Renaissance” [trailer:above] and read this graphic novel “Torso” for clues on representation in my thesis and to take a break from the white slavery of architecture school. Renaissance is a pretty amazing visual statement, wrapped in a fairly trivial story line. It’s what Sin City (the movie) should have been.

Torso is a true crime, noirish tale, that used black and white drawings coupled with real photographs and documents from the mid-century case archives. One of the nice touches is that it uses onomatopoeia as way to transition from one scene to another so that sounds overlap even if the visuals and location don’t. Anyway, these helped me get back on track. I was feeling tired and doubting that I could pull off a beautiful thesis. Now it’s time to make this so lovely to look at that I don’t have to talk much.

Filed under: movies, music

Places You are Most Likely to Find Mase’s Money Hanging Out Of

This was too good not to make into a blog post.

Enjoy!

Also, continuing my other game post, check out what “no gravity” has done for spatial representation in Super Mario Galaxy:

Filed under: videogames

Early Work on the Grand Canyon

I was in a used bookstore yesterday looking for more graphic novels and I found a book by David Macaulay called “Great Moments in Architecture“. You might remember Macaulay as the illustrator of books like “Mosque” and “How Things Work”. There’s some really nice moments in the book: the ruins of a gas station, early excavation of the Grand Canyon, and an inflatable cathedralm, all illustrated in a sketchy Piranesian style.

I bought the book for a couple reasons. First, it was published in the 70’s the beginning the pomo achitecture’s golden age. As such, it’s a great reminder that my ideas are really nothing new, a lot of people have been thinking about this stuff for a very long time. Secondly, I bought the book as a gentle reminder not to screw up. When the illustrations are good, they’re funny and beautiful and you want to build them. But when they’re bad, they read like a Farside comic. (by Gary Larson, AIA) Ugz.

A dirty secret: this is probably one of about five architecture books I own. I’ve got a copy of Oppositions that I stole from the NYPL and some random books from the Details series. But mostly, I’m thoroughly uneducated/unread. Now you know not to play Humiliation with me.

I also bought “The Story of O” to add to my collection. The introduction which compares the novel to Sade’s Justine starts to ask the right questions: how do you place this book into some sort of historical or cultural context, while acknowledging how much of an anomaly it [still] is? It’s never the novel that feels dated so much as the criticism. I can tell immediately when the response was written, but the novel itself seems outside of identifiable social cues.

I like the freaks, yes I do.

But this is for another post about another kind of graphic novel.

Filed under: art, books, graphicnovels

Sinistra

Fooling around instead of doing work…
Sharpie on Security Envelope, Right-handedly

Filed under: art

Space Rocks

This is probably a better post for twitter, but I don’t know if I’m going back there. (Sorry, T)

I’m blogging from Gund Hall at the GSD at Space Rocks, a symposium that Bryan organized. I had forgotten that the AsiaGSD element was going to make this a very Asian presentation, which, honestly, is an odd subtext for the topic of looking at “new ways of conceptualizing spatial experience and representation.” But being semi-Asian, I’m down.

It’s very exciting to hear how other designers work. Their process is really sort of amazing.

Dana Cho talked about IDEO’s prototyping process as part of a business/marketing model. IDEO’s partyline of functionally driven design came across just as strong as when Bill Moggridge presented his book at the Media Labs a few months ago. Personally I find it really boring, but it is very successful. My friend and former co-worker Eva is with them now. The foam core mock-up of a hotel lobby was amazing. Foam core is the new plywood!

Rain Noe showed a bunch of photos from Theme Magazine. It’s an odd magazine that seems to be an amalgam of everything that is both design-y and asian-y.

Nurri Kim’s talk on her project “Tokyo Blues” starts out sort of banal but ends up being elegant conceptual investigation. She’s an artist, but her presentation felt the most architectural of all of them.

Irene Hwang from Actar Publishing gave a presentation about MVRDV’s SkyCars and VERB “Boogazine”. Publishing is now so much more important to architects. Not just for the publicity or to have a record that they get there first, but also to set up and distribute the theoretical and critical groundwork for a pedagogical position. It reminded me a lot of the experience I had working at Volume Magazine. The weird/scary part is that are so few people who are publishing and editing what we (Architects) are looking at. It’s nuts. My favorite is the monograph on desert as new model for “big-ness” (hot topic for architects right now) but cast in biblical terms. But of course, not having to build but only to theorize and publish is what the Rem-dog empire is founded on.

Whilce Portacio from DC Comics gave a dope talk; the best of the symposium, i.m.humble.o. But I’m predisposed to this stuff. Some interesting quotes about comics relationship to Hollywood: “Modern comics are used to tell stories for Hollywood.” “Originally, we were competitors with Hollywood because we were both cheap media.” “Comics are a repository for market research for Hollywood.” Most of the talk revolved around Whilce’s production methods. Speed seems to be the real factor here. It’s amazing. He talks about making 100 drawings in a month, and within those 100 drawings he’s designing entire worlds: cities, people, fashion, and “a sled” all in a few days. For half of his talk, he sketched real-time for us, a real treat.

—————

Sadly, I had to leave to get back to work on my thesis before the Q&A session started. Overall it was an enjoyable event! Great job, Bryan!

Filed under: architecture, art, friends, videogames

Exquisite Cops

Here I am in the midst of an all nighter, using YouTube to listen to music, waiting for a script to run. On any input above 10k, Rhinoscript runs really slowly. I’m trying to process about 100k points with twice that many lines. This is so slow I’m actually beginning to think it’s unnecessary. Anyway, in the meantime, I’ll write out the rest of my thesis script…

From the last post…

Since the theater and circulation are the same we can address the problem of the theaters scale. Movie theaters make money by having multiple spaces for different movies to show at the same time. A design that had several smaller movie palaces would be more successful than one with a single theater space. Here are some diagrams exploring how to balance theater, poche space, and circulation. [edit these…halfway done on my laptop]

The solution in this case was to divide the theater space into three cinemas, three hollows inside the framework of the building, swellings in the circulation. Each is a different size and has its own features.

The first theater is taller than it is wide. The space is the height of the entire building. It serves to bring light into the space which creates a large, well lit public space in center of the building. In fact, it connects to a public passageway that goes from block to block.

The second theater is the only circulation space which touches the envelope of the building. It starts at the 3rd floor and extends towards the interior. Movies are shown against a glass window. When not in use, the theater space offers a visual connection to the JMZ platform. When movies are being shown, a blurred reversed image in available to people on the platform and on the train.

The last theater is the smallest. It sits on the ramp which provides roof access. It can be adjusted for open air showings and performances.

So the next question became how to contruct these blobby structures and their ornament.

Keeping in mind that I needed to frame fairly tightly around these odd shapes, I examined ways of wrapping around an ornate curve with a truss chords or webbing. I was also thinking about a framing unit from which these spaces could be subtracted. Some of these experiments were impractical, such as a framing units based on on octahedrons or pentagonal tiling.

Eventually, I settled on two more practical types of framing units. Webbed trusses a foot deep 24 inches on center on each floor. And a 10 foot column grid… I think… I’m actually still working on this part.

Well, I think I might actually try and sleep for a couple hours; I’ve got class soon. And this 24 inch webtruss stuff looks a little silly. I’ll finish this post tomorrow.

Filed under: architecture, music, thesis

Interiority Complex

This is a working post… after shitting the bed at my mid review, I’m trying to edit up a new thesis statement.

I’m kinda tired of trying to be smart, so I’m going to write this more conversationally. When I first presented my thesis I described the proposal as mostly driven by aesthetics and the criticism from my committee was that I wasn’t making an academic argument. But it seems like everything generated by this postmodern approach could be made more efficiently by modern, minimalist poo: less material, less effort, less everything. Well, “less is a bore“. The only real reason to make all this extra effort is because it just looks better. I like pretty stuff. And so does everybody else. We’re all nostalgic for the days when craft and not cleverness was king. Anyway… here goes again…. This time I’m going to try and be more matter-of-fact. This is not just the intro statement but the presentation script…

——————————————————————

In 1914, a small theater was constructed on Broadway Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In the 1920s it was converted into a cinema and for twenty years successfully operated during the golden age of movie palaces. From 1950’s to 1970’s the theater gradually declined, eventually showing grind-house Mexican wrestling movies and pornography. After closing in 1977, the theater space was re-purposed as a ballroom and then a restaurant. Today the building holds a assorted retail stores, several apartments, and a five thousand square foot 99 cent store. This thesis proposes to reinstate the theater as it was during its heyday in the 20’s and 30’s, as an ornate movie palace.

To create this contemporary movie palace, this thesis uses an aesthetic which encourages nostalgia, that, through reference to the past, can endear a design to a community, mitigate programmatic dischord, and provide unusual formal qualities. To find this nostalgic beauty, this thesis will revisit antique typologies like that of the movie palace and nickelodeon, out-dated architectural techniques like poche and pastiche, and forgotten forms of ornament. Iconography and ornamentation, rather than being mere decoration of the interior, form a membrane which acts as a cultural interface to site the building in a strong, diverse, and ultimately stubborn community.

Since the original drawings for the theater have been lost or destroyed, the first attempt to create a movie palace was merely to copy an existing theater of approximately the same size and place it into the site. [I'm going to make these graphic better...]

The major problem with this approach is that the theater is too large for the community. In the 20’s and 30’s Williamsburg was at the height of its population density and prosperity. Today, this area of South Williamsburg is poor and only recently is making the same gains in population that we see elsewhere in Brooklyn. It cannot support a 500 to 1000 seat theater. In addition, an ornate movie palace wastes both structure and space in order to maintain its appearance. Re-examining how theaters like this one were originally constructed gave a clue how to proceed.

In the old theater, the poche space wastes both framing material and space. By inserting secondary program like apartments or retail into the poche space, whose structure can support lightweight ornament, we also gain the pro forma that might support a large “public” project like a movie theater. Given this logic the building could be read as a theater where the poche space is a midrise apartment building. Or, when we reverse the relationship, a midrise apartment building with a theater as its circulation space.

Since the theater and circulation are the same we can address the problem of the theaters scale. Movie theaters make money by having multiple spaces for different movies to show at the same time. A design that had several smaller movie palaces would be more successful than one with a single theater space. Here are some diagrams exploring how to balance theater, poche space, and circulation. [edit these...halfway done on my laptop]

To Come:

1.) There are three major theaters…

2.) Framing

3.) Offset Ornament (How a 3-5 foot EPS foam offset turns ornament into architecture and vice versa…)

Filed under: architecture

The Net is Vast

Last Friday was thesis mid review. Bad news: I sorta bombed my presentation. I was tired and incoherent. Good news: My graphics were good enough that everyone understood the project and I got great feedback. I tried to resolve the building a little too quickly and produced some ugliness but now I know how to go forward. (More on that later.) Afterwards I rewarded myself with a graphic novel binge on Friday and Saturday. I “randomly” grabbed a bunch of these from the library (a technique a friend of mine has practiced) and then dug in. I’d like to comment a little on each.

100% Paul Pope.

I don’t understand. I had heard such great things about Paul Pope and I was really looking forward to seeing his take on the Batman stories. The drawing is beautiful but the story is so crushingly bad I felt uncomfortable reading it.

Summer Blonde Adrian Tomine

Boy, this was lovely and depressing. I liked this one a lot. The drawing style is pared back but Tomine reads like graphic novels’ version of Todd Solondz. A whole lotta angst and depression served up without resolution. Double woot!

Akira Vol I, Katsuhiro Otomo

I can’t believe I haven’t read this. I watched the movie, sure, but so did every male “indoor” kid. This is a sci-fi masterpiece. The book has some images in which the synchronicity of a post 9/11 America and the post nuclear/apocalyptic Japan are captured perfectly. Really, it’s all I could think about. A cultural obsession that scales both physical damage and puerile emotions to the urban scale in exactly the same way.

Ghost in the Shell, Shiro Masamune

T and I watched the series (available in installments on adultswim) and the movies. But this is another one that I’ve actually never read. I’ve commented before on how the main character in the series is amazing. But really this is more that just waist to hip ratio. I swear. The “Major” is one of the most compelling female characters I’ve ever come across. I’m not sure why although the novel makes it abundantly (abundant in the most graphic terms) that the main character is certainly bisexual and certainly mostly robot. It’s constructed as a series of loose cases which eventually start to have a common thread. The stories are paced very quickly and the novel was over much too soon. I wish there were more!

Akira and GitS were the two Japanese novels I picked up. They were both written almost 20 years ago. (Akira in 1988 and GitS in 1991) They both are very cliched, I think because their forms and themes were so widely copied. The look of GitS of dirty, intricate, technology is so familiar I almost don’t realize how hard it is to draw. For a while I was obsessed the intro to the movie Ghost in the Shell II. If you haven’t seen it, it features robotically enhanced Hans Bellmer dolls floating while traditional Japanese acapella plays in the background. Powerful shit, indeed. I recommend it.

And last but not least:

The Acme Novelty Library, Chris Ware

This one I wished I had read before my thesis. Ware isn’t a spectacular artist or inker. What he does better than anyone else is layout a page and scale text in a restrained, yet ornamental style. He’s so good that even though the subject matter of the comic itself often deals with death, loneliness and boredom, I find myself pleased at the end of each one. I wish I could steal these layouts for my boards.

So that’s it for now…. I’ll come back and edit this post. I want to redo my thesis statement. Again!

Filed under: architecture

I can bend minds with my spoon

Two new games that you architects have probably already heard of:

Echochrome.

(Check out the java and downloadable demos here.)

And Portal

Playing in space never seemed so fun! I’m really excited to play these games. Especially if there’s a co-op mode in portal.

I remember trying to explain to my friend T what it was like to be really really good at an FPS. I told him that the best players play like the walls and floors aren’t even there. They track players through a map as if they could see right through the structure. And they’ve also invested the time in knowing all the possible paths through the space so that moving from point A to point B doesn’t depend on “walking” through the map.

Like the dancer in the last post, it seems that spatial understanding is subjective (interpretive?… I’m not sure what the right word is) at even the most basic level of perception.

I wish I had more time to play games these days. So many have come out that have a lot to offer the design process. The last one I went crazy over but didn’t get a chance to play was Paper Mario. Have any of you played this game?

Paper Mario exploited that odd relationship between 2d and 3d that most side scrollers have. (The intro/credits for the 300 –the only good part of that movie– do the same.)

There are some fascinating parallels between architectural representation and building which paper mario could apply to. I’d love to make a side scroller or Portal like game in which the outcome of playing the game is actually some realizable construction. A project for this summer!

Apologies for the multitude of videos and the matrix reference…

Filed under: architecture