I’ve been away from this blog for a while, but it’s because I’ve been sort of busy…. and also lazy, so lazy. Here’s a batch of updates in no particular order. More to come, of course.

For work, I’ve been managing construction for two interior projects at Microsoft.

One is an office remodel for my group, Office Labs. We’ve been working in an old building: Building 4– the buildings are numbered by when they were built on the Redmond Campus– that’s been less than ideal for team work and collaboration. Basically, we’re taking down a lot of walls and putting up some glass to provide areas where people can work together more easily. I’ve designed a couple really simple pieces of furniture for the space too. Pictures will come soon.

The other is the second phase of the Envisioning Center, a lab space where my team (the Envisioning Team) will experiment with different software and hardware prototypes. I’ll talk more about this later. There’s still much more work to be done on the space. Another phase. Furniture. Technology pieces. For now enjoy the renderings.

At home, I’ve been playing around with type and some Oppen lines (many thanks to K). Posted a few more to flickr.

In older news, my friend, Pablo Herrera, has published a book which accumulates the work we’ve (Kenfield, Daniel, Pablo & our students) done in  a series of Rhino Workshops in Latin America.

Last but not least, my good friend Arthegall is finally engaged to the lovely R. Congratulations! (It’s about time.)

This is a shameless plug for my cousin, Dorothy.

I just noticed that her line of clothes can now be purchased at Jasmine Sola and the Tannery. My friends in Cambridge/all two of my female readers can shop happier.

I am eagerly awaiting a Men’s line.

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.

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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!