The Fine Line of Lunacy

The edge of architecture. This is definitely where things are going in the conceptual architecture world - whether you like it or not. I do appreciate the way Greg Lynn describes the work as spectacle though.

Books

What is it about the things I love that makes them hard to find? Music that's only available on Vinyl... books that are out of print.
And what is it about Architecture books that is so fantastic? Is it their thick pages, their unusual binding methods, the awe inspiring pictures? I know it's not the cost or ease of availability that's for sure.
I recently went trawling through Amazon's web listing of books on architecture in preparation for being drilled by family and friends about what to get me for Christmas. Lots of books I am interested in were listed, but only a handful were available if I wasn't willing to wait for several months. Figures. It's a shame the bulk of the really interesting projects out there only exist in books. But that is how many of today's world leading architects existed for a long time: as 'Paper Architects'. If anyone is interested and wants to stir the creative juices of a young architect, here is only a quick and incomplete list.

The Fistfight

A recent lecture by American artist James Turrell was the highlight of last week. Turrell has spent his artistic career so far exploring the properties of light and somehow giving an intangible material weight, presence, and texture. When starting on the project which made him famous, Roden Crater, he admitted in hindsight that he was a little out of his league. [Turrell started the project and has been working on it steadily since 1972 - he says he is "almost finished"] He referred to the Roden Crater project as " ... a fistfight I probably shouldn't have gotten in to. But it's too late once it's already started... "

Funny, it makes me think of Studio.
Well almost.

Making

Everyone wants me to make something. Make a drawing. Make a proposal. Make a building design. Make a poster. It's quite odd. I haven't made anything useful this year until quite recently. All of a sudden everybody wants the fruits of my creative labors.

Of course there was the huge model a few weeks ago along with mixed media presentation panels measuring 4 feet high and 23 feet long. And now Studio wants/needs detailed models of several buildings and necessary circulation routes [which are intensive] for Tuesday.

On the fun side of things is the 3D modeling / 3D printing. Make a digital model. Don't make a physical model - let a computer do that.


The Digital:
The Real:

1:750

I've been really naughty lately:
I've called none of my friends. [My parents have been barely included in the loop]
I missed a really good friends birthday. [I'm still trying to figure out how to dig myself out of that mess]
I haven't called one of my best friends in Washington DC since I don't know when.[By the way Adrienne, the painting is done...I swear!]
I haven't called another one of my best friends who is supposed to be in my neck of the woods in a few days - who wanted to hang out with me so badly that he was going to fly me to Montreal for a few days while he was there. I don't know if he is even still coming.

cripes.

I have been rather close to a model lately though. This one is not the skinny runway type but the overwhelming architectural kind. It's 78in X 56in X 40in. At almost seven feet long and five feet wide it's quite imposing and seems to have a voracious appetite for architectural materials - which might be fitting since in reality the site is almost a kilometer wide and one and a half kilometers long. Did I mention that the base the model sits on [custom built by me] has a fully articulated double sided drawer almost the same size as the model surface.
"Wanna see the underground road system? Here let me pull it out for you."
Fantastic.

So as I sit here at 1am waiting for the base coat of paint to dry I thought I would take some time and say hi/apologize to those who have suffered due to the ridiculous work schedule I've had this past 6 weeks.

The model is due Tuesday.
It only gets worse after that.