Taking a risk, Taking a break

Ian Chodikoff, the editor of Canadian Architect Magazine came up to me after my year end presentation and told me "It's really good. Aggressive. Good work." As did Bruce Kuwabara, Bridgette Shim, and Diana Balmori.

I was extremely nervous going into my final review as I had very little resolved with about 9 days until my presentation. I didn't have a building. I had a lot of research and a lot of ideas but nothing had developed over the previous weeks.
On the last day of school my studio supervisor Bridgette Shim came up to me and told me with a smile: "You have a lot of work to do."
I have stated earlier that I was going to dive into a classic 'student project' complete with all the customary trappings: crazy visuals, aggressive ideas, a complete lack of reality....
I even added things that were quite unusual for an architectural poster/panel: such as a girl in a bikini wearing a gas mask. Now I could explain it all and I could make it all make sense, but it was just so different from anything anyone had done all year that I wasn't too sure as to what to expect.
"You have got balls of steel." was Johanna's response when she saw my panels which were equaled by my model which was so large and conceptual that the main roof surface [which I had made out of a stiff galvanized steel mesh which I laminated to a black canvass fabric] started to pour off the edges of the site model and onto the floor - piling up around the feet of the critics.
All in all my fellows students were quite engaged in my project and really got behind me on it. But none of them knew how the critics would take it.
In the past eight months I've seen what I thought were good projects get destroyed by an agitated panel of critics. I though I was totally setting myself up for this as there were obvious holes in my project [The main issue I had was the major problem of detailed plans of where things went like change rooms, restaurants, retail spaces etc... I had ideas and some areas were demarcated but the specifics were lacking].

The project was so big that some things needed to be left behind or ignored for the greater good. It was a lesson for all of us in the successful representation of our projects and how to show off our ideas the best way possible. No one could do everything on the massive list of things they asked us to do. So instead we have to edit the list down to the most important things there and try to blend things together to make the list smaller. So if I could somehow come up with a diagrammatic sectional perspective drawing instead of a diagram, a section, and a perspective I could in fact have three things in one drawing instead of having to do three drawings. I tried to make sure I got 4 hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks of school and somehow I got it done to a point where I felt I could present it.
I'll post the panels here in the next day or so....

Project Update

No time to write but enough time to show you a quick rendering of what I'm woking on....
Think 'Chisto and Jeanne Claude' versus architecture.

Already?

I started to clean out my desk today in preparation for Summer break. Lots of debris managed to bury itself under the organized chaos that is studio. I had a review yesterday of my visual communications work - a class based solely on representation and experimentation with the presentation of visual information. My site Engineering class is done. My History paper is due on Monday and the big final presentation is spread over the 24th and the 25th. That gives me 11 days of total hell.
I can't believe it's been a year. It feels like ten years and only a few weeks at the same time. I still have no idea exactly what architecture is but I know I want to find out exactly what architecture is to me.

Humor

In response to recent 'episodes' of hopeless despair [see previous posts] I have decided to have some fun. I'm going to create a really weird student project. Architecturally this well known genre generally consist of projects completely devoid realistic human interaction, structural considerations, or any other type of rational quality that my parents brilliantly embedded within me while growing up.
To hell with reason! Be gone sane thoughts! Research be damned! It's time to make the building I've never even thought of!!! Maybe it'll fly? Why not. It's not like there's a budget or anything.

I know you're all bugging me for examples of stuff I'm doing so....
Maybe this?

Answers

They're just not here. I have absolutely no answers for this project. I just can't get into it. I'm so goddamned frustrated with this project. I keeping researching hoping something, some sort of an answer will appear. Tidal charts. Erosion systems. Soil analysis. Historical Photos. Cultural history of the site. Other precedents around the world. Stormwater filtration systems. Large-Span steel structures. Core samples. Satellite radar data. It all seems so arbitrary and my interest in this project has totally vanished. I'm tearing my hair out and getting nowhere. Someone told me I'm thinking about it way too much, I should just choose something and stick with it.
I just can't do it. I keep looking for something - the one thing that'll make all of this stuff piled on my desk make any sense. All I see is a pile of crap that is moments away from being tossed in the rubbish. I'm so tired of producing garbage. I'm surrounded in the studio by 40 students all working on the same project and I don't like any of their work.
I just can't get started on this project. The 20 page History papers are easy to do. The site Engineering class has been a breeze. But when it comes to studio I am......lost. I have a mountain of work I should have done for a review on Monday, but don't have anything because I can't create a project I believe in.

I don't even know what I believe in.

[The picture above is from a European Space Agency Remote Sensing satellite and it is a radar image of stormwater runoff plumes from the LA and San Gabriel Rivers into the LA and Long Beach Harbors]

Questioning the Origin of Form

Originality and arguments supporting or contesting if it actually exists have been around for ages. I am absolutely not interested in examining this argument today[or ever] but I am curious about the idea of originality in the architectural sense. The process in which any creative type gets inspiration is questionable for me. Is it simply a development, a further iteration of ideas and work done previously by the artist, an expression of something the artist has experienced; OR is it totally original and fresh and not based in anything seen or done previously? And further from this argument - the artifact that is left behind, the sculpture, why does it take the form that it does? How is it presented, is it in a gallery? If so why? Could it look like something else or does it absolutely have to look the way it does? Why the material choices?

Well you get the point.

I am currently going through a major theoretical crisis about the origin of form in architecture. With all the technological possibilities, new materials, etc, why are we designing and building things the way we are? Why does it look like that when we can build this? Why do I have 12 different models on my desk of the same project? Why are they all different when I'm approaching them from the same angle?

When we design here [as it is in other schools] the approach is as follows:
A program is given for a particular location. Now this involves what the site will be. Is it a courthouse or an athletic center, a movie theatre, a shopping mall, whatever.
Sketch models are produced. Usually quick 5 minute experiments following a theme of some kind. Something the individual wants to 'explore'.
The program is integrated into the sketch models through more refined models and more accurate drawings of possible relationships. Usually rulers start to get used somewhere in this period.
Initial concept designs are the result so far and they are refined usually through the act of creating multiples to flush out the initial ideas, then...
A final design is reached.

Is the approach currently being taught the trend? In the Renaissance it was simply a matter of copying what had happened before and using an architectural language developed by the Greeks and the Romans; columns, symmetry, grand entrances, etc. When I look back on architecture of the Renaissance [or just about anything pre-1880] we have come a long way in developing fresh ideas and new approaches. But this is where I am having trouble.
Are we really doing anything different? And more importantly am I? Words are thrown around a lot in the beginning of the design process. A lot of verbs seem to be lobed back and forth amongst he desks. One student in the previous athletic center design project was interested in looking at muscles and how they act. Athletics - Muscles - seems like a logical way to start, and he wanted to explore the compression and stretching that occurs when a muscle is being used. This was applied architecturally through a series of 'moments' where areas of the building were subtly compressed or stretched in a similar way to a muscle. A neat idea....but why? The reasons for the 'why?' seem far to superficial to me. "It's a sports complex so muscles seem like a natural place to start off." I'm just not buying it. My response is "So what?" Everyone in the studio is trying to show something or explore something but I'm just not getting it. Everyone is trying to do something new, but the approaches are still the same. The design methodology is still the same from project to project.
Now some architects have broken new ground exploring ideas in the last hundread years, but a lot of stuff is - I don't know. Uninspiring? The same old stuff repackaged?
Obviously even I don't know. I'm still not sure exactly where my conflicts lay. But this whole 'why does it look the way it does?' argument I have just won't die.

Elsewhere

There's something about a city other than the one you live in. For some reason I analyze them on a rigorous list of requirements chosen by me, and I judge them on their pros and cons. Los Angeles is very far from Toronto. Maybe not that far in the world, but five hours by plane is far enough. But what I mean by far is in a different sense. There's this substantial cultural shift from this city to that one. But what is it? What made the city so different in so many ways? The Gold Rush? The Film Industry? The Weather? The Surfers? In a city so far from what I've become used to around here, Los Angeles looks like some sort of frat house drunk utopian wonderland. Downtown looks more like a fortress than a vibrant city center. Public transportation is laughable in comparison, and the extent to which a car is necessary to get around is blatantly obvious after just a day or two.
L.A. did surprise me though. It was much cleaner, and was overgrown with vegetation and plants and landscaping to complement some very expensive properties. And even between the highways and on the lower class streets there were palm trees and flowers and such growing in appreciation of the perpetually good climate. People were friendly and laid back, and it was generally very beautiful.
What is fascinating however is what is in L.A. for a person like me.
"You're going on an architecture tour of L.A.? What's down there?"
Well, a lot of good architecture for one thing:
Arguably the most influential and most important house built in the last 30 years is Gehry's personal residence in Santa Monica.[1978]

The Cathedral of our Lady by Rafael Moneo.[2002]

The Schindler House [1922]

Charles and Ray Eames' Home.[1945]

Also there was:
SciArc
The Disney Concert Hall.
The LA River.
The office of Morphosis Architects.
The Office of Gehry Partners.
Ray Kappe's personal residence with a tour by Kappe himself.
And the sprawling $1B Getty Center

To name just a few of the things I crammed into four days.....[not to mention the site for my next project.]

L.A. was weird and wonderful. A voyeuristic dream of blondes and beaches. But absolutely not for me. I guess it was like Kitsilano with several billion dollars added to the mix. For a city seeming to be obsessed with the 'show' and having a pseudo-voyeuristic slant; after just a few short days I feel like I have seen all that L.A. has to offer, which is a lot by the way, but I'm not that interested. There is just no mystery left.