This is the first year that MSU has ever had a week long fall break. I remember hearing, over the past few years, about other schools having week long breaks in the fall, and being jealous. Never again. This is Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and here's what's happened over the break...

We had alotted this week to finish all of our CAD drawings. I brought my desktop up to school on Monday, so that we could both do CAD at the same time. (Her Mac laptop won't run it.) Monday, I drew for 12 hours or so. I felt sick Tuesday morning, but managed to work about 10 hours anyway, despite a 100+ degree temperature. I felt much better on Wednesday, but only worked another 10 hours or so. I was really proud of myself for working 9.5 hours on Thanksgiving Day, and today, so far, all I've done is type this blog. I had planned on going to the Jackson area to visit my extended family today and tomorrow morning, but that had to get cancelled because of my getting sick. Maybe it should have been cancelled regardless. Anyway, the result is that we have 90% of our CAD drawings done, and it looks like we're about up to schedule.

We're trying really hard to finish our CAD drawings so that next week, we can focus solely on red-lining them, rendering, and building a final model.

My limited experience with blogs tells me that people use them to vent about their lives. Since school is my life right now, this could be therapeutic.
Looks like when he said "Do some wall sections by monday", what he really meant was "Do your elevations by monday, and do some really loose sketches of wall sections which show only where you want to place major elements." Looks like we weren't the only group that did what he said, rather than what he meant. Well, it's a good thing I didn't work 23 hours on Saturday and Sunday, and it's a good thing that every hour of work isn't crucial. Oh wait... I did, and they are.

Seems like blogging is always least important of the things I have to do. Tuesday through Sunday were spent (in rough order) refining the floor plan, drawing it in CAD, and designing our mechaninical system to the point that we know it doesn't conflict with our structure. We'll have to look into it more later on.
We had been working without a schedule, due to the fact that every time we made a schedule during the first few weeks, a kink was thrown in by Prof. Monson. Maybe that's inevitable. No new kinks had been thrown in several days, so we decided, on Thursday, to make a new schedule. We decided to be done with mechanical research, structural grid, interior performance criteria, schematic exterior elevations, and (more or less) final plan drawings in CAD by Wednesday, and to finish wall sections and some other things by the Monday of Thanksgiving week. BUT, we were told Friday at 4:00 to have sketched wall sections instead because Prof. Monson wants to talk about them Monday.
Not only does this mess up our schedule, but it isn't entirely possible, as we can't really do wall sections until we've done exterior elevations, we just didn't allow time in our schedule to do all of that this weekend (not to mention deal with other classes). Hopefully, Monson won't mind that we only have one (well researched) wall section because of this.
WAAAAAAAA

Yeah, this narrative style is much better. On Thursday and Friday, we developed the floor plan more. We met for 5 1/2 hours on Saturday, and again on Sunday, to knock out the floor plan. We're really happy with the intuitive circulation, but haven't done much recently to develop the experiential qualities. When we stopped working on the plan Sunday night, we were both pretty worried about how the building's length (from north to south) would fit on the site. To study this further, Julie started making a 1/16" model to fit in the site model.
When we placed the model in this morning, we were both really relieved to see that we had overestimated Allen's width, and that the line of site from the intersection/sidewalk node to the library had been preserved. We'll still probably try to shave off a few feet in that direction, but squashing the building in that direction isn't nearly as important as we first thought.
We met with Prof. Monson at about 5:00 pm, and confirmed that some of our individual room sizes were working, and had enough room for wheelchair access. He didn't exactly examine our floor plan closely, but Julie and I are both comfortable with that, so it's just as well. We re-examined the building within the site model, and everyone seemed happy.
Tonight, I'll examine mechanical systems. Tomorrow, we're planning to spend most of the day developing our interior performance criteria, and drawing the floor plan in CAD.

So it turns out that blogging about my work habits on an hour by hour basis is a real pain. I think that, by now, anyone reading this has a pretty good idea of how much time I spend per week, and hopefully, that won't need to change much.

Here's what's happened in the past week...
We worked more on planning until Monday's studio pinup. By comparing our work to everyone else's at the pinup, we learned that we tried to design in too much detail too soon. We knew that we would need to spend all day on Tuesday working on studio to make up for this.

Tuesday, was really productive... we thought. We came up with a scheme to do the following..
1)provide ambient light to the presentation halls
2)adjoin the presentation halls to the lobby
3)raise the ceiling of the presentation hall above the ceiling of the rest of the first floor
4)provide a large public area/lounge on the second floor
5)provide lots of ambient light through a light well which stretched all the way to the circulation around the first floor.

On Wednesday's crit, we found that, though this idea might be usable, it wasn't public enough. Monson didn't like the idea of interior spaces revolving around a lit, but non-public space. We spent the rest of our studio time sketching to fix this problem, and Julie started on a sketch model Wednesday night.

Friday, October 24
Plan - 1-4pm

Saturday, October 25
Plan - 1-4:30pm

Monday, October 27
Performance criteria - 10-11:30am, 12:30-1pm
Plan - 1:45-3pm, 3:30-4:30pm

Friday, October 24
Plan - 1-4pm

Saturday, October 25
Plan - 1-4:30pm

Monday, October 27
Performance criteria - 10-11:30am, 12:30-1pm
Plan - 1:45-3pm, 3:30-4:30pm

Thursday, October 23
Massing/pod planning - 12-5pm

Wednesday, October 22
Massing/pod planning - 10-11:30am, 1-5pm

Tuesday, October 21
Revise Apparent Space Model- 8:00-10:30am
Pod Layout - 10:30-11:30am, 12:30-2:30pm
Revise Apparent Space Model - 3:30-4:15pm

Monday, October 20
Digital Massing - 8-8:45am, 10-11:30am, 12:30-1:00pm
Revise Apparent Space Model - (after talking to Prof. Monson) - 3-5pm, 7:15-10:30pm

Because of an Angelfire goof, I'm having to repost everything in one day...

Saturday, October 202:30-6:30
Program review

Friday, October 19
Apparent space in site model ? 8-8:45am, 10-12:30pm

Thursday, October 18
Apparent space in site model ? 9-10am
Apparent space in site model ? 3:45-5pm
Apparent space in site model ? 8-10:15pm

Wednesday, October 17
Sketchup Site model ? 10-11:30am
Sections ? 1:30-3:30 pm
Sections ? 4-5pm


Sunday, October 12
Scheduling - 5-6:30


Monday, October 13
Sections - 8:15-8:45am
Sections - 10-11:30am
Performance Criteria - (Collective, among classmates) - 3-5pm
Sections applied to 3D sketchup model - 8-9pm, 10-11pm


Tuesday, October 14
3D Site model in Sketchup - (w/ Kemper) 8:15-11:30am


Sunday, October 12
After getting back from our field trip to Los Angeles Saturday night, we took several hours to recover. Then Sunday, we made tentative plans for the rest of the week. Scheduling for this week - 5-6pm Reviewing universal design research - 6-7pm


October 6-11
Field trip to L.A.


Friday, October 3
Webpage building - 8-8:45am
Webpage building - 10-11:30am
Universal design research - 12:30-1pm
Site research - 1:30-2:15
Site research - 3-4pm

Even though we've worked more hours than we planned this week, we're still several hours behind schedule. Hopefully, we can make this up tomorrow (Sunday)


Thursday, October 2
Researched Universal Design: 8-11:30am
Worked on webpage: 11:30am-12:45pm
Worked on webpage: 4-5pm

The webpage has become an obsession. Hopefully, once I get it where it needs to be, (tomorrow morning.. latest) it will require minimum maintenance.


Wednesday, October 1
Building webpage/ blog page: 8-8:45am, 10-11:30am
Researching universal design: 12:15-1pm, 1:30-5pm, 8-9:45pm

Tuesday, September 30
Building webpage/ blog page: 8-12am, 1-5pm, 8:30-10:45pm

Monday, September 29
Finished scheduling: 8-8:45am
Researched blogging: 3:30-5pm
Built webpage: 8-9:15

Sunday, September 28
On Sunday, Julie and I met to come up with a long term design plan. We strategically assigned tasks to weeks. Then, we planned this week in greater detail. We hope to meet towards the end of each week to revise and detail plans for the next week.