For the most part, things went as scheduled last week. We finished our CAD drawings by Sunday, and had the rest of the week to do final renderings, red lines, and a final model. The only big glitch came with the final renderings. I had spent a lot of time on a viz model, from which I planned to get two large poster sized renderings. One from the ramp and one from the drill field. The problem was that, though the pics rendered well at small resolutions, when I tried to make them larger, they went nuts. I would wait for an hour of rendering only to get an error message. Instead of going to Sketchup immediately, I kept trying to fix the problem. If I'd gone to Sketchup immediately, I could've had another day and a half to get important interior shots. Not to mention the fact that everyone seems to prefer the Sketchup renderings. I'm still kicking myself.. but now I know.
The jury itself went well, overall. It started with complements from Prof. Barrow, then some minor concerns from a few other professors, which I thought we were able to defend pretty well.
Then Buege spoke up. Actually, first he asked what kind of ceilings we were planning on. That's a completely off the wall question, considering the scope of the project. When we replied that we planned to have lay-in ceilings he flipped. He said "his world came crashing down". Then he went off on this complete tangent about how we were probably planning to use rubber molding, which, he informed us, is poisonous. Huh? Did we say anything about rubber molding? If anything, he could've made a relatively fair criticism that we didn't show enough of the interior to prove that it was inhabitable. (And I know that there should have been more interior views. That's why I'm kicking myself about that wasted day and a half.) But he criticized something he couldn't see. Then, he began to set his sights on our exterior, calling the ramp uninviting and the bricks on the north side strange. Again, huh? There's a really cool rendering of the ramp that to me, elminates any doubt about the ramp experience. I pointed this out, and that's about the time Prof. Monson stepped in and took up for us and for the entire jury experience. He's right. It does no good to redesign our building in jury. Prof. Buege stopped talking after that, because apparently, he had no interest in talking about the issues that we had laid out.
From there, there were a few other compliments about our volume of work. Prof. Berk raised some concern about all the rooms on the interior of our building which weren't receiving dayling. This concern wouldn't have been raised, I feel sure, if he had taken the trouble to come look at our floor plan before speaking. The rooms he was concerned about were mostly closets, restrooms, and media rooms; none of which need daylight. There were a few other rooms which might have appeared to him from 30 feet away, not to have light, but did use giant light wells to remedy this.
After the jury, Julie talked to Prof. Barrow who, as I heard it, was mostly full of more compliments. I talked to Prof. Berk, who raised some more concerns about our flat roof, and our connections to metal rails which held up solar panels. The connection details, he realized, probably came from a source which claimed to be credible. The problem, as he saw it, was that he didn't believe any detail would prevent leaks entirely. I'm not sure what I think about this. It's possible that Prof. Berk and I just value permanence differently. But, I could probably be convinced to think as he does.
We've received other compliments in the days following juries. That's never a bad thing.
After juries, I took a couple of days off. (Saturday and Sunday.. like a normal person.)
It seems a bit ridiculous that now, during finals week, Prof. Monson is making us turn in lots of different forms of documentation of our project. Documentation makes some sense, but like this? Why couldn't we just find some way of turning it in within a single source. It's a webpage, a "notebook", and a folder on the school's server. I don't think he realizes how much work has to go into doing all of these things. What's worse.. it'll be harder for him and everynone else to get a grasp on what we've done when everything is in slightly different places. Here's an idea... we could've finished the documentation before juries, instead of doint the utterly pointless gray wood things. I know he means well, but this is another example of Prof. Monson's whacked sense of the work to value ratio.
And now for some final thoughts...
Working in pairs was great. But that probably has something to do with my partner. I can see where working in pairs could be a nightmare if I didn't get along with my partner. As it is though, I don't know of any examples of the group work not going well in our class. I definitely learned more and accomplished more this way, and would recommend it to others.
The juries went well. Laying out issues to talk about helped, and generally, juror feedback was more valuable because of it. Encouraging students to talk was also helpful. After asking a couple of questions of the groups to which I was assigned, I found myself thinking more critically about all of the presentations, and asking more questions. This means, of course, that I learned more than previous juries, during which I've hardly ever heard students speak.
Overall, though I wish I had more time to work on it, and less time on the less valuable assignments at the beginning of the semester, the project went very well.