Well, I guess that this is my final blog. And since I'm headed off to China in....less than 6 hours, its going to have to be semi-short and sweet.
First, I want to say that, on the whole, I really enjoyed this project. There were times (when we had to start over) that were increasingly stressful. But it must be said that if we hadn't started over (and over and over) again, then our final product wouldn't have been what it was. Working as a team was definitely nice. I don't think that either of us realized the full value of our efforts together until the night before juries when we were plotting and then again at our jury when we were running out of space to pin things up on the wall. The volume of work we had was incredible, and that's not even considering the thought that went into the work. I haven't known any of my building as well in the past 4 years at school as I did this one.

As far as our project is concerned, I know that Jake and I are pleased with our results. Since our jury, we've had some professors approach us with really positive comments (and always the "What they would have done" suggestions). And since we've finished, we've both thought of things that we Could've have done and probably would have done if there had been more time.

So, I think that that just about sums everything up for me.

Merry Christmas!!

Apparently, something went wrong the last time that I posted to the website because my entry isn't here. Oh well.

Just to update, though....we're still working away. Trying to get our technical drawings out of the way so that we can move onto getting the experiential aspects of our building documented.

Lots to do, but its coming along pretty well. The plan is to be finished (more or less) with drawings by Monday so that we can have plenty of time for the model and perspectives...

**See Jake's Journal for last weekend's and yesterday's happenings.

Last night, after we had our crit, while Jake was looking at mechanical systems issues, I began thinking about some more sustainability stuff. Specifically, we both want to get into the LEED accredidation. Prior to my research, I think that both of us had an idea that we were interested in using PVC Cells, sustainable mechanical systems, water collection and reuse, daylighting, etc. The LEED certification checklist will give us some more specific goals towards which we can feasibly work.

After I had finished with LEED, I built another study model so that we can start to think about the facade of our building that faces Swalm. Today, we're going to be working towards getting our plan into a more legible version (no longer on trace paper), and we'll be working on our interior spaces. Then, we'll also be working on elevations, making different compositions according to our plan and the specific rooms we have to accommodate. We're really excited about getting started on that. It should be fun. Today, I will also be doing some more sustainable research, involving PVC cells.

After spending the past 3 days building models (2 sketch, 2 not quite so sketch), we are actually on the right track.

As of this morning, we had arranged our public spaces so that they were actually public within the surrounding context, i.e. the corner of the building that faces McCool and the road. This was a good decision, I think, rather than keeping them in the middle of the building, which is what we had yesterday. Ultimately, it will be much easier to arrange our pods and other rooms, and it just makes more sense.

Some of the issues that we're facing now are the Presentation Halls, which need to be tall (15-20 feet), while the surrounding rooms are relatively short (8-10 feet). We've now realized that dropping ceiling tile about 7+ feet just isn't a good idea for multiple reasons. Other than that, we have to work on our first floor plan, which is a little large for the functions that it has to accommodate, and we need to double check to make sure that we have plenty of exit stairs to assure safety. Apart from that, we're on our way to assigning square footages and doing some of the planning that Jake had been working on originally! Hopefully, this will happen relatively easily because we've got a pretty good background knowledge of which spaces need to go where.

Ok. Change in direction.
We're going to backtrack a little. What we've done so far with the planning has been really helpful in giving us an idea of how much space some of these areas are going to take up, but somehow, we managed to skip an important step...massing.
So, what we're going to start doing is moving away from individual rooms and back to whole spaces, i.e. dialogic labs, lobby, etc. And I think that by doing this, we'll be able to concretize our main organizing aspects, i.e. ramp, light wells - elements that we really want to put in our building. Since we know that these are things that we want, I think it will be a wise move to go back and put these exactly where we want them and let them be the guiding influences of our (later) planning.

I keep trying to play w/the digital media to accomplish what I'm trying to do, but I think that now I'm going to go back to old fashioned modeling. Whenever I do that 3D stuff on the computer, I ultimately spend more time trying to figure out how to do something than actually doing it. So that's what's on the agenda for tonight.

While we missed a lot of work last week due to a project due in another class, Jake and I have kind of divided our efforts, trying to be a little more productive. Jake has done more planning, and I've been sticking to working out our performance criteria. Then we come together to talk about what we've been doing and to comment. And you can see pictures of our final performance criteria proposal in the "pics" link above.

Last night, though, I started trying to re-orient myself in the planning concepts. Jake has been doing a lot of autocad work, and I thought that I could use sketchup to start to get an understanding of the space that we think we'll be dealing with. I drew up a column grid with some floor planes and started trying to place light wells where we've been putting them so far.

But from here on out, we're going to put away the Performance Criteria and work predominantly on the physical building. There are still a few small things that we know we need to do on our "box," but we're ready to start making some definite moves with the building and may give the box one last tweak in the weeks to come.

10.22.03

8.30am - 11.30am
Planning of Dialogic Lab "Pods"

1.00pm - 5.00om
More Planning

1:00pm - 4:00pm
Apparent Space Revisions

8:00pm - 12:30am
Started trying to lay out spaces for the Dialogic "labs"

10.20.03

9:30am - 11:30am
Apparent Space Revisions

3:00-5:00
Apparent Space Revisions

12:00am - 1:00am
Apparent Space Revisions

10.13.03

Before we left for our field trip, Jake and I took a trip to the site to make our own observations. We took some pictures, did some sketches, and hung out for a while talking about some of the issues we felt were pertinent to our building and its position in the site. (Pictures will be posted soon...)

We also met again yesterday (10.12) to do some scheduling and to refresh our memories on some of the things we'd talked about before heading to L.A.

We got together this morning after having looked back over our Environmental Design research, so that we could work some more on our apparent space sections that we'd started while we were at the site last week. We made some pretty good progress with them (I think), and Jake was going to take our sketches and try to put them into the computer in 3-D!

I will hopefully start putting together some elevation configurations to get us started, but if not, then we'll start working on that tomorrow.

9.1.03 - 10.2.o3
Just an update on the past week, and I'll be more consistent about writing soon...

Since Monday, while Jake has worked on this website, I've been researching Sustainability pretty extensively. This is such a huge field, and I thought that since it's been 3 years now since we took Passive Building Systems, that I would give myself a refresher course and spent a lot of time looking at the broad categories of Sustainability, i.e. solar power, hydrothermal power, etc.

Then, starting on Wednesday, October 1, Jake and I both moved on and began looking at the issues that we'll be encountering with "Universal Design." We're working with other people in studio because the field is so broad. Jake has done a lot of research about handicapped and elderly/aging people, while I'm trying to concentrate more on gender and racial issues. So far, information about regarding gender issues has been fairly abundant, while the racial arena is proving to be a little more difficult. Sirobe and I have e-mailed Rachel McCann, hoping that she might be able to give us some leads regarding African American architects and architecture.

That's all for now. We'll be doing some site work tomorrow...