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...