Portfolio
So, it's likely that some of you have browsed over to my web portfolio at some point. I have been working on the html version bit by bit. Understanding the complex language of html these days has been challenging at times, especially when a poorly written script works in Chrome to only be completely wrong in Internet Explorer. Even Chrome can't manage to understand my scripts sometimes. It's not like the good ol' days.... I'm pretty amazed at the power of a cascading style sheet.
Anywho, I am going to start producing pages for each of my projects. My first page is for one of my favorite early projects, The Rare Books Library. It's a cool hand draw project from my third year.
I will start working on the other pages and I'd like to get you opinion on future developments. Take a look at the portfolio browser and let me know which projects seem more interesting to you from the single image provided. This will give me priorities for future development. Also feel free to give me feedback on the portfolio, good and bad.
Good Design Moment – Police Station Tower
Near Georgia Ave and Peabody St is a great radio tower for a police station. With a little bit of effort and design someone has turn what typically is ugly into elegance. You can tell they added another tower afterward that reflects the culture of crap we expect from government design these days (tried my best to get it out of the photo). We should think of this as a strategy for cell towers. Maybe making towers look like a palm tree isn't the best solution.
The police station below the tower is a Miesian like building similar to the Martin Luther King Jr. Library. I'm sure the neighborhood and political forces are marching towards its destruction. I digress.
Good Design Moment – Friendship Heights Metro Station
Not the best picture, but a nice design moment in the Friendship Heights Metro Station. It's interesting to see how the typical vault design is implemented into a radial space. Good work Metro.
Capitol PechaKucha Disappointment
I attended my second round of Capitol PechaKucha this past Thursday and, unfortunately, it was another disappointing night. Luckily it's not the speakers that are the problem, but the organizers of the event. They come off as the kind of people who don't pay attention to the details to an astronomical level. They also praised the fact that they have been around since 2007, which is more scary that the details haven't been worked out by this point.
The first problem is they haven't managed the process of checking tickets. The fact that you have to pay $10 to attend seems odd, but it's Washington, so I digress? The ticket people seem like they were just handed a list and hadn't thought of a process to check off people and verify IDs. This may also be a simple problem on my part of showing up way too early. For some reason the time posted isn't the actual start time of the speakers, but an hour of listening to DJ cool play his jams while drinking overpriced (not so cold) beers. It's also sad that there are never enough chairs at the events. The latest event was so bad that there were only about 10 long benches/couches. Good work making everyone uncomfortable!
The last time I attended the event, I was surprised that the hosts pronounced Pecha Kucha incorrectly. I was laughed at in Columbus for not being able to get it right, but thought maybe Columbus and I had learned to pronounce it incorrectly. I was relieved when a speaker, who had been to the one in Japan, took a moment in her presentation last event to correct the hosts. The event on Thursday proved that nothing came of this public correction. They still pronounce it incorrectly.
After all that I wasn't surprised to realize that the projector had not been set up properly, cutting out 1/10 of the bottom of each slide, when compared to the laptop screen. I found this particularly bad with the fashion presentation, where the whole outfit wasn't being projected.
The one thing out of the control of the organizers, but worthy of noting was the audience talked through presentations to a point that presenters couldn't be heard. What is wrong with these people?
I know the PechaKucha system works on a kind of honor system, but I would recommend the PechaKucha committee revoke the current organization association. Washington DC deserves a organization that lives up to great standards that would make the event as fun as the ones I've attended in Columbus and Springfield, Ohio.
Useful Links:
How to pronounce Pecha Kucha: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdghID66kLs
The Angry Bicyclist
I have always felt a little odd as a bicyclist regarding traffic laws. I've always thought I should follow the same laws as automobiles because I am using the same road as automobiles. Unfortunately this requires stopping, which is quite different on a bike, so I have some exception to a stop sign treating it as a yield. On my daily commute I'm usually the only bicyclist waiting at a light with other bicyclist proceeding through the light. For some reason most bicyclist don't feel the need to stop at a red light. A new article published in Cycling discovered that bicyclist breaking the law is becoming more of a concern among communities. The negative perception is making expansion and adoption of bicycle networks harder to approve. I think it's time bicyclist suck it up and follow the law.
NPR's Talk of the Nation recently had a segment regarding this issue. Also, I feel Portlandia describe the public perception quite well in this bike clip.
I Like My Architecture Plaid
We were at a our local bar the other day, when someone noticed a picture in the dimly lit corner of Jesus blessings a building. I jumped up and examined the picture to recognize the building as the United Nations Headquarters. I say "great design," followed by a friend asking "whats so great about a box?"
This question comes up often. I don't think Washington solely possesses this architectural pessimism, but Washingtonians have a way of becoming experts on anything with all the Master's Degrees. I know I can't change an international relation's expert on architecture, but I'll beg that one hear me out.
What instills confidence that the UN Headquarters a great building is the fact that Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier designed it. I don't know the in and outs of the building, but I know that these two were/are (Oscar is 104!) very competent designers with a record surpassing most architects in the past and now. My confidence in these two architects' designs is similar to the confidence most people have in Apple. I don't know every Apple made device, but I can easily argue every product is good. Apple products are known to work well, be built well, and have an intuitive interface. No one can compare!
So what makes Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier so good? In the word of my graduate studies professor, Robert Livesey, "What is it doing?". Everything Corbusier touched was full of symbolism, strategies, historical references, and arguments that would take hours of Doug Graf diagrams to explain. Niemeyer even recognized the brilliance of Corbusier calling him "the master" and he would use these same devices in his own work.
I know this isn't going to convince anyone outside of architecture that the UN Headquarters is great. What makes any architectural argument weak to a laymen is their understanding of architecture as an aesthetic. Architecture is a language. I can't speak French to a German and expect him to understand much. In a similar way, an hour long presentation analyzing the UN headquarters won't make much sense if you don't understand Chandigarh or Brasilia. If one want to truly discuss the merits of the built environment, it's imperative to know basic architectural language.
If architecture is only an aesthetic, there isn't much to discuss. I like plaid you like stripes.
Song for the Day – Kanye West, Jay-Z “Otis”
I have to keep up the routine, I'm a little superstitious. Let's go UNLV, destroy the Lobo's (one letter away from crazy).
Song for the Day – Jay-Z “Show Me What You Got”
This song brings back great memories of UNLV basketball games at the Thomas and Mack. The basketball music guy, back in the day, would queue "Show Me What You Got" with the exactly enough time before the start of the second half.
In honor of the first day of the conference tournament, UNLV, show me what you got!
Song for the Day – Arcade Fire “We Used to Wait”
Happy Friday Folks. You need Chrome for this one.