Las Vegas

So time has passed since my last post. I was putting in extra hours at the office and in early June I went to the homeland for a vacation. I had not been in the valley for almost one and a half years and I was very pleased to see the place was just as I remembered it. First, the weather was beautiful with dry heat and unseasonably cooler temperatures. I sat outside a Starbucks in 90 degrees and thought this is what 90 degrees should feel like. I was happy to see all my friends and family were doing well. When flying in, I realized I forgot about the city's true scale of sprawl. It's amazing from the perspective of someone now living on the east coast to see a world of such low density. I think the sprawl isn't as bad as I thought it was in the past. While there are still negative impacts, certainly on the environment, I think the city for the most part can adapt what they currently have to make the city better through increasing densities in older parts of the city. I'm glad to see a push towards moving into downtown Las Vegas. This part of town is a true gem and I'm sure rents will rise as more people realize this.

I found a few new development since I last lived in the city. I am happy to see the mass transportation system is still expanding and really meeting the needs of the high density routes. I am glad to see the new terminal and signage system for McCarran Airport, although the new airport doesn't seem to be nearly as attractive as the adjacent terminal 1. The pastel colors of the parking garage reminds me more of post modern architecture over something complimentary to the desert landscape and Terminal 1. Additionally, the designers of the parking garage convey a real slapdash placement of the building with the center spiraling ramps being about 20 feet off center of Maryland Parkway.  Every time I sat at the light of Maryland Parkway and Russell Road I cringed at the off centered spiral. It would have been a simple and easy gesture to have the spiral on axis with Maryland Parkway. I would comment on the airport itself, if I could have seen it over the parking garage.

The Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health was less exciting that I thought it would be. I found the steel structure overwhelming. The main interior space seems like it could offer something good.

I also took a moment to look at Predock's Las Vegas Library also part of the Lied Discovery Children's Museum. I was really surprised at what the library had to offer. One of my favorite features were the outside reading rooms. The small rooms inserted around the exterior of the building offer patron the ability to take books outside without checking them out. A really good courtyard inserted in the center of the building reminded me of the courtyard next to the Cordoba Cathedral where small canals allow water to flow from one tree to the next. Unfortunately, this courtyard looked closed and not well maintained. I recommend a stop for the designers in the valley that haven't been inside since childhood.

I like the development around the center of the strip. My only complaint is the new pedestrian walkways around the Cosmopolitan and City Center are a pain to navigate. The design of the walkways don't address the need for pedestrian to pass by the two casinos, instead making you go into the mall or walking down to street level to only go back up shortly after. Also, could the county finally connect Harmon to a major street on the west side of I-15? This is a great thoroughfare that is underutilized.

All in all, the city is still great. Keep up the good work Las Vegas.

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 your 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 turned what typically is ugly into elegance.  You can tell they added another tower that reflects the what we expect from government design these days (tried my best to get it out of the photo). We should think of this strategy for cell towers. Maybe towers that look like palm trees aren'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 filing the paperwork necessary for its destruction.

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! -[Update- Oscar passed away December 5, 2012]) 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.

Communities and Metro Stations

Washington Metro LogoSo I was looking the breakfast links on Greater Greater Washington this morning when I found a hilarious post (including a sarcastic map) by Matt Johnson and David Alpert regarding the new Silver line station names proposed by Fairfax county. Working Station names proposed by WMATA were cited as too boring. Fairfax County's effort churned out an even more boring list of names, all starting with a certain large region then hyphenated  into more specific area (table below). I don't know much about Virginia, so I can't speak to the superiority of the names, but I imagine everyone could do better. Maybe I should send Fairfax County the London Underground map hanging above my desk for inspiration? I pull two valuable lessons from this. a) The community may not be the best source for a station names largely because b) the community, in general America, doesn't value the rich resources of history. We should hand over new station names to regional experts and historians. I bet they could draft up meaningful station names fulfilling everyone requirements and maybe give everyone a new perspective of each neighborhoods. If we could start valuing knowledge again we could overcome this fiasco.

Working name Fairfax proposal
Tysons East Tysons-McLean
Tysons Central 123 Tysons I&II
Tysons Central 7 Tysons Central
Tysons West Tysons-Spring Hill Road
Wiehle Avenue Reston-Wiehle Avenue
Reston Parkway Reston Town Center
Herndon-Monroe Herndon-Reston West
Route 28 Herndon-Dulles East

I'm betting , in the end, the strongest power of corporate and developer interests will win this war. Prove me wrong Fairfax County!

BS BCS

So I am going to join the other 85% of America in saying the BCS Bowl series is stupid. Most know the system isn't fair and should be taken to court for anti-trust practices. I could go on and on about it but we've heard most of the points before. I think the worst part, perhaps unforeseen years ago, was the destruction of collegiate conferences. The final nail it seem comes with the news that my Alma mater's conference the Mountain West will soon merge with Conference USA to become a new conference in 2013-14

The idea behind the Mountain West that I valued was being a small regional conference. The members that split from from the WAC back when the MWC formed, did so to be part of a manageable sized regional conference. As the past can describe, this is the point of conferences. I think it is a shame that universities now have to battle like a game of musical chairs to be in the power conferences (as decided by the BCS). I hope that one day a District Attorney, or the Department of Justice gets the ball rolling on an anti-trust lawsuit, so hopefully one day we can return to a more regional conference alignment.

Andy Schwarz letter questioning  the legality of the BCS