Hard work does pay off. The above image is the competition boards submitted by a team of my third year students for the D3Space.org Housing Tomorrow Competition. This entry by Mark Lo, Tyler Laskowski, Sheena McNeice, Dane Knudson and Nick Belkowski recieved a special mention in the Alternate Typology category. As far as I can tell from the competition’s website, that category didn’t exist, so it seems that the jury created it specifically to recognize the team’s work. In addition, this was an open international competition for both professionals and students, so it is quite an honor to be one of eleven submittals to be recognized.

This team struggled at first to arrive at a consensus and had a dismal review with their first idea, but they pulled together and came up with this idea the following class and I knew right then that they were on to something. Here is their description of the project:

.consume material goods

Within contemporary society, infatuation with material possessions has lead to a lifestyle controlled by the impulsive pursuit of novelty and excitement through the consumption of material goods.  In a consumer culture dependent on media and advertising, these material goods have become a measurement of our subjective well-being as well as a replacement for many experiential aspects of our lives.  This cycle of consumption continues to progressively dominate our lives to such an extreme point that buying the ‘latest and greatest’ no longer adds satisfaction to our lives and we begin to question the purpose of our existence.

.consume experience

Because the act of consuming is an inherent human trait, we turn to the consumption of experience to reclaim the experiential aspect of our lives lost in our previous obsession with the material.  Instead of continuing the endless cycle of material consumption, experience is now the object to be consumed, opening us up to a lifestyle of adventure that is no longer defined by the “stuff” we buy.

.camp URBAN

The proposed Camp Urban is driven by existential experience, embracing the various levels of adventure associated with the tradition of camping; from the RV tourist to the mountaineer extremist.  In its form and materiality, Camp Urban celebrates the city as the natural human habitat in recognition that the vast majority of our planet’s population is, and is projected to be increasingly so, living in urbanity.  Camp urban Chicago would be the first in a global network of these metropolitan destinations, offering a weekend excursion to the 40 hour/week worker or a temporary residence to the urban nomad.

One thing I’d like to point out about the boards is that the image of the building is not a 3D rendering It is a photograph of one of the best models I’ve seen created in school. The model was huge, with its base it was about 6′ tall. Here are some poor images from my cell phone of it (click for larger):

The entire third year studio was the hardest working group of students I have had the pleasure to teach.

Link to the official competition site:  http://d3space.org/competitions/

Over the past few weeks, my second year design studio has been diligently endeavoring to understand the architecture of death. The site for the project is a beautiful undeveloped area on the Spokane river in an appropriately bucolic cemetery. We visited the site again today and it was an interesting experience as the group was taken on a tour of the facilities by the President of the funeral home. For some of the students it was an unnerving experience, particularly when they were shown the cremation ovens and realized that the long rectangular cardboard boxes lined up in the room actually contained bodies destined for their two hour fire bath. It truly was a priceless moment.

On my previous visit I was able to spend quite a bit of time alone in the mausoleum at twilight. I won’t deny that being alone in in the long dimly lit corridors surrounded by bodies of those that have past was a bit creepy at first. It made me certainly more aware of my mortality. During that time my mind wandered to thoughts about what I would want done to my body at the end of life. Unsurprisingly, the inner designer began to work. The final design problem I suppose. I will save that discussion for another time as I’m still designing! However I began to turn a critical eye at the surroundings I was in, the repeated motifs, the overwhelming blandness of it all put in stark relief by the vain attempt of the painted polyester flowers to color this pallidness.

I was in a suburb of death.

The casket showroom; the car dealership of Thanatos. Offering the latest in top of the line post-life luxury; a $10,000 polished stainless steel casket to transport you into the afterlife. That particular casket was already sold and the man who purchased it comes in periodically to admire it. Has he taken it for test drive? The cremation urn showroom was like the camera island at the local Best Buy. All tightly arranged and diverse in their materiality and size and use. Can’t decide who gets to take home beloved Aunt Judy? No problem get matching lockets to keep her close or perhaps a small no spill vial that you can toss in the junk drawer when you find out that she didn’t leave you her fortune.

Even more striking, this suburb had its own landfill and a slum too! There was a small dumping ground hidden in the trees. Hundreds of headstones and the miscellaneous debris of the death industry was strewn about. Some of the granite and marble epitaphs were broken but others appeared to be in fine condition and one had to wonder if they were relegated there by typographical error or something more disturbing like foreclosure on their plot.

Adjacent to the dump was an overgrown area that featured forlorn looking crosses resigned to struggle with the natural vegetation. A small rusty sign announced that this was an “un-endowed area” like any poor neighborhood. And like other poor neighborhood’s even this slum is subject to gentrification. Complete with the vinyl fence and the polyester flowers…

Ran across this. I think this is a very interesting take on integration of technology into building.  We were lucky to have been able to hear Tom Bieling talk about his work on the same principle last year in Spokane. He is from Germany too.  Something must be in the water there. Where his was an interactive exhibition, this is more premeditated, choreographed performance that was cognizant of the concept underlaying the layout of the facade and consequently more embedded with the architecture.

The nice thing about this is that this suggest a new type of performance of a building rather that ‘dumb’ screens projecting other media or showing what people are browsing on the web (self broadcasting) as is to often the first tactics heard in architecture design studios when the mention of integrating media into a facade.  This is a performance of a work of art in its own right made possible by the art of the architecture.

555 KUBIK_ extended version on Vimeo on Vimeo

Came across the site of Alex Roman for his short film “The Third & Seventh.” He describes the project as:

“Architecture through the cinematographic lens. The visual fusion between the third and the seventh arts.”

The entire film including the above image is a fully 3D animated work. He has modeled already built architecture and filmed it through computer renderings. I find it interesting the exploration of the real through the virtual. He could have made the film with real cameras inside the real buildings, but consciously chose to virtualize the architecture and virtualize the camera. It brings to mind Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation”.

After so many hours producing CG images myself, it is obvious that it is done in CG, but at a level that I couldn’t imagine the time and effort it took to accomplish. The attention to detail is astounding in places like the textures of the camera sequence.  What is even more impressive is his ability to create a mood in the image that makes it compelling.  That is even more rare in today’s realm of architectural CG. My only gripe is the over-use of certain effects like the “shake.” If it is bothersome in a 2 minute clip, I would hate to imagine what it would be like for the whole thing. It is a minor criticism though.

I look forward to seeing it when it is complete.

http://www.thirdseventh.com/

A friend of mine, Amanda Hallberg, received a fellowship from SOM to travel across the US mapping modern architecture in America. I’m looking forward to her completing the documentation of the project.

mappingmodernism.com

The Institute for Mechanical Engineers are suggesting algea photobioreactors integrated into buildings.

Inhabitat » Algae-Covered Buildings Boost Biofuel Production.

Nice to see that the university has built this program.  Now WSU students and faculty can borrow bikes, for FREE, to use around campus and town. I’m definitely going to be using them.

WSU announcement of program

This is something that I didn’t expect to come across, a scientific paper that compared network complexity between brains and cities.  More interesting is that they found that as both the neocortex and cities grow in surface area, the interconnecting infrastructure scales up at the same rate.

I’m still processing what this may mean. I’m interested in seeing what cities they used as cases, American vs. European, west coast vs. east coast, or maybe some type of composite amalgamation.Another question, which I guess is inherent in the examples above, is whether they used only highways or all types of transportation infrastructure in the study.

One last observation, the researcher, Mark Chaingzi, is quoted as saying “When scaling up in size and function, both cities and brains seem to follow similar empirical laws. They have to efficiently maintain a fixed level of connectedness, independent of the physical size of the brain or city, in order to work properly.” Are the cities actually functioning properly and efficiently? Guess I’ll have to add this to my pile of articles to be read.

Ego City: Cities organized like human brains.

This looks like a very cool exhibition concerning the future possibilities of ubiquitous integration of technology into the city.  Although it focuses on the city I can see application for the IDeX Studio at WSU which is exploring the creation of the smartFARM.

Toward the Sentient City » September 17 – November 7, 2009.

Fascinating and thought provoking.

Dark Roasted Blend: Living, Growing Architecture.