Fall Sketches

This fall I have made it my goal to do one sketch per day.. even if it's just a gestural line drawing. Three and a half months in, my drawings mostly cover architectural representation, figure/portrait, and just plain fun representational doodles. Check out some of my favorites below, and keep up-to-date by following my Tumblr sketch-a-day blog here.

The more that I explore watercolors the more I realize that less is more. Although it's a lot easier to go through and outline the character/subject in pen or pencil before coming back through to watercolor over top, often times the plain simple watercolor drawings are a lot more interesting to look at and allow a lot more room for interpretation than the crisp-line pen drawings.

Philadelphia's blue horizon

PMA at dusk

cafe lovebirds

Mt. Moriah cemetery gates

Fishtown site visit

monastery in western PA

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Lerner Center @ Penn

Urbanized

Fairmount Park visitor's center

the log lady

Lothlorien

Reading Viaduct

Natalia Lena

Minas Tirith

Zaha Hadid's galaxy soho

Gandalf (more or less)

Rorschach

Diagnostics and Monitoring

Architecture students are no stranger to the technical dynamics of building construction.  But one aspect of architectural design that has fascinated me for a while is the shortsightedness of those in the building trade.  When a client approaches a contractor, architect, or engineer to solicit their work on a new building, does the client think "I want this building to stand the test of time" or does he/she think "I just want a good return on my investment".  Perhaps these two desires are more closely related than we think-- that the value of a building is equally tied to its ability to endure and its capacity to interpret culture (or perhaps project culture) through contemporary design and construction

With this in mind, I have been enjoying Michael Henry's building diagnostics and monitoring course, in which we explore building pathology and the ways in which time and elements take their toll on the built environment.

I'd like to also suggest that while contemporary building design seems to fall closer to the side of Return on Investment and Speed of Construction, most architecture students receive little to no training about how their building design will perform over of time.  Design studios seem to focus almost exclusively on concept and quality of design (with, every so often, a nod to context).  But while architecture students most likely imagine that the buildings they are proposing will last forever, there is scant consideration of the corrosive/erosive/decaying dynamics of architecture that inevitably undo the best laid design plans.  This small diagram lays out the gap between architecture studio theory (ideal), the theoretically normative place that I believe architecture should seek to design for, and the actual (positive) place that most buildings are built today.

PennDesign Review Fall '012

Greetings Arch-Perspectivo's

It's high time I wrote about something with an architectural twist.. how about a reflection on this past semester -- a top ten if you will (plus one) -- of studying Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

10+1 - the Making Space Symposium at the beginning of the semester. If ever I saw a design exposition that received nowhere near as many accolades as it deserved, this was it.

10 - Giant Nyan-Cats

9 - Making a model of the Barnes Foundation. It's a beautiful building and making a 3/16" = 1'-0" scale section model made me appreciate TWBTA's intricacies all the more.

8 - Food Trucks. That is all. Salt and Pepper, I'm looking at you.

7 - Tiny glue bottles from PLAZA (actually, from back when it was Lance's). DAAPers know what's up. Some marketing genius decided that slapping a mechanical pencil top onto a plastic eye-dropper bottle could be sold for 5 bucks to arts students. And boy, were they right! Model-makers know that tiny glue bottles are the best way to model anything with SOBO.

6 - ASUS laptops. They're pretty great -- way better, in fact, than I first gave them credit for (although carrying around an ASUS 17-inch is comparable to giving a toddler a sempeternal piggy-back ride (although probably with less screaming and puking involved).

grasshopper sold separately, batteries not included

5 - the Hammitt Hammock in Simon's Studio

4 - "Annyong" and all its many spin-offs. 안녕하세요! including this beauti-doodle of Dr. Dave:

3 - PennDesign Super Happy Hour. I never would have guessed that the Lower Gallery could be transformed into a space somewhere between National Mechanics and an Alpha Rho Chi Rabirius dance party.
2 - Ivory soap

identity obscured to protect the uninitiated

And the number one best thing about studying architecture at the University of Pennsylvania...

1 - Squirrel Cannons

So this comes just as a new semester is about to begin. Who knows what the next few months will bring? Hopefully more Ivory Soap.