Architecture Links

From Architecture Record 2011 America’s Best Architecture Schools. My undergraduate college, the University of Virginia, wasn't ranked (boo!) but my graduate school, the Southern California Institute of Architecture was ranked in several categories, including #2 for Design. Way to go, Sci-Arc!

Never a good sign: 2-ton chunk of UC Santa Barbara ceiling collapses. I bet the architects and their consultants are scrambling right about now.

Possibly the most interesting architecture article I've read in a a while: Design Within Reach: A blind architect relearns his craft at The Atlantic Monthly. [via Building Content]

Architecture Links

Here's something I haven't done in a while - interesting architecture links.

Architects Hawking Cars at ArchiDose: I always love seeing if I can spot what buildings are in the back drop of car ads. When Sci-arc's new building (aka the freight depot) first opened, it was constantly being used in car ads (and in movies, but that's another topic). I remember one time, we were all gawking out a window at a shoot and some poor production assistant had to come shoo us all away, as we were interfering with the shot.

The Little Town That Los Angeles Killed at metal_floss: While we're sort of on the topic of LA, here's a scary story with some beautiful photos of a modern-day ghost town.

Fictional Architects in Movies at Arch Daily: This is seriously one of my favorite topics. The list in this article isn't even complete, as the commenters and I could name several more (plus, as this is just movies, it doesn't even cover TV or ads). But seriously, I don't know what I love more - how architects are assumed to be cool enough to be in movies (I assure you we are all actually big geeks) or how unrealistically the profession is portrayed in most movies (FYI, the fancy models you see are the kind we make for developers, not the ones we actually work from). Either way, I always get such a kick out of seeing architects in movies.

Someone else Rips on SCI_arc

at Drowning in Culture.

To refresh your memory, SCI-Arc is the Southern California Institute of Architecture, and my alma mater. I was much nicer when I wrote about sci-arc and blobs.

Eric Owen Moss Architects at SCI-Arc Gallery

Tomorrow is opening night for Eric Owen Moss Architects' project IF NOT NOW, WHEN? at SCI-Arc Gallery in Downtown LA. The exhibition runs to September 13th. There will be a gallery talk with Eric and Jeffrey Kipnis on July 29.



EOM is the director at SCI-Arc, as well as a world-known architect.

Secret Rooms & Other Cool Stuff

This house is insane. Its not a house, its a castle. So, of course, it has a secret room. Read all about it here.

Here's a news article about the same house and the woes of trying to sell a home for over $30 million. My heart goes out to them. (/sarcasm)



I've seen something similar to this car lift used in parking garages, but this is the first I've seen of its use in a residential application. How cool is that? It would only be better if it was also serving as the exit from your secret lair, a la Batman.


Nothing secret about this, I just think its interesting: Student Works: Rock and Roll Fantasy - SCI-Arc at Coachella: Elastic Plastic Sponge. The image above is of the pre-construction rendering; follow the link to the article for osme images of the real thing. Best quote:

One big lesson that people got out of it was that materials and their aggregations can generate the parameters for form making... you couldn't just twist the big ribbon in Maya and expect it to perform the same way in meat space.

Meat space? Ew. (oh, and see my previous posts about sci-arc (here and here) and blobs.)

Blobs

From a comment on one of my earlier posts:

I've noticed both UCLA and SCI ARC showcase a lot of amorphous blobs; any thoughts on why that is so popular? Is that just the technology?

This is just my guess, of course, but I think the answer can boil down to just a few people (first and foremost, Greg Lynn and Neil Denari) and one school, Columbia University. For the non-architects who are actually reading this, you may not realize this, but architecture is a pretty incestuous family. Greg Lynn taught at Columbia, where he (and others) influenced many people to start working with non-traditional forms in their work (ie, blobs). He moved to UCLA, spreading his gospel of Maya.

[Side note: when GL had the chance to build at the Korean Presbyterian Church in Queens, NY, the blob became quite a bit more rationalized. Turns out, actual building materials aren't made out of vectors. (Photo from archidose's flickr page) There are more examples of blobitecture at wikipedia.]

In the meantime, Neil Denari moved to SCI_ARC, where he eventually became Director, at which point he recruited a bunch of Columbia professors/graduates, who were also working with/teaching the blob, including Hernan Diaz-Alonso and Michael Speaks (I believe he is at Kentucky now).

So that's how students are exposed to the idea. As for why students have embraced the blob so whole-heartedly? Again, this is just my guess, but I think it's because the blob is new (or new-ish, rather. It's 10+ years old at this point) and if not new, then at least new to the students. It's also the first time many students get the chance to play around with some sophisticated software (Maya) and a milling machine.

All this is just my opinion, of course.

More Thoughts on SCI-ARC

In response to my last post about sci-arc, a commentator asked a few questions that I thought I would answer in blog posts. Here is the first set of questions.

Do you think it was more isolating than a traditional school would have been? Did you come out too immersed in architecture or is that a good thing?

As I mentioned, I went to a big university for my undergraduate degree, so I had already had my traditional college experience. Really, though, it doesn't matter whether you go to grad school at a place like sci-arc, which just does one discipline, or a larger school. Either way, all your classes are going to be in your grad program. If you are serious about your education, you will spend all of you time at the architecture school anyway, so it won't matter whether there are other disciplines at the college.

I asked my husband this question, to get his opinion, too. He's not an architect, but, like me, he went to a big university for undergraduate and a small, single discipline school for his graduate degree. He smiled a little when I read him the question; the idea that a grad student gets to spend much (if any) time outside of his or her program was amusing to him.

Undergrad is fun. Yes, you are there to learn. But if you're an American, chances are its also the first time you've lived on your own, so it's also a time to explore who you are, have some fun, meet new people, etc. Grad school is a job. There are fun things about it, but it should be much more rigorous. If you are taking it seriously, you get up every morning about the same time, you go to the studio/lab/library/research office/etc and you work until it's time to go home that night. And in my case, that frequently meant taking a break for dinner and then going back to the studio to work some more.

I should point out that there is an undergrad program at sci-arc. I knew very few students in that program who fit the traditional mold of 17/18-year-old, fresh out of high school, never been on their own, etc. In fact, I can only think of own kid who was there at the same time as me who was a typical freshman, straight out of high school; he had, I believe, gone to boarding school and had been living on his own for a while. He was also the most mature, pulled together person his age I knew (and that includes me at his age. I was a more typical college freshman). I would, though, steer a high school senior away from sci-arc for their first college experience. In that case, a year or two at a traditional college before transferring would be a good idea, in my opinion.

Okay, onto the next part: was I too immersed in architecture? It was very immersive, but I think all architecture grad schools are. Actually, I would say that sci-arc has more going on that's not architecture than a lot of schools.

Architecture is a big tent. (I was trying to get at this in my last post on the subject, but I think I wasn't direct enough.) Most of us, when we think of an architect, picture a person who works for or owns a firm, who designs buildings and works with contractors to get them built. Obviously, this is what most of us want to do and that's what we do. But that's not the only thing that you can do with an architecture degree. Sci-arc is famous for the high number of graduates that don't end up in that traditional mold, but find a related path to take. For example, look at the HEDGE design collective. In addition to traditional architecture, the collective includes a florist, landscape architecture, graphic design and a clothing designer. And probably about half of its members teach at sci-arc (or did when I was there).

All of this is just to say that, yes, I was very immersed in architecture during grad school, but that may not be as confining as you think.

Sci-Arc, warts and all

As I mentioned in this post, long ago, I have mixed feelings about the graduate school I attended, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (sci-arc). Recently, someone, having read that post, asked me about sci-arc, why I had mixed feelings, and what I thought about him going there. Specifically, he asked whether I felt my education there had prepared me to become an architect. Here is my response:

The one thing I can say for sure is that grad school (all grad schools, I think, not just ones for architecture) is what you make of it. And that applies double to sci-arc.

Let me tell you a little about myself and why I decided to go to sci-arc. I went to the University of Virginia for undergrad (in architecture). It was a wonderful program but it was very traditional. It was also before computers became so ubiquitous, so while I had been working in an office (in Boston) for 2 years on CAD, I knew very little beyond that. UVA required us to do pretty much everything by hand and we were discouraged from doing much on the computer.

I applied all over the place for grad school, not really sure what I wanted. In the end, I decided on sci-arc because it was just so different than what I had been doing up until then. It was kind of free form, very hands-on, there was a lot of emphasis on cutting edge design and theory. I hardly knew anyone there (unlike, say Michigan, where I would have been in class with several people I had gone to undergrad with). And I was excited about the idea of living and working in a new environment (both sci-arc and Los Angeles).

For all those reasons, Sci-arc was great for me. It really expanded my horizons. But it was also very frustrating at times. For one thing, I just could not drink the Maya Kool-aid. [Note: Maya is a computer program for 3-D modeling. It is very sophisticated and, while it was originally developed to do CGI for movies, it has been co-opted by architects. It was bought not too long ago by Autodesk, the makers of AutoCAD.]

I don't know if that is still the trend of the moment (I'm sure between Greg Lynn [photo above of blob exhibit by Lynn] and Hernan Diaz-Alonso all the good ideas have been done) but it was big while I was there. While I did some work with it, as Hernan said when I was his student, I was the skeptic. And sometimes I got really annoyed because I felt that the ideas I was excited about were being ignored in favor of ooh-ing and ah-ing over the latest amorphous blob being called a building. Like I said, things could have changed but that the case when I got there in 2001.

Fortunately, as I said, sci-arc is what you make of it. I spent my last semester working on my thesis (with Jay Vanos as my advisor) and that was a wonderful experience. I made friends with people who shared my ideas, and I went to a lot of buildings and art gallerys. I found my niche, and I liked that.

The emphasis on sci-arc being what you make of it goes both ways, though, because I know a lot of people who weren't self-directed and they just floundered. They wasted their money, in my opinion.

Regarding your question about preparing you for the real world: I'm not really one of those people who thinks that the purpose of grad school is to teach someone to pass their Architecture Registration Exams (ARE). There are plenty of guide books and AIA classes that can tell you how to do that (and in the end it all boils down to one thing: STUDY. A lot. More than you can believe).

As I said, too, I worked at a firm between college and grad school. And it wasn't a well-known design firm, it was a pretty nuts and bolts kind of place. So I already knew how to do window details and a finish schedule. You don't need grad school to learn that.

To be sure, there are some great classes at sci-arc for learning the real-world stuff. Jay's Design Development class, for one, which everyone has to take. I took it, and I think I ended up more as the unofficial TA than anything else, but I still think it's a great class.

So, did sci-arc prepare me for life as an architect? Sure, but not in the way you probably think. It prepared me by making me go out and figure out what I liked and didn't, by exposing me to new ideas, and making me define what architecture meant for me. Architecture is a big world. I don't know if you read archinect, but if you don't, you should. They have a new series now about alternative careers for architects. And there are lots of them. I also learned that I don't really like living in LA, but that's another topic.

There's my take. Its not as simple as "yes, you should go to sci-arc" or "no, don't." I don't know you or your personality, and I'm just one person with a blog, after all. You should think about contacting some other students and sci-arc alum and getting their take. You can try Bill Simonian, too. He has a new website (arcounsel, which I previously wrote about here) and he's just an all around great guy to talk to.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Other posts on this topic: More Thoughts on Sci-Arc, Blobs

Architecture School

As discussed in this article from archinect, the Sundance Channel has a new reality TV show entitled Architecture School. I've set my DVR to record and I'm really looking forward to it. I'll report back on my thoughts after I've had the chance to watch.

sci-arc

The Southern California Institute of Architecture, aka sci-arc aka my graduate alma mater, is getting some good press for their new exhibit: Voussoir Cloud by Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott (photo courtesy of sci-arc). It looks really interesting; I hope they exhibit it in the Bay Area so I can see it.

Sci-arc is a really interesting place. I just have such mixed feelings about having gone there, which I will probably blog about some other time. 

Update: See here and here to read about my thoughts on sci-arc.