The Update

Sendai Cafes

2009-05-16T22:09:00.000-07:00

I'd been meaning to post these up for a while. These are reviews of some of my favorite cafes in Sendai. I had plans on visiting all the cafes in Sendai and drawing them until I got sidetracked.

Cafe Mozart

Mozart cafe is located on the third floor of a shop inside the arcade. It like it for the atmosphere; it feels like a small European cafe with assorted furniture. Only downside is that the smoking area is nicer and by the window.

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Atelier Mozart

Mozart Atelier is a bit of walk from the main arcade but well worth it for the beautiful views out to the river. Deck seating is best in the spring and summer.

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Forsta

Not exactly one of my favorites but interesting for the combination of clothing store, cafe and bar. The cafe itself is a little too small to really relax and read.

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More Japanese POMO

2008-07-21T04:17:00.001-07:00

Well, this is my new place, Leopalace 21. It's a type of short-term rental place that comes furnished, the only thing it was missing was a worktable.

I can almost hear what they were thinking when they made this place. "Hey, let's make it look like it's always under-construction." It's two concrete towers tied together through a steel walkway. At first I thought there's no way this can be my apartment, it looks like it's falling apart. Well, aside from the rust it seems like it's built strong. I've survived three earthquakes in that place and it fits in well with it's context, a small apartment going up next door. I have to say it's growing on me.

Long Overdue Thesis Videos

2008-07-15T06:07:00.000-07:00

Here are a few videos from my Sciarc undergrad thesis. Out of 25 studies I made about six or seven had a video component. Here are the ones with sound. I'll be blogging up the rest of the thesis presentation in the next few months. All my files are unfortunately stranded in Los Angeles.

Specimen 12 from s m on Vimeo.

Specimen 08 from s m on Vimeo.

Specimen 15 from s m on Vimeo.

Specimen 19 from s m on Vimeo.

Specimen 17 from s m on Vimeo.

Architecture Contradiction

2008-07-05T09:42:00.001-07:00

Tokyo's known as the mash-up city and for good reason.

Here are a few examples of those crossings:

Traditional Japanese cemetery bisected by street.

A view down the main entrance of the Meiji-Shrine located in the deeply wooded Yoyogi Park framing the new construction in Shinjuku.

Funky POMO architecture. Where does the building end.

Japanese version of the LA taco truck. Everything on this small car has been carefully selected for maximum style including picnic basket on roof.

Old and the New

Architecture as Product

2008-06-26T00:03:00.000-07:00

Japan is way ahead of america as far as marketing architecture towards the general public. This is a interior/architecture design department store in Fukuoka.

Meeting rooms for clients and architects are located right along side a furniture store. An employee told me that clients will often come out with the architect to pick out furniture that then gets designed into the floor plan. Architecture as a product.

Also cool aluminum modular furniture used to design shelves as well as buildings.

Seeing Yamato in Fukuoka

2008-06-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

After a few days in Kyoto I travelled south to Fukuoka to visit my sister who's an English instructor with the JET program. She took me on a tour around the high school where she teaches. Since high school education in Japan is optional there tends to be some degree of specialization. Her school happens to be a farming school and boasts the biggest high school campus in Japan. They have dozens of greenhouses and rice fields as well as cattle, ponies, sheep and other farm animals. It seemed like a really fun high school to go to. I met one boy who was the captain of the pony club. All he does all day is ride the pony through the hallways of the school. My sister introduced me to the other teachers, they couldn't believe I was her brother, and said we look nothing alike. I seem to pass off as being more Japanese but we have similar mannerisms, coincedentally we happened to have the same shoes. They were much more amicable towards me after learning I was family, I suspect they thought I was her boyfriend at first.

Specimens

2008-04-03T21:45:00.000-07:00

Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators? They did not die out, for they are the past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

-Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Summer in Hawaii

2008-03-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

I wanted to throw this idea out there again and see who was interested. I'm thinking about getting a bunch of us recent grads together, go to Hawaii in May and build a small shack. It'll mostly be camping on a lot on the big island in the Hawaii country side. The details need to be worked out but it would involve physically building a small shack and camping daily. I wanted to get about ten dedicated people that could stay for the whole month and put in some work and have some fun.

アロハー、卒業後いかがお過ごしですか？　五月ごろにハワイで小さい家を建てようかなと思ってます。　ハワイ島の田舎っぽい土地で毎日キャンプで過ごすつもりです。早起きしてサーフィンでもたのしみ、午後からバリバリと肉体労働、夕方からみんなで晩御飯のしたくをしてのんびり過ごす毎日はどう思いますか？まだ詳細は決まってませんがざっとそんな感じです。できれば日本とアメリカの仲間十人ぐらいで早く建てたいです。興味あればメールください。　　

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Colabour

2007-12-04T00:58:00.001-08:00

The new LA collaboration

New Orleans + KPCC

2007-12-03T23:56:00.000-08:00

I've spent most of my free time these past two weeks working with Harold to complete a model for a firm in the New Orleans relief effort, Make it Right organized by Brad Pitt. Read more about it on Harold's Blog, or listen to Brad Pitt talk about the project on NPR.

Speaking of NPR, I was talking with Yuki today about which shows I like listening to on KPCC, the local radio station, and although I probably listen to about 3-7 hours of KPCC a day I was still hard pressed to say which ones I like. There's something about radio that makes all the shows blend together to just form one continuous information stream. So I've done a quick little ranking of the shows I like. These are all available for Podcasts and live streaming so just go to KPCC to download:

Although they're all good, these are some of my favorites.

Zócalo Radio

Science Friday

Fresh Air

* Off-Ramp™

Talk of the Nation

The Writer's Almanac®

This American Life

November

2007-11-18T19:53:00.000-08:00

I forgot how busy school can be. This semester I'm taking four classes, first a design studio where we're designing a hotel for Tokyo that uses advanced technologies and construction methods. It's about laminar flows and anisotropic materials, which basically means layered facades and materials that behave non-uniformly. It's interesting but not as relevant to my thesis as I had hoped it would be. I don't ever really plan on designing a hotel in Tokyo.

Here's the current state of the project, I still have three weeks to make it really sexy.

I'm also in a Thesis Prep class. I want to do my thesis about homes, its called code. You can read more about it here. Basically I want to make a genetic code for building homes, a conceptual framework that takes into account all the aspects that make a house a home.

I was also part of a six week life-drawing workshop. It's great to take off a few hours out of the week to just draw and its surprisingly applicable to architecture, even in this seemingly computer only environment. This is a drawing from the last session. This model was amazingly beautiful.

Also I bought a piano with the money I made at my new job. Now I'm one step closer to becoming a concert pianist. Check this baby out.

Automorphic School Final

2007-10-21T23:32:00.001-07:00

Yuki, Ye and I just presented our final design for a temporary classroom that can be made of folded plastic panels. The idea is that the classrooms are made of light and weak materials that gain structural strength and climate control performance through its geometry. The project can be seen as automorphic, meaning the logic for form and fabrication is embedded in each panel. The result is that the parts that make the classroom can be transported to site as flat sheets and be erected on-site with minimal effort. This will get rid of formwork and expensive machinery and allow for the structure to be built by unskilled labor in an informal manner. The people actually can influence the subtleties of shape.

The Compound (revisited)

2007-10-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

What if the idea of the compound, a community based living model were to be relocated to the suburbs.

After talking with my dad today I saw the compound also working on a much smaller scale, three to eight lots on a residential strip. The lots would be fenced from the street but be open to each other. Several of the key features for this scheme to work.

Joint ownership of sites. Each house is composed of two to three singles/couples for cost reduction.
Shared public spaces. Each house would be opened up on the bottom floor to have complete interaction with the surroundings. Forget the porch, the living room is the porch. Furniture, appliances and electronics are built into the wall, secure from vandalism and theft. Movies can be projected onto the walls.
Extreme Privacy. In opposition to the openness of the living room, the bedrooms are private to the extreme. What I call the Hyper-interior, with no windows and completely soundproof the room would be similar to a sensory deprivation chamber. To wake up each morning and cross the threshold from extreme isolation to extreme openness would be awesome. This also makes living in close quarters with others tolerable.
Joint infrastructure. Water Collection, Garden, Nursery, these things should all be consolidated. Even things like home school can take place within the site.

The main point is to rethink the boundaries that we draw in our lives. Should the division between public and private happen at the door of a house or can it happen within the house resulting in more shared space? Should we get power from the city or should we be generating it on site? David is working on some of these very things in his thesis, check out his proposal here.

Concept Drawings

Images from the Hyper-interior Essay

Simplicity

2007-10-03T01:29:00.000-07:00

One month into my final year at school has got me thinking about life after college. It seems that the strategy for architectural curriculum is to leave all of the real-life seminars until the very end, a sort of good kick in the ass to gain some momentum out the gates.

I guess this is what's called a pre-reality-check and although I'm not there yet I get the feeling none of what I'm doing now will matter once I graduate. People will care if I can get the job done but they won't care what I designed in college, just the way no one cares what my grades were in high school. Which means its really important to always do what you believe in, always.

Today I'm into simplicity. My life now is too complex, or more accurately it feels too complex considering how simple it really should be. I have my architectural education to blame for that, because there's nothing an architect does better than making a simple problem much more complicated than it has to be.

John Maeda puts it simply. His Laws of simplicity lay out 10 ways of living a better life. Which if I follow one every day, I'll be simple in a week and a half.

But I really shouldn't be thinking about this now, I'm still in school until May. Don't think, just work!

Kyoto Pics

2007-09-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

Google is getting better and better, soon everything I do will somehow be linked through google, and surprisingly I don't really mind. Finally started using Picasa, not bad....

Seika Production

2007-09-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

Finally, I have internet at home. Expect much more posting.

Here is the final work of the semester. For a detailed description of the process.

(The structure)

(The Manuals)

(The stories)

(Spatial Sequence)

(Building Section)

Lucid Dreaming

2007-09-01T14:42:00.001-07:00

Last night I had my first ever truly lucid dream experience. I've had two others that I can remember but each one lasted for no more than thirty seconds, one being only about five seconds, but this one lasted about twenty minutes until I was awakened by my computer overheating. Lucid dreams are dreams in which you realize that you are dreaming and as a result can navigate through the dream freely. Some exceptional lucid dreamers that call themselves "psychonauts" can have up to four to five lucid dreams a week, or even multiple lucid dreams in one night. But for the most part people only experience them once in a blue moon, I don't know the actual number but it's pretty infrequent for me.

The catch for me becoming lucid was that I had just woken up from another dream within my dream, so I knew that I was supposed to be awake. The room was unfamiliar but I knew it was supposed to be my room, in the dark I noticed several remote control cars moving on the coffee table. I knew I didn't own any remote control cars then it gradually dawned on me that I could be dreaming. Moments later some robot aliens crawled in through the window, probably to kill me but I wasn't scared. I ran out of instinct but I wasn't scared. I think I might have only been half lucid at this point because why would you run from anything if you knew it was a dream. But then I stopped because I remembered I was supposed to be able to control lucid dreams and focused on the scene in front of me, everything behind me including the robots just seized to exist. I was then in a small Italian town, everything looked so real. I had read before that everything becomes really vivid once you become lucid and it's true. I looked at the tile. I could see all the textures and colors vividly. I was like this for about twenty minutes, where lucidity seemed to brighten and dim like the swell of waves. When I finally woke it was like slipping into another reality, there was no adjustment period and I remembered everything clearly. It may have been that all my r.e.m. cycles were messed up because of all the travelling. I went lucid in the first five to ten minutes of falling asleep, usually this is a time of deep sleep and it's not until later in the night where r.e.m. dominates that one has the most dreams.

One note about control, I tried flying only to notice that I couldn't zip around like superman. I could fly but it was much more like a balloon or feather floating and when I would stop concentrating I would drift back to the ground. When I would stop concentrating things would start to settle back towards reality and resemble the development of a normal dream.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

2007-09-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

I've only been back one day and Kyoto seems like a deep and distant memory. Back in LA things seem dustier, more real. People stand around on street corners with nothing to do, talk as they wait in line, honk their horns to pick up their kids.

Five years ago I left Japan anxious and determined to begin things in LA, this time around leaving is a tad bittersweet. In the end, I learned to love Japan despite it's shortcomings and frustrations.

Beautifully oppressive, in Kyoto time really does stand still.

Gaijin

2007-06-10T09:45:00.001-07:00

High School Culture Exchange

2007-06-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

To the Students, Thanks and Work hard.

Last week the Japanese speaking exchange students went to visit the local high school to talk about their respective cultures. The students I presented in front of weren't very enthusiastic about the whole event but the cultural club that we went to afterwards were very welcoming. Many of the students were surprisingly good at English. For an American snack Sareen and I brought "ants on a log", celery covered with peanut butter and raisins. It was the most American thing I could think of that wasn't available. Eating raw vegetables whole is pretty rare in Japan, to the point where people will look at you funny if you eat a carrot as is. But I think most liked the snack.

The school also encourages energy consciousness by having a compost heap where earthworms eat the organic waste and green shading for the summer.

Workshop Update

2007-06-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

The bamboo structure is finally being installed by the main pond. The installation is made up of two main systems, the arched structures that are shown in the photos and the grid canopy that's to be made next week. Currently the bamboo arches are held in place with zip-ties and then bolted to a wooden peg that gets screwed into the ground.

Will Immortalized

2007-06-10T08:11:00.000-07:00

Will became sudden inspiration to Aiko Kaku, a fourth year painting student at Seika, and is now forever a piece of art. This painting is supposedly a combination of Will and the dad from the Japanese cartoon "Ge Ge Ge no Kitarou".

Seika Festival

2007-06-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

This is festival season at Seika, unfortunately due to several violent incidents last year the normal festival had been canceled. Instead a small group of hardcore members got together to put on a small version of the Satsukisai festival. Getting drunk and stripping seem to be normal among the guys and happened everyday.

Studio Project Location

2007-05-31T02:15:00.001-07:00

Studio project update, I'm done with ceramics for the time being and have moved on to manga.

Here are pictures from a recent site visit.
First possible location for the site is here next to a water treatment facility.

Which is connected to a Shinto shrine in back.

A creepy run down building straight out of some Miyazaki film right in the middle of a normal residential neighborhood.

Open Campus Workshop

2007-05-31T02:00:00.000-07:00

As part of the Open Campus event where high school students are invited to campus and given tours of the various departments, the architecture students are responsible for building a temporary structure. This year it's been decided that we'd make the biggest bamboo canopy structure possible. Here are several one to one scale tests on the structural limits of bamboo.
Here some of the early test domes.

The current main proposal is this one, a series of domes with a bamboo grid canopy. Personally I'm against this design because of the non-structural grid canopy that's supposed to go over the structure. The original design was one in which the grid and the canopy are all part of the same system. The team gave up on this idea because they felt it was too structurally unreliable.

So we decided to test the bamboo to see if it could stand on it's own.

With support:

Without support:

Kyoto Temples

2007-05-31T01:53:00.000-07:00

Ukawa Family Reunion

2007-05-31T01:44:00.000-07:00

My sister Yamato came over to Kansai as part of a business trip last weekend. Here we are with my grandparents in front of their house in Nara.

Global Party

2007-05-31T01:27:00.000-07:00

Sareen's surprise party was celebrated in two continents simultaneously through skype. In Japan at noon on sunday and Los Angeles at nine the night before. Check out Yuki's post for pictures from the other end of the world

Seika Weirdos

2007-05-31T01:21:00.000-07:00

Just a glimpse into the new friends I've made at Seika.

Annti, Finland boy that talks like a robot on heavy drugs. Has the best dance moves, takes pictures of everything and is now addicted to Joe Frank.

Sakura, half-Japanese Australian, seen here writhing seductively on top of a yakuza car that happened to park on the bridge we were partying on. Note the impromptu roof bar and sareen's worried face.

Some random campus weirdos doing a dance during lunch. Gatherings like this are common place.

Inventing Grammer

2007-05-25T02:34:00.000-07:00

This project is the first step in the process of creating a new aesthetic grammer, one which will hopefully be able to give meaning and wonder to normal objects. The main output from this part of the process are these two clay sculptures which are seen as the two manuals made by the Gyouja as part of their twelve year death marathon on Mt. Hiei. These sculptures are a formal network of relationships that fuse together two separate systems of Murakami's "Kafka by the Shore" and the historical burning of Enryakuji at the beginning of the Edo Period.

Making the Objects:

Collecting the Objects:

Taking Molds:

Haru-San

2007-05-25T02:07:00.000-07:00

Despite being a liberal art school Seika doesn't encourage multidisciplinary arts and has a very conventional division between different disciplines. This may partly be because of Kyoto and the traditional techniques the school teaches but I think it also has to do with the faculty not wanting to get things too shaken up. It's very annoying!
So when I wanted to make some ceramic sculptures it took a bit of coaxing to get the faculty to let me talk to the students, being an international student that speaks Japanese really helped. Luckily I was introduced to Haru-san, a fellow forth year student in the ceramic department. Everyone gets us mixed up because of our hair and beards and calls us brothers. His ceramic work was one of the inspirations when I began the project in the way that it used everyday mechanical objects to make new formal combinations. Thanks to Haru's help I got to make the sculptures.

Suzuki Studio Midterm

2007-05-25T01:35:00.000-07:00

Our studio had our first jury presentation yesterday. The project began by selecting a famous artist and then using them as an example to create our own art pieces. Some of the artists used were Marcel Duchamp and Yoko Ono.

Heaven on Earth

2007-04-20T03:28:00.000-07:00

Heaven on earth is located in Kyoto at a place called the Kyoto Manga Museum. It's this converted elementary school that now houses all the manga you could ever dream of. It's free for Seika students and the best part is they have this big lawn that you can bring food and have a picnic. We had a little picnic last weekend and spent over five hours just relaxing and reading Manga. Inside they have little demonstrations where people will show you how to draw your own manga and also lots of activities for little kids. It's a very peaceful place.

Construction in Japan

2007-04-20T03:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a little house being built right up the street from where I live. This is just some regular old house but look at the craftsmanship. Most of the lumber is brought to the site precut and their workspaces are always so clean. The workers let me come in and take a few photos.

花見

2007-04-20T03:08:00.000-07:00

The second week in Kyoto was Hanami week and everyone went out to spend a day under the cherry blossoms. It's pretty fantastic .

Kyoto Seika

2007-04-20T02:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long delay but finding a decent computer in Japan is a difficult thing, one computer seemed to still be running Windows 3.1. Well after three weeks I'm starting to feel settled, which means I'm waking up at noon and watching ten hours of youtube. NO! Actually I've spent the last three weeks jumping around all over campus to the different departments and got my classes organized. You see, I'm only required to take Studio and that only meets twice a week. So unless I'm a bit more proactive in my schedule I will end up watching ten hours of youtube a day. But venturing out from architecture isn't as easy as just committing, I've spent most of the time these last few weeks trying to convince other non-architecture teachers to let me sneak into their classes. So far I've failed more than I've succeeded. In the end I've been able to weasel my way into one painting class, got formally introduced to the ceramic grad students and may be able to work with some sculpture students. It's tough going. Sitting in on lecture classes isn't a problem and I attend three a week, Modern Sculpture, Japanese Architecture History, and Japanese Art History-- pretty pretty fun.

Pictured here is the architecture Building at the top of the hill next to the woods with monkeys. My studio is second floor on the right side.

2:8 A&D

2007-03-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

Our Interface project got picked as the undergrad project for Sciarc in the annual 2:8. This event is one in which all the local architecture programs send two student works. This time the projects are being displayed at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. Unfortunately I won't be here for the student forum on the 29th.

Here are pictures from the 2:8 two years ago. That time we were representing Pasadena City College.

Magic Castle

2007-03-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

Barry took Mie and me to magic castle as guests to see several magic shows. There were some pretty amazing tricks like cards spinning around the air as well as the classics like cutting a woman in half. The place is invitation only and everyone has to either wear a suit or an evening dress. Pretty interesting.

Zuma Dogg

2007-03-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across some videos of "Zuma Dogg", an man who goes to Los Angeles City Council meetings to speak up about the issues he feels are important. Although he's loud and obnoxious he is involved and passionate. We should all feel more compelled to be a part of the local political process as these governing bodies may one day be the only limiting factor in realizing a different approach.

The Future of Design?

2007-03-13T00:07:00.000-07:00

Today I want to write about three lectures I heard and how they show two competing directions of design.

First was a lecture at Sciarc by Roberto talking about designing and optimizing complex building envelopes. In it he presented many big projects like the 2 mile long airport designed by Foster and the work it took to derive the shape from mathematical formulas and the subsequent optimization of the envelope using scripts. As fascinated I am about the subject of optimization and automation I couldn't help but feel a little saddened by the scale and aggressiveness of many of the projects and what this means to designers like myself coming out of school. Cities like Shanghai and Dubai are building bigger and more formally complex buildings faster than ever before. Some of these skyscrapers go up in less than two years, which is astounding considering that these buildings require enormous amounts of energy, manpower and coordination. The number of specialists needed in such a project continues to grow and makes it impossible for any one person to understand the entire process. This move towards specialization is happening in almost every technical field as information and complexity grows. The problem is we live in a time where energy production is at an all time high allowing for such buildings to be built at the rate they are currently being built at. This won't continue and all the young designers that are being trained to Design buildings that simply look amazing relative to current trends will never be able realize their designs or use their skills. I see the possibility of such designers with our training to become totally irrelevant. The second problem for me is that this forces designers to work in large companies, companies big enough to handle these complex projects.

The other lectures were from the past TED conference and they stressed a very different approach to design. These designs come from people all over the world and stresses that innovation and design can happen at the lowest social levels with limited means. The first lecture by Cameron Sinclair speaks about open source design and the access to design for all people all over the world. In it he speaks of how designers can be political and social. The second lecture by Neil Gershenfeld is about bridging the divide between computers and life, not the digital divide. In it he shows that people have access to the information now, they just don't know how to use it to make things yet. For him machines like laser cutters, cnc tools and more are for everyone and has set up these Fab-Labs in even third world countries. The result is that more people are design and build the things they imagine and need.

If both these positions of design pan out in the future I can see the world of design and production being divided into two groups. We will have the big companies that are making the production tools (cnc, nano 3d printers etc) and we will have the user designer that use the tools to create whatever they want. This has already happened with computers. We have several large companies that produce the tools and hardware, even software is being made by a handful of large companies. This then gets used by people to create a variety of things. This puts me in an odd position because in America I'm the end-user, but in the global economy you could say that I'm somewhere near the top, the trained professional. What this means is that I'm either under-resourced or being over-trained to fit into either group.

I'm a Statistic

2007-03-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

I get to my car this morning to find my passenger window smashed in and all the things in my glove box strewn about. I can't believe someone wanted to rob my car. Well luckily nothing but a pair of jumper cables got stolen and only because it was brand new and still in the box (I was planning on returning it). They banged up my radio but didn't take it, maybe they gave up when they realized it's a tape deck.

Well I reported the crime like a good civilian and found there's been other crime in the neighborhood. How safe is the place you live? Check at LA's crime map. http://www.lapdcrimemaps.org/

Office Work

2007-03-04T19:22:00.000-08:00

This is the desk I've been working for the last month. It's an engineering firm called Arup which has over 7000 employees and work as the engineers on most of the fancy architecture projects. I've been working on putting together an energy report for a small residential house by running various simulations. After working here for a month I've noticed there are many differences between the small offices I'm used to and a big office like Arup. For example some of the perks of the big office are subsidized food for breakfast and lunch, paid holidays, tech support, and quality control. I would say 10%-20% of the staff are there just to keep things running smoothly and up to date. Through the website I can navigate to see who's in the office, what phase various projects are at, download all sorts of forms and get tech support. This can both be helpful and overwhelming. It took me a while to figure out how to fill out my time sheet or that I had to fill out certain forms to get days off. But this extreme organization can come off a bit too sterile at times and if this were an architecture firm I think it wouldn't work. For example the computers at work are all standardized and regulated for security and management which makes it difficult to feel as though the computer you use is yours and yours alone. The large number of people you work with also means that procedures must be followed and I think a certain flexibility is inevitably lost. These things can be detrimental to an architecture firm in which creativity sometimes seems to come directly from the chaos in the office.

Here's what I'm used to.

Our New Place

2007-02-22T21:53:00.000-08:00

Recently made a move next door into a bigger better apartment for the same amount of rent. I made a floorplan of the place to get renters interested. Here are pictures of what one of the rooms look like.

Respect to MIT

2007-02-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

I heard on the radio that MIT is now putting all their courses online for everyone to view and study. Currently there's about 80% of the courses offered and at the end of this summer all courses will be made public for anyone to benefit from. Taking the courses, which essentially is downloading the zip files that have links to lectures and homework assignments, is free of charge and available to anyone worldwide. You don't get any credentials from studying the material, just knowledge. And isn't that what college really is about.

Huge props to MIT for making this brave move. Go take some architecture courses!

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

Mexico City

2007-02-02T23:06:00.000-08:00

After debating it for a while I've decided to enter the Lyceum Student competition once again. I entered this one last year and got no nothing, not even a "sorry you didn't win", so I like to believe that my entry got lost in the mail somewhere.

This year the program is a "Hybrid Market" in Mexico City. After doing some research for the competition I came across a neat site of pictures taken from a helicopter. Mexico seems to be a crazy place from the sky or maybe every city looks more interesting from above. Check out the rest of his pictures here.

Architect Interviews

2007-01-24T22:24:00.000-08:00

So once again I found a perfectly good way to squander an entire night. Earlier this week I stayed up all night watching Charlie Rose interview a bunch of famous architects. Internet is the new TV.

Here are the selected videos.

Frank Gehry, the celebrated LA architect.

Thom Mayne, another celebrated architect and one of the original Sciarc group.

Philip Johnson, old school architect.

A short discussion with Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, and architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable

A bunch of interviews with old and new architects.

More Frank Gehry from acclaimed movie director Sydney Pollack.

Sensory Deprivation

2007-01-15T17:45:00.000-08:00

Recently I wrote a paper on sensory deprivation and architecture.

Currently sensory deprivation tanks, now called isolation tanks are being used as a relaxation room for rich clients that want to get away. I think they charge up to $50 an hour to soak in the tank.

Here Michael Ashley's Oasis Shower which can be seen on trendsnow blog

This shower + isolation tank + living room = my dream home

It's Vacation, so I thought

2007-01-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

After Harold showed me how many hours were being scheduled into the competition I worked out exactly what my life will or should be like over the next month. Holy Macaroni! I'm busier than when I was in school. This is what my life looks like as an excel chart.

Google Moon

2007-01-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year. Hope everyone's well on their way to realizing their New Year's resolution. I'm doing well myself as #3 on my list happens to be "DON'T NEGLECT MY BLOG"

Blogs like any pet have to be tended to daily, so here's a little something something.

I'm currently trying to make the site map for the Salton Sea competition and running into all sorts of cool things I didn't know about google. For example Google Moon! and even Google Mars. Google keeps getting better and better.

Christmas in Arizona

2006-12-30T20:29:00.000-08:00

Yuki and I spent Christmas in Arizona visiting old friends & eating the best food this side of the Mississippi c/o Ryan's mom.

Here's a short video Ryan made for the occasion.

Titled: In glory of ライアン.

Harold

2006-12-22T19:29:00.001-08:00

A fairly typical video of my partner for most of the semester.

Finals Are Over!

2006-12-22T18:43:00.000-08:00

INTERFACE Our studio assignments this semester were about production spaces such as movie studios and factories in Alameda. I worked with Harold as a team for the semester to propose a factory that was made up of many small modules. The way in which these interfaced with the existing site was what our project explored. The development of the project can be seen in each scheme. Here are some images from the project.

Here are several other projects from my studio:

One group set their project up in a Uhaul truck. This project is about intrusion and getting out of the comfort zone in architecture.

PLANT
Another group proposed a vegetation facade system that would make buildings and could cover the city.

ELEMENT
Yuki and Ye presented a building that would unique spaces for each step in production.

Living Curtain Pt. 2

2006-12-21T19:53:00.000-08:00

A fun little video about our living curtain project along with videos of the final.

M-o-v-i-n-g Surfaces

2006-12-14T21:21:00.000-08:00

Sciarc hosts installations from various architects on a quarterly basis. Here's the latest installation that's opened to lukewarm reviews as it really doesn't do much new. It's called something like breathing wall and opens up with one pneumatic piston controlled by a computer.

Pros: The green car paint looks really good.
Cons: The mech. piston is pretty lousy and poorly detailed.

In a similar trend here's a video of our "Living Curtain" using flexinol wire.

Pros: A much cooler and localized opening system
Cons: Doesn't really work yet, BUT could!

Read more about it on Dave's Blog

The-Compound BETA 0.1

2006-12-10T19:09:00.000-08:00

After an invitation from my Studio teacher I've joined a small competition group along with Harold to enter into the upcoming RIBA sustainable community competition. This is an open competition based on designing a self-sustaining community of anywhere from a 1000 to 30,000 people hence the reference to the-compound. Although this project is different from the vision of The-Compound, it's still a step in the right direction.

So far the group includes nine people from various fields like architecture, economic planning, biology, organic farming, energy resource, and mechanical engineering. Harold and I are the only students, specializing in visual communication and design. It's fun to be a part of a team like this. It feels like being on some sort of Oceans eleven where everyone has their specialty.

Our site is tentatively set for the north side of Salton Lake. I'll keep posted on developments.

New Toy

2006-12-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

After not having a camera since coming back from China I finally decided to spend the money and buy a new one. It is really nice! Image stabilizer, nice colors and really small. I'll be posting up a lot more photos from now.

Event Sculpture

2006-12-08T05:21:00.000-08:00

I'd seen this image several years ago and never really knew what it was. Turns out to be from the artist Matthew Barney, boyfriend of Bjork. His art pieces deal with film, performance and sculpture.

Here's a clip from Cremaster 3, the final installment of a five part series.

Enjoy!

Fashion + Architecture

2006-12-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

Just went to see the new MOCA exhibit which was all about the connections between fashion and architecture. Although I knew most of the projects seeing the actual models were good. There were some really amazing models at 1.5" scale. Which means its big enough that you can put your head in the model and almost imagine you are in the room.

But the real surprise was the fashion design. Really amazing pieces, both provocative and beautiful. The selection of clothes really highlighted the connection between these two seemingly different disciplines.

I would say as a whole the fashion designs dealt with two aspects that are very important in architecture. First the idea of a structural and fabrication connection to material and second the way that the design facilitates the body and its proportions. I imagine that both these considerations are unavoidable in making clothing but the pieces that were selected really highlight these areas. For example, one of my favorite pieces was a multi-layered dress that was worked off the idea of the Russian doll. It also reminded me of a traditional Kimono with its layers and presentation. The display was set up in a circle with seven mannequins, and showed the progression of the layers being added. The complete dress doesn't even look human, it looked more like a warhead with a face painted on. Just really surreal work.

I wish I could have taken pictures but the security was tight.

Parametric Modeling

2006-11-29T23:21:00.000-08:00

So the big thing now days in architecture seems to be computational design, design based on using the power of the computer to create better buildings. Nothing new to most people but architecture being the big business that it is unusually slow to catch up with technology.

Well I'm also on the bandwagon and applied yesterday to be a part of a four day workshop in New York. If selected I get to join a bunch of pretty big movers and shakers in our industry. Here are the details of the event, and below is my application.

Here's a short lecture that introduces the idea of computational design along with all the other hot acronyms like BIM, AEC.

Here's another lecture about similar topics but with more style and better architecture. Its part of the yearly TED talks. Pretty interesting things from people all over the world. This one is by Joshua Prince-Ramus and he talks of his new buildings, including the Seattle Library.

Riding LA

2006-11-28T15:31:00.000-08:00

It rained yesterday and the air is clear and crisp. Riding on days like these are great.

Here's the ride into school over 4th st bridge.

Amboy Crater

2006-11-28T01:41:00.000-08:00

This was a few weeks ago but the trip was so nice I had to post up. It's also one of those rare occasions where I got to actually do something you'd call "fun" during the school semester.

This was a trip to Amboy Crater out near the Mojave Desert. It was slated to be the second biggest meteor shower of the year with no moon so I was expecting to be dazzled but there weren't any more shooting stars than any other night. The next day we went to the Kelso dunes and jumped around like kids. All in all, a lot of fun!

Check out the pictures.

Killing Brain Cells

2006-11-28T01:20:00.000-08:00

So this what it comes down to.
Friendly fights to the death.

After finding out about the boxing gym down the street, Dave and I went out to get two pairs of boxing gloves with plans on becoming the toughest guys on campus. Well knowing me I never actually got to the gym but we've had our fair share of impromptu fights in the hallways.

Here's my moment of glory. Poor Dave, he's at least forty pounds lighter than me.

Alameda Corridor

2006-11-28T00:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAiHgwNPROc

A little video I made. No twists, no plot, no actors, just a nice stroll down Alameda Corridor.

Midterm Sciarc

2006-11-27T23:55:00.000-08:00

To let you know SCHOOL takes up most of my time.

Whether I'm actually working or more likely watching videos on Youtube, I'm hanging out in this place.

This term it's all about Urban places and conveniently my site is just a few minutes walk down the street.

It's all about the show!

The-Compound Revamp

2006-11-27T23:40:00.000-08:00

Inspired by the story of Kraftwerk I've decided to redo the look of the-compound . Something to give more form to the idea of the-compound. And in that regard what can be more important than the logo, the thing that determines the feel and possibly even the future of the whole operation.

I'm thinking it's a little science, a little art. Something plain and subtle.

And so in all it's humbleness possibly the new look of the-compound.