my family's role in the world revolution

woo! i've stopped counting the hours i've been in the lab. we're all here in the lab working on our forte presentation on mixed use towers. jiddy is making an awesome video right now of our trip to three towers in the city and i am so so so excited about it. i'll post it here when she's done.

yesterday was our opening for our designs of the museum. it was supposed to be 'potluck' but everyone brought wine, and forte gave us like 5 extra bottles he had in his car. don't ever drink after you've stayed up for more than two days. you'll be hanging from the rafters! here's a couple samples from my project:

(i dunno why, but this first one's colors are coming out all crazy...it's supposed to be burnt sienna words on dark orange with yellow figures???)





afterwards katie drove us to cross county and made some bad drunk-buys. for example a white 'u.s. polo association' shirt. wtf????????? why did i buy this? i'm predicting it'll be my most-worn item of clothing for the rest of the summer.

i feel like i'm floating right now... everything is good and bad too. for example, volume emailed me to ask for writing samples but then i wrote the guy back as a "ms." OOPS!

p.s. i am so into beirut right now. it reminds me of our eastern european escapades last spring (one year ago to the months!). that was so awesome. but something tells me i shouldn't like beirut...much like my instinct to not like sufjan stevens. but you know what, i don't care. i like what i like!

hurry boy it's waiting there for you

is toto the greatest? 'africa -' yes.
so we drank some wine at the advanced painting show, and then i come home to get my drawing stuff to take to katie's room where everyone is, but then i sat down cuz i wanted to listen to toto. so then i started up maya, and then after 20 minutes i started to feel sleepy. uh oh. so of course the only choice was go to bed or keep drinking. luckily i have a few beers in the fridge from last weekend. so now i really am kind of drunk, maybe too much so, but anyways it's making for hilarious work in maya. especially in light of this article about stoner architects.
because the model i am building in maya right now is MADE ONLY OF STAIRS!
haHHAHAHahahha!

montanita

my god i am getting nowhere with this museum design. woolfson emailed this morning to say he was out sick, so ive been in the lab since 930 trying to get somewhere, and amazingly i have nothing - though i did get an easter package from my mom and a huge, crazy-looking abstract from columbia.
anyways it's 4thirty and nothing has changed in my design. i have tried johnny clegg, sufjan, even ratatat's "classics," which always makes me work. ive finished another model of marshall field. yet i cannot get anything done on this damn thing that's due tomorrow. i just don't know what the fuck this thing is even supposed to be. i can't stand the collection, i can barely stand the building we're supposed to put it in...ugh. i was actually closer to a good design the second day in. this guy we're building it for, v. margolin, looked at all the pictures of fancy new yuppie-ish museums and loved them, but in our first review he criticized us for not taking a more theoretical, critical approach to his museum. it's like guy, you told us you like modern! you told us you liked raw stone and track lighting! this is our compromise. geez i just feel really frustrated right now.
i had too much fun with the concept graphic design and now i cant do any more, its like im stuck in this.

well i published this post but i already feel a little calmer after having written it. so ill talk it out some more.
what i'm confused about is that i really really like the twin ramp cyclones that right now are anchoring the entire concept. like i cant get over them - or more specifically i can't put anything else together around them. like they're this black hole which i know is going to stay but which is debilitating the rest of the design. it's almost like these two towers are oppressing the rest of the design because they command so much attention. they create a vacuum. so then my instinct is to say, well let's play that up and make the rest of the building as dark and minimal as possible. but then you're left with a design which draws way too many comparisons to the twin towers light memorial.

interjection: oh man this lady who teaches the photoshop workshop at night just came in and is being sooooo mean to eli, who runs the maclab. like being a jerk about stuff that clearly isn't his fault. then she started screaching about "where's the controller for the projector? the controller???" and i was like "it's right in front of you, here" and gave it to her and she didn't even crack a smile or say anything. and then she was like "i think the administration would be VERY interested to know that i cant even send my files to my students, i dont WANT to put them on my website, name the solutions for me if there are any" its like whooooa this is your problem. UGH i hate listening to this. poor eli.

anyways, as i was writing, this design is stuck. i mean on the one hand, maybe no one will even notice the 9/11 light tower thing, and plus i mean this design in many ways is related to the event. on the other hand, the most important aspect of this design's success, ironically, is not the actual design but how the renderings look. so maybe i should go with this initial idea, and just concentrate on making the rendering as badass-looking as possible, because honestly i feel like when people in a non-educational setting judge renderings it's not the pragmatic but the romantic appearance of the image that matters. okay. so here i go.

but what would frank lloyd wright say? oh, columbia!

while in the bahamas i cultivated a newfound awe for 'illinois.' leaving the dallas airport, i bought "the devil in the white city: murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed america," by erik larson. it's about the world's columbian exposition of 1893 in chicago, which daniel burnham spearheaded the building of, along with people like mckim, hunt, olmstead, and for a short while root. even sullivan and adler did a building. anyways, it's about the fair, and how chicago won the competition to get it over new york, and how it built 'the white city,' within chicago, 'the black city,' and became this point of civic and national pride. as the book follows burnham, it also follows h.h.holmes, a serial killer so charming and handsome that he was able to build a city-block long 'castle' under the guise of a hotel called 'the world's fair hotel,' though the building was actually a killing machine full of sound-proof vaults, a furnace, and so on. so there's this dichotomy between arguably the greatest and most beautiful creation of american planning/architecture/commerce/invention and this evil for which no one could ever find a motive. and chicago becomes this central point for this kind of cyclone of beauty, progress, and evil. and of course the fair is also the focal point for the 'illinois' album -

"Oh great white city
I've got the adequate committee
Where have your walls gone?
I think about it now

Chicago, in fashion, the soft drinks, expansion
Oh Columbia!
From Paris, incentive, like Cream of Wheat invented,
The Ferris Wheel!"


it's all in reference to the fair - chicago surpassing new york, the new inventions of the fair (shredded wheat, aunt jemima), how ferris (a pittsburgher) got this amazing wonder of engineering built, and dedicated it to "all engineers of america," and the warfare between the committees of businessmen created to build the fair, and the intense anxiety of the directors and for that matter, the whole nation, of underselling the paris exposition attendance record (a record which they in fact broke by several hundred thousand people, on "chicago day!")

i could clearly go on and on about all this stuff, but at the heart of it is this amazement that this all happened, and the hugely influential impact it had on us and our country. and what's more, how no one remembers it now - no one knows about the architects, or engineers, or entrepreneurs at all! though for a hundred years after they were household names. one 19 year old advertiser who worked at the fair, sol bloome, even went on to help found the UN. everyone in america still has this reticent but profound connection to these events! and we don't even know it. walt disney's dad was a construction worker at the fair - and after hearing stories about 'the magic of the white city,' his son would try to recreate the enthusiasm. and that's just one example of the supreme influence of the fair on american culture. for burnham, millet, olmstead, ferris, and even mckim and all the eastern architects - it defined their lives. it was the single largest construction project in american history.

and so this book made me go back and re-interpret "illinois," in the context of the history of the fair. and so now of course it's 15 times better, though before it was still my favorite album ever.



anyways, we got back from the bahamas yesterday... it was sort of insane, but fun. i got some kind of food poisoning on the way home and so have been in bed all day since yesterday. the next month and a half looks a little bleak, since i have my thesis, the appeal to my housing probation, and the decision about grad school to make. also, there is a bug infestation in this slonim. it's disgusting beyong belief. i am so ready to get the fuck out of ny.

also, our presentations for victor are due tuesday...OOPS! we have to have our entire models done as well as a flythrough quicktime movie. i am really excited to make mine, i'm looking to OMA's recent louisville kentucky skyscraper video for inspiration. however, i have not even begun the final model so i really am a little worried. especially since i can't really get out of bed right now. i'm excited nonetheless!

louisville

we're in claudia's maya class right now, and she brought in the big daily news article on the rem koolhaas jersey city development. so then i wanted to show her the wyly theatre i just posted about, and then justin showed us all this video, a proposal video of the new louisville, kentucky. its kind of awesome, and it kind of looks like an mtv commercial. par for the course.

dark mac lab

oh man i'm bored right now. i'm in hour 2 minute 44 of maya class. heres the gist of what i presented today:




pretty much some bullshit i pulled together in the two hours before class, but i like the pukey-colored one. i think that one is good.
tonight is our first meeting of slc group for design this term, which would have stayed defunct but other people in joe's class kept complaining. so we're having it in jiddy's room at eight. great. i dont have much to say now, im just exhausted.
i went over to the gym today to pay my 100 dollars in cash for the ski trip. i'm just worried about who i'll room/ski/eat with now that jiddy's not going.
i'm trying to type really quietly so claudia won't think i'm not paying attention, but whatever. i have a headache.

the golden city

i just got back from brunch with justin, it was good. we were going to the city but ended up not getting the van, so we just went down to bates. it was nice to actually talk to him... we talked a lot about our friends and what's been happening, and what will happen. the real question right now is spring break. no one wants to spend a grand to have a miserable time. we all know that people will fight. it's true, a thousand dollars could buy a lot of fun otherwise.
amy and jiddy came down after a half hour or so, and amy says "do you guys want to go to bronxville with us," and i said
"to do what?"
"eat"
"no, we already ate here"
and then she realizes i'm confused about what she means, and makes a face, and then i say
"don't be mad at me, i thought you were telling me you're about to go eat in bronxville, so i said no we've eaten here"
and of course she stormed off to go sit at hunter and eli's table.
i didn't immediately apologize for not understanding her (and pissing her off), so she's mad at me. get over it. jiddy sat with us, and said we should start a competition to see from whom amy storms off the most, and how far. i remember when justin pissed her off and she walked back up the hill, he ran after her apologizing and she screamed RAPE to get him to go back down. i don't know why this keeps happening - but i do know one thing - people aren't perfect. but goddamnit, it's tearing us apart. it's like, come on man, get over it. there's nothing to be mad at. it just sucks. you never know when she's gonna storm off or be pissed at you. i miss when she was happy most of the time, and when she was mad you knew it was for a good reason.
i talked to my parents, they were walking down the katy trail to go see victory plaza in dallas. justin and i talked a lot about america, as we usually do when we're alone, and that was okay. he's set on israel now - i keep thinking it'll blow over but he seems serious, and that makes me happy, since he's clearly happy about it. i like hearing him talk about it, and about palestine. i'm proud of him for not being brainwashed by birthright - i'm sure so many kids come back and hate arabs. but he took a few days and travelled without the group in palestine, and is not more on their side than anyone's, though he still believes in a jewish state. he has a video of him walking towards the dome of the rock, where they believe muhammad rose from,

"the spot from which Muhammad ascended to God in heaven, accompanied by the angel Gabriel. There he consulted with Moses and was given the (now obligatory) Islamic prayers before returning to Earth. A Qur'anic verse says that Muhammad took an instantaneous night journey on his horse Buraq from al-Masjid al-Haram ("the sacred mosque," interpreted as being in Mecca) to al-Masjid al-Aqsa ("the farthest mosque," interpreted as being in Jerusalem),"

and the sun is setting and you hear the islamic call to prayer, and the mosque looks so beautiful, it's made from the same jerusalem white rock, which as justin says turns gold when the light hits it. it's the most incredible video. it made me want to go to israel, a want that i haven't really had before. but the sound of the adhan and all that gold...it was really spectacularly great. i finally kind of got what justin kept ranting about... i'll see if he'll send it to me so i can upload it.

now i'm just sitting here thinking i should do some work. tuesday our concept presentations for victor margolin's museum are due - claudia is sending them to victor to comment on. it's a big deal, you have to try and sell it with a few pictures, really. i should do some sketches, cuz right now all i have is a super conceptual idea, which looks cool but doesn't compare to a fully modeled building, which some of the other people already have. i can't work in maya today since the lab is closed and i forgot my mouse in dallas, so i guess i'll have to whip something up tomorrow after precalc.