J: That looks like the Mexican Embassy in Berlin. I know that's the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin. The whole thing reminds me of the Australian Houses of Parliament -- Oscar Niemeyer, late Frank Lloyd Wright. Who else?
D: Well, you said Brasilia. I said Perkins & Will.
J: I know what it was -- 70s Soviet glam.
...
D: This is "The Matrix" for people who don't like to think. Everything is laid out there in short. five. word. sentences.
J: Yes. It's a beautiful, beautiful movie. It should be a silent movie.
D: They could have title cards with Gothic lettering.
J: That way they could get away with horrible dialogue.
...
D: "No. Freda. No. It's gone. I cured it. It's all gone. We have to keep going." That's the extent of the entire conversation.
J: They do this in every movie where there's a cure. Like Cowboy Bebop. The scientist who discovers a cure, then forgets it, and the data is destroyed. I know from experience, if I spend a MONTH on a project in architecture, sit me down in front of a computer or a drafting set, and I can recreate it from memory. WTF is wrong with scientists in movies? Don't they have any short term memory?
...
[watching a featurette]
J: Wow. It was filmed almost entirely on location. It's like an architecture tour. The production quality is amazing. The plot is... okay. The acting and dialogue are horrible.
D: What are we, Ebert and Roeper?
J: No, we're Q and A, the two sides of Aina's personality.
Dreary days are perfect for riding the train.
On Friday, the rain washed down First Street as I climbed over Bunker Hill, slowly gorging myself on red bean paste.
From Saturday to Sunday, the sky cleared, but Sunday evening I looked up at the Library Tower during dinner. A dense fog was falling on the city of Los Angeles, and the usbank sign glowed in a hazy corona.
Dreary days are perfect for taking the train.
They remind me of riding the MDN into the city, watching the industrial backlots of Chicago, listening to The Postal Service, or Ray of Light. Then, arriving in the belly of the city, I emerge at the world's navel.
A man is preaching in the next car in the Blue Line to Long Beach. "Think of what Satan took from us! Thank God and Jesus!" The flies along, a high-pitched noise enveloping the cabin. The tracks rise up at each station, affording a view of Florence, Watts, Compton, Artesia. At each stop, the noise lulls, and I hear the man again. "Thank you Jesus..." He gets off at the PCH.
The sky is white in Long Beach. Below, there are no more endless bungalows or the Los Angeles River. Instead, Nordstrom Rack. I'm catching the 31 bus to Naples.
Long, wide boulevards. Ships in the distance coming into the port. Luxury condominiums. Monumental, Eisenhower bridges. A labyrinth of water, with small, expensive houses and little boats.
I waIk around from the inland beach, over the bridge. "Bridge Diving Can Cause Great Harm." On the other side, a 24-hour boat launch stretches along the waterfront, barren, demarcated by concrete and heaped stone. We take pictures, and make note of things of contextual interest.
Above, the oppressive sky sits taut. The scale, the immense, overwhelming bigness of the boulevards, bridges, waterways is juxtaposed against the utopian streets of Naples. The intensity confronts you whenever you venture from an enclave.
I waIk around from the inland beach, over the bridge. "Bridge Diving Can Cause Great Harm." On the other side, a 24-hour boat launch stretches along the waterfront, barren, demarcated by concrete and heaped stone. We take pictures, and make note of things of contextual interest.
I catch the 31 bus back to Long Beach. The dull sky, having mixed with the blue and returned to a silvery grey, begins to turn. I walk up Pine Street. "Video Monitoring In Progress For Your Safety." I buy a coffee and return to the Blue Line.
Dreary days are perfect for riding the train. The overwhelming utopia, the patronizing scale, the coffee. Sliding North, the Blue Line rises above the city, disconnected and shrouded in the night.
I had a really weird (but fairly typical) dream last night.
For some reason I was taking classes at my grade school, despite the fact that I'm in college. I had all of the same teachers and classes as I had in eighth grade. Well, mostly...
The thing was that I was taking classes, but I was only going to them about twenty percent of the time. So I got to school about eight in the morning, but I was tired, so I went to the library and fell asleep on a sofa. Of course, I had classes all day, but I slept until like one in the afternoon.
When I woke up, all of my teachers and classmates were in the library. Specifically, my Spanish teacher from high school was there, and she was annoyed because I had just missed her class. Also, my literature teacher from eighth grade was there, but I didn't want to talk to her because I was embarrassed. There were teachers from lower grades, as well, and I didn't talk with them either.
There was a little coffe shop set up at the North end of the librarian's counter, and there were students selling things. (We had done fund-raising food sales in eighth grade, and they were usually packaged items, not baked goods.) I was hungry because I hadn't eaten since maybe seven in the morning, so I went over to buy something. There were mostly a whole bunch of (delivered) danishes and coffee-cake, and people were buying the danishes in bulk. However, by the time I had gotten to the front of the line (there had been one person in front of me), there were no brownies, danishes or coffee-cake left.
However, there were indeed bananas. Behind the counter there were large, yellow ones, maybe fifteen inches long, and on the counter there were small, brownish-green ones. I thought "those are organic," and went ahead and bought one of the larger ones.
There was another part of the dream, but I don't remember if it was before or after. My entire eighth grade class was in some downtown area that looked vaguely like the Doubletree Hotel in Skokie. We were standing in front of a restaurant, and there was a big police kiosk set up inside of a round wall that was in front of a raised sort of plaza. We had just finished or maybe were just starting a race (maybe some connection to the bananas...).
Then I remember being inside the restaurant, and we were having Bible class. There was, you know, scripture stuff, except half of the papers I had were from like fifth grade or earlier and needed to be filed away or tossed. And I remember thinking "I don't want to be here."
The reason why I say this dream is typical is that I used to have a lot of dreams about going back to my grade school and not fitting in, though (perhaps fittingly) I have only had a few dreams about my high school, almost always involving being late to my yoga class. (You see, my teacher could be a bit intimidating, but that's another story.)
I think the dream was a combination of my grade-school-themed dreams and my stress from last semester at USC. I remember being really overwhelmed with my courses, to the point where I kind of didn't go to my physics class. For some reason, my portfolio anxiety didn't figure in, but perhaps it's had its share of dreams.
Does it ever seem that you're asleep 90% of your life? I feel like I'm always waiting for something in my agenda, happening off in a couple of weeks.
Even on the momentary, immediate basis, I feel a cloudy heaviness in my mind.
I've learned to take Tylenol, Aleve or Advil. Then my mind clears, but I'm still waiting for something.
For this reason I prefer mobility over stagnation. In the transition – the discomfort and disconnection – I can live.
[Copy-Paste something old]
The Aeroplane Between
I shall begin that I revere the aeroplane. It represents the bygone and the mobile, the alluring beyond and the mundanity of business as usual. In fact, this I write whilst seated aboard and aloft. My inspiration, that which circumscribes me and about which I write, the aeroplane typifies a vacuum.
The vacuum is an absence, a "vacuous stage." Its dynamism derives from its ambiguity and in-betweenness. The aeroplane is neither here nor there, in the admiral's land–or sky–as it were. The aeroplane is the poche of travel. It defines the figure-field relationship of points and spaces. The void is the structure which defines place-ness.
This kinesis allows the yonder's exoticism and relegates "home" to an acceptable stasis. What makes home the "base" is its stability. It is not engaging. It requires a minimum of mental exertion to comprehend and is, at best, a venue. The remote beyond embodies anti-presence. The exotic allure thus arises from its non-real conception. The imagination feeds itself, pleasure deriving from an image, and image from the conceit. The home is chocolate because it is concrete, whereas the hotel is soda because it is ephemeral.
A series of statements, really... So very absolute.
Between is the second dimension, the binary opposition to the binary opposition. It is the medium, the text, and becomes an entity, a place. Whilst between I relapse into a dream. I appear in the enlightened anti-(place/non-place), awash and buoyant. Here I am enabled and unreal.
Is it any wonder my mind wanders as I walk? As I traverse the between, from "A" to "B," that my greatest clarity blooms, it is that I repeat the mantra of a thought, refined and louder. How then... I am troubled to translate such to a medium once I, myself have arrived.
The aeroplane is the beauty of a dream.
So then, I indulge in the desiccant atmosphere and the de-pressuring, the pop of my ears and the ethereal lightness of the soft drink.
Have I arrived at a thesis? Not really. The journey is the destination is a denial of the especiality of an incomplete experience. The journey as the destination posits an intermediate destination, and... but the expectation of a future place, combined with the despedition of a past locale demands an original, tertiary state... the vacuum I now enjoy.
[End copy-paste]
My momentary clarity occurs immediately after I arrive. When I got home to Chicago, I immediately set out cleaning, sorting and recycling. In the course of two days (really only a few hours of effort) I recycled two wastepaper bins of clutter. The same scenario replays its after every due date at school. Is it any surprise, then, that I was once bulimic?
When I was staying with Juliet after finals let out, I was able to achieve simultaneous relaxation and clarity. I experienced a moment in time that stretched out without achieving duration. It retained the purity of its transitional character while lasting for nearly a week.
Now I have just awoken, literally, and am able to write. Later today I will need to board a train or ride in a car, but now I am awake.
I am currently in a very bad mood. I spent at least eight hours working on a building in Second Life, and today I found that my client had drastically modified, nay, eviscerated it in the past 36 hours, without contacting me with any problems or concerns.
In short, this sort of behavior makes me feel violated. Modifying someone's design, especially before it's done, is a BIG no-no in architecture. I felt like Howard Roark, ready to implode the (fortunately virtual) building, or at least threaten to. Adding insult to injury, my client revoked modification permissions on his objects in world, as if to say, "You can't do anything about this. Ha!" Of course, the Second Life permissions system being the way it is, I still own about 95% of the building, so his rather flippant gesture is nearly meaningless.
Basically, the design process is all about communication. There were issues with the design that he had not brought to my attention, and rather than continuing with the proper mode, he took things into his own hands. I think the other big difficulty was time. He wanted the structure "done" by today, and I had left it early on Sunday with an explicit request for feedback. However, this proved to be not enough time, apparently.
I'm blaming instant gratification. In Second Life there are tons of highly detailed, immersive environments that one can visit. My client wants something along those lines. He knows that I can only work with him on the weekends, excepting emergencies, yet he doesn't seem to understand that it takes time to design and build even a first draft of a building, and that even the product of 10-15 hours of work is no-where near done. Despite all this, he doesn't want "big box" architecture. He expects me to make interesting, realistic spaces, yet also demands that I pander to the whims of people with whom I have never even spoken.
This whole doublespeak of complexity v. instant gratification and quality v. populism has gotten me very fed up with the medium. Fortunately, I have a huge project due in one week, so I will be able to ignore Second Life until next month.
On a distinctly lighter note, I had a wonderful afternoon with my friend Juliet on Sunday. I actually met her while waiting for the bus sometime in January, so it's sort of strange that we actually hung out... But life is all about fortuitous coincidences.
I actually forgot to bring my camera, so this is going to be light on pictures... I must make up with description, then.
So, she picked me up at around one in the afternoon, and we headed in off in the direction of Westwood, where the University of California Los Angeles is located. Specifically, they have a contemporary art museum called "The Hammer" (after Armand Hammer). They currently have an exhibit on the drawings of Vija Celmins, and as both Juliet and I have done a sigificant amount of drawing, that was our destination.
The Vija Celmins drawings on display were all graphite or charcoal. They were all incredibly detailed and technically proficient -- smooth textures, blending rather than lines. There were four particular subjects she covered: space, the ocean, spiderwebs and photographs.
The space and ocean drawings were large, often up to 16 by 20 inches, depicting the surface of the water or a sea of stars. She would coat the paper in white acrylic then use both additive and subtractive techniques to get a consistent finish. The starry skies were fields of graphite or charcoal with matte white dots of varying sizes and opacities reaching through to the paper. The drawings of the water were softer in contrast, some showing the translucency of the surface and others studying the qualities of light. The cobwebs were somewhat like the sky drawings.
Her drawings of photographs, however, were most intriguing. Rather than merely using the photographs for reference, sho drew pictures of the photographs themselves. You can see the qualities of the paper crinckling and of the torn edges. Some of the drawing were of old magazine clippings, and she reproduced the text, albeit truncated, around the photographs. There was one picture, however, of the cloudy sky, where she drew a wire, sitting on the photograph and casting a shadow, although the cropping of the frame did not include the edges. It was interestng how she portrayed the photographs as objects, as if they were sitting in shadowboxes on the walls.
I actually forgot to bring my camera, so this is going to be light on pictures... I must make up with description, then.
So, she picked me up at around one in the afternoon, and we headed in off in the direction of Westwood, where the University of California Los Angeles is located. Specifically, they have a contemporary art museum called "The Hammer" (after Armand Hammer). They currently have an exhibit on the drawings of Vija Celmins, and as both Juliet and I have done a sigificant amount of drawing, that was our destination.
The Vija Celmins drawings on display were all graphite or charcoal. They were all incredibly detailed and technically proficient -- smooth textures, blending rather than lines. There were four particular subjects she covered: space, the ocean, spiderwebs and photographs.
The space and ocean drawings were large, often up to 16 by 20 inches, depicting the surface of the water or a sea of stars. She would coat the paper in white acrylic then use both additive and subtractive techniques to get a consistent finish. The starry skies were fields of graphite or charcoal with matte white dots of varying sizes and opacities reaching through to the paper. The drawings of the water were softer in contrast, some showing the translucency of the surface and others studying the qualities of light. The cobwebs were somewhat like the sky drawings.
The visit to the hammer was actually just the very beginning of our grand adventure around L.A., but I'm awfully tired and shall continue this post later.
Thursday: hurry for review and a sucky schedule. I have classes from 8AM to 6PM on Thursdays, so I tend to have rather pitiful walking lunches. We were also supposed to have a portfolio layout for the first project... which you can see incomplete on my screen.
Friday: The USC School of Architecture has a professional guild that connects students to members of the architectural profession. One of the things that the Guild does is "Lunch with the Guild," where they invite a speaker to give a presentation while they give free food to visitors at 12PM on Fridays. Last week the speaker was Qingyun Ma, who also happens to be the dean of the School of Architecture.
He talked specifically about an ongoing project he has in the Jade Valley, the part of China where he grew up near Xian. Basically, he was able to find a plot of land that was unsuitable for agriculture (being up on a ridge) and convinced the government to let him build there. The first structure he put up was sort of an exploration of local building techniques: the local builders use mud-brick, not concrete, and they are hesitant to build things in a manner different from their traditional techniques, so Dean Ma simultaneously learned about local technology while introducing the builders to alternative structural systems. His presentation was largely about how architects can go out on a limb with projects and take things as they come, rather than building according to a set program with the purpose of making money.
Food note: Residential dining at USC is based in two cafeterias: Everybody's Kitchen (a reverse abbreviation from EVK = Elizabeth VonKleinsmid) and the Parkside Restaurant (predictably across the street from Exposition Park). EVK serves American food and is, well, boring. Parkside serves a wider varety of food (though generally rather genericised) in more posh environs. They have things like curry, pasta dishes with interesting sauces and (to randomly pull up a name) goulash. Except... somtimes the goulash one day looks a lot like the Moroccan beef stew the next, so the variety is rather superficial.
Anyhow, one of my favourite customised desserts at Parkside is a chocolate chip cookie sundae, prepared by microwaving a cookie and topping it with frozen yoghurt, chocolate sauce and sprinkles. Parkside is set up so that most food is served in little portions on separate plates, but it is still possible to be (somewhat) creative.
He talked specifically about an ongoing project he has in the Jade Valley, the part of China where he grew up near Xian. Basically, he was able to find a plot of land that was unsuitable for agriculture (being up on a ridge) and convinced the government to let him build there. The first structure he put up was sort of an exploration of local building techniques: the local builders use mud-brick, not concrete, and they are hesitant to build things in a manner different from their traditional techniques, so Dean Ma simultaneously learned about local technology while introducing the builders to alternative structural systems. His presentation was largely about how architects can go out on a limb with projects and take things as they come, rather than building according to a set program with the purpose of making money.
Anyhow, one of my favourite customised desserts at Parkside is a chocolate chip cookie sundae, prepared by microwaving a cookie and topping it with frozen yoghurt, chocolate sauce and sprinkles. Parkside is set up so that most food is served in little portions on separate plates, but it is still possible to be (somewhat) creative.
The weekend saw me doing in studio in the middle of the night, working on the site model for the stanchion project (which I really need to explain in more depth). One of the frustrating aspects of the project was that it was a group project with rather abysmal communication. The base was too short, meaning that some buildings had to be cut off, and it was too wide, meaning that we should have included some buildings that we omitted. And I had to redo what I had already done from scratch. Of course, most of my working was on Sunday night, as I did other work (in Second Life) for a large portion of Friday and Saturday. And, as with most all-nighters, there was at least one obligatory caffeine run.
Then, on Saturday evening (or maybe very early Saturday morning) I walked past the construction site for the new building for the cinema school. (George Lucas donated USD 175 million to the USC School of Cinematic Arts for a new building late last year.) In a greatly fortuitous situation (for me) the construction workers had left the gates unlocked, so I was able to trespass and take pictures from the inside of the construction site. (Though they are chronologically from right to left.)
As a sort of epilogue to this little series of black-and-white photos, the trees along the street in the pictures have been coming down one by one this week. Please excuse my diction as follows. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Why do these fucking idiots have to kill mature trees to put in a fucking new building when the trees are within three metres of the sidewalk and zoning requires a setback anyway?! Chainsaws are for killing zombies, not fucking cutting down trees, damnit!
Monday was the final review of the project, and it kind of needs a blog entry of its own... Monday was also my birthday, wrapping up my 18th year and inaugurating number 19! I had a fairly low-key birthday, but I did receive a phone call from Aina and a book from my parents . Thank you all!
As a sort of epilogue to this little series of black-and-white photos, the trees along the street in the pictures have been coming down one by one this week. Please excuse my diction as follows. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Why do these fucking idiots have to kill mature trees to put in a fucking new building when the trees are within three metres of the sidewalk and zoning requires a setback anyway?! Chainsaws are for killing zombies, not fucking cutting down trees, damnit!
Monday was the final review of the project, and it kind of needs a blog entry of its own... Monday was also my birthday, wrapping up my 18th year and inaugurating number 19! I had a fairly low-key birthday, but I did receive a phone call from Aina and a book from my parents . Thank you all!
Hmmm.... I've been in school for three weeks or so, now, so I ought to have a lot to talk about. Last Thursday was the due date of the first project for second semester architecture at USC, which could be called, simply, the "Woodshop Semester." Apparently we get to build things big. Also, this means we had power tools training! I very much like cutting things on the table saw; there is an indescribable pleasure in sliding things neatly through and having them cut exactly to size.
This month has also introduced me to the experience of shopping for Japanese music online. It doesn't sound that complicated, but Amazon marketplace messes things up with third-party merchants. Specifically, a certain anime soundtrack, Cowboy Bebop, is very difficult to find. At least, it's very difficult to find from Victor Records... You can get it cheap enough from K-O, Ever Anime and Son May. The only issue with those is that they are bootlegs. I ordinarily wouldn't mind breaking copyright (BitTorrent?), but it was rather annoying to order from an Amazon page that listed JVC as the label and receive a bootleg. Especially perturbing as I received THREE bootlegs in a row, from three diiferent merchants, and I had to put up with their B.S. when emailing them about the difference. Ah, well... I just received two where I had specifically ordered an American re-release, and they are exactly as advertised.
Album on left: bootleg; two on right: Geneon.
Anyhow, while school occupies my general day-to-day, I have Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons off! So today I ran some errands that were moderately overdue. Considering the lack of copious documentation in much of my life, let's start with lunch: I live next to a cafeteria that sells Starbucks coffee, Jamba Juice smoothies and food like strange, gourmet pizza. It's convenient and bloody expensive, but fortunately all those expenses are wrapped in with my tuition so I won't see them for a while.
The weather was notable for being a nice, rainy day... L.A. seems to prefer it dry out, but I like my low-pressure systems. And while I'm photographing, this building is kind of my photo-reply to Aina's "Spaceships, they're not". (It's the cafeteria on the inside.)
Moving right along, I went to the cobbler, which is located in the university's shopping center, creatively named the University Village. It's a rather bland 1980s complex with equally bland music piped in. There's a Starbucks and a grocer, though, as well as a nice, cheap salon and the cobbler (among other things), so, again, convenience wins. (I'd buy the eggplant pizza even if it were inconvenient, though.)
After a quick trip to the salon for a face wax (sooo much better than shaving), I went back to pick up my suit pants to bring in for alterations, then sat and waited for the bus. L.A. is a rather auto-centric city... however, four different buses passed before the one I needed.
Note also, on the UPS truck, the Clean Air Vehicle label. They seem awfully proud of all the little pro-environmental things here, but there's still smog. w/e
So after waiting a half hour for the bus and spending about four minutes riding it, I arrived at the tailor, where I picked up my trilby and my fedora, while the gentleman there pinned my pants for the alterations. Another twenty-minute wait plus four-minute ride and I was back at USC. In the meantime: more streetscape!
Finally, I ended my evening with a screening of a pro-mining propaganda film. It was very interesting, to say the least, but the argumentation techniques were a little disturbing in their manipulative tactics. The discussion afterwards had more than a proportional amount of guilt attack, as well, and seemed on the verge of a yelling match on several occasions. The film-makers were on hand, and they were most impassioned...
A long day, and I find myself blogging at two-thirty in the morning, with a test in anthropology at eight tomorrow morning. Ah, well.
Note also, on the UPS truck, the Clean Air Vehicle label. They seem awfully proud of all the little pro-environmental things here, but there's still smog. w/e
Recent Comments
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Linolumixa said:
Now that you're on your little break, how about writing and posting photographs on here more often? read more
on Momentary Clarity -
John Hupp said:
Generally I have a very specific idea, be it the design of a specfic room, or a façade, or a... read more
on Bad today; good yesterday -
John Hupp said:
I took the pictures on the USC campus, on a construction site (the reason for the fence). The building with... read more
on [Overdue] Week in review -
Linolumixa said:
Hay, I've always wondered how you architects start on a project. Do you design from the inside [which will then... read more
on Bad today; good yesterday
on Momentary Clarity