Second Year. Semester 2. Studio IV.

This will be rather a long post.

Well, this semester has been quite trying. By far the hardest, not only academically, but personally and emotionally. The latter two for reasons that happened in my personal life that have no need to clutter and drag down a blog that is meant to write about my life through architectural school.

I hope to cover the entire semester in this post.

Well, I guess we begin in January.
The semester started on a cold, snow covered day, with me not particularly looking forward to being back in school(due to an event that happened to me personally over the break). The previous semester ended with me being quite angry about architecture and I was not in the best mood to be creative again.
I walked into Crown Hall and saw familiar faces and also saw the lists of new studio groups. I was excited to see that I was placed with a professor that was(from what I've heard) one of the best in the College of Architecture. I also heard that she was one of the toughest, but I was looking forward to that.

This semester was the Masonry Semester.
We started working at the basic level of the unit itself.

Our first project was a frustrating one. In groups we were assigned to design a new masonry unit. I was working with a group of five, which it can be hard to get five people to agree on anything, so the creative process of this workshop was a challenge. We agreed on a rather simple design due to the fact that we just ran out of time left to design. We wanted to reach really far out into the edge of what can be done, like in the realm of blob architecture, but we settled on a simple curved design that could create curved walls easily as well as turn a 90 degree corner.
With this masonry unit we then had to apply that into designing a garden space on the southern end of Northernly Island. We also had to settle for a simple idea due to lack of time. This also proved hard for me personally, with walking around with a chip in my shoulder about life.

This was our presentation board for the project.

Our model would have been difficult to produce out of concrete in the short deal of time so my group left it to me to construct one out of wood.  

Here are some model photos of the unit and studies of it.

The large model was difficult to build. I take it as a compliment that my group only trusted me to make it. It was done completely on a band saw, two separate pieces that had to line up perfectly. The smaller model units we cut on a laser cutter to assure consistency and accuracy.

In the review, the two reviewing professors, which mine was one, gave us a very good review, which was one of the best they gave that day. However, it turns out when it came time for the grade(two months later at midterms) she gave our group a C, which was surprising. 

As this workshop came to an end, as we neared the end of January.

As work began on our next workshop, a case study of two chapels(leading up to our next project) I was still in a pit and struggling to be happy, especially with the struggles of another class which I lost countless nights of sleep over worrying about not passing that class, which was required for next year's studio. It was during this time that i decided, one grey, rainy Sunday afternoon in late January to head over to Crown Hall and just get some diagram work done for the case studies. If anyone is familiar with Crown Hall they will know that the desks near the walk ways are the worst, my desk was one of them. Well, this day I walked into Crown, set down my bag and coat and noticed a friend on the other side of studio and went over to talk to her. I realized that my phone was over in my coat and did not want to leave it unattended, just because a phone is easy for someone to walk away with. I grabbed my phone and headed back over to my friend, I was within eyesight of my desk, and had to be turned right at the perfect moment, because within the five minutes of grabbing my phone and walking back to my desk to work, my bag was gone.

It was the horrible. My entire academic life was in that bag: my computer, my sketchbook, my notes and work for other classes, all completely gone.

If I was not already mad about things this definitely pushed me over the edge. 

But time does not stop and the world does not cease to continue on just because one person hit a bump in their life, it is not up to the world to stop for them, it is up to that person to push harder to keep up and pass up the world. 

This event really showed that I had to now be one of those people.

Time carried on, and fortunately I was able to get a new computer, one that I now guard with my life and never leaves my sight. The Case Study came and went, it went generally well and time was now here, in mid-Ferbuary for our first actual project- To design a meditation space/Field Chapel for the Effigy Mounds National Park In Iowa. 

My struggle with this project is that I could never really get my heart into it, I never found a passion and spark of inspiration for it, but that was my fault, I still had a chip in my shoulder from my personal life and that aforementioned class that was really beating me down. 

My thought process for this project was: how can people, and how do people interact with nature? and how can they meditate upon that in a building?

So I first isolated the senses that we experience nature down into four: light, sight, touch, and sound. I thought that these would allow the user to have a better thought towards nature. 

I approached this as putting one sense per room, or building. With isolating the senses the user can, once in nature with all the sense will have a better approach towards it.

Here are some of my early drafts for this meditation space

The entire odd shape for it came from me messing around with a lump of clay.

However, as time went on and revisions were made, and I really did not fight back when my professor wanted things different seeing as, to be honest, I did not care much about this project at all. I still think it was not the best, and when it came to the reviews the reviewers dug deeper into it much more than the rest of us ever did during the whole design process.

My drawings were not the best, but I made up for it when it came to our next project, which started two weeks after the field chapel ended. 

The model was a lot of work. To build these four separate buildings, I decided to build them using all individual bricks, bricks that only measured 1/4"x1/4"x1/2"

This was a nightmare in itself and I was not too pleased with the results.

  

As soon as the chapel had finished, we as a group of 14, had to take the brick county house, designed my Mies and figure out how he did it. He only ever did one floor plan and one perspective of it. This was done as an exercise to see how well we can grasp an understanding of masonry techniques. It was our last time hand drafting, or so they say, we've had many last times with hand drafting. I lucked out and just had to produce a detail axon of the bricks, very simple. 

The final project for the year was also my favorite project that we have done in school so far. 

To design a mixed use building on one of three lots at the intersection of Indiana and 37th. 

Not the prettiest site, but much room for growth and creativity. 

The assignment called for a mixed use building with retail space on the first floor with (a) dwelling(s) located on the second and third floor. I chose to do only one dwelling that would take up the entire second and third floors. We had the opportunity to write our own programs. For me, I decided to design a home for a family of three or four if the children shared a room. The retail space we were told not to give much thought seeing as it's good to leave that space as open as possible to rent as much square footage as possible. So with that in mind the space is generally just an open floor plan, with me ideally placing in a small design shop that is operated by the couple that lives above it. 

I wanted to keep this floor plan as efficient as possible with every space having a meaning, even allowing hallways not to exist, in the sense that even hallways are technically rooms on their own that just also serve as rooms. 

I started to think of how can a home be divided in terms of the family's privacy. I came to three zones: a public zone where rooms are used mostly for hosting guests and company, an intermediate zone where closer guests can be but also spaces that would regularly occupied by the family, and finally a private zone, where the space would be used almost exclusively by the family. These zones then became, respectively, the living room, the dining room and the family room. The secondary zones to connect these three were zones that could function in between, such as an office/workspace between the living and dining room, and the kitchen between the kitchen and family room. The third floor was just a place to house the bedrooms and a common/multipurpose room. 

In the end the entire shape of the building was derived from this idea of spaces.

Concept Diagram

First Floor

Second Floor

Third Floor

East and South Elevations

Longitudinal Section

Cross Section

Render

The honest truth is I am glad to see this whole semester gone. It has taken me around five months to write this entire thing seeing as it was probably the lowest point in my life, but it's not the knock downs that define us, it's the moments when we get back up from them that shows who we are.