Midterm Review Time

As of last night at 7 I didn't have any completed drawings for today's presentation but I managed to stay up all night and get everything done.  Sleep deprivation waited to slam into me until after I'd gone home to eat and shower.  I'm exhausted but I'm actually proud of some of my drawings (hand drawn!) and my poster isn't toooooo shabby.  I think.  Here's a sample.

Broad Street Elevation

Monterey Street Elevation

Entrance Perspective

Winter

It’s been awhile since I left an update out in cyberspace and I’m feeling the need for a little reflection time. 
It’s week three now of winter quarter and I’m keeping myself very busy.  I’m finishing up some required GEs as well as taking studio, a class for my minor, and a seminar for my study abroad program next quarter.  I’m also trying to work two, maybe three jobs, this quarter.  It sounds really insane now that I see it written out.  In any case, you probably won’t be hearing from me much.
I have mixed feelings about my studio project this quarter.  My professor was very secretive about it until we were able to go downtown to the site.  After walking around the SLO’s “cultural center” for awhile he finally announced that we would be doing an addition project on the Old Carnegie Library.  :/
For those of you who may not know, I’ve already done this project.  Not only have I done this project, but I did it as part of one of my worst classes at Cal Poly.  Second year, winter quarter.  I think it’s the only time I’ve cried in a college class. 
In an effort to convince myself that this would not be a repeat of that unpleasant experience, I reminded myself that most students (and architects) don’t get the opportunity to do a project again; to start over fresh and with more time.  I think I’m already making good progress towards a better design.

I don’t want to make this post too wordy just in case someone is following along out there, so here are some highlights from the gap.

Ding, ding, ding, goes the trolley...

Lombard Street: not as cool with all the cars

View from Lombard

It really is that steep

Peace Pagoda

My friend and I spooning

Beautiful day on Los Osos Valley Road

In honor of National Cupcake Day, double chocolate cupcakes

Sucks to be a Cougar coming home...

My number one pick for the Gingerbread house contest

Rusty, the dancing kitty

Pacific Science Center at night

My beautiful pie crust

LeMay Car Museum

Old Carnegie Library, right next to...

Mission San Luis Obispo

Bears at Mission Plaza

Autumn

Autumn is the prettiest season in my opinion.  At least if you have maples and other beautiful deciduous trees where you live.  I follow a blog called Seattle Daily Photo so I can get a little taste of home.  The blogger has some great photography and I'm always inspired.  She's recently posted some beautiful photos of autumn in Seattle, specifically trees changing color before their leaves fall.  Makes me homesick.

This is interesting because I was thinking about trees earlier today as well.  My case study group and I visited our project site in Woodside, CA.  Woodside is small town right next to Palo Alto and it's beautiful there.  The drive down took us through a valley covered in evergreens which I am not used to seeing in California.  Then we saw the lake in the valley reflecting the trees and causing a light fog a couple of layers up.  In the immortal words of Don Swearingen, "so fine."  It just reminded me of home and how much I dislike the dust covering the hills of San Luis Obispo and how wonderful it is when after the winter rains, suddenly the dust is green.

It was a beautiful day and the property the house is on is awesome!  Tennis courts, pool, huge yard, barn, long gated drive, it's like there should be this huge mansion on the hill.  I'm glad there isn't.  This house is big, but not huge and I think it fits well into the landscape.  The house itself it definitely a little funky because it's been through so many remodels, but it's still a nice house.  Unfortunately, I didn't take some good photos of the front but that's not the good part.

 

View from the future living room to the central patio.  These sliding doors are original and will stay.  They will be mirrored on the other side of this room as well which is the front entry to the house.  Should make a great indoor/outdoor space.

 

Kitchen/living room.  It's pretty nice but was definitely added on.  It's in a completely different style than the rest of the house.

 

Kitchen.  If I had taken a better photo, this kitchen could be in a magazine. 

 

Patio off future living room and game room.

 

Huge backyard.  I could see so many awesome birthday parties in this backyard.

  

Pool house.  Sort of reminded me of the Neptune pool at Hearst Castle.  That's not to say that this is extremely over the top because it's not, I just got that vibe. 

After touring the house and property, we went to the principal architect's house nearby because it's currently under construction and our mentor wanted us to be able to experience that.  It was cool to see a house under construction and it was nice, but it wasn't amazing.  I'm sure I'd feel differently if it were closer to being done.  

After touring that house, we went and saw some other projects that he has done in the area.  He's done a lot of houses in Woodside, it's kind of crazy.

When I got back to my firm, I had a quiet day of editing drawings and images.  I'm really ahead on my pet project and they don't seem to have a lot for me to do.  I finally have some other things to do.  Right now I'm editing plans and sections for a press kit.  Basically removing on the technical information and making them look pretty.  I also had to track down some images and format them for a magazine article being written about the firm.  A few days ago I was searching for photos on google images for a brochure being put out for a blossoming non-profit.  Looking at some much photography has been making me really want to get into that hobby and/or profession.

The afternoons seem to drag on so slowly at the office.   Today, Karen, who interns at the firm right next door to mine, called me and told me go outside for a second.  She came out and gave me a cookie!  Dark chocolate chip cookie with sea salt sprinkled on top.  While I don't like dark chocolate truffles with sea salt, the cookie was delicious.  I felt so honored because I don't really know Karen.  We walk to the bus together in a group after class so we've had minor interaction, but earlier this week she suggested we take the bus together to class.  We talked about baking and she mentioned that she wanted to bake more because she gets bored in the evening (what? I guess it helps when your commute is only a half hour as opposed to 1.5 hours.  She's also Karen and has a reputation for being amazing).  I never thought she'd randomly bring me a cookie in the middle of the day.  Totally awesome!  Great way to start off the weekend!

November is here!

First of all, congrats to the Giants for winning the world series!  Being from Seattle, I've never experienced my team winning the championship (go Mariners!) and the vibe of the city was really cool to see.  I don't follow sports much because I have other things I'd rather do, but I'll get into it if there's a game on and I have my teams that I root for.  I was pulling for the Giants and it was great to see them get it done.

November is here (already?) and that means Thanksgiving is in a few weeks!  Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday for a few reasons.  1. All the delicious food!!  2. Great time to catch up with family, although not so much this year since we're scattered all over the place.  And 3. -The Tie-Breaker, No pressure to get the perfect gift.  Secret reason 4.  The day after kicks off my Christmas preparations starting by breaking out my Christmas Music playlist.  Can't wait! 

 This week has been a little up and down.  I've been working on layouts for the marketing publication.  I spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning feeling like I'm just going around in circles trying to find something I like that's different from what I've already got.  Then Wednesday afternoon I got a break by tidying up the materials library.  So dusty.  It was nice though.  My mentor prefaced with "I've got a left-brained activity for you," and I remembered that I really am left-brain dominant.  Organizing, math, and music are my strong points.  Creativity, not so much. Yesterday I could have really gotten into reorganizing their whole library, which is really out of order.

I spent this morning continuing my quest for an alternative layout.  I had a case study meeting with Arcanum which I enjoyed.  I think I enjoy those meetings because it's like listening to a story.  A story about a historic house remodel, but to me it's riveting.

Last night was our case study mid-term presentation.  It did not go well.  Myself and my team are mostly to blame (one didn't show), but so is our professor and our case study mentor.  Our mentor is great but keeps our meetings to an hour which isn't enough time, and repeats herself.  We hadn't gotten much of a chance to ask questions, but we also hadn't formulated them.  My professor shouldn't have shown so much disappointment because I specifically asked her what she wanted for the presentation and she said "Nothing specific, just show progress.  I know you guys have been busy settling into your firms."  I guess we didn't make enough progress.  So today we spent our whole meeting going over what we need for the presentation.  

After the meeting I went back MHA for a lunch and learn.  I got to hear a guy talk about cement board, look at samples, and get free food!  I arrived late and missed the first part of the presentation but I wondered if it was the guy's first day, because he was not very good.  He didn't have a presentation up, he was switching back and forth between photo albums to show examples of the product.  Later, everyone else said he was awful.  Poor guy.  

After lunch, I talked with my mentor about the layouts for the publication and I finally get to move onto making mock-ups or two partis.  I was miserable on this project before when I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over and I thought it was the project or my short attention span, but I really think I just want to feel like I'm making progress.  After talking with my mentor and moving on I started enjoying it again and I was able to focus.  I just find it interesting how when I think I hate everything about architecture and start thinking about what I'm going to do once I graduate and can be done with this, I start to like it and get sucked back in.  Sounds like an abusive boyfriend.

Intership: Week 1

Happy Halloween!

My final review is past and gone, thank goodness. I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked. I didn't have any perspectives as usual even though I know they are the most important because they weren't required and I'm just plain not good at them. I also ended up having to present earlier than I thought and therefore had to talk about the site information for our jurors which I wasn't prepared for and subsequently froze up and fumbled my presentation. I was also the first to be reviewed by a somewhat harsh critic so I was a little crushed afterwords. Whatever. It was a five week project so I guess I shouldn't have expected to make as much progress as in past quarters.

But now I'm a week into my internship and I'm enjoying it for the most part. Sitting in a chair and leaning in to see my computer screen makes me pretty stiff by the end of the day. I haven't gotten to do much architectural stuff yet, but I've been working on some marketing stuff. I have to keep a journal for the internship anyway so my first two posts are below. I know I need to be taking pictures, but it's kind of awkward to take pictures of people while they're working away and I'm supposed to be doing the same. I'll post when I take some.

Mark, the principle, is pretty cool but likes to give me crap. He does that to everyone, but I'm not as good with my comebacks yet. My mentor, David, has been pretty great too. I worry that I'm working too slowly and not making enough progress on my projects, but I'm learning and he hasn't said anything about it. I only have a month left which is unbelievable. Then back to SLO to earn some money and see my kitties!


Day One

Today I arrived and sat down with my mentor, David, and went over a few projects he had lined up for me. The first is updating the mailing list for their promotional materials. The second is a marketing magazine for their residential projects. This involves designing a layout that can be used again for their commercial and institutional projects later on. The third project is working on the submittal paperwork for an online architectural journal called Formness.
As the first two projects weren’t ready, I spent the day researching projects and putting together the submittal forms for each project. It was a good first project to get me familiar with the firm and their work. The firm had published 15 projects previously with a similar online journal, so I worked off of the submittal form for that project and resized all the same pictures.

Day Two

Today I continued work on the Formness submittal forms. I searched through their digital portfolio of press releases and photos to fill in as much detail as I could. After exhausting my resources, I printed a copy of the forms for each of the 15 projects for David and Mark to review.
David then put me to work helping Keith on the El Camino project. I was tasked with finding the spec sheets for a long list of plumbing fixtures the owner had purchased before bringing in Mark Horton Architecture for the remodel.

mid-review

Friday was the mid-review for our projects. Eight hours of presentations on two hours of sleep was difficult.
I hate reviews. Not because I don't like giving presentations (those are getting easier) but because I always feel so inadequate. I worked really hard to get stuff done for this presentation but still didn't have enough progress to show the reviewers. I got a few good critiques but I could tell they wanted more.
I think my problem is that I take too long to make a decision. I struggle hard with design. I always end up hating my project which makes me not want to work on it. It seems like design comes so much easier to most of my classmates and I find myself trying to keep up with them, but I just can't.
At this point I just want to get my degree done and then figure out what I'm really going to do with my life. The thing is I like design, but I don't love it. I don't think I'm good at it, and maybe if I was I would enjoy it more.
Enough of my whining. Here's the plan I spent soooo long on (and it's still not done).



Here's a diagram to explain things.



I'm not posting my other drawings or sections because they are going to change. A lot. Okay, time to learn sketchup. Hopefully, that will help me get up to speed.

Week 2

Week 2 went by quick! I've been going back and forth again and again between two different organizational layouts, but I think I finally made a decision. I think half the reason I struggle with design so much is that I make too many assumptions and that I never know how to move forward. The other half is that I get distracted too easily. I didn't used to...
Anyway, now I know what I need to do, it's great. I just hope I can get it done in time. It probably didn't help that I took a mental health day today, but sometimes you just need a break.


Concept model


Organizational Diagram


Rough plan


Entrance sketch

In other news, we did an office visit Wednesday at Field Paoli, the firm that did the renovation on the Marina Branch Library (our site). The talk we heard was really helpful, informative, and inspiring. It was also really helpful just to see how their office works. Then on Thursday, we had our first case study meeting with Arcanum. The guy we met was a Cal Poly grad who had gone through the S.F. program so it was really good to hear his story and see what he's doing now. The project we're going to be studying also sounds really cool: a historical renovation.
The mid-review is next Friday so I'll probably have much more to talk about next week.