Image Breakdown

"There is no solution, seek it lovingly"

One of my favorite things to do is conceptual design.  It's fun to come up with the initial concepts and impressions for a building.  During conceptual design, you set out on a journey, not knowing where you are going or what lies at the end of the road.  Along the way you end up taking design-turns and detours that can lead you to question yourself and your decisions or they can spark a thought or idea which you then start to explore.  One of my studio professors from architecture school was quick to say 'There is no solution, seek it lovingly.'  The first few times I heard this saying I would roll my eyes and think 'Are you off your rocker??  Soooo, whats the point?'.  I would hate to admit that I agree with, or even quote, one of my professors that 'there is no solution, seek it lovingly.', but I have learned that the design process is a journey you must take exploring different design possibilities while not knowing the end result.  I have come to love seeking the 'design solution', meandering along design paths leading to an unknown destination.
Below is a short video of an image for building proposed in Orem, Utah.  This building/site/project has been 'lovingly seeking' a design solution for a while now.  This isn't the first concept, nor do I feel its the last.  In this video I breakdown this concept image showing each layer created in Photoshop and how they are layered on top of each other, making a composite.  Unfortunately I don't narrate each step long the way, its more of a final image breakdown, revealing one spot along the design journey.  However, I do plan on making a full video in the future recording myself making one of these images from scratch.  Music by Mumford & Sons.
I do apologize for the 'flickering' that happens periodically in the video, I believe it has something to do with the frame rate at which I recorded the video and then processed/compressed it in Adobe Premiere Pro.  I'm architect, not a cinematographer.  You can find a higher resolution image of this project in of my previous posts.

If anyone has a comment or a question about the process or whatever, please don't hesitate to ask. 

 

Challenge Accepted

So I have a buddy who is also in the glorious field of architecture and design.  Recently he has been modeling up tons of furniture in 3D.  He came across one chair called the Baker chair.  He shared a link with me so I could view this particular chair.  He commented on how this chair was going to take some time and possibly be a little difficult to model using his current software.  He may or may not have said 'this chair is going to be impossible' but that's what I heard and I took it as a personal challenge.  For all those of you that are familiar with 'How I Met Your Mother' and Barney Stinson...

"CHALLENGE...wait for it...ACCEPTED!"

Just like Ted and Marshall (Barney's friends), my buddy is probably rolling his eyes, telling himself that he never challenged me, and that this is ridiculous.  So here is a video of me modeling up the Baker chair in 3D set to the music of my buddy's band (he plays the drums).  I sped up the video 5 times the original speed so that it fits within the length of one of his songs.  I rather enjoyed making this little video so this might become a more common element to my blog.  So until the next 'Challenge Accepted', enjoy!

La Scuola di Montessori


During my final year of undergrad (spring of 2009 if you are wondering) I was given the assignment of designing a school based off of the Montessori Method. For those of you that aren't familiar with this method, I will summarized it very briefly: Its a teaching method developed by an Italian educator named Maria Montessori. Some of the main principles are; that children learn at their own pace and have the capacity to direct their own learning, that children do not learn at the same pace as adults and that they do not use the same teaching methods. A Montessori school is very much a hands-on learning environment allowing children to interact as much as possible and, where appropriate, with all five senses in learning. You can find some more information about Maria Montessori and the Montessori Methods in the first several pages of the embedded project booklet in this post.

This booklet was handed in at the end of the project as part of a project record. I believe there are still several type-o's in the booklet - as with most of my projects, I stayed up the night before it was due to complete it; I do not recommend this particular type of work flow :)