Guggenheim 3d Model

This Building Has Fins

I walked past this building today.  Its the CUNY School of Social Work building on the corner of 79th Street and 3rd Avenue.  It caught my eye because, as you can see in this photo, it has metal fins on the ground level facade.  I really like the fins, because they change as you move around them, and also because I have vertical louvers and fin-like building objects on my brain right now as I am currently designing some for my studio project in school.   (photo from here)

Another building I like with vertical louvers is this one pictured below, which is the Archaeology Museum of Vitoria, Spain, designed by Francisco Jose Mangado Beloqui. (photo from here)  These are made of cast bronze and I think they are beautiful. This image really demonstrates how different they look depending on the angle at which you look at them.

John & Wayne in Brooklyn

I was invited to see John & Wayne, of Aquarian Nation Records, at a house show they played in Williamsburg last week.  Its a unique and special experience to see a band you like playing in the intimate environment of someone's home.  I had previously seen Francis Dunnery, another Aquarian Nation friend, play a house show before, so I knew it was going to be a fun time.

Here's a video of their song, The Sign to Coventry, about the time they crashed their car driving to Coventry. This video was filmed and produced by my friend, Stephen Harris, also on the Aquarian Nation Record Label.

Desperately Seeking Symmetry

I've been listening to Radiolab while I've been working on my 3d model of my school project.  This episode is really amazing, and explores issues such as how we perceive ourselves, how others perceive us, and what happens when these things are mirrored, flipped, or rotated.

This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert set out in search of order and balance in the world around us, and ask how symmetry shapes our very existence--from the origins of the universe, to what we see when we look in the mirror.

Along the way, we look for love in ancient Greece , head to modern-day Princeton to peer inside our brains, and turn up an unlikely headline from the Oval Office circa 1979.  

Click here for more.

Intro to Grasshopper for Rhino

I attended the Novedge Intro to Grasshopper for Rhino Webinar yesterday. It was given by Andy Payne, from LIFT Architects, and I found it to be really helpful and informative in getting a handle on the basics of Grasshoppers and its capabilities.

Here's a recorded video of it, for those of you who missed it:



The webinar covers three things: First Andy goes over the the interface and explains where and what everything is.  Next he covers two tutorials, the first of which is a truss.

For more Grasshopper information, click here.

Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective

I went to see the Richard Serra Drawing exhibit at the Met last week.  Really really interesting work.  Most of the drawings shown were done using a melted paint stick on large sheets of paper.  He also created a few site specific drawings for this show, and those were my favorite.  Here are my sketches of those drawings.

Its amazing to me that with just a subtle change in his interventions in each of these corners, the result was a huge difference in one's experience of the corner.  All the more interesting by the fact that each one is the same size and height.

As an architect, Richard Serra's work is very relevant in that he has a unique ability to play with our perceptions of a space without us even noticing that he's doing so. This was the first time I have seen his drawings, and they were almost more powerful to me than the sculptures, because they provided a window into his thought process and his ideas about form, gravity, force, and weight.  

Songs Outside My Window

Last night, I was sitting on my couch reading about masonry walls as one does on a regular Saturday night.  The window was open, because it finally getting warmish here in NYC and humid, which tells me that its almost beach weather (!!!).   Around midnight, I heard the most beautiful sounds of singing floating up from the street and into my living room.  I looked outside, and it was coming from the Ukranian Orthodox Church on my block. The entire congregation had gone outside, standing together on the balcony with candles, singing songs (which I didn't understand, but assume they must be about Easter).

What a welcome surprise.  Thank you!