One of my most memorable classes as a student was a theory seminar I took by Jeff Kipnis, which at the time was privy to only students in their final year of architecture study. Entertaining, to say the least. Since then, he has also taught lectures to students in their first year of school, and the lectures are available here. I think you’ll find them humorous, and enlightening.

Start with “Windows”

http://knowlton.osu.edu/open/media.asp

MS

An amazing website devoted to the scalar relationships of our known world. Think Eames Powers of Ten with a flash interface. Perhaps the most amazing thing is how small we have been able to create man-made objects (namely single electron transistors). A sobering testament to both our insignificance, and simultaneously our amazing ability to catalogue our environment.

Nikon Universcale

MS

Engaging the right side of the brain is a liberating exercise, except most times it isn’t something we consciously do. Right-brained thinking is interesting in the sense that it is so unlike its counterpart, aka left-brained thinking, in that there isn’t necessarily work involved in getting from point A to point B. There isn’t an “I get it” or “I don’t get it”, but simply a range/depth of appreciation.

I think we would all be surprised at just how attune to visual phenomena we really are, and how much we can process simply by looking at an object, a space, a face, or an image.

I say that relevant to this project, only because I started with trying to indulge a right-brained urge, and ended up getting there in a pretty linear fashion.

Working on a project in Dubai, our project team found out that a good portion of the masonry in the city is actually cut and hewn coral deposits. Its combination of mass and porosity, as well as availability, had obvious benefits given the climate and region. Though the project pursued another direction, I kept finding new things relative to color, growth patterns, etc.

A project emerged simply by trying to follow the underlying geometric logic of a species of coral whose septa (walls) fuse together from polyp to polyp.  Simplicity follows two tracks; a simple thing + complex technique, or a simple technique to get a complex thing.

This employs the latter.

I’ll probably post a more detailed description on my website shortly.

MS

This has nothing to do with architecture or design for that matter, unless you’re counting the suit fabrication, but I thought it was amazing nonetheless. Besides the sheer insanity of it all, some of the video tracking the jumps in first person is incredible.

Get the fullscreen vimeo video here.

Matchstick Productions

MS

I came across this note in the NYT by chance in a google search. Thoughts anyone?

To the Editor:

Christopher Hawthorne asserts that individual geniuses like Frank Lloyd Wright are being replaced by ”collectives” — teams that advocate group design and compromise [''Goodbye 'Fountainhead,' Hello Kibbutz,'' April 27]. As Ayn Rand has demonstrated, however, a collective of mediocrities cannot match the achievements of a single genius. Could Fallingwater have been designed by a committee? The surge toward collectivism in architecture may explain why so many buildings today are trite, disintegrated and/or just plain ugly. 

EDWIN A. LOCKE 
Westlake Village, Calif. 

MS

A recent exploration/study involving aperiodic distribution of volumes…

MS

…but don’t tell me the careful visuals and graphic consistency of his campaign didn’t help him win in some way, shape or form.

The campaign might have been the best marketed brand of any presidential candidate to date, and one that exploited (in a good way) our current technological networking opportunities.  

No small feat.

Obama Graphic Downloads

Image © NBBJ, 2008.

We need to stop referring to 20 story buildings as “towers”. It undermines the typology, and makes you feel like it should be something it isn’t. Although by definition, a tower is a structure whose diameter is smaller than its height, we know this can be applied to a significant amount of buildings we wouldn’t consider to be towers. A true tower has a slender proportion, and has a relentless vertical vector distribution.

As designers, let’s be honest with ourselves, and let these be what they want; tall midrise buildings with their own specific set of constraints, independent of a true high rise. No better or worse, just different.

We will see the Midrise become more prevalent in less dense cities in the near future as developers procure less capital from lenders. We should equip ourselves with the critical tools to make these projects effective as architectural solutions to urban or suburban insertions.

MS

Check out my Pecha Kucha presentation on Simplexity.

8.21.08

Simplexity

MS

An image of a competition entry I have been working on tentatively titled Kalyx.

More to follow…

MS