New Year

Keeping up with my quarterly updates...

I took a bit of time off around Christmas and the New Years. The office did the annual trek to Stuttgart to visit with the other offices and see what everyone was working on. Afterwards I took a couple weeks to collect myself and enjoy a bit of downtime.

I took the opportunity to pull material together for NH AIA's competition and enter a board. My submission can be found below and the winning entry's here. While disappointed that I was not selected I was proud that I was able to get my thoughts and material together. Working on CA for UB for the past two years hasn't given the design side of my brain much activity so it was nice to think about architecture in this light.

Looking at the other entry's (or the winners) I can see that certainly much more time was spent on visualizations. This is something that I also considered. I only threw one weekend's worth of effort at the problem (and perhaps the winners did as well) but I lack the ability to create such quick visualizations that I would be satisfied with. Its something that I need to work on, finding the satisfaction that something can be "done" without being at the absolute level of refinement. Though looking at my board after a few weeks I can see that I didn't clearly define my solution to the problem through the few plans or sections on the board. While clear in my head it wasn't communicated clearly.

This of course is the goal of this (and other competitions) is to begin to develop my ability to create new material (visualizations, plans etc etc) but also to refine the way I think and describe my own architectural interests and solutions to problems.

Other than NH's competition I've been steadily working on the chair. Eli Cleveland came through and delivered an amazing prototype of the stool which I'm thrilled with. I've included a few shots of the prototype here.

And a big thank you to Ashlee @ AMI for an awesome job on printing the board on such short notice, it came out amazing!!

Stool Updates

Re-posting an update from my Assembalge page documenting the stool I'm working on.. Check it out!

Trannsolar Discussion

Trannsolar's 20th Anniversary Forum can be found here. Some very good discussion by engineers and architects.

Busy

One reason, not a great one, but a reason nonetheless that there hasn't been much activity here is due to the fat that I've had a fair amount of activity here. Nate helped me with a new page, putting a flyer together and helping with new business cards. Trying to get a name for myself and see what I cant get going with the chair. I've been sending my things off to a few chair manufacturers and I'll be following up with them in the next week or so. My next move will be to push the kickstarter route... so we'll see how that goes. I need to keep my head down and get some nice study models going as well as a full-sized prototype... hopefully then I'll really be in business.

I've realized to that since being licensed I've really fallen off any regiment of reading or even trying to keep current. Work is so draining that I find it hard to spend time thinking about the small amount of reading that I do manage to cram in.... I hope to make a better effort at that... and documenting my thoughts so that I can begin to formulate my next move.... maybe jumping into teaching. Right now I think I'd scare them with menacing stories of why they should quit architecture and be a janitor... need to get a bit of the passion for design... and thinking about design back into my brain.

April brings snow...

well its been a while ... as par with the course here. I've been busy with UB and the project is now squarely in CA phase. It will be interesting to see where I move as the project progresses and our duties become more limited. Though there is always something to drag you back in.

I've been working on my chair design and working on getting that built or patented. We'll see how that goes and I'll try and post some images once I get some proper models built.

making an effort....

so I've obviously been pretty lax about keeping up on this thing, (Jane its possible you are the only one following). But I'm going to do a bit better of keeping up on this thing. I think if I at least set out my goals for the month/week etc etc it might spur me to keep to them a bit more and make me a bit more pleasant to be around when I see that I actually do get some things done that I think about.

So I've been mulling my chair design around in my head for some time, but I'm making a more direct goal of getting something made. I'll need to document my idea before I bring it to the few plywood manufactures I've found but perhaps that can be my goal this week - to get it sketched out and mail something to myself as initial documentation.

I'm also studying for the ARE's now, which is extraordinarily hard. I'm in the midst of the structures test books and well.. its not going very quickly. i need to get my ass in gear and set a date that I will take it. It will force me to study and really get me in the swing. I think once I have the tests behind me I can focus on some of the other things that I've had on my mind.. reviwing my thesis book... getting something printed for myself and my school etc etc.... but lets start small...

setting a date for the structures test and documenting the chair

working late nights.... boston @ midnight

see flickr for large file