T.E.F.S.C.A. sections

Just a close up of the individual sections I made in the second week of my apartment, since the actual page I posted previously is quite large, and things seem small on it even when enlarged!

The lady in the Red CoAt

One of my finished renders  from media this year. We're designing for Madelon Vriesendorf, the wife of Rem Koolhaas, who collected many items. Each week we get a new image from her collection to add to our work, and this week it was the lady in the coat.

Also, I have quite a lot of work, particularly from this class, to upload but I've been very busy lately... I'll get to it eventually.

Vintage Sections

If you haven't already figured it out, these are the same sections as the last post, just inverted! I like them a lot better like this to be honest, which is weird since blue is my favourite colour so you'd think I'd be drawn to the blueprints more... anyway, we ended up using neither these nor the last images, just the line work of the section since we wanted to annotate, and overlay the elevations with tracing paper.

Blueprint sections

Sections of Karen's house for our project. We are meeting tomorrow, so I'm not yet sure if these are the final sections, as I still need to get feedback off the others about the appearance. Of course, the main thing for this project is the information conveyed, so we will mostly be working on annotations tomorrow. Anyway, I first modelled Karen's house on ArchiCAD (which was quite tricky, her house is rather large and on a slight slope, so it was hard to think through as I've only been there once so far!) and then I edited the sections I took off that on Photoshop and Illustrator.

Home analysis

So along with our model (which is now massive... I have yet to photograph it in its entirety, it fills up my entire locker...) we produced an A0 page (I swear, the page sizes get bigger each year... next year I bet it will be 2A0!) analysing our house, mainly concentrating on the acoustics, material qualities and the distance to public places to express citizenry.  I'm really loving this paper so far!

Pandoratech

Hey there, just letting you know that I have another blog running now for work related to one of the assignments for ARCHTECH 208. This is group work, so the blog posts will not only be by me, but also by my team mates, Mandy, Jenny, Karen and Alicia. Also, don't forget that this blog is my number 1 spot to show work, so I'm definitely not abandoning it! Anyway, if you want to check the new blog out its address is http://pandoratech.blogspot.co.nz/ although there is nothing on it yet... 

T.E.F.S.C.A.

So for our fist project this year we are looking at our own dwelling as a precedent. So- this is a wee card model at 1:100 of my apartment... which my flatmates and I decided to name T.E.F.S.C.A... (it stands for The Epic Flat of Supreme Classy Awesomeness hahaha it's a bit embarrassing admitting that online...) this is just a small part of what will this apartment, shown in it's location in the overall building, in site context, with the closest space for an expression of citizenry (like a café, or another public area) expressed, so the proximity between them is clear. There is a lot of work to!

Architektia Logo

Firstly, I made it to second year! Yay! That means I'm just over 1/3rd of the way through my BAS now. Anyway, I don't have much time to write since I have A LOT of work to do... but since one part of my work is, of course, presenting things (on an A0 sheet, gasp... so huge! We seem to work on bigger paper every year! To think I used to think A3 was big...) I decided I should make myself a logo, since of course I can no longer use the Studio L.I.M. one since I am no longer working with Manu and Andy. Therefore I spent a few minutes fiddling around on Illustrator (which I am getting better at... but I am still terrified of it and run back into Photoshop's arms whenever I can...) and came up with this. My initials are highlighted, this blog is advertised, and I can easily change the colour depending on the overall colour scheme of whatever I am working on so I'm pretty happy with it. The only thing that is frustrating me a little right now is the fact that the eye (or at least my eye...) immediately jumps to the second 'i' (the eye jumps to the i... hahaha... yeah, it's past midnight and I'm exhausted). I guess that's just because your brain registers SUDDEN NEGATIVE SPACE since I'm pretty sure I got the spacing between the letters right... well anyway, it will do. Clearly, I'm only a perfectionist to the point of laziness!

In other news, I'm really looking forward to Design 3. We got to pick our studio topics this year, something I was really excited about! I got my first choice too- Dermott McMeel and George Dodd's paper on High Density Architecture, Acoustics, and expressions of Citizenry. I really enjoyed our first studio- we visited the Acoustics Centre and got to enter the Reverberation Chamber and the Anechoic Room! They were both incredible to experience, but especially the latter... it is -12 decibels inside, and at the time it was built, was the quietest room in the world. I found it slightly uncomfortable... when I first entered I felt pressure in my ears as if I were descending on a plane, and once the lights were switched off all I could feel was the pressure of my feet on the ground... since I had been left with only 3 senses. Such an amazing and interesting experience!

Advice for new first years

I've recently been in touch with a few new first years wanting to know about architecture, so I thought I'd create this post and update it whenever I think of something that last year me would have liked to know about architecture.

1) You will be totally confused when you first get into studio, but it will all come together in the end. Just keep working- ALWAYS PRODUCE. Even if you have no idea what you are doing or where you are headed with your design, just keep drawing, making models, whatever... in the end something will come of it.

2) 3 things that are pretty useful to have on you at all times are:
i) A craft knife: forgetting this when you go to studio is terrible, since you will be making models like all the time. It is also handy at home, and it makes you feel safer if you have it close to you when you're walking home from uni at 11pm through the dark streets of Auckland... haha...
ii) Plasters: these are necessary because of item number one, haha... no but seriously, I cut myself sooo many times this year. To be fair model making is definitely something I need to improve on, but the probabilities of you cutting yourself are fairly high and you don't want to be bleeding all over your work when you do.
iii) A sketch pad: you never know when inspiration will strike. Also, I find I like to draw when I explain things to people, so it's annoying when I don't have it.

3) Before buying textbooks, check the library. Our required textbook for ARCHTECH 106 last year was available as an ebook, which saved me cash (which I could then go spend at Gordon Harris, our continual money sucker, hahaha...). You may also be able to get textbooks cheaper elsewhere than UBS, so check online etc. 'Cause baby, you will need moolah.

4) It is never to early to start learning software. If you are a future first year and you are reading this check out my post about ArchiCAD here Starting ArchiCAD it provides you with links for getting a free licence and for training videos.

5) Speaking of software, you will be using A LOT of software, but learning Adobe Illustrator will be very useful since it is vector based (and therefore preferred) as well as Adobe InDesign since you will be printing many, many things and it is good for layout generally. If you can, take a look at Rhinoceros3D and Grasshopper all well, we use those too (you may already know things like Google SketchUp, but some of the tutors hate it... so be wary of using it, although I personally find it useful sometimes...)

The Psychology of Colours

I'm not really sure what label to put this under since I am currently on holiday and hence not in any particular class... well anyway, I just found this interesting:
http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/the-psychology-of-colors_504dc89d06de9.jpg
I've already learnt a bit about colour psychology, way back in primary school! I was picked to be part of a students that worked with an engineer each week to design a desk. (So you see I've been designing since I was a kid, definitely a passion!) It was really fun, although the class ended up just stopping for some reason (such a shame, we had all these epic field trips planned to factories and things... I guess the teachers thought it was too much for wee kiddies).