Cynical

I said, "Someday I'm going to make my way into the West. I'm going to go to America and ride the 'South 40' with my .45 on my hip and watch the sunset." . . . When I came here, I was so disappointed. [He laughs.] But I stayed.

- architect Charles Choi, 2004

This card and many others like it was part of an exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, which I saw during a 2007 visit with my brother Bill. I cleaned out my wallet the other day, finding it had faithfully stayed exactly where I put it four years prior. [Art-stuffing: it's a great way to fatten up your wallet on a budget.] The exhibit contained many small cards with various mood on the fronts and quotations on the backs. I couldn't resist this one for the quotation on the back and its architect author.

And while I don't think the sentiment on the back expresses cynicism as it claims, it's more about disappointed expectations and embitterment, tempered with eventual self-effacing humor. Which are probably much, much more valid emotions for architects, now more than ever.

PROCRASTINATION

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

This really sums it all up. The narration is marvelous, providing a very real qualification of the experience of procrastination. Johnny Kelly: you sir are brilliant (and apparently cured, having produced this.) More of Mr. Kelly's work can be found here.

Whether or not this is the necessary kick in the pants to get going already remains to be seen. The last exam (Structural Systems) has been put off for months and months. I'm getting married in the fall and there's planning involved with that, but it's not a productivity-hobbling time consumer. But it is a subtle professional motivator: I'd feel a whole lot better if my future wife was marrying an architect, instead of some jerk intern "yes, I get paid" architect, which in my experience, remains a title no one can understand without the obligatory and horrible explanation!

"Smellya Later, 2009"

[via someecards, of course.]

Happy New Year! I've got high hopes for 2010, and so should you. Hell, maybe I'll even blog a little bit. Now go celebrate!

-Mike

Draft Catalog #2: "Inman Square: A Visual Summary"

Originally drafted 12/21/2008:

[via catbirdseat.org]

When you play Hipster Bingo in my neighborhood, everybody wins.

Ted Kennedy

[at a 1978 Healthcare Policy Workshop, via boston.com]

I'm really going to miss Ted Kennedy. I miss him already. He was my senator for these first 27 years of my life. He was always there, and as I went from a kid watching him debate inferior Senate challengers in election years to a politically-conscious adult respecting and identifying with his dyed-in-the-wool proud liberal ideals, I developed a deep admiration for his commitment to public service and faith in the American experiment. I believe Massachussians like myself were truly spoiled by such effective representation.

As great an influence he wielded nationally, he certainly left his mark here in his home state. As he is laid to rest this weekend, his body returns to Boston, the political birthplace and cultural homeland., before being laid to rest beside his brothers at Arlington National Cemetery beside. Below is a map showing the path his procession took today through Government Center, Southie, and finally to the JFK Library in Dorchester, representing the indelible mark he left on Boston, Massachusetts, and the United States as a whole. Thank you Senator, and rest in peace.

Boston.com has a wealth of information about his life and death here, and a list of dignitaries attending his funeral Saturday.

Draft Catalog #1: Birds v. Buildings

[via treehugger.com]

Originally drafted 12/18/2008:
At Boston.com I there was an article by Bina Venkataraman about the effect of buildings [glassy sustainable skyscrapers, specifically] on birds, both migratory and otherwise. Lately it seems, however, that bird strikes involving aircraft, [see US Airways Flight 1549 back in January.] are much more in the public consciousness than bird strikes into buildings. When it comes to building strikes, the figures are staggering: over one billion birds are killed each year by accidentally flying into buildings, with migratory and often endangered bird species bearing a disproportionately high segment of the birds that fall victim to building strikes.

I could paraphrase the rest of the article, but it might make more sense to just rattle off some basics from the article about this "disagreement" between the avian population and modern architecture.

1. Annually, between 100 million (100,000,000) one billion birds (1,000,000,000) are killed by striking buildings. This figure is greater than the death toll from cats, cell phone towers and windmills combined.
   
2. The above figure represents approximately 5% of the total world bird population.
3. Bird strikes are the second leading cause of avian deaths -- the first is destruction of habitat.
   
4. When a bird strikes a building, there is a 10% survival rate. [I have to assume the survival rate for the building is nearly 100%.
5. Some species of migratory birds navigate by way of the stars: city lights can prove to disorient and cause bird strikes during their evening flight. Last year some buildings in Boston, including the John Hancock Tower (Boston's tallest skyscraper) joined a campaign to dim their evening lighting to reduce the negative effects. [Since Boston does not yet keep track of bird strike data as well as other cities such as Chicago and New York, it is unclear how effective these efforts have been.]
6. Green roofs, an effective and popular sustainable building element, are especially deleterious: they provide inviting habitats for birds that often collide into walls flying to or from them.
7. Cities such as Toronto and Chicago have adopted bird-friendly design strategies such as fritted glass, patterned glass or other visual barriers to prevent collisions.
8. The USGBC is being lobbied to include bird strike prevention methods to be incorporated into the LEED program.

It stands to reason that as we build more buildings, and more transparent buildings, that this problem will only worsen as time progresses. What we do from here is something of a mystery, but it should be obvious that however sustainable a building may be from an energy conservation standpoint, there is always room for improvement and further consideration of the greater ecosystem.


Two good articles on this topic are here:

"Fatal Reflections" by Bina Venkataraman for Boston.com
"Glass-walled buildings can mean death for birds, killing 1 to 5 percent of them a year." by Karen Knee for physorg.com

Draft Catalog

Though it seems a little foreign to me now, the platform this blog runs on, Blogger, offers a pretty easy system for bloggers to write and save quick drafts, either to later materialize into posts or to wither away in the queue. My case is very much the latter: since I hadn't posted anything since March, a lot of various things worth exploring and later writing about got posted to the draft bin. Maybe resurrecting or at least mentioning these posts will make the time elapsed between substantial posts a valuable tool of retrospective, rather than a complete waste of time. Here's a list, and hopefully I'll revisit some of them in greater depth.

Date ______Title
12/18/2008: Birds v. Buildings
12/21/2008: Inman Square: A Visual Summary
01/15/2009: The Tennessee Coal Ash Spill
01/21/2009: Solar Panels Over the Pike
01/27/2009: "It's Not All Bad, Except When It Is."
01/28/2009: Robert Campbell to Obama
02/25/2009: Peter Schubert: A Good Stimulus For Design
02/25/2009: Saving the Suburbs
02/25/2009: On the Upside, Now I Know What a Bangle-Butt Is.
03/06/2009: State Will Require Regulation of Insulation Contractors
03/06/2009: IOTA: Inland Office for Tomorrow's Architecture
03/10/2009: Studio Culture Wars
03/25/2009: Scott Van Voorhis: Really?
08/29/2009: Draft Catalog

Oh, Right!

[something excellent being assembled in May outside the GSD, now a mile from my home.]

It suddenly occured to me that I have [or, had?] a blog. Fear not, it has not disappeared completely, just gone way, way dormant. Banging out four more exams [only one test--Structural Systems--remains.] and having a pretty busy summer peppered with weddings, barbecues, and our two new kittens has rendered my free time/mental output almost nil, so consider this a placeholder for posts to come.

While many noteworthy things have gone on in the world of architecture since my last post in March, the only thing that comes to mind that I would have written about would be the ReBurbia competition held by Dwell and Inhabitat, which sought entries for revisioning the suburbs and their many non-sustainable qualities. The top entries selected by the jury were not my favorites, but all the entries in the Top 20 finalists were pretty great, and are definitely worth a look.

So here's to a more productive fall, and if anyone still reads this bad boy, I hope you all had a great summer.

You Know It's Bad When AR Becomes a Pamphlet

Yeah, so I've been busy with my face jammed into my study material lately, [as my friends and family would surely attest, I've had absolutely nothing else to say for myself for the past 9 months or so.] but I guess I needed to post something up here. Thankfully, the new issue of Architectural Record, entitled "Surviving The Recession: The Strategy Issue" arrived in the mail today. The name explains it all, and while I'm dedicated to not reading anything not ARE-related, I had an observation that didn't require reading any of the articles or features.

This month's edition of AR is damn near two-dimensional. It's only 148 pages. If I had to guess, I would say the average issue is pushing 300 pages. Mostly ads of course, [and to be fair, most industry periodicals are] but it's an especially heavy, bloated piece of print. So the dearth of advertising dollars coming in would disproportionately affect the girth of the mag. So maybe it's perfectly expected that the issue detailing the sorry state of things is physically reflected in the printed object -- It would stand to reason that the magazine is suffering as much as the industry it covers.

That's all I've got so far. But if you see a copy of Architectural Record, make sure to pick it up, feel the heft that's conspicuously absent. And enjoy. As it was well-put over at a great blog, "Why Architects Drink", it's not exactly a timely collection of advice.

Let's Build a Barn

Found an interesting passage in the Boston Society of Architects' 2008 'Homeowners Project Handbook' concerning the rights of Intern Architects, small structures...and barns.

"In Massachusetts (as in most states), these architecture-school graduates who are not yet licensed and architects from other nations not yet licensed in Massachusetts are permitted by law to design structures that are not larger than 35,000 cubic feet—and that includes almost all single-family and two-family residences as well as farm structures not designed for human habitation (barns, silos, etc.)." [page 7]

And here I was thinking that I couldn't design so much as a doghouse without a stamp...