Archinect - Sci-ARC, Making+Meaning (Brian Ha)

a little bit more...

2005-08-30T03:05:51-04:00

sorry i've been away for so long... needed some well earned R&R after the program finished up on friday.
so even though it's been done for over a week, M+M is still staying with me. i also have so much more to say...
so i know that 5 weeks is much too little time to pass any judgements, but i have to admit that after finishing M+M i don't know if i'm anymore closer to applying to sci-ARC. as i've said before the student life and the student community is amazing and to my very limited knowledge, completely unique to anything i've witnessed before. that's definitely a pro.
on the other hand, none of the faculty, whether it be instructors or presenters, really wowed me. sure there were some pretty interesting characters and great architects, but no one that really was awe-inspiring. the instructor i thought was best was also considered by most to be an arrogant jackass, which he was (yes i'm talking about our friendly neighborhood argentinian friend alexis). at first it's rath...

final reviews

2005-08-22T12:50:27-04:00

it's been 2 days since the program has been over... and i have no idea what to do with all this free time.
anyways, after sleeping for two days, i have finally managed to get back to the blog. our final reviews went quite well. i ended up not seeing much of the morning reviews b/c i had to print out some pictures for my presentation. the student printing center not being open as the sign on the door said it would be, i had to trek out to kinko's in downtown to get it done (remember i'm not from LA). anyways, people at kinko's are retarded. they honestly have no idea what they're doing. it took them 30 minutes+ to print out 6 images.
needless to say, i only got the chance to see the tailend of the morning reviews for my group (the 55 of us were divided into 4 groups) and the crits were definitely alot harsher than the afternoon crits. in some sense, it would have been nice to have the same critics throughout the day.
after the crits, we had our final ceremony and "awards", ...

the last day...

2005-08-18T21:47:09-04:00

so to stop with the review of the program and actually have a real blog, i just wanted to talk briefly about the last day (tomorrow). i just finished building my 3ft steel tower, and now can start getting ready for tomorrrow's final reviews. these should prove to be quite interesting since they cover everything we've done since the beginning.
i honestly can't believe that this program is already over, it's gone by so quickly. it sure has been a whirlwind of a ride...

i still can't quite wrap my head around the program and give any final thoughts, my mind is still too full of stuff to do, and utterly exhausted, i'm now a mental vegetable. hopefully in the next couple of days once i've rested, i'll be able to give some thoughts.

anyways, for anyone in LA who's thinking about doing M+M next summer, tomorrow is the day to come in (all day 10-4) and see what the program is all about. i think you'll be blown away by the work that we've put out over the past 5 weeks, especially c...

the projects...

2005-08-16T03:24:12-04:00

to answer the first comment, i only went to the ER once, there has been two other accidents as well. and for the other comment, i'll definitely try to be as honest as possible; i think that most everything i will say in this blog is more or less common knowledge so i don't that i'll be offending anyone.

so the projects. after a couple of brief drawing exercices, we recieved our first problem the second or third day. it was a drawing that consisted of several different marking systems and a cutout system. simple enough... but little did we know that it would be the basis for EVERY single project thereafter, which were:
3 paper cubes,
36 homasote cubes,
1 wooden folly/hut/teahouse (a meditative space),
1 landscape/site for previous hut,
1 plaster model of the previous site,
1 metal tower.
alot of people got pretty frustrated with the projects. the one common thing i've been hearing is that if people had known that the initial drawing was going to be the basis for everyth...

the very first...

2005-08-15T06:05:07-04:00

okay, so i guess it's a little late for a blog, since there's only a week left in the program, so i apologize for getting this started so late in the game. but let's think of this as a personal review of Sci-ARC's Making+Meaning program 2005.
brief overview of the program: 5 week intensive studio program; couple of morning "classes" and/or presentations; design studios for the rest of the afternoon/evening. there are 4 instructors who rotate through groups of students each week. there were a total of 59 people this summer, which is apparently the most ever. average age is probably around 25-27, which is higher than i expected. it's advertised as open to anyone, with or without arch background, but to tell you the truth, having some experience (even a tiny bit like me) is necessary b/c they move so frigging quickly through the projects. if you're starting from scratch, you're going to get lost pretty quickly and it's going to be pretty frustrating.
here are a few numbers:
17...