Media, Social.

The other day, a group of architecture students were talking in the studio. As per usual, they're talking about architecture. They are sitting around a studio desk, when one student firmly believes that, "..in order to advance our technology and be able to look further into the future, we will have to sacrifice our personal interactions." The other students think about it for a minute and quickly gang up to disagree with the student, who replied by instantly shoving his opinions and futuristic predictions down the naysayer's throats. One student on the other hand, stood up and said,
     "Well, what about Tinder then?"
For those of you who don't know, Tinder is most often used as a dating (but mostly hookup) app. In the app, you either swipe right to say, "Yes, I think this person is physically attractive," or left for, "um.. she/he's not really what I'm looking for." If yall were to both swipe right, then there would be a "match," and you're suddenly asked if you would like to chat with that person through the app. Usually what follows is some talking and then plans to meet in person.
     However shallow this app may be, it instantly grew in popularity since the thought being able to meet and experience something in real life, not solely virtual and over the internet, was innately intriguing to the curious little cat inside every human. Right around the time that Tinder gained it's so-well-known-that-it-has-its-own-abbreviations level of popularity, apps started attempting to base their ideas off of Tinder's main idea. Tinder's main idea was not to create an app strictly for use on your phone; their idea was to transform the phone into a simple channel through which people could meet and connect in real life.
     People have started getting all worked up about how technology is "destroying our children's lives" and "the reason why people have dreadful social skills nowadays." It's true, more or less. In today's time, we hardly even know our next door neighbors anymore. And if you live in an house, there's probably an even greater chance that you have probably never even met a few of your neighbors. As for those of you, this is what a neighbor is by definition: "Neighbor: A person living next door or around the same vicinity as you." (And I'm not just talking about being friends with your next door neighbors solely out of convenience of keeping a spare key over there.)
     But people have slowly started to realize that the "at-home" luxury is sometimes not all it's cracked up to be. People crave external attention. This is why the word "lonely" has such a depressing connotation attached to it. We LOVE going out to dinner (despite our wallet's wails) and sitting among other people living their daily lives. We are interested in other people. Can you believe we PAY hard-earned cash to go to giant rooms where they project giant people up on a ratty fabric that's been there since the place was built, and for roughly two measly hours, we got to PAY to see into the lives (fictional or not) of others through their or someone else's eyes. (Also lookup: "movie") This phenom isn't anything new or hipster either. We've been entertaining ourselves with other people and their imaginitive stories of other people since the beginning of time. Think cavedrawings, plays, amphitheatres, movies, etc! Wherever you are, we are here to create our own interactions.


     So... when the student thought that advancing technology would mean less personal interactions, I told him he was wrong.


     YES, with Facebook you can now have "virtual real friends," but what made that so fabulous in the first place was the fact that there was an actual human being behind that friend request, wanting to "be your friend" for unknown reasons. YOUR friend. They chose you. Yeah I'll admit it; it makes everyone feel a little special inside. YES, we have resorted to eating dinner in front of the television. That only shows our want to see into other's lives even more since you are only watching strings of events of people show after show. (The problem is, you possibly need to be more interested in you own family's life then.) YES, technology has recently had a recurring trend of being put in the place of communicating face-to-face with friends and family.
     BUT. The trend is changing. Now is the time for inventions to create real-life interactions instead of replacing them. Technology is now used to grease interface with other humans like yourself. This is the trend that I see happening in the future. We already know that "two heads are better than one," and we need to fully embrace that and utilize that to its full potential.
    We already work mostly in groups in the "architectural world" anyway. Most architectural firms have open environments that bring people together and spur on creativity. We're a building/floor/office full of dreamers and imagineers. What would you expect?
     The challenge here is bringing that sense of community (such as working at the same company) into people's social lives, to make them feel like theyr'e a part of something (much like a city, as one company already birthed that app idea) Hopefully then, they are able to take that small step for a man, but one giant leap for mankind (to create that technology) outside of their comfort zones and meet their neighbors.


So. What side are you on?

Boho.

I was surfing the web recently for interior design/architecture/decorative things for my room, as any almost-ordinary, college-age girl would do at this hour (it's called Pinterest), and happened upon one quote that I thought defined my "style" well and even myself as a whole (with slight tweaking). So, bam. Here it is.

"Defining 'bohemian' (boho)

as an interior style is really attempting to label something that can’t be labeled, so dependent is it on the individual. It has elements of Shabby Chic and eclecticism, mixed with an artistic and theatrical flamboyance that has nothing to do with trends. Boho is witty, whimsical and highly reflective of the mind and lifestyle of the person who embraces it. In its way it is an antistyle, but at its heart is a love of art, color, contrasts, creativity, travel, adventure, the past and, above all,
freedom from convention."

Also today, the Italy (YAY!) students had a chance to ask the previous study abroad students about their trips and tips for us at the student panel meeting today. It was great to talk to them about some extra things we had yet to think about until today. You could see their eyes light up whenever someone wanted to talk about their trip, and could tell they were always thinking about their previous awesome/hilarious/memorable adventures through the main cities and hill countries of Italy.

Obviously I had to start reading the Italy book my aunt gave me directly after. Now, I'm learning Italian and Italian history. I may or may not be using this as a study-break (aka: procrastinating tool), but at least it's a highly educational study break. ;)

Some quote

I was talking to a friend of mine today, and (whether these are his words or not) I wanted to save it:

          "I hardly see bad architecture.

          All I see is misplaced elements

          of a design that did not come

          together as I personally would

          have preferred them to."

For Future Reference

Here's a little article on Rem Koolhaas, one of the more interesting architects I've studied, by Smithsonian.com.

Interesting Article on Remmy.

Everybody's a Critic

A studio-rendition of a poem by a popular modern-day poet:

Our palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy

There's sweat stains on shirts already, we're not ready

She's nervous but on the surface she looks calm and ready to drop bombs

But she keeps on forgetting what she wrote down

The whole studio goes so loud

She opens her mouth but the words won't come out

She's choking now, everybody's joking now

Keep trying to put words together but I'm stumbling, wow

The clock's run out, times up, over, BOW!

AKA: It's review day.

However, despite the fact that majority of architecture college students hate reviews, I tend to like them. I don't like the actual presentation of course (who actually likes those?!) since I tend to forget the art of English-ing, but I rather enjoy the critiques and conversations about my/our design afterward. After you've worked on something for so long, hour after hour (most likely in the wee hours of the morning), it's advantageous for a group to get a fresh pair of eyes to review the project at hand. 

In spite of the fact that both my partner and I were running on roughly 2 hours of sleep each, I think that our presentation went well today. The reviewers were very helpful with their comments after our presentation. They talked mostly about how, at least in the beginning, liked our parti (even though it was most definitely not in chronological order.. which is surprisingly hard to realize at 3 am..). Later though, they said the form was lost in the process, specifically when we split the one "noodle" form into two different pieces. 

Now, I think we will be able to move in a direction that can fix the children's noise issue, that they also touched on, and still be able to stick with our original "inspiration" and/or parti.

Hopefully we will be able to design a great form and fix our currently non-functional areas. Will get to work before the weekend however. :)

                                            ^

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!    (^ .> ^)

Transportation and Technology Are Not My Friends

Once again my luck almost got the best of me today.
     On the way to class today, the bolt that holds the front tire of my bike to the frame decided to just FLY OFF while I was speeding down a hill. Luckily for me the front tire "forks" onto the frame and the wheel only wiggled from side to side wildly as I came safely to a halt (with my back break because the front doesn't work). I sprinted to grab the bolt and proceeded to fix the bike at one of the handy bike-fix stations around campus. (I also saw a man on the ground under the bridge receiving medical attention from 4 or 5 medics and a cop. No clue what happened. Exciting day I suppose.)

     On the bright side, our project is going well. We've decided to give up on my computer and utilize the lab directly next to the studio. (Why we didn't do this before we'll never know. -_- ) What I've learned from this project so far is:

CURVES SUCK.

     But besides the fact that it is hella hard to make roofs for our building in Revit, we're pretty excited about the form coming together and taking it's final shape, and therefore aiding with the program of the library. And now, it's about time to go start on Systems and Structures homework.

Tata for now. 

Uh.. Friday?

10-10-14

Technology hates me.
It just does.
I've seem to had a run of bad luck recently, and after someone stole something from me and my phone rained on, my computer now seems to hate the program Revit. After attempting to diagnose the problem, I think it may be time 1) to install a newer version of Windows or 2) get a new computer altogether. (Unfortunately that won't happen with my financial situation as of now.) So hopefully we can get all these problems banged out by Monday and have a clean model, sections, and a good floorplan to show for all the work that we (actually have) put into this project so far. 
But right now computers still hate me, and in return, I hate them. It's a lovely hate-hate relationship as of ten minutes ago when my Windows partition decided to shut down completely in the middle of attempting to save our model. (-_-)

Besides that, I can't wait for this weekend! I have friends coming in to stay with me for the game from both Lubbock and Waco, and will get to see even more old friends at a once-a-year tailgate. Sadly I'll have to finish the weekend off with painting signs for one of the chair positions I hold, but it'll be fine since my friends will be simultaneously suffering from cutting out the spray paint stencils. :) Muahaha.