momen+s

Urban Planning Project :) Zoning and massing model for...

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:18:00 -0400

Urban Planning Project :)

Zoning and massing model for redevelopment in Providence.

Yay. And it’s beer Friday. Amazing week. :) [this tower.]

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:16:00 -0400

Yay. And it’s beer Friday. Amazing week. :)

[this tower.]

asjdfhljasdhfljkas :D :D :D :D :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:02:27 -0400

asjdfhljasdhfljkas

:D :D :D :D :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

amazing day.

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 23:33:26 -0400

amazing day.

hurrah! :)

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:08:04 -0400

hurrah! :)

Finished my first rendering in 3DMax :O :D Sadly I cannaeeee post a pitchurr yet. rawr. Also...

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 12:27:00 -0400

Finished my first rendering in 3DMax :O :D

Sadly I cannaeeee post a pitchurr yet. rawr.

Also today’s design exchange Thursday again! I love these meetings so much, it’s definitely the thing I look forward to most each week (not for the free booze… but because the presentations are all so incredibly amazing and inspiring :D)

06.10.12 // Le Maison de Macron. So many colors! :)

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 23:16:04 -0400

06.10.12 // Le Maison de Macron. So many colors! :)

06.09.12 - 2 // I think the Highline is one of the most amazing...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 23:01:00 -0400

06.09.12 - 2 // I think the Highline is one of the most amazing places in Manhattan. Because it’s far from the Times Square/Fifth Ave area, it’s thankfully not very touristy, but definitely a hidden gem. It’s essentially a “floating” park/walkway stretching from 12th street all the way to 30th street in the Meatpacking district, converted from an old elevated railroad track. Beautiful greenery is kept nice and groom on both sides of the walkway and every hundred meters or so there’s a larger patch of clean-cut grass perfect for picnic-ing or laying out or just people watching. With the recent completion of the Highline, New York is planning to rebuild the entire area around it, replacing the old, exhausted buildings with soaring modern residential towers ($$$). At the present, you can see very clearly where the new architecture has replaced the old - the juxtaposition is amazingly striking.

06.09.12 - 1 // Walked all around the city today, from the Flat...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:57:00 -0400

06.09.12 - 1 // Walked all around the city today, from the Flat Iron district to Chelsea & the Pier! New York culture is so rich. My feet hurt… but all around successful adventurous day :D

hello! have you read about arcology? also paolo soleri and his arcosanti? I think you'd like it. it's an progressive environmentalist's dream. (•‿•)

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 09:37:59 -0400

no I haven’t, but the concept of the arcosanti is really cool! (perhaps a little extreme) Definitely going on my list of places to visit :D

06.08.12 - 2 // Bloop. I miss him.

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 12:46:08 -0400

06.08.12 - 2 // Bloop. I miss him.

06.08.12 - 1 // It’s finally above 70 degrees outside! :)...

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 12:44:00 -0400

06.08.12 - 1 // It’s finally above 70 degrees outside! :) And it’s the weekend!

06.07.12 // Some notes from the design exchange this afternoon....

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 01:28:00 -0400

06.07.12 // Some notes from the design exchange this afternoon. Anthony and Francis presented this amazing new corporate building being proposed in Malaysia, intended to be an “iconic urban structure”… and I think it certainly is! The generation of the design is from a single vertical cylindrical shape that is expanded at the top and then scrunched to form a blossoming flower shape. The design principle behind it is that real estate as elevation increases also increases, so by expanding the top, you increase more office space which will generate more revenue. The flower shape is not only aesthetically interesting, but also increases the perimeter by 30%, which maximizes the number of corner offices! The building is also going to have a museum on the (I think) 40th-41st floors, and the top 22 floors have a hollow center (you can kinda see it in my sketch in the second picture) and the entire space will be a hibiscus garden! If you have an interior office space, you can look out your window and see greenery as well. The additional flare on top of the building serves as a funnel atrium for collecting rain water for the interior garden.

The building is aiming for LEED Platinum, and there are so many cool sustainability features to it. The structure is also surprisingly simple given how complicated it actually looks; the exterior is made of triangles that are all planar, which is much cheaper and easier to make, plus it adds a cool effect when sun shines on it at certain angles. The entire thing is projected to pay for itself in 5.5 years! So amazing…

No official renderings are released… but you can kinda get a glimpse from my sketches :D

I’m such a dumbass. All this time I’ve been at MIT,...

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:18:00 -0400

I’m such a dumbass. All this time I’ve been at MIT, I’ve had so many opportunities to learn about energy efficiency and sustainability… it’s such a popular topic at school and so many people around me are really into it, but I’ve never bothered to give it much thought. Honestly, I don’t even recycle (or print front/back if its not by default.)

Today’s Lunch + Learn completely altered my mindset. Yes, I am currently at work, and no, I’m not supposed to be on tumblr, but I’m feeling especially inspired/mindbown, so I’ll make this brief.

L+L’s are weekly lunch presentations given for the interns led by rotating leaders in each division at PW. Today was the first one of the summer: Sustainability. Perhaps it was the charisma of the presenters that made want to do energy research at the end of the hour… but the topic of energy in building design is just so cool. Solar panels… wind turbines… thermal storage walls… its amazing.

The first picture up there is the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, to be built on Stanford’s campus starting next year. Hospitals are conventionally one of the largest energy consuming buildings, but this one is projected to increase energy savings by seventy percent. There’s on-site rain water harvesting, a wind turbine, terraces, and each patient has a garden outside his/her room maintained by a clean water filtration system to each room. Also, its just a ridiculously sick (no pun intended) hospital design, asethetically.

The second picture is one of my favorite PW designs. It’s the Botanical Gardens Visitor Center in British Columbia, and it is a LEED Living Building structure. It actually goes beyond LEED platinum because it uses net zero energy consumption yearly. Buildings, though they are vital to society, are almost always harmful to the environment… but this one’s existance actually doesn’t harm the environment at all! Amongst other things, it uses a grid-tied energy system; it uses filtered rainwater for the building’s greywater requirements and treats 100% of blackwater in an on-site bioreactor. Also its a beauty.

The third one is really cool too! Its the DAR Headquarters in Egypt. The coolest feature about this one, in my opinion, is the exterior shielding. If you didn’t know otherwise, it looks like a cool parametric exterior design that makes a very geometric building look interesting, but the exterior is purposeful too. The design creates a natural shield to the intense sunlight that is prevalent in Egypt, allowing natural lighting to illuminate the room while keeping them from getting too warm. The shields also expand and contact in reaction to the intensity of the sun and the position. SO COOL, AMIRITE?

There were so many more amazing buildings that were presented today. It’s amazing how much I’m learning here. You could say that I’m probably getting a skewed view of the profession through these presentations; that when you’re actually working on the nitty gritty, it’s not so romantic as is presented in the end, but just the fact that everyone is so charismatic about their work is enough to make me start to fall in love with the field again. Architects don’t just draw pretty pictures; what we learn in studio is so different than the real world. Every day I come to work and I see problem-solvers. They take what is existing and and make it beautiful, clever, and useable.

Ok, I am done raving now.

Guh, I love this place.

06.06.12 // 15 hours today. I’m exhausted. But its a good...

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 23:59:00 -0400

06.06.12 // 15 hours today. I’m exhausted. But its a good exhausted.

Logged 35 hours as of today for this week =_=

06.05.12 // 12 hours at work today… exhausting, but...

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:20:00 -0400

06.05.12 // 12 hours at work today… exhausting, but addicting in a way. I’m working on a new project thats 2983729873 times more interesting than my usual tasks of drawing/dimensioning floor plans. Maybe I’ll write about it more when I’m less tiiiiiired.

Also, I found out today that design exchange meetings are a regular Thursday evening thing. Hurray for more beer at work!

06.04.12 - 2 // The building on the right is home for the next 3...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:28:00 -0400

06.04.12 - 2 // The building on the right is home for the next 3 months! Welcome to the flat iron district :)

06.04.12 - 1 // There’s a cute little (overpriced) art...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:55:00 -0400

06.04.12 - 1 // There’s a cute little (overpriced) art store right around the corner from where we live. I’ve stopped by everyday after work. Originally because I wanted to check to see if they restocked on blank watercolor postcards that I could draw on, but now I just go out of habit. I love the wall of oil paints… it reminds me of art class from…. gosh, seven years ago now?? Plus, they have an adorable little kitty there :3

06.03.12 // wall decor for our room :)

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:32:00 -0400

06.03.12 // wall decor for our room :)

06.02.12 - 2 // Wandering around the upper east side, we found...

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 18:49:00 -0400

06.02.12 - 2 // Wandering around the upper east side, we found Laduree, the adorably cute macaron shop! Overpriced? Yes… but still couldn’t resist purchasing a small box :)