building beyond

Transforming a life with garbage

2012-01-31T14:15:00.000-05:00

Screening @ MIT on Monday 2/6, 6:30-8:30 (32-123)

(right before the UCO Reg Day service at 7:30pm, MIT Chapel)

[yele] Emergence of e-Luma

2012-01-19T06:19:00.000-05:00

When we arrived, the site for the development center was just a dirt field, used by the community for occasional football (here, = soccer) matches. It is located not far from the main intersection of Yele - the Junction - and is sandwiched between the primary and secondary schools. The construction was delayed because the village decided to hold a festival here, but once we arrived the local contractor was already there to mark out the site boundaries for the first part of the project.

In the time since the first photo, the concrete foundation and slab were laid and poured with the help of 73 men from the local area. It was quite the sight! Although I myself am not doing much of the physical work this time around (sort of a strange feeling), I'm glad to know that we're at least providing jobs for people who need them.

The shipping containers were supposed to be moved on site last Saturday, but this was delayed because the equipment to do it and the medical supplies it was supposed to deliver was stuck in customs. Finally, though, we have 2 containers on site! Community members have been coming by to see what has been going on, and we're getting more questions about e-Luma and the opportunities it will bring.

Yesterday Anna and I spent 3 hours in the Junction, talking with local shop owners about e-Luma and handing out application forms. Despite our lacking Temne skills, we managed to get our point across with pictures and images (thanks to technology like Photoshop and Illustrator to make brochures and renderings). I'll upload some drawings of the design in the next post.

As an update on the team, Paul and Anna got engaged last Friday on Monkey Island, Paul and Greta (volunteer nurse from the Philippines) left on Sunday, and now three more people with the Foundation - Donald, Stephen, and Maria - will join us on Friday. The house will be full again in our last week in Yele, and a lot will be happening!

[yele] Getting old in Yele

2012-01-16T06:07:00.000-05:00

Turning 28 makes me feel old, but at least celebrating this milestone in Yele made me feel at home. Maria made me a cake and set out some balloons for another delicious meal in the village.

[yele] Project overview and more

2012-01-12T07:28:00.000-05:00

We are in Yele! To keep updated, check out my blog on the Public Service Center's website or the e-Luma blog. Here we have internet about twice a week, since our connection is dependent on the operation of the palm oil mill.

[yele] En route to Africa's 'diamond in the rough'

2012-01-06T09:29:00.000-05:00

"What, you're going to Sierra Leone?"
"What is Sierra Leone?"
"Isn't that in South America? Wait, it isn't ... above Brazil or something?"
"Thank you for the information, miss, but what country is Sierra Leone in? I will need the country name, not the city."

Above are some of the sample questions and reactions I've received recently. For starters, Sierra Leone is a small country in West Africa:

(not the best map, but something)

Most people know only of its diamonds (where the term "blood diamond" comes from), but there's more to it than that. I'm traveling there for 3 weeks with the e-Luma team - or some of these people:

to build a community development center bringing together merchants in a new marketplace, but also to distribute electricity and provide entrepreneurship training. We're starting the first phase of the project, or the "proof of concept" to house 8-10 merchants in recycled shipping containers.

Gotta go catch my flight, but more soon!

Sugar plums dancing in our heads

2011-12-31T14:11:00.000-05:00

I've sadly missed it for this season, but the Nutcracker (particularly the Balanchine version - sorry Boston ...) has always been a personal favorite. When I think about Christmas, coming close after Jesus in the manger are images of party scenes, battles between mice and toy soldiers, and the Sugar Plum Fairy.

When my brother and I were young, the Nutcracker made my family crazy. For 4-5 years, we were both in the Nutcracker at the same time and running around to various rehearsals and performances, I as a child dancer and he as a vocalist. His boys choir would sing the signature "ahh's" during the Snow scene before the end of the first act, and my ballet school trained the children who performed with the Pennsylvania Ballet.

Young kids didn't have a particularly difficult part to play - unless you were Marie, Fritz, or the Nutcracker/Prince - although I loved being on the same stage as some of our ballet heroes, the principals (and now artistic staff) of the company.

There was a distinct hierarchy to the roles one could play, though. The youngest and smallest were always angels, who came out at the beginning of Act II as a prelude to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. The party girls (of the house scenes*) and polichinelles (emerging from the impossibly immense skirt of Mother Ginger) were the most coveted roles. The rest of us would become toy soldiers and even mice for the battle scene.

At the time I never understood why certain girls - the same girls - always got what seemed to be the "best parts." Was it their skill level? Or maybe their body build (preference given to the not-too-tall and slender)? Or did they have the most connections? It wasn't clear to a small Chinese girl with what she thought was a too-round face and a too-curved body. These questions about body image bothered me as a child, but I later came to terms with the fact that I didn't have the build nor the desire to become a ballerina - and so laid aside the discipline of dance for the disciplines of design and music.

But I still had the fun opportunities to perform as an angel, the soldier trumpeter, and then as a soldier wielding a saber. As an angel, we paid a small price for looking cute. We wore heavy gold crowns that stayed on only with the help of bobby pins and hoop skirts that restricted our foot movement to small shuffles. If you took one real step, there was the danger of stepping on your skirt and then falling flat on your face (whoops) - something that did happen many times in the rehearsal studio but fortunately few times actually on stage.

Being a soldier was probably one of the most fun roles. We got to throw foam cheese blocks at the storming troops of mice, slash fake plastic swords at fat mouse costumes, and eventually be carried off kicking by the mice when the toy soldiers lost the battle. Our cheeks were emblazoned by bright red circle stickers that sometimes came off in the heat of the tussle.

And although I've moved on from that part of my childhood, I still can't help but play Tchaikovsky's score over and over again for the entire month of December (or longer). The choreography has faded in my memory - and I've become a bit long-winded in my reminiscence - but the Nutcracker itself never will stop being part of my Christmas.

Be still

2011-12-30T21:52:00.000-05:00

I came across this recent NYTimes Opinion piece and found it quite insightful, especially during the Christmas holiday time leading up to New Year's Day when we are split between the frenzy of gifts and company and the reflection of resolutions and years-in-review. This quote struck me in particular:

"When telegraphs and trains brought in the idea that convenience was more important than content — and speedier means could make up for unimproved ends — Henry David Thoreau reminded us that “the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.” Even half a century ago, Marshall McLuhan, who came closer than most to seeing what was coming, warned, “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.” Thomas Merton struck a chord with millions, by not just noting that “Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest,” but by also acting on it, and stepping out of the rat race and into a Cistercian cloister."

// Pico Iyer, "The Joy of Quiet," 29 Dec 2011

Perhaps this is a secular call to a Sabbath?

Being in graduate school in architecture has made the idea and practice of rest both one of my greatest longings as well as the greatest challenges to achieve when surrounded by pressures to be productive - every moment of every day. Simply taking time out of the day to pray, to read a leisure book, to take a quick walk outside, to eat a full meal at the table with no distractions or multitasking - are challenges to the idea of "pressing on," but I've realized are disciplines that can make me more productive and less strained, if I choose to do them.

I still need to reflect on this past year and this past semester in particular, but one thing I know is that I don't want to repeat the anxious frenzy that characterized my fall, but remember the "joy of quiet" even in the midst of work and busyness for the spring.

Inventional season-ing

2011-12-20T17:21:00.002-05:00

MIT Tech TV

MIT's official holiday greeting - featuring one of my professors (Walter Hood, visiting from Berkeley last semester) and some of my residents (in Ohms)!

Season of preparation

2011-12-18T17:31:00.000-05:00

Season of anticipation.

///
via Thomas

Faux pas in another language

2011-12-01T22:26:00.001-05:00

This video reminded me of my summer days in Beijing all those 5+ years ago. Perhaps you, too, can relate to the anguish of erred tones and "dui bu qi ..." - or, on a more universal level, just trying to learn another language and have a native speaker give you a quizzical look (or worse, one of utter horror) when you try to say the simplest of sentences.

The tune sounds just like a Chinese pop song, too. Good job, guys!

And for another rendition of struggling "wai guo ren" attempting to master Chinese (because ... I guess I am in that category despite my deceptively Asian looks) :

///
First video courtesy of Stephanie, second courtesy of Diana - all of us ABC's (American Born Chinese).

Tools in everyone's hands

2011-11-11T00:41:00.001-05:00

I especially like the compressed earth block machine. Pretty amazing (and faster than a concrete block maker, too)! See the ArchDaily post for more information and an informational TED talk video of the founder and his vision.

///
thanks to Ann for the reference

[ayiti] Simple rubble math

2011-11-09T01:56:00.002-05:00

Let's do some simple math related to rubble and (wo)man power.

The question is, how long would it take to process all the rubble necessary to build a single family home?

This wasn't the question I set out to answer today. Instead, I just need to crush up some concrete debris some new friends of ours of Maple Hurst Builders gave me as part of thesis research. The equation was actually

me + sledgehammer + large rubble + a good pair of safety glasses = crushed rubble

And certainly, the assumptions in this equation to answer the above question are that:

This is done by purely human power, not mechanical means (potentially applicable to areas where machinery can't be reached)
You have a woman doing the work (and a small one at that, given my own size)
The measurement is for a rubble gabion house because this building method requires hand-sized pieces. (A rubble crusher would be necessary to make the debris size any smaller.)

Anyways, when picking up the concrete debris with my trusted strongarm Marcus, we estimated that we hauled back about half a ton of rubble. (As in, he carried most of it. Thanks :) ) I broke almost all of it into hand-sized pieces or smaller in about 1.25 hours.

If concrete weighs, on average, 150 pounds per cubic foot, then I crushed about 6 cubic feet, or 0.17 cubic meters (because we like meters in Haiti - and in all other parts of the world except for the US). A rubble gabion house contains 46.3 cubic meters of rubble (calculations based on the Haven/Oxfam gabion pilot house in Clercine).

Therefore, it would take 341 hours or 6 weeks working 9 to 5 to crush enough rubble to make the house, let alone actually build it.

This number isn't particularly significant except to say that although I'm glad I can do this work, that is a LONG time. At least I am not making a whole house for my thesis, nor am I doing this work alone because there are such people as men and more women, and such things as machines that can help get stuff done faster. Oh, progress.

But indeed, women aren't afraid to sweat!

On another front, my mini material tests worked and didn't fall apart! A preview for now:

[Note: no, the one on the right is NOT a big gray cake ... although it does look like frosting. It's hiding a secret instead!]

2011-11-03T21:41:00.000-04:00

It is only by God's grace that I can have a thesis!

This encapsulates how I feel right now. After shouldering my way through worry and fear, I can finally feel some joy again - and not feel like I'm just wading through mud. Hallelujah!

Currently: finalizing an experimental design and procuring rubble from all over Boston, with the help of the Tall Man and a myriad of other people I have pestered into giving me some.

[events] Wasteland's Lucy Walker @ MIT

2011-10-29T22:26:00.000-04:00

via Fell Witness

Upcoming ACT event with filmmaker Lucy Walker, who directed the documentary Wasteland. This documentary has been on my "to watch" list since even before its Oscar nomination. Hooray for trash people getting press!

///

Monday, October 31 at 7:00 PM
Filmmaker Lucy Walker
99 Is Not 100 – Documenting the Transformative Power of Art, or the Art of Transformative Documentary
······························

····························································
Keynote: Lucy Walker, Filmmaker (UK)
Respondent: Claude Grunitzky, Chairman, True; Sloan Fellow, MIT (USA)

How do we observe or quantify the impact of an artistic intervention or the impact of a documentary film? Lucy Walker will be reflecting on the experience of making and showing the film Waste Land, a documentary about artist Vik Muniz’s collaboration with the self-designated recyclables materials pickers of Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill in the world. The film has won over thirty international awards and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Lucy Walker has directed four award-winning feature documentaries: Devil’s Playground, Blindsight, Waste Land and Countdown To Zero.

Lucy Walker’s latest film, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, is among the eight shortlisted contenders for the 84th Academy Awards’ best Documentary Short Subject category, of which three to five films will earn Oscar nominations.

Location:
MIT Bartos Theater, Wiesner Building (E15)
20 Ames Street, Cambridge
(See directions below.) Free and open to the public.

Studio sunrise

2011-10-29T21:51:00.002-04:00

Yuliya and I were privileged to witness a most amazing sunrise the morning of our thesis midreview. And although the review itself ended up not going so great, I'm still glad I saw this as a reminder that there is beauty in the beginning of a new day.

///
photo courtesy of Yuliya's phone

[ayiti] The smallest construction site

2011-10-21T15:28:00.002-04:00

Last night, the smallest construction site was in operation from 11:15-11:35pm. Some of my thesis studiomates had a good laugh at this process. It just seemed so ... real yet fake. I was working with "real" materials, yet in such miniscule quantities that it was more akin to doling out medication doses than cubic meters of construction matter.

Welcome to my studio-turn-production center. Maybe it seems silly, but I wanted to do a (literally) little test of a recycled concrete mix design, what material is best used for formwork, and what release agent is ideal for the process. Scaling a building panel down to 1/10th its size meant that each piece was roughly the size of a credit card. How much will I learn from it? Well, it's something. The concrete is still curing. In the meantime, I made this stilted animation courtesy of Phil's smart phone and a little bit of Photoshop* :

* while I figure out how to upload animated GIF files to this blog -

a subject that many a blogger has struggled over but have not come up with a simple solution -

click on the photo for now to see the animation.

It involved mixing concrete using the following essential ingredients:

cement = Quikrete (because I don't have time for the real 7 day cure)
large aggregate = gravel from Killian Court as "scaled rubble"
fine aggregate = playground sand
water = taken from the women's bathroom
work area tarp = trash bag
work gloves = latex-free gloves from the fab lab
release agent = WD-40 (a real release agent, but perhaps too powerful for corrugated cardboard)

My mix design was essentially 1 part cement, 4-parts gravel (inaccurate due to using plastic cups for measurement), 6 parts sand. I might need to use more sand and less gravel next time, or let these things cure longer since the first one broke after I separated it from the bottom formwork to reveal a mini piece of concrete reminiscent of a gray Blondie with chocolate chips.

In any rate, more experimentation to come as our thesis midreview looms!

Who builds the house?

2011-10-18T14:15:00.000-04:00

¹Unless the LORD builds the house,
   those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
   the watchman stays awake in vain.
²It is in vain that you rise up early
   and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
   for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Psalm 127:1-2

A good reminder of the right perspective on control and the right attitude based on trust, especially in the midst of thesis and other work that threaten to overwhelm me. Pressing on!

I also realized that I haven't been very good about posting updates directly about my thesis research ... or really, anything else that I've been working on recently. Hopefully I'll find some moments to put a few things up and reflect - or just pretty pictures as they come.

1 litre, lanterns of light

2011-10-09T14:17:00.002-04:00

In any conversation about working in developing countries, the term "capacity building" comes up time and time again - but what does it really mean, or begin to even look like? And what is the role of our education at MIT in relation to locally-grown knowledge?

In our eLuma project meetings, there has recently been quite a bit of discussion about training and knowledge transfer. As a possible exercise or real life example of 'capacity building,' one of our teammates brought up the example of the "bleach and water light bulb" - which I didn't quite understand until watching this video:

For more information about the MIT-seeded, community-grown initiative, check out the organization, called Isang Litrong Liwanag.

[ayiti] La creativite naturele

2011-10-01T15:55:00.002-04:00

NATURALLY HAITI from David Belle on Vimeo.

Another take on life in Haiti, through the eyes of local artisans. I had previously heard about the art of converting old oil drums into steelwork, but seeing the process, people, and other examples of craft was a refreshing inside look.

///

via Architechnophilia
Thanks to Juliet for the link!

[ayiti] La Difference on camera

2011-09-23T20:43:00.002-04:00

Watching this video almost made me cry - more out of delight than anything else. This was our 'last stop' before flying out of Port-au-Prince last month, but it is also my strongest memory of Haiti. (Ok, I guess the hysterical moths that came out to mate during the rainstorm at GRU is also a pretty vivid memory. Or any conversation with Harvey.)

La Difference also inspired me to consider how something as simple as paving can figuratively 'pave' the way for further clean up and community development. Is there a way to go back? J'espere que oui. (And hopefully I'll sometime be able to translate that into Creole.)

- - -
video via Citizen Haiti and The Haiti Independent

Be serious or paranoid?

2011-09-21T20:58:00.000-04:00

from Times Online aerial photos

As we in Boston saw with Hurricane Irene, sometimes official predictions of natural hazards and preparations outweigh what actually ends up happening. Girls in my dorm were decidedly underwhelmed by the winds and rain, leading to a general skepticism about "the boy who cried wolf."

But in other cases such as the L'Aquila earthquake in 2009, seismologists are being charged with manslaughter for NOT being serious enough about the data received before the quake. An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education describes the start of the trial, leading to questions about the exactness of predictions and human attitudes towards hazards.

Is it paranoia or preparedness?

This semester I am taking a course with Prof. Jim Wescoat, Disaster Resilient Design, which lays out a theoretical and practical framework for thinking about and applying these issues.

The topic also fits in with my thesis and makes me consider the role and responsibility of professionals and academics is within the field, as well as what it really means to "build back better." This last phrase is thrown around so much by NGOs, the government, and whoever else is involved in Haiti or elsewhere. Is "better" an objective or subjective term? If it's the latter, who determines it? How can we know if one strategy is successful without 'testing' it in the next big quake/fire/hurricane/famine, etc.?

Although I can't address all (or even some) of these questions within the scope of a one-semester MArch thesis, it's worth mulling over in the back of my brain.

GQ's delayed summer issue

2011-09-12T11:51:00.001-04:00

Two of GQ's newest models pose for the 'Waiting for the Wedding reception to start' featurette in its delayed summer issue.

Behind the scenes, chatting with two of the high heel models before the next shoot.

- - -
GQ Summer 2011 issue v.2.0
Event: Gerhard and Megan's summer wedding of architects
Location: Watertown, MA
Featuring: Marcus, Kunle (male models); Gao Yu and Runo (female models), and a spread of cheese (not pictured)
Clothing: Versace, Calvin Klein, Clark Kent, and other fastidious European labels
Photographer: author of this blog

[ayiti] Someone to watch over me

2011-09-03T15:20:00.001-04:00

I've been going through my photos and picking out ones I want to print for thesis. I was about to pass this one up before I stopped and took a closer look.

You first notice the woman carrying the basket of fruit on top of her head. Everywhere you see extraordinary women (and sometimes boys) like that, who can confidently and deftly saunter down the street without so much of a teeter. Most of the time, these are the 'traveling salespeople,' walking around with their wares and advertising them to passersby. Marcus and I learned to pick up the sound of "sashay dlo," which means "bags of water" for the thirsty. These are the most common and convenient ways to get clean water, although you still find water bottles all over the place - mostly tossed into road-side canals.

Then you have the man watching up in the corner. This is a common sight, particularly along Boulevard Toussaint L'Ouverture - one of the major thoroughfares that runs by the airport, UN Logbase, and other MINUSTAH compounds. Someone is constantly watching. What I found funniest, though, was that Haitian merchants and artisans have been able to profit from this constant official presence. Because most all of the peace keeping soldiers and other relief workers are foreign, they make for a bizarre class of tourist. Want a souvenir to show family and friends that you went to Haiti and back? Artisans have shrewdly set up their wares right outside compound walls for easy browsing.

It's nice to come home

2011-09-02T22:49:00.000-04:00

What a great message. <3 residents !

I feel old

2011-08-23T18:24:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we had training for graduate resident tutors, in which we learned all about the nuances of what incoming freshmen will go through as they navigate their first year of MIT. I already met one of my fresh(wo)men, and the other will be moving in this coming weekend. To get into their psyche, one of the administrators in charge of the 'First Year Experience' sent us "The Mindset List" for the class of 2015 ... which instantly made me feel old. Some items aren't very significant to me, but the ones of note include:

Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents.
Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
Life has always been like a box of chocolates.
They’ve often broken up with their significant others via texting, Facebook, or MySpace.
Frasier, Sam, Woody and Rebecca have never Cheerfully frequented a bar in Boston during primetime.
“PC” has come to mean Personal Computer, not Political Correctness.

[ayiti] How to summarize a week in Haiti

2011-08-20T01:23:00.000-04:00

The short answer is: You can't.

Some people told me I didn't need to go in order to have a perfectly proper thesis. Others urged me see the place for myself - that it would change everything. I ignored the naysayers and knew that I needed to somehow get to Port-au-Prince, and only when God made a way for that did I understand instantly - maybe even just as I saw the coast loom into view from the plane window - that this was so true.

The thing that hit me - overwhelmed me, and still overwhelms me - is how Haiti engages your senses. Just reading news stories or seeing pictures isn't enough - it's not simply visual, but also intensely seizes your ears, nose, tastebuds, and even skin (because it was about 115 degrees F and humid everyday - and dusty).

On the flight over there, I was puzzled by the number of Haitian men who had boomboxes as their second carry-ons. What an odd piece of luggage, I thought. Once we landed and were launched into the midst of the chaos called baggage claim, I realized what they were for: mood music, of course! They turned up the calypso and became instant DJs - perhaps to lighten the frustration that came with an hour of searching for our bags.

Who is big in Haiti? The media says NGOs, the UN, and everyone who is there to help bring the country back on its feet. Tap-taps, the local bus transport, say it's God ("L'Eternel est grand"), and I would also have to say it's the people and those who stand alongside them.

I still find it hard to tell people in a "nutshell" how was my weeklong trip to Haiti. There's a lot to process, but hopefully little gems will come out from the sifting of thoughts, emotions, and memories - not to mention images, sketches, and notes made along the way. I'll try to write at least one post per day I was there, in the hopes of somehow piecing out the experience.

More than first travel blues

2011-08-11T00:34:00.000-04:00

I don't remember where I found this photo, but it's one of my favorites of live revived in PaP

I recently read an article by the Frugal Traveler about the 'blues' typically faced by travelers on the first day, when you're bumbling around in a new city, not understanding the language, and nothing seems to be going right. I have certainly faced those times, but typically it just gets better and, as he concludes, it's these 'trying out' times that make one feel actually familiar with a new place.

I can't help but think how different visiting Port-au-Prince for the first time. It will likely be filled with a certain level of confusion and discomfort, but not because of the typical traveler's dilemmas. Instead, it is the first-hand experience of a havoc only read about in the news or heard about second-hand. Some say it's horrible, lamenting the slowness of recovery. Others say it's a beautiful place - and my, how the beaches are lovely! (A Haitian woman told me this, and I smiled. Maybe next time?)

I'm actually tired of using the word 'disaster' because it is a term devoid of hope, although there are few alternative ways to phrase it without resorting to euphemisms. But who knows what my first reaction will be? I asked one of my friends how to mentally prepare. She told me to be ready for some level of shock, but that it would be individual to the person.

So I won't get lost because I will always be with a driver or someone who knows their way around. I might not get to wander the city at night because of a 10pm curfew and safety measures. I will meet other travelers, but not ones who somehow "stumbled upon" the destination but rather those who came knowing they were risking their lives to a certain extent. Will it be overly somber? Exuberant in the resilience? It's hard to say now, with two feet firmly planted on American soil.

I'll let you know tomorrow.

Food for thought

2011-08-09T19:55:00.000-04:00

While writing a Katerva blog post about the Oxfam GROW campaign, I came across this fun video that is basically a brainstorm of favorite foods from people interviewed all over the world.

What are yours?

I would agree with the noodles person, particularly if they were 'soup' noodles. Cheese would also be another, yum!

[foodage] Grilling and toasting

2011-08-05T23:21:00.001-04:00

Somehow, this picture's colors remind me of the '50s

Food verbs are so fun, especially when they are tasty. The other night, M and I tried out two of them: grilling and toasting (and some saute-ing). Instead of going out as per our summer Thursdays ritual, we decided to cook to save a bit of cash. However, we quickly discovered that going to Whole Foods and letting the die-hard meat lover pick out the main dish are not good strategies for being frugal... but it ended up being quite the delicious home-cooked meal with:

grilled marbled ribeye steak generously flavored with The Spice House's Bronzeville Rib Rub (thanks Jenny!) and kosher salt
grilled onions with the same spice
sauteed broccoli with lemon

We didn't buy anything for dessert, so I searched online for some quick and easy ones and found this great recipe for toasted oats with fruit. It had just the right combination of sweetness and crunchiness, with the nutty flavors of walnuts and coconut to accompany the fruit. Instead of yogurt or raspberries, I sprinkled the oats on top of a few slices of canned peaches for a simple version of peach crisp without the hour-long wait time - and I already had all the ingredients, so it was affordable, too!

via Everybody Likes Sandwiches

Next time we'll try some other combination of food verbs, yum.

Stepping out

2011-08-04T12:08:00.000-04:00

"... Our journeys of faith, it seems to me, are just like that. We respond to the call of God by stepping out, one graced step at a time, into a luminous darkness. Our direction is clear, but the route reveals itself only as we put one foot in front of the other. We cannot know beforehand exactly where we are heading or how we will get there. Nevertheless we trust in God to show us—and to be for us—the way.”

- Deborah Smith Douglas
Weavings, July/August 2002

I'm a planner. I like to know what's going on and what steps I need to take to get there. There are situations in which I'm not exactly sure what to do, but there are few times in which I absolutely have no clue. This is the case right now, in light of going to Haiti. On one hand, I sense that God has told me and is still telling me that I will be going. On the other hand... the question, then, is when? And how? With whom? Realistically, time is running short. I find myself doing things aligned with normal preparation: getting my vaccines, buying hand sanitizer, packing my travel towel. This seems funny because I have no flight nor a definite group to be going with. I have, by now, a whole bundle of leads and connections thanks to kind colleagues and responsive NGOs, but no actual plug-ins. In it all, I can still be thankful for the pieces that have been coming together, while being reminded to keep trusting even when it seems either illogical or uncontrollable. May my character and faith be all the more refined in the end.

Food's flight patterns

2011-08-03T11:45:00.000-04:00

via irresistable

A recent grad in graphic design, James Reynolds devised an alternative to traditional produce labels that inform consumers about just how far those Argentinian tomatoes really traveled to get to your store - and plate. Would the "Far Food" project change people's buying habits?

A storm by any other name ...

2011-08-02T16:10:00.000-04:00

via NOAA's storm tracker - see the website for a larger image

I recently made the discovery that I'm a tropical storm threatening the Caribbean and Florida.

I also was reassured that despite that, I am not - in fact - a Rhino command. Phew.

courtesy of jo'c

Being abroad - made live

2011-07-26T12:42:00.000-04:00

cover of sketchbook #5

Back in June, I wrote a post about a travel reflections project I had once contributed to called Being Abroad. A few days ago, I had received word that the project site has now been made live after a few years' hiatus. I finally got to glimpse what I had written and drawn all those years ago, and seeing the sketches again brought about feelings of nostalgia and regret, along with reflection on the sentiments expressed about being abroad, now recorded in Sketchbook #5.

nostalgia
Although I claim to document my reflections "three parts," they only really represent the two countries where I had most recently studied abroad: France and China. I was in France for the Spring of my junior year in college and predominantly lived in Paris, with a brief week-long homestay in the southern part of the country. This was the start of my intense love for travel, adventures, and the idea that I could transplant myself and live elsewhere and somehow blend in. My daily 20 minute walk to school, the food I ate, the culture I absorbed, the classes I took were all small parts that made up the whole of this amazing experience, convicting me that every student should try and study in a foreign country if they could. The stretching-ness and just sheer fun of it changed my perspective about home.

regret
Studying in China was also a similarly joyous situation - this time, the 3 months of summer right after graduation. This, though, was more defined by the friends I spent time with, the intense language training, and the new knowledge learned about my heritage. It was also a trip, though, that challenged me more than I thought - not simply because Mandarin was harder to learn than French for me, but that I somehow had hoped to "blend in" more easily than I actually could. Perhaps this has to do with the fact of being Chinese American, having been raised in the States and not fully knowing the language of my 'people.' I looked the part, but couldn't act it - was far from it in many ways, although I worked hard and made great strides in that short time. Like many others at the boundary between two cultures and two nations, I felt - and still sometimes feel - regret about what I couldn't be, although over time I've come to accept the different strengths that come with a hyphenated ethnicity.

My time abroad - particularly in these contexts, but in subsequent journeys as well - has been marked by both a profound sense of place as well as a certain placelessness. In each experience, I had the opportunity to soak in a new culture, new language, new environment, new friends and 'family' - all very specific to the context. Living in Paris is quite different from living in Beijing, as if it weren't already clear enough. But the placelessness was more about identity, where nationality became the key to defining who I was. In France, people could never pinpoint it. They actually almost never thought I was American, but rather asked if I were Japanese or even Brazilian Native American (... this was true!). In China, I got similar questions of "where are you from? No, where are you FROM from?" because I looked Chinese but spoke with an accent. Most taxi drivers then assumed I was Korean, which made for entertaining explanations.

In more recent travels, the role of language has changed a bit. Instead of being an indication of self identity or something about myself, I found that the power of speaking in the same tongue is more about the people you are communicating with. In Cambodia, my Khmer was less than conversational but the villagers we worked with appreciated those gestures - no matter how paltry - because we were attempting to genuinely communicate in a way that they could best understand. It enabled me and my teammates to form relationships over English/Khmer lessons on the construction site, singing "cement/simong" every time we went to mix more mortar or accidentally flung some onto each other. I suppose it was a way to say, in minimal words, that by caring enough to learn a language, we were showing care for that person.

Being abroad - eye-opening, self-revealing, relationship-making, and fun-filled, it becomes about people and crossing borders to find commonalities instead of simply about places and capturing the monument on camera. So, where to next?

Barbie can be modern, too

2011-07-21T10:34:00.000-04:00

... with a real live architect-designed dream house such as this design below :

The AIA has partnered with Mattel to sponsor a design competition for Barbie's next dream house. Like many design competitions, this one will also not be built but is, rather, what they call "a fun way to play and engage with Barbie® I Can Be™... Architect regardless of your age."

Too bad for architects, though - their designs can't even be realized in the fantasy world of toys, although it's an interesting way to engage other disciplines in the potential education of children, in technicolor pink.

One fun note (if the pink wasn't enough) : One of the judges is a former coworker of mine from my days prior to MIT.

[musica] j.montague / fly on

2011-07-20T00:07:00.000-04:00

<p>&amp;lt;a href="http://jacobmontague.bandcamp.com/album/fly-on"&amp;gt;fly on by Jacob Montague&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</p>

Discovered via the Design & Thinking documentary blog. The electronica + banjo puts me in the right summery mood. Instrumentalization reminds me a bit of Sufjan - but unique on its own. Check out more of Jacob Montague, or get your own cool widget.

High Line : Part deux

2011-07-19T20:52:00.001-04:00

via Architectural Record

“We like to think of it as a place where people revel in doing nothing, which is an anomaly for New Yorkers. It has an unscripted, unintended, unprogrammed timelessness. You just get lost in there."
// Liz Diller, in the NYTimes article
anticipating the opening of Section 2 of the High Line

Has anyone seen it yet? (Some people clearly have.)

Don't talk, just do

2011-07-18T14:46:00.000-04:00

"... it’s true that when we talk about our work, we give ourselves the feeling that we are working on something when truthfully, we aren’t."

and other thoughts on creativity from Donald Miller,
author of Blue Like Jazz

Spontaneous occupation?

2011-07-15T13:27:00.000-04:00

Well, this is one way to occupy a slice of the city in more ways than one...

(found via C&Z's newsletter)

The train must add a tasty...flavoring to the veggies. Where is this, though?

On creative work

2011-07-14T16:46:00.003-04:00

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."
// Ira Glass, host of This American Life (via FreshAir)

The nature of long hours resides with creatives, not just 'crazy' architects.

A bit on Ira's history:
Ira Glass started working in public radio in 1978, when he was 19, as an intern at NPR's headquarters in DC. Over the next 17 years, he worked on nearly every NPR news show and did nearly every production job they had: tape-cutter, desk assistant, newscast writer, editor, producer, reporter, and substitute host. He spent a year in a high school for NPR, and a year in an elementary school, filing stories for All Things Considered. He moved to Chicago in 1989 and put This American Life on the air in 1995.

[foodage] Salmon + ratatouille

2011-07-11T00:36:00.001-04:00

via Chocolate & Zucchini

Tonight M and I had a very baked (and nearly smoke alarm-inducing) dinner to fuel visionary conversation. It consisted of modified recipes for:

ratatouille confite au four
one of my French favorites
+
lime and honey-glazed salmon
the smokey culprit that thankfully was completely intact

plus a "healthy" serving of pastries from Area Four, who decided to give us freebies because we happened to stop by right before closing today. (Delicious!)

I have no photographic evidence since it all ended up in our stomachs. For the future, however, I would
a) add more salt and maybe a bit less rosemary for the ratatouille ... and make it ahead of time so that the flavors get to settle
b) add more lime and honey to the salmon to strengthen the subtle flavors

Note: M was the actually chef for the night. I only helped to buy the ingredients, pick the recipes, and do some backseat cooking over my laptop.

[FAST] Lightbridge illuminates the crossing

2011-07-10T23:33:00.000-04:00

LightBridge from Pol Pla

These videos of the FAST installation Lightbridge came out recently. The project, conceived by the Media Lab's Susanne Seitinger and Pol Pla of the Fluid Interfaces Group, illuminated the Harvard Bridge with 10,000 LED lights back in May 2011.

See more images and animations on the project's Flickr site.

The first days

2011-07-08T23:51:00.000-04:00

I was asked to unearth evidence from our first two projects in architecture school, and as I dug around I swear I could smell the must of dust-encrusted work.

Exercise 1 // The Bridge
a project I liked but which induced many of my first all-nighters of grad school, as well as my first introductions to the laser cutter

Exercise 2 // The Circulation Project
(aka interstitial space, or how many stairs and ramps are needed to get from one place to the next)
a project I liked only in diagram form but really didn't like in physical form, and which manifested in a model bigger than my body

Oh Level 1... how long it's been since then. How far we've come (hopefully). How different Level 1's are today.

Figure 8s

2011-07-06T15:46:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what to think about videos like this that highlight a building walk-through in such a 'cool' way (with requisite lounge music), but don't say much about the actual experience of living in such a place where the figural aspects of the building itself (shaped like an 8, like the diagram) means a very long road from one's flat to the parking lot.

Then again, I still like the scenic promenade (supposed to be for cyclists), so the walk-through as a convincing visualization tool works.

- - -
Bjarke Ingles Group
8 House
2010 / nearly completed

July 4th : The best view in the "house"

2011-07-05T12:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, a festive group of GCFers and friends neatly staked out a great spot along the Memorial Dr. side of the Charles River to watch the fireworks. Thanks to Sam, Yong, and Mark, our area was well claimed, big enough for ~30 people, and - perhaps most importantly - directly in front of the fireworks barge. We had plenty of food, games, and good conversation to keep people going through until the concert's start and then the fireworks at 10:30pm.

This was my first 4th of July celebrated in Boston, and it was a splendid one. We were right near one of the main speaker towers and screens broadcasting the Boston Pops performance from across the river. When the US Army Field band came on with their marches in full swing, it made me nostalgic. "Stars and Stripes Forever," in particular, has long been a favorite. Once upon a time I could actually play that piccolo solo ... can't imagine getting back into shape for that again, but who knows?

For Steph, who didn't see the smilies

I was very impressed with the 1812 Overture, the fireworks that followed, and then the main pyrotechnic display to end the night. What a great show! Here are some snippets from the night :

What's your secret life?

2011-06-17T15:33:00.000-04:00

One of our very own in the architecture (and EECS) department, Emily Whiting, was recently featured in NOVA's "Secret Life of Scientists" series:

Although I personally don't know her, I feel somewhat of a kinship because 1) we share the same great name, and 2) we've both done research with the same professor - her adviser and now my thesis committee reader, John Ochsendorf. I guess we also both like bricks, stone, and masonry, so that might be the #3 commonality.

What is my secret life? I'm not exactly sure. Part of me thinks that architecture school attempts to squelch out any other life than studio, although I've resisted. Would mine be loudspeaker? Bible study leader? Trash enthusiast? Flutist (if I practiced more)? Sustainability blogger? Design-builder? Stationary and sketchbook enthusiast? Maybe the first question is, rather - can I be considered a scientist?

What's your secret life?

[foodage] The most stereotyped vegetable

2011-06-16T00:43:00.005-04:00

Poor brussel sprouts.

Did you know they grew like this?
Neither did I - but thanks to Eat and Live Green, we know.

Kids love to hate them. People in general seem to love to hate them, even. I think even as a child, the phrase "... not as bad as brussel sprouts!" must have passed through my lips at some point. If you look at them closely, though, they're actually sort of cute, like the cabbage's impish nephews and nieces. Although they can be quite bitter if not cooked properly, there are ways to enjoy them - which I only recently discovered.

My friend Betsy introduced me to buttered sprouts in college, and later Robin showed off his culinary skills by sauteing them with olive oil and cumin. After buying some of these on a whim at Shaw's the other day, I decided to pair them with beets from the on-campus farmer's market and the flavors of cumin, salt, and pepper.

Usually in my cooking endeavors, I don't really follow recipes faithfully. Actually, I typically stray, dip, mix, match, and come out with something that could either be great or a little dodgy (but I would eat it anyways). I guess that's the nature of creative cooking experimentation. I found 2 recipes that each used part of what I was interested in, but then fused them together for what I hoped would be a tasty result. Since I only purchased a small amount of both vegetables and estimated all amounts, I won't include a strict recipe but only a guideline of what I did... improvements welcome!

The lighting makes the beets look scarily like red meat.
Thankfully, it did not taste as such.

In the end, the vegetables were a bit caramelized but could have benefited for a longer saute to make the sprouts more tender and a bit less bitter. Adding more cumin and maybe even a sauteed onion as suggested by the NYTimes recipe might have also sweetened them a bit, but the beets at least were quite delicious and made up for their slightly bitter companions.

Ingredients //

red beets (I used 3)
a generous handful of brussel sprouts
cumin, salt, pepper
olive oil

Process //

Boil the beets in a sauce pan for ~40 minutes while preheating the oven to 350 degrees F. When the beets have started to soften (can be slightly marked with a wooden spoon), fish them out and place them on a foil lined baking sheet. Roast for ~20-25 minutes (faster if you have a better oven than I do). Cool for 5-10 minutes, then peel and cube.
Note: Sadly, beets take a long time to cook, but maybe someone has a better - meaning faster - method. I boiled first to speed up the process, but then finished off with roasting because roasted vegetables really just taste so much better with the flavor captured in the flesh rather than escaping into the water.
Trim the stems off the brussel sprouts and boil for 7-10 minutes or until softened. Add a dash of salt to the water to flavor them a bit. Once done, slice them in half.
Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat and add beets, sprouts, and spices. Be generous with the cumin! Cover it up and stir on occasion to avoid excessive burning, until sprouts fully tender and vegetables have begun caramelizing.
Note: I did this for 5 minutes re: the recipe, but as I said above, I would have done it longer.
Serve! I actually ate them alone since I had already eaten leftover pasta while I was awaiting the long process of beet cooking, but I could imagine combining this dish with couscous.

The consequences of unsubscribing

2011-06-14T17:33:00.000-04:00

Groupon is pretty clever.

Rather than allowing people to unsubscribe with an innocuous email submission and requisite "You are now unsubscribed from this list," they actually attach that action to violence. You'll have to find it on Youtube or unsubscribe yourself to know what I'm talking about... I didn't take a screen shot of the actual video, but it made me laugh - and then feel a twinge of guilt. Maybe their tactic worked?

We'll see if I try to make it up to Derrick in the next couple days.

On display : B+C | A Alumni Show

2011-06-13T01:18:00.000-04:00

I missed the reception, but got to see my work and others on display for the 3rd annual Barnard + Columbia Architecture Alumni Show when I returned for my class reunion at the beginning of the month. The title of the exhibition is "Progress | Process," essentially looking at the ways in which the design process has evolved. (Brief below.) The work is on display on the 4th floor of Barnard's new Diana Center, so check it out if you're in the City.

Instead of sharing studio designs, I decided instead to showcase two different ways of rethinking the building block from a very material standpoint. No sleek renderings here, but instead I introduced a little dirt. Yes, these are group projects (thanks to teams MRG and D-Lab Building Materials aka RHA), but I'm ok with not being the sole author in these innovations. Sometimes better work develops with more brains than one, and this is often the case anyways with most design and research.

I saw some other familiar names with work showcased, and in general there was a pretty wide variety of projects highlighting what alums all the way from the class of '98 to the class of '09 have been up to since leaving the alma mater. The other participants include:

Benjamin Weinryb Grohsgal, CC ’08 // “Living on the Edge of a Megacity”
Edgar Papazian, CC ’95 // “One Competition”
Irmak Turan, SEAS ’07, CC ’08 // “RAMPed UP”
Jacob Moore, CC ‘06 // “Unknowing the Known”
Lizzie Hodges, BC ‘02 // “Redacted”
Marissa Grace Desmond, CC ‘05 // “Damn the City, Dam the Suburbs” [also a recent MIT alum]
Meg Kelly, BC ‘09 // “Tracing Shifts of Place”
Shan Shan Qi, BC ’06 // “Production House”
Tom Stewart, CC ’08 // “Salsabol”
Wendy W Fok, BC ‘03 // “UP – Urban Tower Transformation”

The brief, crafted by the show committee (including Charles Curran, another fellow Columbian and MITer), refers to the work of a recent visiting faculty member here at MIT:

In her essay Theory After (After-Theory), Ashley Schafer identifies the emergence of the promiscuous architectural practice, one that works seamlessly through design, contextual study, building, and writing, as a new, agile modus operandi within and beyond the discipline. This conflation of material and theoretical practice (design and concept) fosters great diversity in ways of working, which can be calibrated to suit the constraints of a specific project and the designer’s unique conceptual biases. The Barnard + Columbia Architecture Department offers a similarly pluralistic and promiscuous pedagogy as evidenced by the diversity of its multi-disciplinary faculty and the resultant varied approaches to design instruction. It is hoped that exposure to and experimentation within this liberal environment challenges students to work dynamically, crafting and continuously refining their own program(s) of design research. This year’s Alumni Exhibition seeks to uncover how the design process continues to evolve after graduation.

Graduation from the back door

2011-06-12T00:58:00.000-04:00

on a recent Friday, dated June 3, 2011

It's a bit belated, but congrats to all our dear MIT grads from GCF, ArchPlan, MArch, and more. Even from the back door, the view was pretty great.

The beginning of a new era, with open doors and open skies.

Gratitude ... of sorts

2011-06-10T15:24:00.001-04:00

“Thank you, first sheet of a new toilet paper roll that won’t tear off evenly so I have to scratch and claw and shred three layers of the roll just to get the thing started. But that’s cool. I think I’ll have the last laugh, since I know where you’re ending up."

From "Thank You Notes" by Jimmy Fallon, recently published and quoted in the NYTimes

Maybe it IS easy to write a book after all ...

DoBV represents in Archiprix awards

2011-06-10T09:27:00.000-04:00

This morning's news: 4 DoBV members won or were nominated for top prizes in the Archiprix thesis competition! The announcement was made at the awards ceremony yesterday at the Guggenheim in New York, which I unfortunately couldn't go to but am glad to hear about. It's quite the sweep - I'm not sure if any other workshop group had so many notables in their midst. Out of over 300 projects, 8 were chosen as winners while 24 in total were nominated.

Congrats to our winner:

Craig Johnson : National Apiological Network: An Illustrated History (University of Strathclyde, Scotland)

On the first night of the workshop, when asked why he did his thesis about bees: "I dunno ... I just thought it would be interesting." That goes to show that thesis projects don't have to have pomp and circumstance from the get go to become good projects in the end.

Plus, additional congrats to our nominees:

Thomas Cole : Hawkesbury Ponds Fairgrounds (University of New South Wales)

Sarosh Mulla : Interconnections of System Densities (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Aezad Alam : Su_Per_form® (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates)

Once upon a time in NYC...

2011-06-09T02:09:00.001-04:00

... there were mundane objects lying around the city we call the City, waiting to be noticed. Items like the window air conditioner...

... the steam vent ...

... the ubiquitous hot dog vendor ...

... and more simply pined for attention. Which they got. When the Department of Benign Violations came along.

Suddenly the streets were filled with music. People chilled (or heated) at bus stops and bicycle racks. Facades were covered with inflatables, transformative louvers, and even erupted with balloons. Trees moved to the song of hot dogs sizzling. Rooftops blossomed. Taxis buzzed with electrostatic energy and removed the lint off of the sweaters of passersby. And the streets of NYC were forever changed.

Spreads

2011-06-02T01:16:00.000-04:00

New wallpaper, produced in a day by the three DoBV groups: Census Bureau, Research Team, and Zoning Commission.

NYC's new department

2011-06-01T02:20:00.001-04:00

photo taken by Marina, Archiprix's dedicated webmistress and social media curator

Meet the Department of Benign Violations, formerly known as Group 6 of the Archiprix workshop competition. Once a crowd of 11 and now a slim 8, these recent graduate architecture alums hail from both hemispheres and across the globe:

Costa Rica (Esteban)
Nicaragua (Tamara)
Scotland (Craig)
Switzerland (Jessica)
Dubai (Aezed)
India (Priyank)
Australia (Tom)
New Zealand (Sarosh)

(That list might have been more impressive as a mapping, but for now, it remains in just words.) Nick Gelpi and Filip Tejchman at the helm; with me to get coffee cups, scan precedents, and troubleshoot network issues in the side wings.

Being abroad - from the past

2011-06-01T01:28:00.000-04:00

Way back when I could say that I was officially studying abroad in my college days and wanted to talk about how awesome it was to be abroad, I had come across a cool little project called Being Abroad. Seemed perfect! If you signed up and were selected, you would then become one of 100 people mailed one of 10 sketchbooks and add your own artistic entry about your own experiences in the wider world beyond. It actually worked, in that one day a few years back, I got mailed a sketchbook by a complete stranger from England, and was then asked to ship it off to someone in another part of Europe. (Not the most efficient path of travel, I suppose.) The submissions would then be compiled in some sort of annotated book about personal stories abroad...

Then silence...

And then... a random email a couple weeks ago. Ends up the book idea sort of fell through, but the guy behind it wanted to bring some closure to the project and is now making a website with all the entries. I visited his own webpage and discovered that he now works for the slightly alternative literary publication McSweeney's - which makes him a cool person in my book.

In any rate, this inordinately long blog post is just to say that my submission will be published online on a URL yet to be revealed. I'm excited in numerous ways, but mostly because... well frankly, I haven't the faintest memory of what I even drew/wrote, so it'll be like a mini blast from the past or a time capsule of sorts about my days in Paris or Beijing...or somewhere in between.

An update soon on our own international experience happening within the walls of MIT ...

Summer reading list

2011-05-25T22:21:00.000-04:00

from two summers ago, a lovely retreat to an urban beach

"The best summer reading I did in the past was in 1993 — I was working my butt off at a Chinese restaurant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., but I stole some time to read Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson and William Faulkner on the greasy kitchen floor. Literature had never been tastier."
- Yunte Huang,
author of Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective
and His Rendezvous with American History

This great quote, from a compilation of authors' summer reading reflections, really encapsulates my attitude towards summer reading. Although I don't always enjoy it with greasy Chinese food, the tastiness of words when you have the luxury of time to enjoy them is a sensation that I really miss during the hectic semester.

I haven't yet put together my own list of summer reads yet, although I imagine it may include some travel narratives, catching up on a peppering of blogs, Haitian Creole lessons, a beta read of a friend's new fantasy novel, maybe some foodie Michael Pollan or brainy Oliver Sachs... and/or countless selections from the many books on my shelf here at home that I've picked up over the years at library and sidewalk book sales but have yet to read. (That last category will likely take me several summers to get through. The plight of a loose-fingered reader who perpetually feels sorry for 'orphaned' books.)

What's on your summer reading list?

Marine "highways"

2011-05-19T22:41:00.001-04:00

Image: Bernd Blasius from Wired.com

For the first time, scientists have developed a map of the world's shipping routes through the use of GPS satellite systems. Singapore ranks #4. I wonder how many of these cargo ships end up stopping by Semakau landfill as a vacation spot...

Citation: “The complex network of global cargo ship movements” Pablo Kaluza, Andrea Kölzsch, Michael T. Gastner and Bernd Blasius, J. Royal Society: Interface

[Tortoiseland] A return to the Galapagos

2011-05-18T00:31:00.004-04:00

... or at least, virtually! A glimpse of a marine research breakwater as the first stop in Puerto Ayora. Lonesome George (bottom right) gets to escape from his pen to enjoy the view as well.

My own boss?

2011-05-16T20:40:00.000-04:00

Today we had our final review for studio, which means that I and the rest of my classmates are incredibly sleep deprived and were practically falling asleep over dinner..

but it also means it's our last studio ever. !!

It also means from now on, we're our own boss - until a client comes along. Am I ready to work in that capacity? Some thoughts to ponder when the mind isn't so weary.

Old school

2011-05-11T21:07:00.000-04:00

Having a professor specify that we should follow the Chicago Manual of Style in making citations for our class paper spurred me to actually take a look ... and realize that I've been stuck in MLA format for all these years. Considering that we learned about MLA as elementary school students, it makes me feel old school ... somehow.

Chicago style:
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006), 99–100.

MLA style:
Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006. 99-100.

Also, the fact that I'm talking about this on a blog means ... I've been too immersed in academia and really need summer break now.

Cairo's garbage people

2011-05-08T00:05:00.001-04:00

In my last thesis prep review, Nassar had suggested I look at precedents for locally-organized sorting methods. He mentioned the Zabbaleen (= Garbage people, in Egyptian Arabic), a community that acts as Cairo's informal garbage collectors, since I'm looking at developing methods and techniques for sorting and processing rubble.

One intriguing fact about this community of about 70,000 Coptic Christians is that their municipal solid waste services are seen as one of the most efficient in the world in terms of recycling. They basically go door to door to collect trash, haul it back to their homes on the backs of donkeys (and now in some small garbage trucks), sort it and sell every last bit of recyclable material to middlemen. The organic waste is then eaten by pigs - I guess one method of "composting." Their operations are done by hand. Their entrepreneurial ways of living have been threatened by the government's hiring in 2003 of contracted garbage collection agencies to take care of the city's waste.

In my brief search, I came across 2 documentaries that bring the Zabbaleen to international attention :

Garbage Dreams

Marina of the Zabbaleen

There is a power in the medium of the documentary to bring to light critical issues and people that I (and others), otherwise, would have no idea about. I have to do some further research to see how their methods might be helpful to inform my own work, but learning about these informal communities reminds me that institutions aren't always what bring about change or keep things running.

P.S. The Wiki page about this group of people is one of the most extensively footnoted of online articles I've seen. Impressive!

Another note : I didn't mention this issue above, but in 2009 because of H1N1, the Egyptian government did a widespread collection of pigs - including those belonging to the Zabbaleen. Since the pigs are the organic waste munchers... the issue the government didn't think they would have to deal with was huge piles of smelly mess in their streets. The NYTimes actually covered this garbage crisis, which sounds almost humorous until you remember this concerns a people's livelihood and a city's own ability to be clean and sanitary.

MIT150 Flash dance, flash mob

2011-05-06T14:23:00.001-04:00

My residents and other campus personnages strut their stuff in a "spontaneous" flash mob during last Saturday's MIT open house. Too bad I wasn't around to see it! I love seeing our serious administrators dragged into the mix as well :)

Alphabetic procrastination

2011-05-06T00:39:00.000-04:00

via Sarah Wilson with micro pencil art by Dalton Ghetti

This looks like the result of an obsession or severe procrastination... Now in the end of the semester, I would be threatened with the latter but after multiple distractions like getting sick and out of town trips, there's not even time for that. Time, instead, to get better and buckle down...

[FAST] SOFT Rockers, to scale

2011-05-04T15:54:00.000-04:00

photo courtesy of Phil Seaton (fellow MArch)

Thanks to a Phil-induced studio break, Yushiro and I - along with the String Tunnel crew - became models for Sheila Kennedy's SOFT Rockers. This latest FAST installation takes place on the grounds of the now-faded Icewall (which, we hope will return by this coming Saturday in floral form).

Loungers orient the rockers towards the sun so that the flexible photovoltaics attached on the rocker's outer hull can transform solar radiation into the energy needed to charge a cell phone, iPod, or even a laptop. At night, the stored power then illuminates the interior with a cool aqua glow, making for a place to chill out in daytime or at night.

Phil's comment: "Emily, you're to scale!" (as in, you're small enough to look comfortable inside of these rockers) See the website for more artfully-captured photos.

Two views on trash

2011-04-26T22:02:00.000-04:00

In my research on the Semakau landfill in Singapore, I came across two interesting yet opposing narratives about the city-state's newest "scenic wasteland." First, the one I dub the "bright and shining future" perspective (with music!):

... versus the "skepticism and doubt" perspective:

Who holds up half the sky?

2011-04-20T01:25:00.000-04:00

I read this book last semester for the D-Lab Schools class, but was reminded of it now as it's being nominated for the Katerva Challenge. Sheryl WuDunn's TED talk has a way for making the book - and this larger "Girl Effect" movement come alive, more so than the website that is sadly not very informative in itself. She and her husband Nicholas Kristof also wrote an informative NYTimes article that walks through their hypothesis that, to combat poverty and extremism, we need to emancipate and educate girls to allow them to take on their pivotal role in the home, the workforce, and even the world at large.

Featuring public service

2011-04-13T02:19:00.002-04:00

This shot wasn't specifically captured in the film, but was part of the testing process in which
our Khmer friends took a hands on role in the experimentation.

The latest documentary short for the MIT 150 celebration features the role of public service in the Institute's history - and includes footage about my D-Lab Schools class from last semester and trip to Cambodia over IAP. ?! I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around that one...

For some background:

Last semester, science filmmaker Michael Barnes came into our D-Lab Schools classroom and asked if he could film our class for a documentary about public service at MIT. I only knew this after I saw this British guy hovering in the corners with a camera at subsequent classes, since I admittedly came late that one day for his introduction. He not only followed our class in general - coming to sit in on our discussions and our final review - but also took an extra interest in the materials group's experimentation with rice husk ash (maybe since we were the only group getting dirty before rolling into Cambodia?) and tagged along as we mixed our first batches of concrete in the basement of Building 1.

I initially felt odd - even fake - being asked to speak in a candid way with my classmates as a camera was rolling, but then curiosity got the better of me. After my stint at making a mini "documentary" of sorts last year (which I should probably revive at some point... more on that later), I wanted to know more about his methods and just generally where he was coming from. Although I've never seen any of his films, I know one of them in particular about the Incan civilization had inspired my own professor (John O.) and was interested to see what would come about from this curious project he was making.

Before heading to Cambodia, Michael asked me and Albert (of the radio group Stories to Share) to be point people in our respective projects to take video footage. The task? Alongside Libby and Dorothy, my fellow RHA-ers, to record critical moments in the building and experimentation process with rice husk ash, and record mini "diary entries" about our experience. With mini video recorder in hand, I tried to do just that when I could get my hands out of the concrete. I didn't really know what would come out of these random pieces of filming, but hoped that they at least would convey an idea of not only what our project was about (discovering through experimentation whether using RHA as a replacement for cement in concrete is feasible and creates better concrete in rural Cambodia) but also give a glimpse of how impactful the experience really was.

Once back, it wasn't clear how the documentary would be released - online? in a screening? on MIT Cable? - but now we know. I might be biased, but it's an interesting 13 minutes from a film perspective, the weaving together of all these seemingly disparate pieces of narrative and historic footage to create a cohesive message about MIT and public service. It's also surreal to watch and realize, "Oh, so that's why he was filming that" and "Hey... I took that sequence! Cool!" To be fair, I was credited with the videography at the end but Libby and Dorothy both had a share in the filming and should also be noted.

Will this have a lasting impact? I don't know who will be watching it, but only time will tell. At least, there's the knowledge that this isn't just about us and a single project but about a larger movement that I'm sincerely glad to be a part of.

[Tortoiseland] Almost 2 weeks later

2011-04-09T03:42:00.001-04:00

Our first day in Puerto Ayora, the Galapagos

This past Thursday, almost 2 weeks after returning. (Sadly, Nads is missing.)

The ladies. Tan landscape. Guess who is who? Are we darker?

- - -

Photos taken by Juliet.

The 15 seconds of fame and more

2011-03-31T17:03:00.000-04:00

Some MIT friends are now on the world wide map, thanks to some great projects and the power of the internet (in this case ArchDaily, a widely-known source of design news):

I think this was originally taken by George.

Yushiro and Kian's Icewall as part of the MIT 150's FAST festival (previously mentioned).

competition board, courtesy of the team

Nancy (and friends)'s Emerald Necklace competition entry

A long time advocate

2011-03-31T16:16:00.000-04:00

I feel behind the times in my recent discovery of the Whole Earth Catalog and its founder-visionary, Stewart Brand. Maybe I was never "granola" enough (although I like making actual granola.) The names seem familiar, but it was only in digging deeper lately that I discovered this tenant of environmental counterculture, and how Brand's work and energy continues even today, 40+ years after the first publication of the Catalog.

There's more to say, but with a looming thesis prep deadline, I leave this video of a 2009 TED talk given by Brand to the US State Department. Here, he makes some interesting claims about the essential economics of slums, the benefits of proximity in the developing world, among other points relevant to urban expansion and sustainability:

Soundscapes

2011-03-30T14:36:00.001-04:00

For Activating the Mundane, I've been researching some sound installations as precedents for a sound piece I'm working on for May. Some of these examples are particularly interesting in the way that they amplify or morph existing sounds that are typically not perceived or noticed in the surrounding natural environment. These pieces are located in the NOAA Art Walk park in Seattle and each incorporate a reused material from a repurposed naval base.

Canadian artist George Trakas' "Berth Haven" amplifies the sound of the lake, through the echoing of moving steel under a hollow cedar deck. The series of decks rest on existing foundations leftover from an old airstrip on the naval base.

Douglas Hollis' "A Sound Garden" seems somewhat typical as a wind chime, but is more than visual effects as each metal tube funnels and changes the pitch of the wind blowing through, depending on the direction and velocity.

This video captures some of the mournful sounds of the sculptures - until the end of the clip, where that mood is broken.

All photos courtesy of Eric Magnuson

[Tortoiseland] Day 7: Last day

2011-03-26T01:28:00.000-04:00

This will be quick since I'm tired and the internet is about to shut off, but today was the last day in the Galapagos before we head back to the States, stopping briefly in Quito for a few hours in between.

Although I wish I could've seen more of the town and the surrounding area, it was a good final day on Santa Cruz Island. I spent most of it with Nancy and Nadya, taking photos of the water edge (since all of our projects have some connection to marine living) and then attending an informative meeting with a representative from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF - not to be mistaken for other heavy lifters). They're doing a lot of mediation between the government and local communities, particularly in areas of tourism and renewable energy. Although what they call "eco-tourism" still sounds like green washing and not real sustainability (at least to our limited knowledge), it's good to know there are advocates who are entrenched in environmental conservation and are now becoming more conscientious about sustainable urban living as well.

We then took a long meandering walk to the beautiful Tortuga Bay Beach, about a 45 minute mini hike along a lava rock-paved trail. It was quite wild and idyllic, with the beach itself stretching far in the distance and made of extremely fine sand. (Juliet called it "pearl sand.") With crystal clear waters and gnarly mangroves lining natural black lava rock breakwaters on the coast... it was a perfect spot for a dip as the sun was setting.

After a last huge meal of seafood, ceviche, and more, we now begin returning back to reality... Here we go! More updates later.

[Tortoiseland] Day 5; Meandering

2011-03-24T02:19:00.000-04:00

I didn't want to use the cliche "off the beaten path" to describe today, but it was indeed a day of surprise revelations and spontaneous adventures.

1. If you don't know where you're going, learn enough Spanish to say "left / right / straight / stop." Tip generously as gringos.

We started off with some official business, heading around Puerto Ayora to particular sites of interest within the urban fabric. I was trekking with Nancy and Yushiro, and we started with the highest point in the northeast corner, marked by a cross amidst a pile of rubble. Getting there was a lesson in itself, as we had to figure out how to direct the taxi driver without knowing any street names and with the use of a Google Earth aerial. Needless to say, he looked at us as if we were crazy when we tried to explain to him where we wanted to go while using the image. (Architects sometimes forget that our "normal" modes of representation are another language for others.) In any rate, we explored some of this rubble - sort of a primordial, makeshift quarry in a dead end zone - and then headed over to what was the new territories of the expanded town.

2. If an area looks like it's under construction and you shouldn't walk there... walk there.

The town government is planning on extending its footprint by 40% and providing additional housing for those who don't currently own property. It was bizarre walking around these unpaved roads, amidst mini trash heaps and construction materials lying around, and thinking that in a few years' time, a new town of sorts would emerge from the undergrowth.

3. Make friends with strangers.

One key discovery during this time: an artist who carves blue footed boobies out of wood, molds bas relief sculpture, and generally does whatever else for himself and for boutiques in the tourist district. He was the most chill character and we managed to communicate with him in broken Spanish (and the aid of my phrasebook) while he worked on some carvings for us.

4. What is lost is not lost.

There were three points in which we lost track of people in our group and had to head off to our various group appointments (or beach callings...) without them. Although we worried about these people as they were gone, we discovered later that they were having possibly even more fun adventures than we were. For instance, Caleb ended up catching a ride with a taxi up to a horse ranch and taking a 2-3 hour ride around the agricultural highlands while we sat in a meeting w/ the city's planning committee. Juliet missed out on our excursion to German Beach (full of debris, mangroves, and volleyball), but got to see the pristine Tortuga Bay Beach and caused envy in us all.

5. Singing is a great bonding experience.

On the way back from a dinner of seafood delight, we came across a karaoke bar and spontaneously decided to hop in for some songs. We didn't manage to reel in our professor and TA, but we did get a sizable group to belt out renditions of "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Hotel California," and more. Nads and I sang a somewhat silly version of the duet "Eternal Love" (silly because I didn't quite know all the words and we didn't quite separate out the man's and woman's parts), and I solo'ed on "I Can't Help Falling in Love with You" among others. We basically sang for all songs we knew, so in the end it didn't matter who had a mic. We also got some great laughs out of the experience and found out who were closet song lovers and divas in our midst.

Photos to come perhaps tomorrow. Ciao for now! Isla Isabela tomorrow for a fun day excursion plus more.

[Tortoiseland] Day 3/4: Surreal landscape

2011-03-23T00:58:00.000-04:00

Our textbooks from elementary school until now have been filled with references about Darwin and the discoveries he made after his careful natural observations, leading to the theory of evolution and a whole new paradigm of popular thought. The voyage of the Beagle and the Galapagos have forever been ingrained in every child's mind (well, at least in America) - how could such a mythical place be inhabited or even visited?

Well, those were the thoughts running through my head as our plane circled overhead and landed on the small island of Baltra, just to the north of Isla Santa Cruz in the middle of the Galapagos archipelago. All semester thus far we had been pouring over Google Earth maps and doing predominantly internet research about various topics... but to see it in person?

view of the northern shore of San Cristobal Island

One word: Incredible!

Actually, I could probably use a lot of different words to describe the impact. Just our first moments out of the airport and on the way to Puerto Ayora, the populated seaport town on Santa Cruz, were telling in themselves. Just in the ferry ride between islands itself, we were entranced by pelicans, schools of tiny darting fish in clear emerald water, and clusters of rock crabs. ("Entranced" is appropriate because we were literally ooh-ing and ahh-ing all over the place and sickening the local Galapaguenos.)

to give an idea about the relationship between Baltra - the island to the north - and Santa Cruz

agua!

So far, our principle activities have included eating ... a lot and drinking generous portions of fresh juices and cafe con leche (= lattes), as well as commenting about how hot it is (and loving it - sorry, Bostonians). We had a travel guide, Kathy, meet us at the airport and bring us around the Charles Darwin Research Station to get us acquainted with the islands and wildlife, as part of the Islands' "welcome" procedures. Although she was incredibly informative and good to talk with, the general consensus was that the research station needed to be updated. It was cool to see Lonesome George - the 100+ year old Pinta giant tortoise who is the last of his species - but also incredibly sad to encounter him in a pen reminiscent of a bad zoo. This set off a whole conversation amongst ourselves about the role of preservation and how to best represent the wealth of biodiversity, knowledge, and research at the heart of the Islands. Designing an appropriate and maybe even challenging welcome center of sorts would've been an interesting studio project.

Seeing the animals up close is probably one of the most amazing experiences. Usually we think they're "in the wild," as if that's some far off place, but for them they're brazenly right there in front of you. The wildlife we see around in the town area the most are sea lions, pelicans, and lava lizards. The sea lions are particularly endearing, flopping on the patio as we're having a studio meeting over drinks and begging us to pet them, although it's technically illegal to touch any of them.

Today we left the hotel bright and early at 6:30am to take a boat out to San Cristobal island, where we would be meeting with a representative from the energy company ElecGalapagos. We ended pu having to wait around for quite a long time for this meeting, and what we discovered was somewhat helpful but could have been more so. In light of that, the most exciting thing of the day - besides discovering a yummy dish called corviches (deep fried mashed plantains with curry fish and shrimp inside) - was a little side adventure some of us took to see El Junco, the only freshwater lake on the islands. It was a ~15 minute ride away, and within this time the landscape completely transformed into a lush green stretch of fern-covered trees and brush.

The climb up to the lake - a former crater - took about 10 minutes through some primordial vegetation, and just that alone was gorgeous. We were under a tight schedule so only got to spend a few minutes at the top to admire the views and the petrel birds flying effortlessly overhead, but it was really completely worth the rush to see the place.

Happy to see El Junco!

After a very bumpy ferry ride back (during which several people discovered they get sea sick), we split up into groups to survey different parts of Puerto Ayora for general studio knowledge. I'm getting a bit too tired to post about that, but Yushiro and I were assigned one section that included climbing onto people's roofs, chatting with the ice cream man, and discovering some amazing looking cliffs at the town's edge.

Also as an aside, we've had another 2 snafus since my luggage getting lost:

the travel agent made a mistake and didn't issue tickets for Juliet and me, so we almost didn't make it here
Nancy's bag got stolen at a local club, which resulted in a day of jumping from one police precinct to the next to finally get her stuff back

By God's grace, no more mishaps! More later.

[Tortoiseland] Day 1: Quito

2011-03-20T04:02:00.000-04:00

For studio, we're voyaging to Quito, Ecuador, and then to the Galapagos Islands for an investigative research trip to include a presentation of our project ideas, field reconnaissance, meeting tortoises and finches, and mixing in some tourist experience (as "required" by our university host).

Tonight we got in around 10pm, and my friend Nadya and I discovered that our bags were suspicious missing from the vast sea of luggage. We soon found that they never made it out of the States and are now chilling in Atlanta (our layover spot). After a mini Spanish lesson from the Delta rep dealing with our claim, in which I cobbled together my lamely sporadic (read: nonexistent) vocab to decipher what he meant, we came to grips with the fact that we wouldn't have clothes for tomorrow and then headed off to settle in and see a bit of the city.

I don't have enough energy at the moment to detail out our first hours in Ecuador, but I feel very foreign to say the least. But it's cool. Out of all my blessed excursions thanks to architecture school, this is probably the most surreal in terms of locale. Tomorrow we tour around Quito and do some presentations, and then the next day... off to Isla Santa Cruz on the Galapagos!

Two abstracts

2011-03-12T22:30:00.004-05:00

Updated abstracts under development for this semester (and beyond)'s long-term endeavors :

Thesis abstract (as of 11 March) :

How can we smartly design from the existing materials around us? This thesis focuses on the transformative potential of the mundane yet abundant waste material of rubble. Within the context of the 20 million m3 of debris remaining from the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, it seeks to develop a catalog of new aesthetic and performance alternatives that will culminate in new hybrid architectural landscapes.

Research paper abstract for Energy as a Spatial Project (as of today) :

The question of what happens with the “end” of productive processes – waste – is only recently being addressed with an ecological attitude. In places such as Singapore where real estate for trash is scarce, the solution of incineration – “burn it than bury it” - has given rise to an unexpected new landscape: the “scenic” landfill.

This paper is a case study of Pulau Semakau, the world’s first sea-based landfill constructed to accommodate the ash and non-combustible wastes from the waste-to-energy (W2E) system. In attempt to eliminate trash and the precious area it occupies in the city-state’s 697 km², the Singaporian government reconfigured their waste management system in the early 1990s, following in the footsteps of Denmark and France by sustainably burning their municipal solid waste to generate electricity. However, even waste makes waste, resulting in the 1995 creation of a 350 hectare island capable of housing 63 million m³ of trash. This spatial manifestation of garbage’s by-product is currently being developed as an eco-tourist destination, a recreational playground coupled with renewable energy production.

Tracing the invisible path of trash from consumer wastebasket to scenic landfill, this paper seeks to reveal the political and social forces at work in forming the Semakau landfill, and to position it within the larger change in cultural attitudes towards garbage and landfill production.

Do we sense a theme here?

Shadow puppet-debris

2011-03-12T20:27:00.000-05:00

Dirty White Trash, via Think or Thwim

In looking for examples of different perspectives on trash, I came across the work of British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, whose work focuses on making some sublime art and effect out of humble materials - in this case, trash. This is one way in which our consumer debris, when seen (literally) in the right light, can be viewed in a completely different way.

Recycled art as an act of resilience

2011-03-09T11:16:00.000-05:00

still from video clip interview / via NPR

My thesis research has taken a turn back towards a year-old conversation for me, about rubble in Haiti.

In my brief survey of where the status of rubble clearance and solutions lie, I came across this compelling piece by NPR correspondent David Gilkey about an artist, Andre Eugene, who has been making sculpture out of recycled material as a way of giving himself and others hope for rebuilding.

I still have to clarify my intentions, but this is one example of how re-aestheticizing waste - considering how rubble can take on a new life in a reconstructed form - can do more than just be recycling.

International Women's Day

2011-03-09T01:38:00.000-05:00

Celebrating women in public service

As of today (March 8th), it has been 100 years since the establishment of International Women's Day. Even as a woman, I wasn't aware that this day existed until my supervisor at the Public Service Center brought it to my attention in the form of an article pitch to showcase a hidden gem at MIT: the MIT Women's League. I then spent the last few weeks reading about the League's rich legacy, talking with some of its board members, and reading about intriguing public service projects the League has funded - for women, by MIT women.

These exciting conversations culminated in an article that was published in MIT News. It's a short piece that focuses the limelight on the Women's League's tradition of public service - both to the community of MIT and on a global scale. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Turning trash into bling

2011-03-06T01:52:00.002-05:00

In The World: Turning old oil into new mileage

The term "catadore" never entered my vocabulary until I learned about the documentary Wasteland, and now in the last week it has come to my attention that a whole initiative has grown around helping these Brazilian trash recyclers both to remediate their backyard (they live and work in Rio near Jardim Gramacho, one of the largest landfills in the world) and to earn a decent wage doing it. MIT News features an article about the Green Grease project, and I'm hoping to both learn more and perhaps incorporate some of this discovery into my thesis research.

Getting trashy with thesis

2011-03-02T20:57:00.002-05:00

2 weeks ago, we had a Pecha Kucha-style presentation. It theoretically was supposed to be 7 slides, 30 seconds per slide = 3.5 minutes of an attempt to explain where we are with our research and what our focus might be. We split into 2 groups and ours was the delinquent one, with frequent "hit the escape!" moments to pause the incessant countdown of slides. So much for punctuality. We did end up having interesting (semi-timed) conversations, and I came out of it with a slightly more focused direction on... where to be looking.

My presentation went a little like this (without words of explanation, for now):

Some questions that Andrew and Liam (our reviewers) had:

Define more precisely my definition of "waste" (which ranges from building materials - which are "not so trashy" - to food scraps - which are more "trash")
Is an examination of rubble too narrow? what exactly would the theoretical premise be?
What is the desired result in the end? (new building typologies based on a conception of new building blocks, or a designed... waste-to-energy plant like BIG?)
What is the ideal context for this work? Post-catastrophe? Daily waste management (i.e. demolition, etc.)?

In a subsequent post, I may 1) articulate what I meant by each slide, 2) explain my fascination with waste/trash/garbage/the end of the cycle, or ruins/remnants/leftovers.

As I started down this path, I got both excited and discouraged: excited that this could be something cool to explore with few tried architecture possibilities (outside of repurposing various building materials in the spirit of Rural Studio) - and apprehensive that this might then, mean, that for further research, I would need to visit some pretty smelly places.

Stomping grounds of yore

2011-03-02T00:55:00.000-05:00

EF - Live The Language - Paris from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

A basic (yet typographically-lovely) language lesson revives the travel bug ...

Back to Paris, I say!

(And is it true that it's been almost 6 years since I convinced the Columbia Architecture dept. that this would be good for my major?)

(This is technically an ad, but hey - it's a well-witted one. Found via Chocolate & Zucchini)

Shrinking / expanding margins

2011-02-27T01:01:00.000-05:00

Dirk Johnson's NYTimes article on the future of marginalia - the act of writing notes in the margins of books - comes in a string of blog posts and recent studies about the impact of technology on the written word. Different parts of our personalities come out in different methods (or, as Livia puts it, "modalities") of writing, and Johnson makes the point that the spontaneity of the pen reveals idiosyncrasies and instant ideas that perhaps are missing from the general typed word.

If someone tried to encourage designers to use a tablet to sketch and take notes, I would immediately reject it. The flow of the inky black pen is too important still in unleashing insights.

To cap it off, I turn to the former poet laureate Billy Collins' ode to the scribble in the margins, a poem I have liked for quite some time and was just reminded of after reading Johnson's piece:

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.

If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Barbie as career adviser

2011-02-26T21:47:00.000-05:00

via GOOD Design

I never thought that Barbie was so influential in directing girls' career paths until seeing this blog post that Fennie forwarded me, talking about the upcoming release of Architect Barbie as a response to the lack of women who stay in the profession.

This discussion about the disproportionate number of women in architecture school vs. in the office started, for me, while I was in the workplace. My architecture firm at the time had a pretty generous policy for mothers in terms of flexible maternity leave and a reasonable work-life balance, although I learned that this was not the norm. I greatly admired my coworkers who managed to raise toddler children while holding significant positions at the company and balancing the professional career of their husbands (incidentally, also architects). How could they handle it? It was only through the grace of company policy (as they put it) that made it possible, along with a love for architecture.

Others haven't been so optimistic nor as fortunate. In college when I told family friends I wanted to go into architecture, many of them cautioned me against it. The number one reason? Zero family life. I can see this to be true even in the lives of some of our faculty. At the beginning, work comes first. It's only after their careers have been firmly established - and the long hours of devotion to projects and clients put in - that they finally then have children. Others don't stick with it so well, which is why in practice, only about 10-15% of firms are women.

Will Architect Barbie make a difference? For one thing, her wardrobe doesn't speak to a true architect's garb. She might have the right glasses, but not the right colors (or rather, lack of color). She should also be holding an Xacto knife and have a laptop slung over her shoulder rather than a document tube. Maybe some bandaids over her fingers from cutting herself with said blade would be realistic as well. Oh wait, that would make her MArch Barbie and not at all reflective of the field.

Back at square one.

[FAST] The ICEWALL complete!

2011-02-24T22:48:00.001-05:00

Reception #1 for the Icewall // photo courtesy of Marcus

This weekend, I had the privilege of helping Yushiro and Kian build their IceWall installation for the MIT 150 FAST festival. The idea stemmed from our class last semester, and they thankfully got to build this 6 foot+ tall, undulating wall of ice blocks. Did I mention that it was also freezing (or below freezing) cold during the process? Marcus and I helped out just during the daytime, but the rest of the building team - comprised of architecture friends and various groupies from Japan and Hong Kong - were building into the night as well.

seeds "floating" inside each block, waiting to bloom

It took about 4 days to build (estimated 2...), but it turned out beautifully and was well worth the effort. Sadly, I didn't feel so great and so didn't make it to the reception today... But it will be up for at least however long the weather decides to cooperate.

The idea is that the wall creates a new but ephemeral facade for MIT (situated in front of Killian court and the iconic building 10 dome). Once the wall melts, the flower seeds within will be (hopefully) planted and grow, leaving behind a legacy parallel to MIT's own growing future. (Or, something along those lines. I was helping Y a bit w/ his description last semester.) In any rate, it will be something cool that people can come to see, and the melting of it will be a pretty sight as well.

- - -

Title: IceWall

Created by: Yushiro Okamoto, Kian Yam

Built by: many friends and Eric, an ice sculpting guru

Location: in front of Killian Court along Memorial Dr.

Study break

2011-02-18T00:08:00.000-05:00

One track in the eclectic soundtrack accompanying late night thesis prep work ...

Makes me want to take a weekend trip.

Suggestions of (a) thesis topic(s)

2011-02-13T00:58:00.001-05:00

or, the beginning of the beginning.

I realized I haven't written very much about my work this semester, so I'll try to begin by painting a portrait of this month since I've been back at school. Spring 2011 is unique, mostly because it's my last semester of pure coursework and my class of Level 3's are also embarking on that thing called Thesis. It's still the preparation phase (hence Thesis Prep), but it's certainly the beginning of the end - or, as I'd rather call it, the beginning of the beginning. Maybe other classmates don't see it in this light, but I keep thinking of it as the potential seed for future work - and if I want to psych myself out, I use the word "life work." Oi.

Although I hesitated initially, I decided to post my first two stabs at writing down some vague thesis ideas, if only to document my thought process and the evolution of this year-long final project. Reading them makes me cringe at just how vague, awkward, and unclear these ideas are, but it's a start. Hopefully by the end of next week - after having done more reading, pondering, sketching, and getting feedback - I'll have a better idea of where this is going. Some people have the issue of giving a simple idea more life. I have the issue of making an overly convoluted and complex question into a more straight forward one. (Often my issue in many things over-thought.)

- - -
Rendition 1: multiple ideas, multiple interests

Nomadic architecture
It may be cliché to speak of the global nomad, but it still remains true that the sense of “home” is less permanent and may, instead, be packed in a suitcase rather than pinned to a concrete foundation. "Nomadic" also suggests portable, deployable, and transient architecture that necessarily incorporates issues of temporality and even spontaneous inhabitation. ... The small scale, flexibility, and malleability of developing a new prototype may be an interesting avenue of exploration within the larger context of change.

Megacity, micro intervention
Cities of almost unimaginable scales, with populations exploding over 10 million inhabitants, are of particular interest to me because they are massive conglomerates of programs and both belong to every inhabitant and agency and yet belong to no one. Some like Tokyo work like well oiled machines with a steadily controlled expansion, while others such as Rio di Janeiro suffer from violent growing pains and vast slum rings. ... Within such a large scaled scope exist pockets of forgotten land, the interstitial spaces or “unusable” real estate. ... I am intrigued by the catalogued behavior of such sites (in the vein of Atelier Bow Wow’s Made in Tokyo) and how to develop an architectural intervention as a platform to somehow cultivate spontaneous occupation.

Preservation vs. Utopic vision
Whether historic preservation, environmental / sustainable preservation, or otherwise, the act of conserving or retaining the existing or past status of a site or culture has often come in conflict with forward thinking development and the striving for the new. However, here I propose a juxtaposition between the past and the utopic vision. ... what is the utopic vision of today that can free architects to dream larger than big?

Rendition 2:
still multiple ideas, masquerading as a single idea but really just a convoluted mash-up

Question #1 : What does a “do it yourself” utopia look like for today’s megacities?

The notion of utopia within today’s architectural discourse is little uttered and little used, and yet what are contemporary visions of the future but self-sufficient, low-impact cities? I suggest that alternative energy and “sustainability” in its vaguest terms have become today’s catch-all promises for a brighter future, yet many pathways to get there reside in the hands of institutions and policy makers. For the average citizen, her participation in this vision becomes reduced to recycling bottles and tacking a few solar panels to the roof, calling it a day. Is there an idealized way of living? Do-it-yourself methods are often a way to empower the individual to create solutions, but in the built environment are relegated to a trip to Home Depot.

I am interested in developing an architectural “tool kit” with an accompanying instruction manual that begins to address these questions of ownership and vision. Within the context of megacities ... the stress of high density living on city infrastructure and the individual life becomes a testing ground. ... A DIY manual in this context could offer grassroots – and maybe even subversive –small scaled architectural interventions to help catalyze change.

Question #2 : What if our stomachs could power the city?

The local food and slow food movements carry an element of nostalgia, bringing us back to the days when farms were literally close to the table and the smell of compost from the backyard garden scented the scenery. It is arguably a healthier way of eating, but although this idealized form of subsistence agriculture may be possible – and is indeed practiced – in rural areas, the urban environment poses particular challenges merely in terms of square footage. Firms and think tanks like MVRDV’s Why Factory have conducted brief surveys that show the absurdity of cities sustained on self-contained farms, but the idea of a “high-tech agricultural landscape” is intriguing to me. How would an agricultural landscape be high-tech? With today’s focus on alternative energies, one being biofuels, an answer to that resides in energy generation.

Here, I am interested in the potentials of an energy producing farm factory – in some ways utopic in conception, but also able to scale down to the reality of a deployable system of “energetic” farming interventions in the landscape.

- - -
Questions for myself: What are the critical issues that are really important to me? Is the conceptual / theoretical bent just an artificial construct to cover up what I'm truly interested in? How do I avoid both the the "save the world" and unreal academic mentalities?

Where to go next: par down, cut, snip, read read read, clarify clarify clarify, refine refine refine ...

What's more romantic than a bus trip?

2011-02-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

... probably many things. (Just talk to someone who has taken Greyhound on any extended trip, and they will desperately try to counter this statement.)

But the extent to which companies will use that ubiquitous V-day holiday as a marketing tool struck me as I was coasting through my inbox and came across Megabus' wish for me to have a "memorable Valentine's Day."

This advertisement made me laugh, particularly after I humored them by clicking the link and found that the target was not the expected page full of actually romantic suggestions for a heart-filled adventure for two, but rather their typical website. Blue and yellow without a hint of pink or even red. In the words of Eliza Doolittle: What a fool I was, what a dominated fool.

False disappointment aside, the idea of the "romantic getaway" or, more generally, the uplifting effect of the unexpected, is thoroughly entrenched in cultural ideas about love and Valentine's Day in particular. It's full of butterflies, cooing doves, and calls to be "whisked away" from the boredom of reality into new heights of ... well, a whole new world, an escape from the everyday.

I confess that I myself enjoy my fair share of adventures with the man friend and can be susceptible to such sentiments, but in the midst of studio deadlines / readings / projects / meetings, then the question comes: what's wrong with the daily? Instead of concentrating so many efforts on a single day - named after a saint who may or may not have even existed and whose connection to eros is tenuous at best - wouldn't it actually be more telling to express the value of the relationship over the course of the year - and beyond?

Two definitions of "romantic" that somewhat reveal the difference:

ardent, passionate
fanciful, idealistic, imaginary

Even #1 is dissatisfying if only as fireworks that fade with the falling of ash. Paper hearts and chocolates get eaten, wrappers crumple and are tossed away, but what endures?

(This is where I'm unsure whether my conclusion should be profound or silly, so you can pick one: profound because I believe a deeper, unfading - but "unromantic" - love is found in God's sacrifice //
or, silly because even after casting a critical eye, I still can't avoid the suggestions that February 14th isn't just a normal Monday, and I look forward to the unexpected planned by the mf. //
Oh well, now you've got both.)

BIG must have hired breakdancers

2011-02-10T00:43:00.000-05:00

... or paid hyper energetic runners to frolic in MTN (a "mountain" apartment complex with parking beneath). Are condos now the new playground, or is this just the way to make architecture look super cool to the general public?

I actually had originally wanted to post the Bjarke Ingels Group's (BIG) animation for the Audi urban futures competition... but it was actually a bit less exciting than this video, or at least lacked the soundtrack to make it more so.

Now you see it, now you...

2011-02-09T17:16:00.000-05:00

via PSFK

One of my courses for this semester "Activating the Mundane," a research seminar with Berkeley professor Walter Hood that looks at urban objects commonly overlooked by designers (i.e. mailboxes, parking meters, etc.) and reimagines their role in cities.

Street artist Cayetano Ferrer called attention to some of these objects in his City of Chicago project by dematerializing them, using photo stickers and other methods to render them transparent. Somehow it's in the virtual disappearance of these signs and objects with a heightened awareness of their existence.

What dreams may come to speak of

2011-02-05T13:39:00.000-05:00

What language do you dream in?

Michael Erard's essay in the NYTimes, "Dreaming in English," highlights that moment of language fluency in which dreamers begin dreaming in their learned tongue - as an escape from English?

As a native speaker, it isn't a profound event to dream in English, although I clearly remember the times when I started dreaming in French and in Chinese, both while studying abroad in the respective countries, and feeling excited about really "getting it." Then it became disturbing to me once I started mixing up the two or unable to think in the other foreign language when I was entrenched in the other. I don't recall ever actually speaking both in a dream, but often I do progress through languages: if I can't think of the word in Mandarin, I'll think of what it is in Cantonese. If the Cantonese word doesn't come to mind, I then think of it in French - and then in English. Worth a study? Maybe, maybe not. Is my brain mixed up? As I learn more - my most recent language being random Khmer phrases - perhaps the answer to that question will be...

oui / si / hai / jaa / shi / yes.

A view that's not from the Peak

2011-02-04T02:30:00.000-05:00

Hong Kong skyline

from a view I didn't get to see while there last summer. Spike's Hongkie Town blog doesn't give the photos justice (they're just a little too small) and these are a bit blurry, but they're still not the "typical" shot from Victoria Peak. I like the Kowloon photo the best: concrete jungles photograph well at night.

Gauge of good design

2011-02-04T01:51:00.000-05:00

How do you measure the impact of good design?

Mandy Brown, on her blog "A Working Library," has some (reblogged) insights.

Just keep posting

2011-02-02T23:45:00.000-05:00

I realized that consistency in posting matters, not just a way of cataloging thoughts but also as a function of process. One of my classmates asked me if I would consider blogging my way through thesis prep, which I readily agreed to - and also which reminded me that step-by-step documentation is important, or else elements get lost with fleeting memory. It's my last full year in architecture school, and as I embark on this road called thesis (... egads!), hopefully I can keep up the posting on a consistent basis as a tool of discipline for myself and - well let's face it - to let people know I'm still alive and that architecture school hasn't completely consumed me. And I will conquer!

My photo storage limit has been reached with Blogspot/Blogger, so I may head to another host rather than pay any money to continue these thoughts.

[K'chea 4] : City / country

2011-02-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

French influence in Siem Reap shows a classier coffee stop than Starbucks - thankfully.

Despite today being the first day of the Spring semester, I still am constantly asked about Cambodia, and memories of it keep coming to mind. One definitive characteristic about my trip that I like to emphasize to people was the fact that we were in the countryside and not in the city, which made an incredible difference in the richness of my experience.

I typically enjoy cities. I grew up in the suburbs of Philly, went to college in the big NYC, and now attend grad school in the snow-laden urban spaces of Boston. I could see myself living in cities in the long term, and otherwise couldn't really imagine an existence apart from them. Down the line, I might even want to study cities.

But this IAP, I reveled in the rural. Angkor Chum was certainly not the most rustic of areas and still had a landmark cell phone tower planted in the middle of a cow pasture. However, it was certainly more so than most areas, and despite my inability to fully get the dust and cement out of my hair with the pour "showers" (basically dumping cold water on my head), some of the things I enjoyed most were:

the rides in the back of Sokum's pick up truck
limited to no internet access (which warranted me to have a "limited access" automated email response, liberating me from actually having to write people back for almost 3 weeks :D )
brilliant sunsets framed by brush and palm / coconut trees
not caring whether I was dirty or not
realizing the amazingness of human networks: who needs Google when you can ask your construction manager, who asks his neighbor, who asks his neighbor where to find rice husk ash. And then instead of calling ahead, we show up at some family's backyard noodle operation and they stare a bit but are kind enough to entertain strangers.

Although we didn't get as entrenched in the community as could be, we still had the great chance to observe true life and work within the village, outside of the tourist lens. (But yes...I did take plenty of pictures nonetheless.)

Once back in Siem Reap, though, I couldn't help but indulge in some hand-foot luxury - in bright pink!

[K'chea 3] : A happy bday beyond language

2011-01-31T09:27:00.000-05:00

27 isn't a particularly notable number when it comes to milestone birthdays, but I have to say that it was probably the most unique celebration in recent memory. When else would you have a chorus of Cambodian primary school students serenade you? I was somewhat hesitant to share my "one year older" news on the trip, particularly since we'd be heading to our group's new work site and I didn't think turning the focus on myself would be particularly appropriate.

But lo and behold, during our introduction to the Phoem Kok Primary School (the site of our constructed latrine), Savoeun (our contact at Habitat for Humanity) said something in Khmer to the kids and subsequently announced to me that they would be singing on behalf of my birthday. I was really touched by this gesture, and even though I couldn't understand a word, it was still a great and completely unexpected way to celebrate.

That night after seeing the site, we had our first of many dinners at the local "5 star" restaurant owned by Sinouen, a woman who exuded a kind of strength and defiance both in the kitchen as master chef and in the "dining room" as proprietor. Putthy (or, affectionately known as Thy Thy) whipped out an English-Khmer birthday song along with a handful of candles, and then we ended the night with a visit to a carnival at the local wat (= temple).

Splendid!

[K'chea 2] : Jum reap lia, Kampuchea

2011-01-26T23:48:00.001-05:00

jum reap lia (phrase) : good-bye

With limited internet access in Cambodia, with one post I said hello, and now with the second I say good-bye to a country filled with smiles, stares (at foreigners, or barang), sampeah (traditional Khmer greeting gesture of respect), and sand - lots of which came back with me to the States and has clogged the washing machine.

I'll have to go backwards and post some memorable moments from the trip, but I realized that 3 weeks is a long time to be both experiencing a new country and away from my own. It's also long enough to grow attached, and I think many teammates share the same sense of budding love for Cambodia.

Some expectations fulfilled during this time :

finishing the latrine for the Phoem Kok primary school
meeting wonderful Khmer people, mostly in the form of our construction teammates Pu Chhea, Thy Thy, and Sokum
learning enough Khmer to have people smile and laugh rather than just stare at us

Some surprises :

detecting tones in Khmer that resemble Chinese, and seeing facial traits that reminded me of people at "home" as well
going dancing not just once, but twice in our humble village of Norkor Pheas - these people know how to have a good party!
getting really positive results from our RHA testing after some less than inspiring numbers at MIT
realizing that I didn't care about getting dirty as long as I got to ride in the back of a pickup truck or moto

Oh, and the sunsets we witnessed on the way back from the site each day were pretty stunning, this one included :

Would I go back? Most certainly so! I'm not sure if it could be in the capacity of a tourist, though - more likely as a volunteer, researcher, missionary, or some other capacity that could give back rather than consume. We'll see what the future holds. In the meantime, let the reminiscing begin.

[K'chea 1 ] Sok sbai, Siem Reap

2011-01-08T04:06:00.002-05:00

As part of the DLab Schools class I took this past fall, I'm currently in Cambodia for almost 3 weeks, doing field research and trying not to get eaten alive by mosquitoes. It's been a while since I've talked about anything school related so as a refresher, this class looked at different approaches to improving schools in rural Cambodia (or Kampuchea, in Khmer). My group has been concentrating on developing sustainable building materials by incorporating readily-available waste materials (here, rice husk ash) into concrete and stabilized soil bricks, with the hope of making school construction cheaper and more locally sourced.

It's actually my 4th day in Siem Reap, the 6th largest city near the heart of the country. Some people refer to it as an NGO wonderland - there are about 140 here (as roughly estimated by one of our community partners) and it's obvious as you walk down the main drag and pass many an English sign for a health clinic or whatnot. The city is pretty equipped (parts of it actually remind me of developing towns in China's Pearl River Delta), so I'm spoiled by the fact that I have internet access in our guesthouse, although as of tomorrow that will no longer be true. My team will head out to one of the areas where Habitat for Humanity operates, est. 40 km away from the city and categorized as "roughin' it," although we'll be staying in a local guesthouse with beds and showers. Amenities!

With Saba as my partner in exploration (not crime - too early for that), we've conquered the city and its environs via tuk-tuk, boat, on foot, and most recently by bike. (Thankfully, we didn't become casualties of reckless student motorbikers.)

We visited a floating forest and village, gotten bitten by mosquitoes (~14 bites on my left foot and counting), haggled mightily in both day and night markets and managed to pay no more than 50% the asking price, compared fruit smoothies across venues, and generally gotten really dusty and dirty.

My greatest milestone thus far: bargaining in Khmer! The key phrase to use was "k'lai pon mai(n)" (although...romanization is pretty iffy in general, so this is based on what the vendors were saying), or "how much is this?" Somehow they didn't expect foreigners to know that, so I got responses in Khmer and managed to keep up the jest that I knew everything they were saying back to me until I got the price I wanted. Win! We felt like locals for maybe a couple minutes. But locals wouldn't shop in touristy markets. Oh well.

Photos to come, once I figure out uploading photos. [Update: photos added!]

Reading underground

2010-12-21T23:49:00.000-05:00

A clip from the article's illustration, by Peter Arkle

The NYTimes publishes a whimsical and lovely way to illustrate commuters' book reviews.

Makes me truly thankful that, now that I'm on break, I can actually read for fun! What a joyful concept, full of possibilities... Any recommendations or favorites?

MIT's seasonal greetings

2010-12-17T23:48:00.001-05:00

MIT Tech TV

These words are the president's, but mine will follow... eventually, once I've gotten sleep.