whoa, i went to a museum

after many days here in london, i finally finally got a chance to go to a museum, just for fun. the TATE modern is open until 10pm on saturdays, and there is an exhibition there by Louise Bourgeois (spider sculptor) and also an installation by Doris Salcedo of a giant crack in the floor. yay!




anyway some nice beautiful things to see. live vicariously through my camera eye:

gobble gobble

HAPPY THANKSGIVING !













i am thankful for:

umbrellas
warm winter coats (from mom + my roommate antoni's ex girlfriend)
russian cough syrup (from my friend anastasia)
my student oyster card finally arriving (30% discount)
google images (where i found these glorious little "turkeys")
+ a bunch of really serious stuff - but lets just have laughs today, eh?

and i just needed to put these little sheepies on here. don't know why they were in the '3D turkey' search, but alas, they have found me, and i have named them Bob + Norm.

legg warmers, arm warmers, i'm insane

so i've done it - i've succombed to trendiness
i've bought 'warmers:

leggs + arms

(oh come on, it's cold here! and it seriously rains every day. i need them)
they are the greatest things [re]invented!!

new components

we've gone digital in studio now - i'm learning 4 softwares and trying to script, model, and animate some sort of new dynamic systems with variation, difference, and the ability to grow . . . all 'parametrically' of course.

here are a couple pretty images, not sure what they mean, but well, my rudimentary ability to render random shapes is improving i guess! i used a sin-wave script to help me generate these though, that's impressive, right?

uhm, yeah. no, considering i'm expected to be able to do something as complex as this - done by someone else last year:

new knees

my dad is having knee replacement surgery today.
he's having it right now, actually.
i'm not there.

i wish i could be, Dad - i love you!

big wigs

the architectural association has some amazing visitors each week. last week was especially noteworthy:

monday night: Bernard Tschumi

tuesday night: Hella Jongerius JongeriusLab

wednesday afternoon: Peter Cook [archigram]

friday night: Biothing (Alisa Andrasek); DORA (Peter Macapia); EZCT Architecture and Design Research (Philippe Morel, Felix Agid, Jelle Feringa); Gramazio & Kohler (Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler); IJP (George L Legendre); and Xefirotarch (Hernan Diaz Alonso)

bernard tschumi is impressive, there was a long line outside in the cold over an hour before his lecture began. peter cook is absolutely hilarious, you just want to have him as your grand dad of course. and well for me, meeting hella jongerius was a rare moment, though most of my classmates didn't even bother to attend cuz they didn't know what she does. ah, such beautiful things. [image of her "office pets" for vitra]
the friday night crew, are all part of a young emerging new generation of crazy architects. they were qute interesting to listen to, though understanding there work is much more difficult to an ordinary person i think!

you can view links to these events and more on www.aaschool.ac.uk of course. yay.

big eye

a week or so ago, i was taken on a nighttime "flight" on the london eye. i had been on the eye only once previously, during the daytime last year, and the nighttime trip is much more fun (well, atleast if you are a nightperson like me anyway).



it is a fairly quick trip, around 17 minutes or something, but you can really see some amazing things - aside from how murky the thames is!

and no, of course i did not take these nice pictures

- ours are all incredibly blurry and dark like this one of Benny:

timetables timetables

well many keep asking me about TIME.
here, they don't use the word "schedule", its always "timetable". of course.


i have a few that you might be wondering about:

1. DAILY TIME

everything in london starts later than the USA. no one here would be caught dead meeting before 9:30am. clearly, this is perfect for me. (however due to the time required for travelling across the city, i actually do have to get up at around 7am each morning. ek. sometimes i oversleep of course and have to disrupt my roommates shower schedule. oops! not good.)

the advantage is still in my favor though, as everything at my school starts atleast 20 minutes late. often much later. seems architects were never ones for keeping time! so far, i appear quite prompt in the eyes of everyone else. yay.

john street (ref.prev.post) is open from 9am until 12midnight daily - with an occaissional extension until 2am if previously arranged with the tutors (prior to a big deadline). i typically leave each night around 11:30 if i want to take the tube home, but most often i take the bus around 12:00, which is a bit more comfortable. the buses are slower naturally, so i often get home around 12:45/1:00am. (but please don't worry mom, the bus stop is close to my flat)

2. WEEKLY TIME

the weeks go so fast for me. my school is organized according to weeks, this fall-er, autumn-term is 10 weeks in duration (well, plus some extra non-official time that is "recommended"). we are apparently on week 7 already, yikes! each week they print and post a weekly agenda with events, courses, announcements etc for the whole school. often there are many good lectures and exhibitions in the evenings at the main school. i feel like i have just started adjusting and that perhaps it is currently more like week 3? nope, guess not.

each week i have a series of studio time, seminars, and software tutorials. i have no electives and it is all used to compliment each other. like this:

Monday: 10:00am-all day studio course: Parametric Urbanism. (yeah, figure that one out!) also, 6:00pm regular monday night lectures at the main school. 8:00 eat cheap soup on the street. recommended to spend rest of the evening in studio.

Tuesday: 10am-12:30pm Design as Research [seminar]; 12:30-2pm New Anatomies of Architecture [seminar]; afternoon/evening in studio course. in 6 person groups, we present the material in our required readings to the rest of the class and have discussions based on the topics. it is a lot of reading and most of it i have a hard time understanding, but it is very interesting and does all relate to our studio work somehow!

Wednesday: 10am-whenever is Studio course; 3pm-6pm Rhino [software tutorial]

Thursday: all day is expected Studio course

Friday: 10am-1pm Design Synthesis [seminar]; afternoon in studio; 7:00pm regular evening lecture series

Saturday: 10am-12:30pm 3dsMAX [software tutorial]; 1:30-4:00pm Maya [software tutorial]

Sunday: 10am-12:30pm Catia [softward tutorial]; 1:30-3:30pm Additional software tutorial vary, but almost always there is a double session of something. ugh.

3. MONTHLY TIME

hmm, what? crap, its almost thanksgiving?
i do laundry about once a month. in fact, i'm doing several loads right now.

it also seems i only see my roommates about twice a month, we had dinner the other night together for the second time ever. Armenian restaurant in Bayswater - amazing houmus!

i'll be in Paris for a short studio trip next month, after term ends around the 12th of December. i am looking forward to it, hoping to discover some more interesting things than just the regular tourist destinations i did when i was there in 2002. of course, being there to study urbanism, i'm sure we'll find something . . . besides wine and cheese - maybe :)
and then i'll be home in Minnesota for xmas. flying into Minneapolis on December 19th (i think) and back out on December 28th. i am planning to spend the new year in my new city, it should be quite neat - though i don't yet know anyone else who is going to be around for it . . . eeeeh.

4. YEARLY TIME

i will be here for a couple years - technically my program is 16 months, with my end-of-project being scheduled for end of January 2009, with final portfolio/documentation/response submission due in March 2009. what happens after that can't be known, but yes, yes, yes, i would like to work here for a bit. i think only then will i really know what it is like to LIVE in london.

visitors are highly encouraged, but definately contact me in regards to your ideas of timeframes, as school is intense and i will want to be able to have atleast one or two pints with you!

ok laundry is done. bedtime is here. time to shut the windows.

londsay's first visitors - 1st!

some other minnesotans were in london, a couple weekends ago! my friend Alex (left) and his pal Mike? (right) were visiting the big smoke, though unbeknownst to each other until they were here i guess - whatever, weirdos.

i met up with Alex (who was spoiled and staying at some fancypants hotel in soho) and took him out for drinks and a dose of student reality - to a party in my studio with byob and iTunes, and the boys then took me out to a gigantobar in Piccadilly Circus with gigantodoormen + DJs.

on a side note, it should be mentioned that london is a bit like vegas. you can drink on the street. and in phone booths. who knew?

http://picasaweb.google.com/lindsaycarol/MinnesotansLondsayS1stVisitors

skype me skype me

so i finally set up a skype account and can make cheap phone calls with Buttercup (my computer's name is Princess Buttercup, yep)! i even figured out how to send sms messages to cell phones from it!

YOU MUST DO IT TOO

its free to set up. FREE. just go to www.skype.com and download it, yeah? Then search for me, lindsaycarolbear or by my full name. Then, call me, text me, chat with me, etc.

brilliant!

the Royal College of Art

this past week, we did a collaborative workshop with the Industrial Design Engineering students from the RCA (Royal College of Art) in South Kensington. We spent our time over in their studios (with views of Hyde Park!), using their workshops and facilities to construct 1:1 scale models of randomly assigned structures.

8 teams were created with 5 DRL(me) students and 3IDE students each and the pictures can show some of the madness that was the process. my team consisted of 2 guys from Peru, an italian, a japanese, myself (all from the AA) and then an american from Aspen (finearts background), a brit (engineer), and an austrian (product designer). it was a ton of fun (especially to get away from our school for a bit) and we learned a bit how the attitude of other designers is different from ours.

a critique was held on friday, my team was one of 4 teams awarded a prize: dinner at Wagamama! yay. then we had beers in the space, and after a few, the constructions were destroyed at will by the crazyness of the students. then we all went to the RCA "Art Bar" which was quite a happening place, and proceeded to party. It was a nice relief to finally let loose with each other and not worry about a deadline the next day! i now am very aware, however, of how little 'dancing' i do, compared with the rest of the world. These people are insane!

attn: anonymous!

ANONYMOUS commenters (commentors?): WHO ARE YOU??

don't forget to sign your name to your message, i think there are several of you appearing as one anonymon.

i wish i knew who you were!

John Street (aka studio)

hi

this is where i spend all my time! (really)

its old. its crowded. its dirty.

its [typical] studio.
there are many models from years before hanging around, giving the place extra DRL 'ambiance' of course.






there are about 100 students occupying studio-space in this building - which is very hard to believe. the building is 5 levels though and consists of Design Research Lab phase I (my class), DRL phase II, Emergent Technologies (EmTechs), and a few random Landscape Urbanism and Sustainable Design folks (who are supposed to be leaving to give us more space).

its about 10-15 minutes walk from our main school and in an area known as Holborn/Clerkenwell. Its pretty dead on the weekends aside from 2 little mini-marts with hords of cookies and beer for sale. during the week however, there are lots of places to get cheap lunch - and recently a 3pound take-away vegetarian thai buffet has opened next door supplying me with much excitement for all my future evening meals!

one day this large portrait was in the hall . . . now she is gone . . . ?