WMMNA

I found the blog site We Make Money Not Art really cool and interesting. All of his articles seemed to be easy worded, informative with nice pictures. I think I liked the blogs mainly because they talked about things that I haven't ever read about. It really enhanced the articles because he actually visited a lot of the places and talked to people that he blogged about. His layout was very nice and caught my eye because I like the color pink and gray. He/she really seems to spend a lot of time and gives quite an effort to make his/her blogs good.

One of his/hers latest blogs that I liked was the "Post Patman". It talked about a place that he/she visited called the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The “Nouvelles du Monde Renversé” is an exhibition of what seems to be random things made into sculptures. The picture that caught my eye the most was the chickens made of chocolate. I really liked the way he talked about the exhibition in his articles.

When I was in elementary school I remember making food sculptures. If I remember correctly, I made a carriage like the one in Cinderella, out of a pumpkin and other vegetables. I also made a car and flower out of fruits. I think this is why I liked this blog a lot. It was definitely my favorite thing to do, I mean really, a sculpture that you could eat? Best idea ever!

TopMod

:)



TopMod is a program that allows you to make shapes that you couldn’t make in any other modeling program. By adding and deleting edges, you can create or delete handles, holes can be opened or closed, etc. The program is very convenient and easy to use.

I began my model with an octahedron. I used extrusion and the different commands within it to come up with an idea. For a while, I just tried to make the model evened out by adding the same type of commands in each section of it. Once my model was finalized, I messed around with the high genus modeling command to see if my model could look better, but I ended up sticking with the normal one I had before. My model doesn’t really look like a certain object but I liked the way that it was formed. I then took my object to Autodesk Viz to use ambient occlusion.

Ambient occlusion is a shading method used in 3d programs which helps add realism to an object. It does this by taking into account reduction of light due to occlusion. Ambient occlusion is calculated by casting rays in all directions of the surface.

The programs that I have started to use this semester are efficient, handy, and easy to use. At first they are a little complicated because I have to start from the bottom and learn how to work everything within the program. I have done a couple of tutorials and googled some ways to help me but really it’s all about practice. I have worked mainly with AutoCAD and have noticed that these other programs take less time to use. I like them.

Giancarlo G. Perossa

Education:
• The Art Students League of New York
Life Drawing with Leonid Lerman, 2006
• Texas A&M University, College of Architecture
Visualization Science Laboratory graduate study, 2004-2005
• Texas A&M University, College of Architecture
Bachelor of Environmental Design, 2001, Summa Cum Laude
• (Took Fairey freshman year and Maffey third year)
Work Experience:
• Gensler, Houston, Texas (2006-Present)
• Alley Theater, Houston, Texas (2006)
• The Juilliard School, New York, New York (2005-2006)
• Derek Stenborg, New York, New York (2005)
• Texas A&M University Energy Saving Laboratory, College Station, Texas (2005)
• Imago Dei, LLC, Houston, Texas (2003-2005)
• Museum of Cultural Arts, Houston (MOCAH), Houston, Texas (2003)
• Lazarides Design, Houston, Texas (1999-2000)
• Texas A&M MSC University Plus, College Station, Texas (1998-1999)

The first thing that I pointed out when I walked into the art show was that the paintings had a lot of red color in them. During class that day, we had talked about red being a very noticeable color. I asked Giancarlo why he chose to emphasize the red in his paintings and he said that the color stood out more than others and it is more vibrant when put with other colors, like black. He picked red though because of the Tuscany feel. Tuscany uses very warm colors. His work was very architecturally painted. After his wife finished graduate school, they moved to Italy for a little over a year. I asked him if he recommended study abroad for a semester of the internship. He didn’t do study abroad but he recommended it because the architecture that we do resembles architecture in other places. It’s a good idea because it really makes you understand everything more. For example: going to a firm, the architect will be more presentable and look more intellectual because of the background experience. Instead of just saying that you know of something, you can say that you have been there. He told me that it’s important to show your strongest points and really emphasize what you are good at in your portfolio. It will be easier for the firm to realize what your strong points are and what you will be good to do for them. I asked about being ranked number one in the College of Architecture at Texas A&M. He responded by saying that he worked hard and got the hard teachers because there was some teachers that weren’t good and a lot of his friends took them. In the long run he definitely benefited the most because he felt prepared. He said that he went into class knowing he would do his best and would be successful. He said that students shouldn’t take a lot of classes, like 15 is too many, 12 is a good amount so you can make all A’s. On a side note, Giancarlo knows Spanish and Italian. He is very successful, winning a lot of awards for his work. I really liked his show. He was an extremely nice guy, cool and laid back, very informative.

Aggieland Saturday

Last Saturday I volunteered to help the Architecture College at Texas A&M work Aggieland Saturday. At the beginning, I was scheduled to work the first shift for a total of three hours. A couple of girls and I met up at Langford and got ready for a hard day at work. I had gotten an email earlier on from Michael White that gave directions in what to do when I worked my shift. My job was to take the visitors and give them tours throughout all three of the Langford buildings. I was a little nervous at first because I felt like I didn't know much about certain departments within the architecture program and I didn't want people to get the wrong impression. Everything turned out great. I learned a lot more about the college myself through the tours I gave. I think that I did well informing the parents, as well as the students about Texas A&M, Architecture College, and college in general. I actually ended up working both shifts which was over six hours. It was nice being on the other side giving the information instead of receiving it. Aggieland Saturday was very successful and I think I did a good job of informing the future students.

Collage

The assignment was to use Combinformation to make a collage about architectural things that I liked. The program was really cool. It was so easy to work with and the variety of images that came about was nice. The steps to working this was typing three keywords, then images would pop up and all I had to do was pick which ones interested me and put them in my collage. The three keywords that I picked were architecture, landscape and mansions. Both architecture and landscape are very general words, but I still wanted to search them to see what images I could find. Mansions was the random keyword I wanted to search. I did this because I was curious to see what kind of images came out of the word. Mansions usually have something interesting and unique about them, so I wanted to see what kind of designs came about from the search. I found some really cool landscape images and photography in general that I liked. I picked my favorites and incorporated them into my collage. Here is what I ended up with.

Menu Design

Matt Nolan and have been working on our menus together. Though we have the same basic format, our layout is a lot different. I decided to add a rainbow stone background because I think that color is very important. The titles for each section in the menu is a color from the background light. I used "Chick": 30pt. for the titles and "Croobie": 12pt. for the items in the menu. I think that the white font for the items in the menu is a good choice because it's very easy to read. I tried to keep everything spaced out so that there's no confusion. I want to keep this a one page menu (front,back). Here's what I have.

City Lights

I was searching through some magazines at Evans Library and I found this really interesting article over lights. The layout of the article was really nice. The article was divided into two sections, the first top half was the title and reading, and the bottom second half was the picture that the article was over. I think that there should always be something in an article that catches a persons attention. For this article, it was definitely the picture (colors within the picture). The reading was very easy. The article had two main rows of reading. There was a lot of space between each section of the reading so it was very easy to understand. The font type was fairly normal with a couple of different colors to combine with the colors on the picture.

Urban Land Magazine is a "30 page special report on retail markets for multinational investors, and how new retail designs driven by "de-mailling," urbanization, and societal influences are changing how malls engage their communities in the US, Europe, and Asia." I looked into the January 2007 issue on the Back Page. City Lights talks about how six members of the British Design Partnership (BDP)attempted to change how people view and what they think of the Manchester, England by using 45 torches and 110 light-emitting diodes. The conclusion was that if they achieved this by only using 20 minutes of battery power, the possibilities of permanent lighting installations are endless. The "guerrilla lighting" event was a campaign to show how lighting has an impact on the cities in which people play, work, and live.

Menu Ideas

I have a set idea on how I want my menu to look like in the end, but I decided to mess around with the color schemes and see how a single color background worked with a regular light font. I think that even though a regular color background could work, I don't like it. It doesn't look very appealing and it seems a little unprofessional. I want to find a picture background that also has a good color scheme. As far as the menu, I want to keep just a single page, front and back. The front will contain drinks and the back will have the food and desserts. One of the menus that I thought was really cute was from a coffee shop called "Common Grounds" in Waco. I plan to emphasize that idea into my own menu.

Architecture's Future

Michael Meredith

Michael Meredith is the Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He wrote Notes for those beginning the discipline of architecture. Some statements that I really liked from the reading:

“You need to find a problem or methodology or technique that is smarter than you. Then this problem becomes what you use and compulsively repeat, instead of something that is already past, and it serves as your creative device”.

“Eventually you decide to scrap the entire endeavor, because you just can’t make your thoughts stick together into a beautifully constructed whole. You think maybe you should write your bildungsroman, something useful like a survival guide or Cliff Notes or an introspective user’s guide or something closer to Rousseau’s Confessions. But how could anyone possibly represent the recursive self-conscious mess of architecture? In the end, all you’re left with are your pathetic “Notes for those beginning the discipline of architecture””.

On a side note, I am taking Fairey’s studio this semester. At the beginning of the semester we each had to pick a word that described ourselves. The word that I picked was “exuberant”, so from then on I have had/ will have to incorporate my word into every project. I just finished my exuberant black and white composition this weekend and Meredith mentions exuberant compositions, which I find extremely cool.

Author Information:

Michael Meredith is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He teaches in the architecture core design studio sequence.
His professional practice engages interdisciplinary discourses, ranging from art to technology, producing a spectrum of design work which includes furniture, products, sound, speculative architecture projects and residences in New York, Ontario, Texas, and California. Recently he was a finalist for the design of the Pentagon 9-11 memorial and the PS1/MoMA Young Architects competition. In 1998, he was a winner of the Young Architects Competition at the Architectural League of New York. His design work has been published in Architecture, Architectural Record, Casa Brutus, Competitions, McSweeney’s, the New York Times, Oculus, and Surface. His writings have appeared in A+U and Artforum. In 2003, he was a resident at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and in 2000 he received a residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.
He received his BArch from Syracuse, his MArch with distinction from the GSD, and the Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship from Harvard University. In 2000, he was awarded the Muschenheim Fellowship from the University of Michigan, where he taught in 2000-2001. From 2001 he was an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design—where he was a corecipient of a Canadian Foundation for Innovation grant—before joining the GSD faculty in 2004.

Thoughts on Music

I read over the articles Thoughts on Music by Steve Jobs and Apple's Jobs call for DRM-free music by EE Times, an online Global news. Both, my sister and I, own Nano iPods. The music that I download comes from LimeWire. It's free and convenient. All I have to do once I download the music is transfer it to iTunes and when I connect my iPod to the computer, it automatically updates the newest stuff. I'm not really sure how much space each file from LimeWire takes up on my computer, but I do know that when I add a song to iTunes, it compresses it so that there's more space available. I know of a couple of people that do buy the songs from the iTunes Store but they only have a couple of songs. I honestly don't think I would ever do that. Why pay when you can get songs for free? There's way too many songs that I want to download and paying $.99 for each song would definitely add up in the future. My opinion is probably way wrong but until someone makes it impossible to download free songs.. I'll probably continue to use the regular programs.

Favorite Tutorial

My favorite tutorial was "using rulers and guides". I learned that by going to layout margins and columns, I can change the number in which I want the page to be split. I can use these different columns for text or anything. At the top and left there are ruler guides which help align objects. This makes it easier to position or align the objects in exactly the same page like on the example.

Louis Vuitton Foundation and Wayne L. Morse Courthouse

Foundation Louis Vuitton

The Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France is a bridge between the Bois de Boulogne and the Jardin d’Acclimatation. It will serve as a gateway to the Jardin and an entry to the museum. The Louis Vuitton Building includes a cafe, interactive documentation center, auditorium, exhibition space or event space, educational facilities for children, and "chapels" dedicated to site-specific installations made by artists.

Wayne L. Morse United States Courthouse

The Wayne L. Morse United States Courthouse in
Eugene, Oregon is a building made up of two distinct areas, the quotidian and the honorific. The main focus of the building are the courtrooms which are located in articulated pavilions that float above a two-story platform that houses office and administrative spaces. The appearance is referred to the fluid nature of the American Judicial System. The system is designed to be flexible through continuous challenges and interpreted by the proceedings of the courts.

Styling Blog

So I was searching through the internet to find some cool blog styles and I came across this website. I definitely think that I am going to start using this website because not only does it have cool templates, but it has tutorials over how to style your blog and photoshop in general! I also found that if you browse through the website there's some links that you click to look up cool color schemes.

Open Source

Open source is the latest unruly technology. It lets in fresh ideas. It illustrates the principles to promote open access to the public and design process for different products, goods and resources. Open source projects are managed by individual developers, not by companies. The benefits of open source are the same as the benefits of any other free market: competition between multiple suppliers results in lower prices and more improvement.

A good characteristic about open source is that the key developers can lead but they will not ultimately control the projects. It provides insurance against the loss of key developers and against the developers taking the software in the wrong direction. Now that Microsoft has taken over the software market, the open source process has opened up new paths and an entirely new class of ideas. Up to now, open source development is most often associated with software projects. An example of an open source we use is Mozilla Firefox.

Apache, an open source Web server, is one of the most important and commonly used software applications to emerge from the open source community. Estimates show that about 65 percent of all Web sites worldwide run Apache. The origin of the name was “a patchy server. After the entire technical staff was hired by Netscape, the university-developed NCSA web server was dumped. A couple of users of the NCSA server gathered around and made an informal group that coordinated updates and patches to the NCSA code.

Parametric Modeling

Parametric modeling takes a slightly different approach on 3d modeling.  It allows you to first
draw the figure, then you can extrude it three dimensionally. Parametric modeling also allows
you to set up restraints in your object.  Which is help "enhance design intent."  This type of modeling
keeps the relationships between an object and its various parts.

The first type of parametric modeling "to tie together all component views and annotations parametrically" was
Revit. I found this website http://www.csanet.org/newsletter/winter05/nlw0506.html that had a good example of parametric modeling compared
to CAD.  Further down it explains how parametric modeling
would be able to change the box by simple changing the
text, while CAD would have to delete the first box and
then create a new box to the new specifications. Parametric
modeling seems to be another reason why Revit puts CAD in
its shadow.

Parametric modeling not only allows users to create new
designs, but also to change an idea or object quickly.
The downside however is trying to adjust objects that
are irregularly shaped. Irregular objects are created
by adding part of other objects while taking away that
of others.  After awhile the steps get confusing and hard
to understand.