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Downtown! That's how far I had traveled

Went out for a drive today, the idea just being a cruise down Mulholland Drive since I had never been. First thing was to gas up because I didn’t know how long I’d be driving around, so I thought I would visit the convenient Shell at Olympic and Grand. I pulled in only to find every pump station had a paper “out of service” sign. That was weird. Hope they don’t close down. So I went to the Chevron on Washington. They also had hot dogs so I grabbed one of those and a Sobe green tea to enjoy while I was admiring the view from one of the look-out points. The approach to 101N on 110 was expectedly slow and I couldn’t help worrying about the car behind me braking in time (a few weeks back I got rear-ended so I was driving a Corolla rental). Once I took my exit I missed a turn and ended up driving in the maze of hills houses east of the 101 but finally made my way back down and crossed the freeway to Mulholland. The first look-out point was PACKED with cars so I got back on the road and pulled over next chance I got, which happened to be the entrance to Runyon Canyon Park. Yaaay. There were lots of exercise-geared-out young people there, and some people just walking their dogs, and some people just being tourists. I parked and followed everyone else walking up a trail. This lead me to what looked like the highest look-out peak with wooden benches (more fences with some thickness to them). LA Inc was right! 360 degree views of LA. Before this discovery, my best view of LA had been from the 105/110 interchange coming back from the airport. This definitely beat it- a guy there mentioned apologetically that on a clear day you could see the coast and Catalina Island from where we were. I told him I’d have to find a clear day. From this point you could really understand Banham’s ecologies of LA, especially the Plains of Id, haha. There it all was – the valley, the hollywood sign, griffith observatory, downtown (heeey loft), west LA, and everything in between. A guy behind me was telling the girl he was with (was it a first date?) that it was a cool place to go to at night and see city lights as far as the eye could see. Something to look forward to!

Cool cactus with a pink bubble coming out of it!

That center white speck is Griffith Observatory

My stealth rental car that lets me blend in

Working at John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects has been a real treat. Why, just this Friday we were hanging books from the ceiling and projecting old movies on huge light balloons. I was lucky enough to be put on the FIL Guadalajara project, a large international book fair held in Guadalajara, Mexico every year in the winter. Basically we’re a team of two (Garrett on the scissor-lift) with input from the bosses. Oh, and the office is so cool, people can bring their dogs to work (say hi to Buddy).

It works!!

Hanging the books

the test

iiiiiiiii'm a dog

Just got this notice on the door to the office building:

Thanks to Emily, who posted pictures from our USC School of Architecture graduation ceremony on the school blog portion of Archinect.

I’m back to the grind in studio now, but tonight all of us from the graduating “+2″ program trekked out to suburban Chino Hills to have some Buffalo Wild Wings. I’ve never gone to a wings place before, so it was an interesting experience. Did some reminiscing and laughing, a nice break from finals.

Thought I would post some of the stuff I’ve been working on that’s been keeping me busy. Rhinoscript is a killer. The basic idea behind my last studio is to add performative intelligence into buildings, specifically in this case, a high-rise tower, through the incorporation of parametric controls. This leads to the possibility of “breeding” buildings or generating many possible design iterations that can be evaluated by their response to site, programmatic, or aesthetic criteria.
The studio has been using Rhinoscript to aggregate our towers, and I just finished a script to generate the structural system that is going for a concrete semi-monocoque. The internal bracing perform structurally and mechanically for ventilation, creating a “breathing” tower. Now I’m onto scripting the skin to control the window openings!

Not really, but I was on the news by being in the right place at the right time! My best bud Ed and his seminar made some proposals for a memorial for the USC freshman who was killed by a hit and run and Channel 4 came to make a story out of it.  While listening to Ed explain his stuff, the camera guy shot some footage of us. Now I know how much I need to work on my posture. Check it out: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/School_Project_Based_on_USC_Hit-and-Run_Los_Angeles.html

Kind of. There’s an adventures-in-Spain blog floating out there somewhere. More like my first website! All made possible by Clint, the constant opportunist, who alerted me to a deal on domain hosting. THANKS BOYFRIEND!