Buildings are usually complex wholes made of disparate things – materials, technologies, concepts, knowledge, etc – brought under the auspiciousness of a singular intent. As a cohesive whole, the architecture does not indicate an aesthetic but rather, a regulating intent. To understand a building as an architecture one must undergo some form of analysis. Between the intention of the author (very difficult to find out and frequently irrelevant to the interpretation of the text) and the intention of the interpreter (who simply beats texts into a shape which serves their purpose), there is a third possibility – the intention of the text. This assignment asked students to analyze a building in its present state and to argue whether or not the building itself is effective in achieving its desired meaning.

Conventional history, for the most part, tells us that architects’ drawings are considered outside of the study of fine art. Normal architectural practice simply puts drawings to use without reflection. The assumption as it stands is that architects’ drawings present a thin description of reality specific to a singular subject matter, devoid of any objective interpretation. But why is the painter’s mark considered replete with all aspects of its stroke given meaning, while the line of an architect’s diagram has its meaning attenuated? The Mirror of Drafting course presented students with several assignments meant to unveil the expressive medium of drawing.

A designer’s work surface can be the most limiting component when working. More surface allows more things to be accessible at one time. We see this in productivity studies that result in employees being issued 17” monitors instead of 15” monitors, dual monitors, larger cubicles, and so on. We see this in the workplace when upper management gets a huge office with a ‘C’ shaped multi-desk arrangement, while the journeyman employee gets a 4’x6’ cubicle. A busy desk makes for a messy employee or an overloaded student. At school in DC, I created a non-invasive, ergonomic addition for my desk that would increase my productivity.

With a plethora of sprawling buildings in my portfolio, my fourth year professor suggested I design a project for AISC’s Steel Design Open Competition. The program had to be comparable to the non-open competition – an aquatic swimming/diving center. The space submitted had to require long span steel structures and utilize modern steel construction methods. Under these constraints, the building would undoubtedly be a large, cellular building. Drawing from my experience exercising along the Potomac River just south of DC, I proposed an exercise research center, headquarters for Gatorades product analysis department, to replace an existing power plant along my favorite jogging trail. The GSSI, Gatorade’s Sport Science Institute, would allow enthusiasts and beginners alike to take their personal exercise to an all new level, while providing the Gatorade scientists with larger sample sizes for their data analysis.

To kickoff the spring semester of fourth year design school, an Arbor Day competition was held where students were asked to design something to enhance Frady Park, a small green space in a nearby neighborhood. Students could design whatever they wanted so long as it cost less than a thousand hundred dollars to make and that it drew on the traditions of Arbor Day for its inspiration.

Urban design seminar required students to team up into large groups of six or more to design a city located in the Piedmont region of western Virginia. My group was asked to design a bounded city with a density of almost 40,000 people per square mile. The city had to be able to support approximately one million people and had to offer all the typical components of a functioning city: civic agencies, educational board strategies, parks, building archetypes, and other infrastructure.

In urban studio, this project asked students to design a mixed use building that challenged the traditional arrangement of its scheme – public facility on the ground floor and private rooms for rent on the upper floor. Students were asked to pick their own site for the project, to propose the clientele, and the needs of the clientele on their own. I chose to work with a popular coffee house down the block from my school. The project was to include all the mixed use functions typically found in a building of this type, but would offer opposition to the traditional norms found in buildings of this kind. Up would be down. Walls would become the sky, and so on.

Design is almost always a process of problem solving. Architects, planners, product designers, and artists start with some subject matter and they work to produce a composition that engages the viewer with the subject. A good design is one that evokes a feeling from the user of certainty, as if its solution is meant to be, and that any alternative design would be less effective than the design they are seeing. When my school found itself the recipient of a few hundred pounds of donated concrete, of course we had a concrete design competition. My roommate and I teamed up to join in the fun.