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The time laps of the Ambitions to Grow project.

CITA workshop #3, working with composite materials and it’s load-bearing abilities 

Final project for the Index:Awards pavilion

November 1-9, 2011: This week was another intensive workshop with CITA (Center for Information Technology and Architecture) called ‘Ambitions to Grow: vernacular strategies for spatial creations’. We had two visiting lecturers from London, Petra Jennings and David Andreen, both of whom have been interested in natural process and it’s implications in architecture for some time. The original prompt for the workshop was: “The workshop will investigate real-time, agent driven approaches towards design in a collaborative and hands-on way. We see today that the convesional approach of separating planning and design from the act of construction lead in practice often to failure by not taking into account the complexity and unpredictability of reality. Within the experimental workshop we seek to embrace constant transformation processes as drivers for good design and performance.” The workshop was focused around creating a structure made up of 6,000 truncated octahedrons by forming four different groups (structure, space, light and air-flow) and having them build together, each one building towards a different goal. The example of this idea in nature is that of the termite and a termite mound. The above image is just the invitation to the gallery opening, but I will but up time-laps videos with more explanation soon. Also you can check out the website for the gallery at http://ggggallery.com/ (it is under construction at the moment, but will hopefuly be up and running soon)

November 1-9, 2011: This week was another intensive workshop with CITA (Center for Information Technology and Architecture) called ‘Ambitions to Grow: vernacular strategies for spatial creations’. We had two visiting lecturers from London, Petra Jennings and David Andreen, both of whom have been interested in natural process and it’s implications in architecture for some time.

The original prompt for the workshop was: “The workshop will investigate real-time, agent driven approaches towards design in a collaborative and hands-on way. We see today that the convesional approach of separating planning and design from the act of construction lead in practice often to failure by not taking into account the complexity and unpredictability of reality. Within the experimental workshop we seek to embrace constant transformation processes as drivers for good design and performance.”

The workshop was focused around creating a structure made up of 6,000 truncated octahedrons by forming four different groups (structure, space, light and air-flow) and having them build together, each one building towards a different goal. The example of this idea in nature is that of the termite and a termite mound.

The above image is just the invitation to the gallery opening, but I will but up time-laps videos with more explanation soon. Also you can check out the website for the gallery at http://ggggallery.com/ (it is under construction at the moment, but will hopefuly be up and running soon)

October 12, 2011: Above are the very first concepts of potential design strategies for the Index Award pavilion. They look a a couple different approaches to design and how these ideas can take form through finding functions/program later in the semester. This is the first phase of the design process, followed by program at the end of November and the final project at the end of January. I will put up the prompt for the phases of the project soon.

October 3, 2011: Research about Index, a foundation started in Copenhagen which promotes ‘Design to Improve Life’ by sponsoring designers around the world with ideas on how to better peoples daily lives. There are five different categories of design: Home, Work, Body, Community and Playful Learning. The above examples are winning projects from the Body category.

  Our assignment this semester is to design a new pavilion for Index that will travel all over the world and display/contain the winning projects as well as a possible education center.

For more information about Index and the Index:Awards visit: http://www.indexaward.dk/

September 26-30, 2011: This was a week long workshop with a visiting professor from Argentina, Claudio Vekstein, where we were given a site, an unused public space in Copenhagen, and asked to find a way to reactivate the space. Through mapping and other studies of the area, we came up with the above concept for the space.

September 5-12, 2011: The first week of school was a workshop focused on new ways of using everyday materials. 

September 3, 2011: Today I ventured up to North Zealand to visit the farm, Fuglebjerggaard, owned by the famous danish cookbook writer, lecturer, baker, etc., Camilla Plum. My friend Sarah, who I went to to kindergarden with in California, has been living in Denmark for over a year and working with Camilla for a little over two months. There was a harvest fair up at the farm today, with food, baked goods and beautiful flowers everywhere! The farm is truly a magical place, but unfortunately the above pictures do not do it justice. I will try to find better ones and post them soon!

September 2, 2011: One of the partners from the Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta, Jenny Osuldsen, (based in Oslo with an office in New York as well) came to the architecture school today and gave a lecture before the opening of the show the school was putting on the the gallery of the firms recent work. 

The firms website is: http://www.snoarc.no/

or http://www.snohetta.com/

The link to the information about the show at the school is: http://www.karch.dk/uk/Menu/About+The+School/Events/Exhibition%3a+Snøhetta

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture

August 29-September 2, 2011: Orientation week! The first couple days was all information about the school, tours of the campus and the workshops, library, offices, etc. and getting to know a lot of new people. September 1st was the opening of the school, which was recently joined with the design school and the music conservatory, so the opening ceremony was very grand, but all in danish. After the opening ceremony it is tradition to have all the incoming freshmen bachelor’s students group up and create a way to get around 10-20 people across the canal in the back of the school. Most tried to make rafts out of wooden palettes or blow-up inner tubes,all failed and ended up having to swim the rest of the way across (it’s not very wide, so that’s not a very big deal, except you get soaked). 

The architecture school is divided up into departments, each of which covers a different area of study within the architectural field. They have specific departments for looking at everything from the urban scale to the furniture in a space. I was placed in department 8, which is titled ‘Architecture, Experiment and Technology’. The department claims to “…focus on new ways of exploring and challenging architecture’s theoretical conditions and practical association with ‘space’.” Sounds interesting…we’ll see what happens.   

August 26, 2011: This evening I was sitting on a small canal in Christianshavn and a group of very nice gentlemen offered to give me a night time tour of the canals of Copenhagen in their boat. The pictures above are some of the things I saw!

August 22, 2011: Today is my mom’s birthday…Happy Birthday Mom!!!

I went to a cute will cafe on Blaagaardsgade today (one of the nice side streets off Norrebrogade). I was sitting in a cafe called ‘Kaffe and Klums’ which is a 70’s style coffee shop with games to play, old furniture everywhere and second hand clothing for sale. A man from the paper came in and took a picture of my friends and me sitting there and it was later on the paper’s website (I don’t think his review of the place was very good, but it was all in danish, so I couldn’t read it). There is also a bar on this street called ‘Props’ which sells Lagunitas beer!!! It was so exciting to see it there, but they were charging $8.00, so I guess I’m just going to have to wait until February to drink it again. 

August 20, 2011: Today is Gay Pride in Copenhagen!!! It’s much calmer than San Francisco’s, but it was still nice. There was a stage in the main square right outside the town hall and a parade that went past Tivoli (the amusement park of Copenhagen). There was only one guys that I saw that was dressed “super” crazy, I call him the Rainbowdude, but I don’t know the girls in the picture posing with him. I have not yet been inside Tivoli, but I will be doing that soon before it closes for the winter (I will add photos of it when I go).

August 17, 2011: Today I went to Nyhavn, which is an area right off the main canal that is famous for it’s bars and cafe’s. The small canal is packed with boats, old and new, all very beautiful. This is also where most boat tours in Copenhagen leave from.

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