+ 18 April 2012

21 | White House Youth Town Hall

Last week I was very fortunate to speak at the White House Young America Series at KLRU's historic Studio 6A. The event served partly to illustrate ways students are engaged in community endeavors and partly as a forum for attendees to pitch issues that could then be discussed in smaller groups.

I was chosen as one of seven featured speakers that addressed issues ranging from sustainability measures to technology and education, immigration, and more.

My talk centered on, well, architecture. More specifically, how architects and students are impacting Austin through initiatives by the School of Architecture, with an emphasis on how I imagine the potential framework for a meaningful dialogue between architects and the community.

It was live-broadcast to students across the state of Texas, as well as to an audience of about two-hundred in the studio. It was a really great experience that I will describe in detail once school slows down. I am planning on putting the presentation and corresponding slidshow up on youtube, as well. So look for that! That's all for now.

+1 April 2012

20 | Pictures from Belo Horizonte, Brazil

I don't think it would be worthwhile to write about everything we did each day, so I'll summarize and post a lot of pictures. Belo was really, really interesting. It's a mammoth city with a mild climate. It's also a young city, making its unchecked and wild development all the more interesting.

We were nonstop tourists, which was great. The food was exciting, the predictable rainstorms made every afternoon a little romantic, and being surrounded by Niemeyer buildings was a nice treat. So here are some pictures! More on how my trip influenced my studio design later...I'm still sorting through that, myself.

+ 27 March 2012

19 | Overdue for an update

Studio has picked up pace a bit and other deadlines and presentations have prevented me from doing a decent post-Brazil write-up. It's coming! In the mean time here's a rendering from my review coming up. I've taken a bit of a marketing approach now. Brazil made me want to try to design the project from the brand, up. So here are some teaser images to be elaborated upon later.

+ 4 March 2012

18 | ab(di)stractions?

Really hung up on the scale of the conference center I'm trying to design, but I worked it out after playing with some canvas. Five days until Brazil!

+ 29 February 2012

17 | Studio Brazil

Although I intended for this blog to be temporary during my semester in Europe, I think it might be interesting to continue to update it throughout this semester.

Without getting bogged down in too much of the project details, this semester I'm in Barbara Hoidn's advanced studio designing a hotel and conference center in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. A week from Friday I will leave with my studio for South America to visit the site and to practice my Portugese.

My professor has been in Germany for the past couple of weeks, so I'm in the habit of submitting my design progress to her digitally.

I only just realized that it wouldn't be difficult to post some stuff here, too.

As the project takes shape there will be a much more coherent stream of documentation.

But here's my early approach to the project. I'm working with a rough kit of parts at the moment.

A lot of work ahead of me next week, and then it's off to Belo Horizonte for mid-review! Stay tuned.