Just Keep Sketching… Just Keep Sketching…

All the instructors and staff had a great time meeting all of your amazing families at the expo, it was great watching everyone show their relatives and friends all of the work you completed. The expo really exemplified how proud you all should be in what you have accomplished over the last two weeks. Many of you built your first model, drafted your first line, and made lots of new friends. We hope over the next couple of years you stay in touch with each other, whether on facebook or email. Who knows, a couple months from now two of you who live hundreds of miles away might be thinking about studying on the same campus (and even rooming together!). It should really go without saying, that you may of course email any of the instructors at any time for really just about anything! (of course – 2 of us are students and the other 2 are working – so please just make sure to give us a couple days to respond! )

If I really have any advice to give, it would be to just keep sketching. The first day we were here, Victor and Katie talked about how they are going to be teaching you all a different way to look at the world. I believe many of you experienced that during the last week here. Some of you started to notice floor patterns, circulation, materials, others noticed window details and facade variations, and many just started to look at buildings in a different light. Even if you don’t end up going into architecture, just keep sketching – take down your ideas and thoughts – look at things in a different light and it will open up a whole new world to you. All of you who attended the program are already leaps and bounds ahead of all other students thinking about going into a similar program, just keep that in mind!

As the last post – It has taken awhile – but all of the photos are finally uploaded to a kodak album. Click here to go to the kodak album. You will be able to download all of the 979 photos from there.

Please note: about 50% of the photos were decreased in size for space management. If you want/need any of the photos at their original size, just shoot me an email (kyle bigart – email is listed under contact tab) with the names of all the photos and I can send you an email back with the photos!

It was great getting to meet all of you, and we all hope you enjoy the rest of your summers – best of luck in applying to colleges and with your futures!

EXPO TODAY AT 3PM! Crown Hall Lower Core

Dont forget to pick up your kids today! And more importantly than that, please come out to the Expo today in lower core at Crown Hall.

The address for crown hall is: 3360 S. State Street, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA

This is what crown hall looks like:

Crown Hall from the North Side

Crown Hall from the Southwest side

Crown Hall from the Southeast

To get to the expo, you may go up the stairs on either the north or south side of the building. Once in the building, head towards either white “column” (note: they are not load bearing at all and serve no structural purpose, so calling them columns isn’t correct by any means, and Mies van der Rohe would want to kill me for writing “column” …but for our purpose… lets pretend!). So head towards either one of the two white rectangular “columns” and you will be able to find the stairs along the wooden panels, then head downstairs and you will be brought right into the Expo, you cant miss it!

We look forward to seeing all of you! PS. the People page has been updated with Sarah, Stephen, and Victors Q&A sections!

Whistle While You Work!

Lately we have been extremely busy in studio! Wednesday was our first full studio day in a long time, catching up on some assignment and sketch reviews, and finishing up with some lessons, we eventually got to introduce the students to their final project (which had been partially introduced last week). The students essentially developed a concept for a… well… you know what! You will just have to ask them to explain the project In the meanwhile, here are some shots of the students in action!

Shenanigans Part 4 – Friday Night Fort Competition

Got nothing to do on a Friday night? Hmmmm… Fort competition!

We had 5 teams compete in the fort competition, teams needed to be at least 2 people, could only use one set of furniture per room (with the exception of linens and mattresses – i think one group had 5 mattresses in their room). And then lastly, they were judged on 5 categories: Space, Creativity, Secrecy, Inventiveness, and Light.

The groups created some amazing forts, including a fort that had multiple levels, one that you could dance in (it was a “club”), another that quite literally had heart, some with recessed lighting, and some that were just insanely difficult to get into!

We had everyone do presentations on the concept behind their spaces, some used Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideals of compression and expansion, as well as “breaking the box”. Ultimately, we all voted on who we thought did the best and…

 Room 420: Breanne, Kristin, and Maggie were the winners! They received the most points (including 9 first place votes!)

Firm Visits

Tuesday (yes i know – such a long time ago) went great! We started off the day with a visit to Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture. An extremely innovative firm with some extremely high profile projects (they are currently working on a project that would become the 4th largest building in the world!). Unfortunately, the office has a no photo policy, meaning… there are no photos…

BUT! Later in the day we headed over to Valerio Dewalt Train Associates, a completely different type of firm that is also doing innovative work at a different scale (and also allows pictures to be taken!). The instructors set up these two firms for the students because they were great examples of two completely different firms. Many of the students found themselves loving one type of firm, and not neccesarily liking the other one; which from our standpoint is great! We set up tours and visits so the students get exposed and learn something about themselves.

Shenanigans Part 3 – City Visit

Just some fun in the city

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Laura and Kyle Q & A

So probably later than it should have been posted (and later then planned) – a short little Q & A section has been posted under a new page titled “people“.

If you are at all interested please make sure to check it out – Others coming soon!

Building Visits

Monday started a little sluggish, as all Mondays somehow do, but eventually after working in studio and having everyone trickle in from all over, we headed out to the Columbia Media Production Center about 4 blocks south of Roosevelt on State Street. The building is new construction getting completed in 2010 by Studio Gang Architects. For a direct link to building information on the Gang website, click here. We had some leftover time from the tour, so utilizing some of the space for its intended lounging, we had the students break apart and do some interior sketches, followed by some exterior sketches of the facade. The key element that we are trying to have the students focus on now is framing and capturing something important to them, something that they want to remember. Sketching is more than just drawing what you see, its drawing what is important to you at the time (which can be anything in scale from how the sun interacts with the building, to the detail of a door handle).

After the Columbia College Presentation, we headed back to campus for the students to present their newspaper structures. The focus of the assignment is for the students to explore the ability to take something seemingly weak (newspaper), and turning it into a structural object (by rolling). From this we had them put an emphasis on using triangles to form all sorts of fun trusses, spans, and objects! Once we then got back from lunch, we had the students once again get some practice with presenting by posting some of their favorite sketches they have done up on the board for the class to see. Presenting is one tool that architects need to quickly attempt to master as most everything you create in school (and later in life) will at some point be presented to someone else.

The next tour that was scheduled was one that I know everyone had really been looking forward to. We were extremely lucky because we had John Ronan (of John Ronan Architects) present one of his newly constructed buildings (completed in June), the Poetry Foundation. This building is a beautiful example of modern architecture at work. The tour was great because any question the students had could be answered without a problem, and John Ronan was able to explain and also help the students discover all of his decisions in the process, small and big. Many of the students were captivated by the clean lines and unique use of material to distinguish space, as well a double facade system to help with sound insulation. Check out the pictures – it is a great building!

Oh… And yes, we have the coolest students ever

Weekend Fun

We had a blast this weekend doing so many different things. We originally had woke up lazily on Saturday morning to head out to the beach and Lincoln Park Zoo, however the weather had ruined those plans. We quickly scraped together a new idea and decided we would just walk around the city for awhile, and go shopping. We ended up heading to Water Tower Place at the request of a couple students, and decided it was a good choice since its a 7 floor mall with something for everyone (including a lego store). Because they are high school students who get bored with a 7 story mall in 30 minutes, we needed to go somewhere different… so we made our way over to the Magnificent Mile.

The mag mile (as its sometimes abbreviated) is a long strip along Michigan Avenue where seemingly hundreds of shops exist. Its know for its world class shopping, and during Christmas time, they even have a ceremonious lighting of the street with Christmas lights – it really is one of the most beautiful spots in the city during wintertime. We ended up stopping first at the Mac Store, which was only supposed to be for a little, however, we definitely got distracted with all the ipad games they had out to play (Nathan set the high score on a game – ballin!). A little further walk later, we found ourselves at Nike Town for a bit (3 floors of Nike).Eventually, bored of looking at things that none of us could afford, we headed over to the beach since the weather seemed to turn around a little bit. Unfortunately, as soon as we got there we weren’t allowed to get anywhere near the water due to elevated e.coli levels (which sometimes happens). So we decided to then once again head back to Water Tower Place for some more shopping. We ended up leaving Water Tower Place, and since no one wanted any cafeteria food (but its so… good….) from iit, we headed over to the Nordstrom food court for some dinner.After dinner, I headed home with some of the students (which I was glad to be done with walking for the day), and Laura took the rest of the residents over to Navy Pier for some mini golf and a free fireworks show that they put on every Saturday Night. (I still have to get pics from that).

Waking up Sunday, we all noticed that the weather was still pretty crummy, so we decided to go ahead with our plan of going to a movie downtown. To save some money, we ended up catching the cheaper Captain America matinee movie at AMC River East 21 (btw – movies are ridiculously expensive now). All in all I thought it was a pretty good movie, though the thing I am still most shocked about was a preview I saw: they are re-making the Spiderman movies now with a new cast! Seems kind of foolish consider how successful the others were, its not even like they were bad movies or anything, it actually makes me a little angry, its just a big waste of time almost… – but i digress…

Thats one BIIGGGG woman!

After the movie we headed back to campus, and then a group of us rode out to the West Loop for some create-your-own stir fry at Flat Top Grill. Many of them said they yet again didn’t want to have commons food… (but its… so… gooood…) Anyway, everyone that ended up going to flat top (half the group) completely loved it, so I definitely think it was worth it! All in all we probably walked a good 5 miles this weekend trekking across the city and visiting various places.

Photos Updated

Its been a little hectic trying to take photos of everything and trying to keep up with posting them on the blog and flickr, but as of right now, I am about 90% up to date! I still need to post some pictures of some “shenanigans” that happened, but that will be for later. Either way, you can check out the new days through the photo page (like always). More to come soon