101 Things I Learned in Architecture School: Matthew Frederick

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School was obviously written by someone who not only went through "the program" but also managed to pay attention to their own students to realize just what wasn't easily getting across.

The small pocket book (which fits perfect in the inner breast pocket of a decent coat or jacket) begins with an author's forward which could have simply read "There are no certainties in architecture except that you won't get it all right, all the time and every rule has enough exceptions to be really annoying".

Each of the 101 points (or lessons) is coupled with a sketch illustrating or commenting on the idea in question. It simplifies the confusing, makes sure of the questionable and seems to offer a rather simple way to explain to others why you spent 6 years of your life learning how to do something you cannot explain simply. I plan to test this book on the MarJ if she amuse me, and see if it clears anything up.

Some of the lessons are specific to school (#42: Those tedious first-year studio exercises in "spots and dots" and "lumps and bumps" really do have something to do with architecture) while others can also relate to the practice (#58: The proportions of a building are an aesthetic statement of how it was built) and some I already want to spray paint on certain new buildings located by the office in which I work (#62, #91).

Where the book excels is in its simplicity. It takes all of 10 minutes to thoroughly read/peruse (more if you are sitting in an architecture office laughing about school and buildings in general), it is completely accessible (we will test that later), it is cheap, compact and relevant from first year of design studio to post post graduation.

AIA Cleveland should be buying this thing in bulk to send to its members and it should be required reading for any first year architecture student. It was a great deal at $10 and I look forward to being able to have enough memorized to immediately see a project or presentation and give it the proper lesson code number to reference later.

Vote for the Bridge Design[Build] design of your liking

September 25, and 26th AllGoSigns, the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative and Ingenuity Festival is hosting an event on the trolley level of the Detroit Superior (or Veteran's Memorial) Bridge with art, food and fun times (fun times actually guaranteed), and it is all free.

Its called (drumroll) the Bridge Project.

Kent State University's CUDC is teaming up Villa Angela St. Joseph high school to offer a variety of built "interventions" along the bridge to interact, intrigue and excited visitors. They have already been working on their designs for a week and have put their early ideas up for public voting and discourse.

Please stop in and reward their hard work by selecting what you would like to experience during the Fest!

And don't forget to come and experience the Bridge Project!

PARKing Day Push - 9 days, c'mon Cleveland!

9 days left until PARK(ing) Day, 2009
Check out the official Cleveland PARK(ing) Day group site and get involved.
Its as easy as clicking a link, making a username, password, etc, etc, etc.

reminder - PARK(ing) Day is Friday, September 18th, 2009

2009 Open Architecture Network Winners Announced

The Winner of the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom is Announced – Teton Valley Community School, Victor, Idaho

www.openarchitecturechallenge.org

Innovative designs for schools in Colombia, India, Uganda and the United States also recognized.

September 8th, 2009 – Teton Valley Community School in Victor, Idaho and architecture firm Section Eight [design] receive the top award of the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom. An emerging practice, Section Eight [design] partnered with Teton Valley Community School to design the classroom of the future. Currently based out of a remodeled house, students at Teton Valley Community School are now one step closer to getting a real classroom.

View the winning designs and finalists: http://www.openarchitecturechallenge.org

Challenge Winner: Teton Valley Community School, Victor, Idaho, USA

Designed by: Section Eight [design], Victor, Idaho, USA

Founders' Award: The Corporación Educativa y Social Waldorf, Bogota, Colombia

Designed by: Arquitectura Justa, Bogota, Colombia

Best Urban Classroom Upgrade Design: Rumi School of Excellence, Hyderabad, India

Designed: IDEO, San Francisco, CA, USA

Best Rural Classroom Design: Building Tomorrow Academy, Wakiso and Kiboga, Uganda

Designed by: Gifford LLP, London, UK

Best Re-locatable Classroom Design: Druid Hills High School, Georgia, USA

Designed by: Perkins and Will, Georgia, USA

Cindy Riegel, President of the School Board says, "We are thrilled. The evolution of Section Eight's classroom design for the Teton Valley Community School was a truly collaborative process involving students, parents, teachers, and community members. It exemplifies the school's philosophy of real world learning and community engagement."

The need for safe, sustainable and smart classroom design has never been greater. Worldwide, 776 million people are illiterate. With less that six years left to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals the World Bank estimates ten million new classrooms are needed to reach its target on education. In addition, tens of millions of crumbling classrooms ¬ including many in the United States ¬ are in desperate need of upgrading. Meeting this demand for better learning environments will constitute the largest building project the world has ever undertaken.

In response, the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge was launched by Architecture for Humanity and principal partner Orient Global in collaboration with a consortium of other partners from around the world. This truly global initiative invited the architecture, design and engineering community to collaborate directly with students and teachers to rethink the classroom of the future. Designers entering the competition were given a simple mandate: collaborate with real students in real schools in their community to develop real solutions. Collectively more than 10,000 individuals participated in this global initiative.

More than 1,000 design teams from 65 countries registered for the competition. The winning design was selected from more than 400 qualified entries by a team of interdisciplinary online jurors. (See Jury Bios: http://bit.ly/oac09jury) Each design was rated on feasibility, sustainability, and innovation in the learning environment.

"The response to the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge has been remarkable. It has clearly captured people's imagination," said Richard F. Chandler, Chairman of Orient Global. "We congratulate the winning teams and everyone who took part in this international effort. Education is the first step in building prosperity for tomorrow's world. The challenge now is to implement the best of these designs in classrooms across the globe."

Many schools around the world share the facilities constraints faced by the Teton Valley Community School. Operating out of makeshift classrooms converted from residential use, a lack of space and an environment ill-suited for learning impedes students' opportunities. The winning classroom design developed by Section Eight [design] provides cost-effective and sustainable teaching spaces and extends the learning environment beyond the four walls of the classroom. Movable panels allow students to reconfigure their space as needed. The building itself is designed to be a learning tool. The mechanical room, a building component normally closed from view, can be seen from the science lab allowing students to learn how heating and cooling systems function first hand.

Teton Valley Community School will be awarded USD $50,000 to undertake the planning and construction of the winning design, and Section Eight [design] will receive a design grant of USD $5,000 to support the school. The school has begun a capital campaign to raise additional funds needed to build their new campus.

In addition to the overall winner, the competition recognized entries in each of three competition categories: best urban classroom upgrade design, best rural classroom design and best re-locatable classroom design. Three building partners, Rumi Schools of Excellence in India, Building Tomorrow in Uganda and Blazer Industries with The Modular Building Institute in the United States have committed to build classrooms based on these designs.

The Founders Award is awarded to the entry that best exemplifies the aims of Architecture for Humanity and the Open Architecture Network. It was awarded to the entry for The Corporación Educativa y Social Waldorf in Bogota, Colombia

designed by Arquitectura Justa for their integrated approach to providing safe spaces for students to learn and play.

Competition finalists will also receive awards, including software from industry leader Autodesk; SMART Board interactive whiteboard from SMART Technologies; Google SketchUp Pro 7; copies of the book the Third Teacher by OWP/P, VS America and Bruce Mau Design and an honorarium from partner Curriki for the best use of the competition design curriculum.

All the design solutions are now available on the Open Architecture Network for designers and school administrators to learn from and adapt to their own context. An international traveling exhibition of the winning designs and notable entries is set to launch in the fall.

To see all the entries and for more information, please visit: http://www.openarchitecturechallenge.org

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond

Published way back in 2005 I hadn't picked up a copy of Collapse (Penguin Books) until late this year as a way of attempting to reconcile specific local neighborhood degradation. While Collapse quantifies the failure of prehistorical to modern societies based upon a 5 point checklist (human environmental impact, climate change, relation with friendlies, relations with hostiles and political, cultural and social attitudes) the relationships developed between the multiple causes (while even sometimes recognized) show an accelerated impact greater than imagined when each cause is studied separately.

It was with this study of the symbiotic relationships that I found the book most interesting. Diamond holds that cultural stigma can be responsible for societies to continue practicing environmentally detrimental practices and failure to adapt properly to their environment (Easter Island, Greenland Norse, Western Montana), to the extreme of famish or population explosion due to improved healthcare and better nourishment, coupled with past cultural identities rationalizing genocide (Rwanda). Even leadership typologies are exposed, those being aware enough to directly influence their environment (Shogun Japan, Dominican Republic) to business practices (Chevron) and the creation of watchdog groups (establishment of the FSC -Forest Stewardship Council- and the counter by the lumber industry of the IFS -Sustainable Forestry Initiative, which does not require third party verification).

While the historical lessons are well intentioned I found the doggedly pace of the book off putting and at times quit while only half way through a chapter not to pick up the book again for a week or so. There was quite a bit of self referential aside which may be fine for readers with short attention spans but in its own right could become a drinking game (Every time Diamond refers his checklist, drink!). The material was very interesting, the conclusions are logical enough to be believable and the end result is that Diamond doesn't depend on an Utopian vision to save us all, if anything the book ends on a note of hope in only that the last 150 years of human civilization have been so dramatically harmful that humans as a race are starting to realize that we are all in this together and that more than technology or prayer, is our saving grace.

In fact, I found so much of the material intriguing I will at my own leisure delve a bit further into the topics, so much so as to use the reference list provided by Diamond in the back of Collapse, which I am sure as a professor, Diamond would appreciate.

Ending thoughts? The topics are interesting and the import of societal collapse, especially now, is one of the most serious concerns of our time. The comparison Diamond makes of bacteria cultures in his TED talk to human societies demonstrate that the collapse comes quickly after the pinnacle as it takes all of our raw resources to reach the point of peak population, at which time we have reached the exhaustion of said resources. The book, in my view, stumbles but there is more than enough of interest buried inside to keep the journey going. I would suggest it as necessary reading to anyone interested in social, philosophical or economic studies as well as a primer on symbiotic relationships for those interested in urban or city planning.

As Diamond notes, we are all in this Polder together.