Although program within a building has previously gone as "form follows function", the idea which leads to building longevity is that of adaptable space. If space can adapt to hold many different functions, it will see more use and diversity within its lifetime. Empty buildings become warehouses, then offices, then art galleries, then dance studios, and so on.
Adjacency of Spaces:
Looking into the breakdown of planned program spaces, I want there to be a blend between private spaces (such as offices and residences) and public spaces (exterior landscapes, markets, and retail).Activities and Circulation:
Associating the private urban spaces and the public landscape spaces led to me thinking about the situations in two different ways: the horizontal and the vertical natures of both. Coming up with potential circulation, there could be an interesting mix of both horizontal and vertical in the blended spaces, interior and exterior as well.
In this idea map I wanted to explore the bridge between two topics that I have great interest in. I created a common path through words of subtopics and details that pertain to each topic. The words close to each topic can be translated between natural ideas and their man-made counterpart.The visual abstract takes images related to the two topics, and combines them into ideas of how they might integrate into an architectural idea.
The home and the water: Having lived and grown on an island for a significant portion of my life, I am attached to the idea of living close to the water.Movement through outdoor space: As a competitive cyclist for the past five years of my life, many of the experiences I've had of the environment I live in have been on the move. I feel as if it gives me the general knowledge of the city on a large scale, the neighborhoods and open spaces become more distinct and you gain a better sense of direction. It makes it a much nicer experience when you slow down and begin to look at the city in a smaller scale.
Travel: Experiencing new places and cultures is something I have loved doing and hopefully will continue to do to broaden my view on the world and where I can fit into it.
So for this exercise, we're taking general thoughts about thesis topics we may be interested in and breaking them down into something more specific that can relate to an architectural idea.
So after the last round of collages, I felt like I was getting stuck trying to make an image that was quite literal relate to a more abstract notion of the term I was trying to define. I put together new images as collages to abstract a bit more.
Light and Shadow: So putting two and two together with what I was trying to show in my last round, I wanted to create a central beacon of light where everything representational of shadow radiated off of it. I tried to match the direction of shadow with their positioning on the collage.
(Section)
Boundaries: This time I wanted to focus on the natural boundary, or boundaries that were created by nature or the landscape. I tried to include a few of the elements that would made up a natural boundary: water, fields, trees, and mountains. Then I mixed in a few man made elements, like walls, agriculture, and cities.
Light and Shadow studies: After the first round, I wanted to explore how I could make this image reflect the essential qualities of light and shadow; a beacon of some sort illuminating a space that hits a physical object and casts something of a dark reflection of itself. Boundaries: I decided to edit this one further, so I manipulated the image to represent three layers of a boundary condition. They would be temporary, man-made, and natural.
So, it's been a few months, but I've decided (and my professors too) to revive this blog to share rants relating to schoolwork, how much sleep I'm not getting, and why I don't have time to even be writing this! Just kidding, all aside I hope to keep this one going for awhile.
Quick recap of the last seven months: Collegiate racing season: I pulled a full race schedule, made it to every weekend, and scored a few points worthy of making the trip out to Nationals in Madison, Wisconsin. I won my first race in a long while in the 3/4 field at the Yale Lux et Velocitas Criterium in April.
Summer: I moved up to mission hill, renting a room in my friend Joe Lonergan's place. I was able to land an internship with Symmes Maini & McKee Associates in Cambridge, and had a fun time working there all summer. In August I graduated with my Bachelor's degree from WIT, and am now in the midst of completing an additional year to attain my Master's degree.
Summer Racing: With the whole job thing not in place until about June, I had a slow start to the summer racing season, but slowly wound up and began to get the results in July/August/September. Our new teammate on Green Line Velo this year was Sam Rosenholtz, who can sprint faster than anything I've ever seen before. He quickly plowed his way through the 5's, 4's, and 3's thanks in part to his teammates who knew he was the sure chance for team victory.
As for my results, I tried to keep it consistent even when I was helping Sam out. Fourth place at Naugatuck with Sam winning was pretty sweet, as well as 5th at the Giro del Cielo Road Race in NJ. I capped it all off this past weekend with 2nd in the Portsmouth Criterium, which earned me my Cat.2 upgrade. Note the anger raging about letting that guy go too early:Future: This weekend I will end my road season at the Boston Mayor's Cup Professional Criterium. It's gonna be a blast to be able to do a professional race right in the heart of downtown Boston. I hope everyone gets the chance to come out and cheer, it's 50-70 laps of a loop around Government Center/City Hall. It's also apart of the Boston Bike Festival, which will have alot of events going on all day long. I'll be going from the gun at 4:00, so come on out and heckle/cheer me on!
Well, we're 6 weeks into the semester now, and I've laid down some pretty consistent improvement in my form since I started training on New Year's Day. Its also pretty sweet that within the last four of those weeks, I revived the Wentworth Cycling Team (again) and already have a bunch of new freshman recruits to hopefully take over when I graduate.
(What is wrong with this guy?)
I don't train with a SRM or powertap or anything cool like that, but its nice to get an idea of power output in numbers rather than going by feel. I have a Garmin, so at some point if I feel like investing in power at least I have a computer than can pick up the signal. Who knows, maybe this year when they come out with the Vector it will be the perfect fit.
I've had two tests so far this year, the Harpoon Indoor TT and the Landry's Indoor TT. Something about indoor time trials gets me excited, I don't know if its the atmosphere, the beer, or the thought of kicking the asses of triathletes with stupid-ridiculous bikes. They made a pretty cool video on this year's event:
Harpoon was about a month ago, and needless to say I was still in an early base period, building form off pretty much nothing. I went into it with an ambition of maybe winning the collegiate heat. They were running behind schedule, and the collegiate heat was the last of the day, so what our 9:45 start time was turned into about a midnight start. Problem? No, I just didn't anticipate bringing alot of food to keep my energy up. So after sitting, a beer, waiting, and warming up, I wasn't feeling that great, the course wasn't easy, and I posted an okay time of 21:44. I couldn't see any of the other teams (BC's and MIT's) times because they were on different screens, so I was really just gauging my effort off of Gregg Izzo, who threw it down right at the end to beat me by two seconds. I averaged 289 watts, okay, whatever, not the end of the world, I'm sure I'll get better. Test#2 came about at the BTT ITT (too much TT) at Landry's six days ago. I just got the official results yesterday, so I could figure out hour much improvement I've had in three weeks since Harpoon. Not surprisingly, I got beat by Natan (BU) but not by too much. A lot of the collegiate and GLV guys signed up for the 1:40 heat, so we could throw it down together. Bruley was up front, Natan to my left and Izzo to his left. Bruley jumped out to an early lead but faded back to fifth half-way through, I tried to follow Natan as best as I could but never could bring 5-8 second gap down enough without blowing my legs up for the rest of the race. Natan finished second to some random guy next to Bruley, I followed in third about twenty seconds or so back of him, then Izzo, Lachance, and Rosenholtz weren't too far behind. Averaged 333 watts over 16:47, so the form is steadily improving, and I'm losing a little weight too so thats helping the watts/kg ratio of 4.0. I've lost 7 pounds in the last few weeks, hopefully I can keep that momentum going and lose my German beer gut.
Rutgers is now less than a week away, and I'm pretty pumped. The ITT is always classic, and I hope they keep the circuit race running in the direction as it was last year. That crit though, I'm not that fond of. The last turn is a bit extreme, so maybe expect crashes in the lower categories.
(picture of this last turn from a few years ago)
Hopefully the A field will run through it fairly safely, but I expect UVM to pull some crazy shit like they always do and take the crit win. I'd watch Derek, that kid got fast (not that he wasn't already from winning overall in B's last year).
I'm a graduate student of architecture at Wentworth. I usually get little amounts of sleep due to the amount of studio work I have, on top of training and running the Wentworth Cycling Team. I am a Collegiate A, Cat. 2 Road and Cat. 3 Cross rider riding with all the other Boston-area ECCC badasses for Green Line Velo.
Adjacency of Spaces:
Activities and Circulation:
Activities and Circulation:
