COLUMBIA OPEN HOUSE !!!

I dropped off my bags at Lauren's house pretty early and had a chance to just sit on campus and absorb the atmosphere for the wee morning hours before the open house. It was nice.

On the stairs ... I ran into Maurizio ?!?!? a co-worker from 4240 Architecture!!! And Jason was there too! Turns out they're considering applying to grad schools for next year. And then at the student Q&A I looked across the room and saw Ben Brichta from Lab School !!! Small world, but to make it even smaller, he had taken the New York/Paris program at Columbia, and he had had Tricia for a professor, who I had had while I was at Versailles. CRAZY.

The faculty presentations about architecture were amazingly inspirational. One particularly memorable statement by one professor was: "the building was beautiful to begin with, all we had to do was not f*** it up." They all ran through slides very rapidly and spoke quickly and energetically about everything.

I met a guy named George who was at UC Berkeley for architecture when he complimented a sketch I did of the chapel during the campus tour. We might exchange info, since he's considering UIUC.

Aries, Lauren and I meandered as best as we could through the first year grad studios, but it was packed with open house people and existing students. It was funny, I was bashing mac computers at one point, and this guy turns around from using his mac and goes: I like macs. But rather than continue to look at more studios, Lauren and I opted to take a small break in a secluded courtyard around the corner and chatted about architecture, school, and people we knew. It was really nice to get away from the craziness of the open house just for a little bit.

As closing remarks, the Dean spoke a little about his take on the school, and he said the faculty and himself were speaking last when we were all exhausted because the school was about the students, and students should represent the school. We bring the verve and challenge the faculty to come up with interesting projects that we will design.

Afterwards was little hairy. I had to get to Penn station and find the Megabus, eventually finding out that I had accidentally bought a ticket for tomorrow in stead of today, causing me to frantically call up the megabus operators to fix the error. Then again, I wasn't that frantic. If there weren't seats, I was thinking I'd take an amtrak or find some other mode of transport. It was going to work out. I did get on the bus though, so it was fine.

On the bus, I met Natalie who's from New York and wants to get out and is thus visitng MIT's open house. All these architecture students are on a grad school pilgrimage right now, it's pretty crazy. Where is the holy grail of architecture?

And my cab driver talked about the 19 year long civil war in Somalia. It was really interesting to hear about, but I was just so exhausted by that point that I had a hard time paying attention. I did tell him to be careful when he visited Somalia in the near future.

I appreciated tonight's shower about as much as I did during Bike and Build.