Busy People Accomplish MORE

The last 24 hours have been non stop movement!

It started last night when I saw the email from OSKA. It wasn't a definitive interview offer, but a request for more material: renderings, models, and sketches.

Now, anyone who knows me knows the latter two are not a problem. I am a laser cutter that runs on biofuels, and I crank out sketches like no one's business. Renderings however, were going to be a problem. I had put my best one in my portfolio, and looking back at the ones I used for my final project, they really just weren't going to cut it. I got back from the meeting around 9pm, and after bouncing around the walls for an hour or so (OSKA was interested in my portfolio ??? MY portfolio??? my PORTFOLIO ???) I got down to business of either cleaning up the existing renderings or creating new ones.

Around 5am, I set Kerkythea to render a fairly good quality image, and it was taking forever, so I decided to go out on the Tati bike ride. Yes, on zero hours of sleep. It was a fairly simple drills day, but there was an awful headwind on the way back. I tried one sprint, and then my legs reminded me about Sunday.

Back home, Kerkythea was STILL RENDERING! More correctly, anti-aliasing, but it was taking forever. I'm so glad I have two computers with CS3 installed. Anyways, I somehow managed to pull together 2 new renderings for one of my projects in Sketchup and Kerkythea, 2 diagrams from Rhino and V-Ray (!!! At last !!!), sketches of all kinds, the Mediatheque model photos, altogether in a very raw format which I sent off by ONE PM. Hopefully they'll be looking more for content, not layout ...

I caught the 1:45pm train to the Loop to go to Wired NextFest with Knute. It was really good to get out of Hyde Park and away from my computer screen. The projects were also a lot of fun!

The gateway exhibited the "Suitcase Pavilion" designed by Virginia Tech students: it can be carried in a suitcase!


Flowers bloomed where we stepped. It felt like Fern Gully but you know, technological.

CRAYONS for big kids! These "solid ink" cartridges don't require ink cartridges and thus creates much less waste. The ink prints by melting on to the page. We could write with them like crayons, so I wrote "yellow" with yellow all over the pamphlets (I'm 5 years old at heart).
They're video games, but rather than hurl bullets, you fly flower petals over green fields. It's supposed to be a retreat for those weary of urban stress.

Brainball is pretty hilarious. Two people duel by wearing straps measuring their brain activity. You win by pushing the ball at the center over to your foe with your "calmer" brain activity. Knute and I tried twice: I won both times. Clearly I had a huge advantage because I was zombie-esque from zero sleep. What was really funny was this random guy in the audience asked if he could try going against me, and I'm like, sure. I won. And then people were talking about tactics, and I'm like, dude, just don't sleep. It creates the perfect Zen-calm apathy.

And then I came home and my legs REALLY complained about Sunday. It feels good to have gotten that good of a workout. And it's also great to know that there are firms out there interested in my portfolio :D

Oh, and at Intelligentsia Coffee Shop, I took this sign to be a good omen (OSKA being in Seattle and my having biked there and all):

Dreaming of Bike and Build

In my dream this morning, we drove Danny (our van) around a colorful mountaintop village, and then walked around its hilly streets to find a good place to eat for dinner. There were lots of colors: yellow, blue, red, green, pink, azure. The girls were wearing dresses, the way we did when we were sick of spandex and athletic clothing.

And then I woke up to find myself in my own bed in Chicago, which was almost as dreamlike as my dream. What is reality now, Bike and Build, or that I'm graduated and searching for a job?

I miss always being with 31 people already: how we take over restaurants, bike shops, roads. We all sleep together in a confusing pile of thermarests and random objects taken out of the bags we lived out of for the entire summer. I miss it, even though I'd wake up at nights with my entire legs stiff from lack of potassium.

However, life goes on. I got to sleep for 10 solid hours without being disturbed, and soon my bike will be here, and I will be able to ride once again on the Lakefront Path. I wonder if it'll feel paltry compared to the mountain passes I have done, but I have a feeling it won't. It's the path I began to ride on, and it's my home. And there's always the skyline.

It was really quite amazing to see the patchwork corn and soy fields along the MidWest from the airplane after having crossed through them on bike. And then to see the concentrations of towns grow larger until there was finally the recognizable Sears Tower amidst the gleaming towers of Chicago. I think it's true what Red said of Chicago, that it lacks a certain sense of intimate scale, especially as compared to Seattle for instance, or Paris. I guess I like the fact that Chicago isn't so perfectly designed though. There's something organic and unintentional in the way it has grown.

Roaming City Streets

Whenever I come back to Chicago after a school year, I walk around with my head tilted up 45 degrees, seeing what new things I've learned.

Last year, after a semester learning about French architecture, I noticed a surprising number of Mansart roofs complete with dormers. The 2 intensive weeks with William Curtis developed my sense of "architectural language," and I was able to really appreciate the Miesian boxes for the first time. I'd read about the Bauhaus and Chicago styles in high school, but I needed an understanding of the poetics of architecture before I could see what was so great about boxes in a city.

Waiting for the purple line on the El, I found myself counting the number of levels between mechanical levels on the new Trump building, and wondering how they designed for the supplies lift running along the side of the building. Unitized panel construction on concrete structure - noted.

Chicago never gets old.

Chicago

"High Fidelity" was filmed in Chicago! They even included a scene on the Point right by Hyde Park where I live, and I never noticed it before!

I like "The Lakehouse" because it's filmed in Chicago too ... especially since Keanu Reeves' character is an architect, and they have so many scenes of Chicago's architecture (otherwise, I have to admit it's not the best of movies or anything, but humor me). And "Batman Begins" because of the wonderful skyline-at-night scenes, and of course "The Blues Brothers" (Best blues soundtrack ever). I'll put "When Harry Met Sally" in this list too, even though it's mainly filmed in New York, just because they start off the movie at the University of Chicago - I swear, I grew up on that campus.

I've lived in Seoul for 2 months, Versailles for 9 months, and I really loved Paris, Tokyo, and London. There's something about really large cities that absolutely fascinates me, and I can't seem to leave them indefinitely. I start to get antsy when I'm on campus at Urbana-Champaign for too long. I've also noticed that I get seasonally nomadic. Perhaps that's a result of my having been sent away to South Korea during the summer time 3rd grade through high school.

Anyways. Even though I'm in love with cities in general, Chicago's my home. New Yorkers and Parisians can go on about how Chicago's not an international city, and that it's just a little Mid-Western town, blah blah blah, I don't care. It's got its set of problems, like the CTA and its @#$%$#@ budget cuts, but Chicago's simply in my blood.

I wonder how I'll hold up this summer.