ARC500.2: When in Rome...it's impossible to outdo what the Romans already did.

The day we spent in Rome was life-changing. Not only had my friend and I visited the Colosseum, Musei Vaticani, St. Peter's Basilica, and the Pantheon all in one day, I was also surprised to find my notoriously lazy self sketching like a maniac. The spaces themselves demanded more attention than just photographs, I think. I sketched like a madman until my fingers were numb, and until I felt pain in both legs from awkwardly standing for hours.

I can never wrap my head around ancient Roman architecture, and how many of the people who took over after the Roman Empire had disintegrated (the Saxons in London, for example) seemed to go back to antiquated approaches of building, because they were also too perplexed by Roman engineering to know what to do with these magnificent concrete structures.

A Pantheon-like space in the Musei Vaticani.

Gah! I can't tell what's relief and what's painting!

Bramante double helix staircase in the Musei Vaticani (Giuseppe Momo, 1932)

On towards St. Peter's Basilica. This sketch was particularly difficult because we started at the left side of the line wrapped around the basilica, and quickly moved across to the right (and therefore changed perspectives).

The colossal monstrosity that is St. Peter's Basilica. Seriously, you can't even begin to imagine the scale of this until you come up to it and realize the column bases are taller than you. (Michelangelo, Donato Bramante, Carlo Maderno, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1626)

And, even though it's larger than human comprehension, it's also easily the most ornate and detailed building you'll ever encounter.

Climbing the cupola. How weird that there are renovated stairs with modern dimensions...

The view from the top of the cupola. I'd like to believe that we were so high up we could tell that the Earth is round. (But most likely it was because of the camera's distortion.)

On another note, can someone tell me where I can get some of these Roman trees? They's so poofy and perfect for renderings.

Some sketches of the Pantheon. We saw the oculus change from its daylit mode to its night-time mode, which was fun.

Obligatory touristy photo to end this post. We didn't have enough time in Rome (we did all this in a day!) to get into the Colosseum, but even the exterior is awe-inspiring. I still can't believe they used to flood the stadium for naval battles. Is this real life?

ARC500.2: Cool House

Shortly after the Koolhaas lecture last night at the AA I was struck with an intensity of emotion that made my hand literally tremble as I tried (and failed to) take zoomed in iphone photos of Rem Koolhaas and his bffl Zaha Hadid. My pen was shaking as my handwriting deteriorated into a series of scrawls as I formulated a question about whether or not the Digital can be hybridized with humanity. He looked me straight in the eye and answered yes, that he thinks this process is already taking place. But I wonder then why there was humor in mocking people who have unquestioningly accepted technology into their lives. It seems that there is still the separate entity of "the digital," so much so that it is given character and identity as a collective thing outside of and completely juxtaposed to the human body. Therefore, when we see a Japanese person using a high-tech toilet that calculates our excrement patterns, we can't help but chuckle. But the truth is we have given birth to the Digital. It came from the human mind, yet we do not accept is as any way associated with humanity. The digital incites fear although its original intention was to surpass fear, the oldest human emotion associated with mortality.

More sustainable, more long-term thinking, more 50 and 100-year plans ahead with the help of the Digital--what's to say that this is the right solution? We are trying to command timelines far beyond the scope of the human body. The real control we have, if any, is over these individual bodies that fall back into the ground when we die. 

In a way, this era is trying to achieve monumentality through the command of time, because that is a far more effective and profound medium than space. Instead of just building big, we are building to last. We're trying to territorialize the future by using predictions and we're encroaching on the past through re-writing and redefining history. But what we perhaps forget is that Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral (~1675) did not command respect because of its sheer size, but through careful proportions and perspective. St. Mary-le-Bow (1680) draws attention to the stone steeple that marks its identity, but the majority of its functional space is quite modestly built in brick and hidden from its public sight lines. Jean Nouvel's One New Change (2010) is a building to look from, not at. In this way One New Change is given significance not by aggressively competing with St. Paul's, but by lavishing the latter and giving it alternative views, reflections and circulation. By lengthening the vertical view, Nouvel creates new meaning in going up and down a transparent elevator, so that it questions what sees and what is seen. These techniques show a thoughtfulness about the art of building that lasts--it is knowledge, not information, that can be eternal.

Transformative Spa Thoughts

The first spa visit of my life was today, and now I feel the best I've ever felt in ages. But the day didn't start out quite so well.

The morning was restless, from making a mistake booking my 7:30a yoga class (they told me I wasn't on the roster) to handing in a paper that I had originally intended to complete last night, to finally finishing my sample page and resume that I had put off for so long. I was working in a great fury because I had figured out that someone I had such a heated debate with a couple weeks ago at an alumni event, who preferred to call himself a "designer" rather than an "Architect," who agreed that architecture is not about "buildings," actually works for one of the largest corporate firms in the world: Foster & Partners. Upon seeing that the clock was moving faster than anticipated towards my appointment time, I rushed to gather all of my belongings (which for some reason always manage to spill out in a radius of no less than 5 feet around me), and headed out the computer lab with my backpack, gym bag hooked on left arm, and my waterbottle, hat, scarf, and a bagged lunch in my left hand. Trying to force the door open clumsily didn't turn out so well, and in response my yogurt exploded inside the paper bag and drenched my lunch in a lovely white goo. I tsked and rode the elevator up trying not to think about how much I needed to use the bathroom because I had forgotten to use it all morning from concentrating so hard on work.

As soon as the glass doors of Faraday slid open, I rushed out in my characteristic stomp and nearly knocked down everyone that was in my way. (Tough luck.) I've noticed that my pedestrian road rage is particularly bad in London for some reason. Maybe because of all the fucking tourists (of course, my entirety of four weeks here had long expelled me from that category). 

Upon arriving at the bus stop in Holborn and realizing I had just missed the 243, I pulled out my salad that had been drenched in yogurt and started eating it in the street (not before spilling some residual white gunk on the sleeves of my brand new coat), getting stares from the proper British people wearing their proper British shoes and behaving in their proper British manner. I habitually sweeped up my phone from my coat pocket to check the time. Only ten minutes until my appointment. The next bus when I boarded, much to my delight and others' inconvenience, skipped some stops due to renovation and arrived a bit earlier at my stop than expected. Finally, I hopped off the dangerously large step onto the street ("kneeling buses" aren't so common in London), and resumed my race-walking stomp to my spa, conveniently located in a large building complex occupying the center island of a roundabout with no visible pedestrian crosswalks. Superb. I sprinted across the street hoping not to get flattened by the same double-decker I had just alighted. 

Proceeding into my spa appointment (located on floor -4, deep in the dungeons of the complex) was incredibly stressful. I remember being scolded for being "late" one minute after the designated time, and of course the receptionist didn't forget to mention that we were off to a "late" start after I arrived, panting, four minutes after 1pm. Then she handed me a questionnaire to fill out, which asked for a detailed description of my physical condition. I was in the middle of constructing thoughtful answers when the masseuse came to greet me in all of her four-and-a-half feet of grace and dismissed the paper form entirely. How many times have I so earnestly filled out a form that meant nothing to the recipient? 

Upon entering the massage room (dimly lit, and minimally ornamented, as expected), I saw a bed that was covered in many layers of towels. I was instructed to take a minute (indeed, it was no longer than precisely a minute) to strip down to my underwear, and "pop" my bra off. "My bra doesn't pop," I wanted to say. "It's a bra for lazy people." I wondered if everybody else who came to the spa were hardworking people whose brassiers "popped" off. The whole Valentine's Day fiasco still echoed strongly in my imagination and I imagined silly people popping their bras off left and right.

The masseuse walked in on my awkward moment of trying to climb onto the massage bed, and without the slightest expression of surprise she quickly pulled the topmost layer of towel over my back, almost surgically. I noticed the vanity over in the corner opposite the door, took a deep breath as I placed my head face down onto a pillow she handed me. Then I proceeded to suffocate while simultaneously being overtaken by the irrational fear that my eyebrow piercing was going to explode. The room didn't smell like anything, just warmth.

Upon lying down I realized I didn't know if I should be responsive or let her do all the work, lifting my leg and fiddling with the positioning of my appendages until they were aligned in the correct position. I suddenly realized that this must be what corpses go through when they're subjected to autopsy. In the spirit of the exercise, I let myself lay there like a chunk of meat being inspected as the masseuse lifted the towel in portions to reveal whatever body part she was working on. I wondered if seeing the whole body all at once would be too sexual, whereas body parts are okay even if my buttcheeks were hanging out of my underwear. She used her practiced hands and applied continuous pressure to each limb so that it felt like small waves of the ocean welcoming me back to, a weird mismatch with the foresty soundtrack that was playing from tiny speakers. My eyes were closed, but I could sense when her hands were about to touch my skin before they even made contact, and shivered as they slid down my back, up my calf, down my forearm, up my shoulders. Then, out of nowhere, when I anticipated the same rhythm of sweeping motions that she had primed me to expect, came a hotness that danced on my skin and made traces of the history of its path through the lingering warmth I felt only after the stone had left my skin. One stone in each hand, used the stone to mediate her hands and the subject of her technique. Sometimes the stones clicked together gently and it was curiously soothing. When the hot stones first made contact with the bottom of my foot, I wondered if I would get burned. But then I remembered that she was using her bare hands to touch the stone that I felt only momentarily, and in that moment I decided to place my trust in her, simply reclined further into my pillow and relinquished control over my body.

When the final song on her playlist came on I felt an emotional heaviness that I noticed before I even realized what I was hearing. Backtracking the source of the feeling, I remembered that I had once played a horrible rendition of this orchestral work in my high school band. Nobody in my class had the patience to play what we thought was such a long and boring piece, but as I hear it this time I am able to mark the subtle changes in the color of the chords, long weeping breaths of sound that flow organically and powerfully. At what point, which exact moment did I gain this emotional depth appreciate this piece? From nothing to something, but when?

As I walk out into the sunlight, the brisk winter wind tickles my exposed skin, and I find it delightful that I feel so unencumbered. I decide to relish the direct contact I have with nature (instead of cursing at how cold it is as I would have before this spa appointment), and walked towards the light reflecting off Big Ben in the distance. The afternoon sun was strong and low and the city maintained its presence. 

BULLSHIT.

Dear Professor,

Looking back on my previous project, I can finally say with certainty that my work makes absolutely no sense. I've always had a problem with defining the things that I make (a sort of self-opaqueness that can only, oddly, be matched by my sensitivity to the immediate environment--but correct me if I'm wrong because I seem to be making a lot of mistakes lately), and this previous project had only exacerbated my sensitivity to nonsense. What am I learning? Who am I really? And what actually matters in life? These stupid philosophical questions plague me to no end, creating the edge of a cliff over which there is nothing but uncertainty and a complete lack of control. I am forever questioning the ground upon which I work, when, for example, I am asked to design a "Meditation Space" for downtown Syracuse, when over half the population is under the poverty line and would rather be approached with jobs than some pretty artifact inside which they may be able to contemplate the joys and sorrows of life, as I seem to have the free time bought by government loans to be plenty acquainted with. 

Propelled by no less than a stressful work load, high (but unfulfilled expectations), and the sudden death of a close friend, I am by no means trying to gain pity, but am simply trying to convey my absolute sophomoric confusion at the blending of boundaries between school and life. A divided personality I am, trying to balance studio, manage Freedom by Design (where I came into office regrettably with angry predecessors and clients), working at the reading room in which I have developed no other skills than scanning barcodes, repeatedly telling students to use the one stapler that works, and notifying unfortunate freshmen that we indeed carry books on Le Corbusier. So far, my life has been an absolute joy coated in nothing but the sweetest memories of pulling all-nighters in studio (not yours, of course) to produce work that will never make it into my portfolio. (Oh yeah, and other classes? What other classes?) I feel as though I am constantly working out of my depth, because the logic that exists in my head is far too complicated to realize through the mediocre and unpracticed skillset that I have. And simplification just doesn't seem to work for me, as you may have been able to tell from the length of this email. (I'm trying really hard to remember that there are starving children in the world as I write this elongated complaint about my irreparable personality flaws.)  

But more about this specific project. For some reason, I started obsessing over the geometry of the hexagon (not because any cult-ish religious affiliations, don't you worry), but because of their sexy multi-surfaced and multi-faceted function and form (how often do you get regular geometries that actually fit on a surface without residual space?) But you were definitely right in that the project was more of a personal research in form-finding than anything that I could say, came from the particular site conditions. But how can you make the argument that something just has to work, that it's the best solution, when we don't even know how structural systems really work yet? We have a bunch of formulas that we can look up, none of them which we can apply to our design because it's always more complicated than a box. And the ones that are a box, never stay as a box because they're deemed "too boring" or "uninteresting" by different professors. And one professor likes nothing but box buildings. I find the critique culture largely unhelpful in developing anything but a thick skin in terms of weathering undeserved verbal abuse (not you, but many professors that you and I can both agree to place on this list.)

And then I have another critique, one that I brought up in an earlier class. Why is it that we are so irreparably wrong when we conduct site analysis, yet we have to pass our work off as the product of confidence and the absolute laws of the universe in order to rid ourselves of critiques on our uncertainty? Places that we deem as "ghetto" (remember that this was used by someone to describe Park Slope in Brooklyn) and "overpopulated" (used to describe the abandoned Gowanus canal area which has a highway, a dumpster, and a subway station) suddenly make decisions for us in our projects. Because we have started off with wildly inaccurate assumptions, we continue to act upon those assumptions because our work is not questioned. And when we are questioned, it feels more like a personal attack than an objective statement on the quality and accuracy of or proclaimed assessment. How can we remediate these in order to find the perfect balance between accepting criticism and not losing confidence in our work? The answer, it seems, is nonsense. When people don't understand what it is that you're doing, they would much rather nod and pretend to know what you're talking about, fill in the knowledge gaps with their own prized imaginations than question the bullshit that you put on the table. I'm wondering if this failure at communication is a common problem, or a defect specific to myself.

Maybe I should pull a Jimenez Lai and make a rectum for this next project. I think he'll quite appreciate the mimicry.

All the best,

Ruo.

P.S. Here is my favorite nude picture of Le Corbusier, just for kicks.

Chasing Shadows

There it is again. The shadow. The person that it belongs to has long since departed, but residual memories haunt me still. The memory carves ever so deeply with each recall. Uncontrollable physical responses to your lack of presence catch me off guard, and navigate my body outside of my control.

Why is my hand picking up another glass of drink?

Her name was Jessica, and I cannot say that she was my best friend (though I insist that that tag is mostly a meaningless social construction...), but I can say that she has touched my soul in ways that I still awaken to, today. Through text messages, chat logs, snapchats that were effervescent and full of your Californian optimism, I learn more and more about who you are. Who are we to believe that our generation can digest the vast amount of information we receive on a daily basis? I feel like an idiot when I've finally realized, a month since you've left, that the wallpaper on my phone was one of your drawings...Give me a couple more years to review these thoroughly. 

Sometimes, when one of your favorite songs come on, one of us would unleash the waterworks fervently and without warning. Just moments later, everyone else would match her expression, and all of us would completely shut down, regardless of how much we were laughing and joking around previously. We all weep for you, as synchronized as the best choir in the world. In this zone of collective individuality, each of us chases our individual memories with you, a love by association. A group love though recall.

Memories grow fonder with time, but they also fade into diluted, psychotic versions of what they were before. We sink deeper and deeper into the constructs of our own mind, convincing ourselves that the most recent version is the accurate version and that everything else is less than true. We intoxicate ourselves with these self-induced substances, and convince ourselves through the inebriation of our cells and the purge of salty tears to the outside world, that you are still okay. No, that's not quite right--that we are still okay.

Because there was no defining moment of tragedy on which I can pin all of my restlessness, I often find myself floating out of my body watching a blonde-headed Asian make decisions that I claim no part of.

Is my body me, or am I me?

Your situation was so differently from last year, when the girl who jumped from the window on the 6th floor splattered right in front of my window on the 1st floor. Nor do I have a roommate now who is so distraught as to scream or lose it. I think I need to lose it in order to find myself again. Can you make me feel again? I'd rather see your body than torture myself in a state of abyss and vague reconciliation. You leave me no visual to remember you by, leaving me to chase nothing but your shadow. But still, I will pick up my feet and run forward, because any action is better than standing in this quicksand of reminiscence.

Ah, everything is beginning to mix together...And yet I cannot find better words to describe myself than cheap metaphors and sickened cliches.

I lavish my belly with drinks and my mind with tasks, but a certain organ feels that its involuntary repetitive motion which has guided me since birth is suddenly little more than a chore. I am conscious of the processes that are happening to keep me alive, and wonder which of your organs had let you down in the end. What can you say? If we could keep an active dialogue with our internal selves, couldn't we then be a little more in control of our own lifespans?

Sink into sorrow. Understand the environment that is guiding your body and perceptions. Only then can you re-learn to swim. I hate to admit that your encounter was the only way for us to appreciate ourselves and the people around us. No longer self-sacrificing puppets of work, we think of ourselves as a renewed community. Through your unintentional sacrifice, you have left only hidden treasures of good feelings in your wake. I don't think everybody is capable of that, and I applaud you.

The hotfaced comfort of drink sets me at ease, but only briefly. Intensified emotions stun my tongue but my mind is finding words on its own, as my fingers struggling to document these words without disrupting their flow.

Currently on the train heading to a place conventionally called "home." But I know better now than to accept its permanence as truth. 

Work is life. (edited by John P. Loonam)

What is a human being except for the work that she does?

Work is life. Just as your lungs expand and contract for every breath of sustenance on this earth, you can either consciously decide to place effort into the things you do, transforming what was once a stack of cardboard you bought for a measly five dollars into a model which represents a tactic to ease the plaguing social problems in this world. Five dollars to change the world. True, your project might never come into existence, but the idea has been hatched through months of rigorous intellectual and aesthetic review, and you have discovered or invented information that can only be useful in the future. Beyond such obvious, pain-inducing work, you might not have even recognized some of the more subtle work that you do almost automatically, which is work for survival. In order to sustain our position in school or the job force, we have to cleverly consider every relationship that we have. Even the simple task of breaking the ice with someone you think has the greenest eyes you’ve ever seen requires the passage of air through your vocal cords and the movement of hundreds of muscles in your face, a phenomenon that you do not recognize. These relationships, both human to human and human to concept, are the only things that define our humanity. We are the only beings alive have such an extended capability of self-reflection. Some use this ability to judge others, but are completely blind to their own faults. So many of us in our late teens/early 20’s, wholeheartedly wish to “just do nothing all day.” But even without the hindering expectations that society has placed on you to produce, people feel the need to create social order for the sake of production. A dialogue between a math teacher, Ishigami, and a physicist, Yukawa, in the Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, reveals:

“The gray-haired man with the ponytail was hanging up the laundry. Beyond him, the Can Man was well into his daily routine.

                ‘It’s the same thing every day,’ Ishigami said. ‘This entire past month, nothing’s changed a bit. You could set your watch by these people.’

                ‘That’s what happens when you free people from the restraints of time. They make their own rigid schedule.’ (92)

Because we are, we do.

How many days have you spent lusting after a dream man or woman, yet the frowning alien that glares back at you in your bathroom mirror is as far from your dreams a pimple-faced cynic whose color has completely drained from her skin? You live by your voracious craving for these objects outside of yourself, yet what dies with you are not these objects but only that which you can call yourself. The existence that you are can hardly be extended outside of your body through possession. It soothes but a momentary lapse in the consciousness of your mortal being. Furthermore, why is it that you assume that others are not looking at you the same way you evaluate your classmates through your judgmental eyes? What makes you desirable when the only thing you do is lust, unable to tame the feelings that have consumed you and unable to recognize that your obsession is a manifestation of your fear of yourself? Are you happy being alone? If the answer is not yes, then why do you suppose someone else has to shoulder twice the responsibility of making two happy? You have willfully let go of your own desire to maintain yourself, and instead look to others as examples of success, never wishing to put effort into the things that we fear and desire the most. Self-transformation, defiance, revolution. Have you not learned, in the early years of your innocence, that you only receive what you give, that love is the last thing to come to those who haven’t a sense to love themselves?

You may think, how can I love myself? I am so ugly and wretched, my youth waning with every gray hair I find in my fading locks, and I approach death with every step I take. The truth is, you’re already on a conveyer belt, and lest you have the courage to walk towards what you want, even if that means pushing past a crowd of the irritable and the fearful, and using extra force to go against the momentum of laziness, you will forever be swept in a direction of which you dread. If you still have the strength in you, why not use it? That strength too, has been fading with time, a concept that the human body is not yet familiar with at the ripe decade of your 20’s. More than fearing to reach out, you should be absolutely horrified at the person you may become in your 30’s, unfounded and graying, undesirable and unloving, full of hatred for the world and kicking at the air for not sustaining you without automatic inhalation, tossing money as a cheap tactic to make the world echo back only your misery. You believe that you deserve more, as do those that are better than you. What makes you think that they will halt in their step to piggy back someone who has not a shred of usefulness, as you? You look to your back and realize that there are still some people behind you. But how long will that temporary relief last, or will you continue to look backwards as they surpass you?

You are standing still, complaining that nobody is willing to put you on his shoulders and work for twice that they have earned, and once more for your ungrateful attitude. By the time you have reached a point where you understand this, wholeheartedly, when the signs of decay have begun to physically manifest themselves, would you rather be taught the hard way? If you want people to notice you, work for it. If you want to be good at school, work for it. If you want anything, work for it. Somebody labored to place the food on your table every day. Your existence is by no means free, but work can be freeing. Work frees you from fear, and dread, and anxiety, because you know that there is nothing else in this world as self-satisfying and concrete than the things you build with your own two hands. So please, be a good person to yourself, take true care of yourself, for if you wish to experience more than the tip of the iceberg of the dessert that is life, then you must be prepared to endure the worst. Only after you’ve found yourself miserable, slaving away hours of your life on a photoshop document or leaving the windowless library to find that the sun has risen, will you find, a day or a year or a decade later, that you’ve become better than you were before. Soothe your fears and take responsibility for the brilliant person that you are entirely capable of becoming.

The clock makes two revolutons.

 A new day, a new dream that has been instantaneously shattered by the annoying tug of your alarm. You could almost go back to sleep. You do go back to sleep, drifting on that fine line between visibility and utter insanity. Even if you remember the solidity of your body, the only thing you feel in the morning is the mind, which tends to grow numb as you sink deeper and deeper into the other realm. You reel your feet in under the covers upon contact with the chilly metal window sill, windowpane that has now been frosted over from the changing of the seasons. Your phone rings, this time it's a different sound, less annoying than what usually pierces your ears at 8:00AM, then 8:05AM, then 8:10AM, and on and on it goes, repetitive torture. The sounds suddenly drops out, and your curiosity is much better at waking you up than any plans of self-discipline ever could. Your favorite song has become the most loathed of the bunch, bane of your existence, so much so that your roommate even yaps on about it in drunken fervor, times when the gates of the usually tight-lipped are overthrown by alcohol-induced excitement. Your toes curl in, you slowly push your antiquated skeleton upright to brave the rush of morning dizziness, and despite the wailing of your limbs to stop moving and hold still, where the pain cannot be felt, you reach for your phone.

"Delivery!"

"Who's calling?"

"Winter."

A sudden gust of frosty air sweeps into the room and slams you back down into your pillow, the gust hard and unforgiving. The wind is knocked out of you and you, once again, are drenched in pain-soaked feeling of wintry despair.

Withered walls along which the weary walk under weeping flakes of white crusted blood.



Your wrists cannot bear the clicking anymore, and the your whole damn hand breaks off from its joint. But you keep clicking with the detached limb as if in a trance-like state, induced by the fear of your professor reaching down your throat and pulling out nothing but a cheap imitation of famous works past. Of what substance are you made of?

You stare at the computer screen, cracked by an earlier impulse to destroy everything that was ever meaningful in your life, cracked like your wrist, cracked like those conversations you've been having with yourself in the shower, cracked like the huge personality flaw that has gluttonously fed on your insecurity to become a behemoth that has resurfaced to render your life obsolete, cracked like the relationships you have with everyone, cracked like how you are to yourself, silent and unforgiving.

Hallenbeck dances a sultry dance and turns you twice in his arms. Foster makes you his partner. Fox cooks up a storm in the kitchen and begs you to try his new recipe from his shop. And onward you trudge in this whether which is weather like now or like ice, impending doom, all else failing but misery. In a year, in seven hundred and thirty revolutions of the clock, all else has faded, yourself jaded, and even the memory of these old friends that you have traded for whatever was convenient, within a mile of which the center is you. Who were they, and why do you care still? And nonsense and nonsense and nonsense, will bring about meaning in the world.

The clock will never stop turning twice, because you have willed it so.