Somerset Chinatown Article

For my elective, Urban Heritage Conservation, I have been researching and working on new options for street furniture and public art as well as many other cosmetic improvements to Somerset Chinatown like colour, signage, lighting, and a theoretical western gateway to the community. Other students are proposing new marketing strategies, public spaces, parking and circulation changes etc. Our class's efforts have just been published in the Centretown News. You can read it online or grab the most recent issue.

Carleton students help Chinatown spruce up its look
Centretown News Online - Saturday, 13 December 2008

© Centretown News Online

Tumblr Blog

Cook Until Browned withered away quietly. In its short life, I created a new page through Tumblr, with the same name and link through this site. I want to keep C+S focused on thesis. As you've noticed, there's very little thesis-related posting prior to this (which is going to change soon). Check out the new Cook Until Browned.

The Disappearing Male

The chemical synthetic world we have surrounded ourselves with is starting to show more profoundly dangerous effects on the human race. According to a recent CBC documentary, synthetic materials are causing genetic alterations in the natural growth and well-being of males, signalling extreme concerns in human evolution. "Found in everything from shampoo, sunglasses, meat and dairy products, carpet, cosmetics and baby bottles, they are called "hormone mimicking" or "endocrine disrupting" chemicals and they may be starting to damage the most basic building blocks of human development." Watch this excellent documentary the CBC has posted on their website and consider making "drastic change".



Watch the full 45min version here.

New Site

Ok, not to discourage my faithful fans from visiting the ever more spectacular C+S, but I've done the inevitable and created another blog. If I could get a drumroll and some jazzhands, I unveil 'Cook Until Browned'!

Cirque de Soleil - Corteo

For my birthday present, Jess treated me to see a fantastic show of Cirque de Soleil, Corteo. It was spectacular. Cortéo means "cortège" (funeral procession) in Italian. This is the idea of the performance, a man who dreams of his own funeral procession. Couldn't take pictures, so here are some scenes from about.com:

Pop - Up vs. Tree House

Treehugger has just posted an article about London architect David Adjaye's Pop-Up House project in the London Design Festival, and it appears a bit suspect to me... suspect, you ask? M'yessss... My most loyal fans may recall exactly one year and one day ago, the post entitled 'Ark Magazine', a publication on Jessie's winning pavilion design for the Wood Studio course in Helsinki. Some striking similarities here...

David:

Jessie:

David:

Jessie:

David:

Jessie:

Architects Win Gold!?

According to a number of sources (mainly trusty old wikipedia, but also the book 'The Forgotten Olympic Art Competition' by Richard Stanton), there used to be an arts category to Olympic competitions up until the middle of the twentieth century. It included literature, music, painting, sculpture, town planning, and architecture! That's right, architecture used to be an Olympic event. Between 1912 and 1948, there were competitions in these artistic categories, with the possibility of winning Olympic gold, silver, and bronze. Imagine that! All of this, the vision of Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin who wanted to combine art and sport, and promote 'athletes' of mind and body. After two cancellations, the Olympics that included de Coubertin's proposal was held in Stockholm in 1912. So, for about 35 years, the competitions were reasonably successful. Eventually a report was made that criticized all the art contestants for being professionals, (and ratings may have been a factor here as well) but in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, the events were derailed.

I guess they would have graded the projects for artistic and technical merit, like in figure-skating for example. Here's an Olympic Gold project in architecture by Jan Wils who designed the 1928 Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam.


Some of the other winning designs are stadiums, pools, circuses for bull-fighting, and sport parks. The closest Olympian to home is John Russell Pope who has designed a number of buildings in Washington D.C. including the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives as well as the Union Station in Richmond, VA. He won silver for the Payne Whitney Gymnasium at Yale University:

Since the Sydney games, architecture and town planning has advanced as a major help to economic growth, and the image of a nation. Sydney truly set the bar for a modern Olympic game, entertaining the idea of reviving the art events. It revitalized one of the dirtiest brown fields in the world, introduced sustainability to mainstream architecture, and celebrated landscape architecture as a centerpiece.

What an amazing change that would be to include those same categories in Olympic sports today. The games are becoming more and more specialized now, with athletes so focused on one task for four or more years. It seems a little obsessive compulsive (though still awe-inspiring) to do triple axle sow cows for eight years straight. I wonder if athletes who could compete in more than one event, sports and arts, would be revered as another level of Olympian? By now athletes must be considered as professionals so it could be high time to introduce professional artists back in the games! Maybe that's the key to Canada's success at summer games, where our Olympians already need day jobs for lack of government funding -- might as well do art or architecture for coin! And of course, it would take steroids right out of the picture...or would it?

Shenkman Sculpture Competition

We didn't win the Shenkman project. I'm pretty bummed about that. I really did think we walked in with a tight project. Our panel turned out well, we had material samples, and questions during the formal presentation were all sorted out. Our project was also under budget so I'd be hopeful in thinking that funds weren't an issue...I really don't know what happened to sway the decision. I guess in these situations, it tends to ride on the jury's taste. Here's a condensed version of the panel we presented to the jury:

We also had a physical model to go along with the panel which I built over a couple of days leading up to the presentation. It got broken in transit which annoyed me...just a little.

Our concept was to create a torch -- an elevated sculptural light that would bend to the sky, lifting those seated with it. The piece would provide bench seating in the main public space outside of the theatre. Function is important to Jennifer -- sculpture that can seat, illuminate, or cool its viewers. Though the torch itself would be illuminated, so would the benches from inside the frame. All together, the whole space would be lit up at night (to Martin Convoy's specifications), providing a lively public gathering place outside of the theatre. One of the benches would be suspended by a tension-stressed pipe and both lit from underneath.

+Orleans Star Weekly: article of the public viewing including some of the competing teams' proposals

Wellington Street West Art Competition Winners

Marcus Kucey Jones and Ryan Lotecki are the winners of the Wellington Street sculpture competition. Eighteen 5ft-tall fire hydrants will be carved out of marble imported from Italy. The hydrants will each have a theme reflecting a part of the neighbourhood, like an onion that denotes groceries, or a book for...library. According to the Ottawa Citizen article, "the pair chose the fire hydrant as a sculptural form because of its interesting shape and for the uncelebrated, but very necessary, role it plays in the urban landscape." Congrats to the two of them. You will see these sculptures installed by 2010.
...Your thoughts? Criticism?

+Miss Vicky's Offhand Remarks
+Hintonburg News
+Ottawa Citizen

All School Meeting Discussion

At the all-school meeting, Director Marco Frascari discussed how and where money will be used to improve the school, following David Azrieli's huge donation to the school.

David J. Azrieli, philanthropist, developer, and architect has just donated 5.5$ million dollars to the school of architecture, bringing his total donations to around 8$ million dollars. Azrieli is a CSA alumni ('97). The donation will become fully active in the next three years, so we won't experience immediate changes, but it means that the new Ph.D program will finally take flight. It will be the second Ph.D program in Canada and the "only one of its kind", based on its emphasis on design rather than theory. The donation also has an impact on concentrating student space in the building, meaning we will at last be able to kick out the computer engineering students from the 5th floor to make space for our currently over-cramped students. Other changes include: better computer facilities, wireless internet (which is long overdue) and big improvements will be made to the Directed Studies Abroad program for grads and undergrads -- even rumours of it being paid for, this year (unconfirmed). Another great change is the revival of the school folio, which was one of the prized documents that the CSA produced in the 80's. Sadly, we will miss the boat on all of the above, but the incoming first years will get the full benefits of these improvements.
Ofcourse, the accumulated donations by Mr. Azrieli is so high at this point that by default, the school is to be renamed in his honour. We are now the Azrieli School of Architecture. All those opposed, tough luck.

Link to full article at canadianarchitect.com

BBC-Horizon-The Six Billion Dollar Experiment

Food for my thoughts: BBC segment on the particle accelerator in Cern, Switzerland:

Happy Birthday Paddy!

Electoral Reform

I'm sure a lot of people have seen at least a few of the tv commercials about our upcoming provincial referendum with the key (albeit pretty vague) message 'Understand the question'. While I haven't heard much on tv or the radio about what that question entails, I've been lucky to be receiving a good feed of information from my friend David Viitala who was one of the 104 randomly selected people to form the Ontario Citizens' Assembly for electoral reform. Their purpose was to make a recommendation to modify the existing electoral system in Ontario (currently a 'first-past-the-post' system based on the original British system) to a new 'Mixed Member Proportional' (MMP) system, used worldwide. Put simply, the MMP system would ask voters to cast two ballots: one for their local member of choice and the second for their political party of choice ('list' candidates). The hope behind the MMP system is that it will tease out massive election distortions by matching parties’ share of seats with their share of the popular vote. But to be enabled in the first place, the October 10 referendum result requires a 60% voter support to be enacted. So, please have a glance at some of the literature that I've been receiving from David. (He is the second speaker in the following video).


Also:

+ 'What's that Second Question on the Ballot?' by Ivor Tossell (you will need a Globe & Mail account to view the full article, but I want to highlight the author of this piece!)

+ 'Blown Into Proportion' - by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Walrus Magazine

+ 'Why I Can't Support the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform Report' - by Rich Gelder

+ 'Vote for MMP'

+ 'Citizen's Assembly'

+ 'Your Big Decision'

Ryanair

During my slumber period at home in the Soo, I watched this Dispatches documentary called 'Ryanair: Caught Napping'. It's a 45 minute movie and I'd strongly recommend you watch it (particularly anyone who has, or may be using Ryanair soon). A Ryanair ticket is extremely tempting because tickets can go for as low as 0.01 Euros (i.e. free) with only airport taxes on top of that which may bring an airfare up to 30 - 40 Euro on average. That's cheaper than a bus fare in some cases! However, as you'll find out, you get what you pay for.

23 on 23

A Champagne Birthday only happens once in your life and today is my day!

23 on the 23rd!

(It makes for an excellent excuse to party even more).

Hope to see people out tonight. We will be heading to either the faithful Heart & Crown or the Honest Lawyer.

Cheers!

Ark Magazine

Jess just found out that her winning pavilion design is featured in Ark, a major Finnish architectural review magazine! The magazine features all kinds of different work in Finland. You can find her under latest issue at the website and her project is shown as the main background too. Check it out!

Together at Last!

Tomorrow the Mrs. arrives.

Then all is good.
Housewarming party Saturday pm.
All welcome.

Murray & Murray Finalists

Congratulations to Nevil Wood for winning the all-school Murray & Murray drawing competition this year! Nevil’s drawing was an overlay of the plan of the Tower of Babel and elevation of Noah’s ark reflected in a human eye. The drawing was simply and elegantly laid out with some snappy graphite rendering, to boot. A great honour onto him! (Will try to obtain a photo of this drawing…it was out of reach from a photograph).

Third Prize went to Tom Ngo (housemate from House of sPain). His one-of-a-kind drawing technique was well received by judges and peers. Manually casting wax onto a thin sheet, Tom etched his drawing into a very fine but playful drawing. Entitled: ‘An Incomplete Lady who Likes Popcorn’.

Second Prize came to my drawing this year! It’s a dense graphite panel with a lot of construction happening. It’s easy to get lost in and was intended to create an overwhelming feeling – the weight of two epic construction projects. Less than Nevil’s overlapping layers of representation, this is more of a photographic snap-shot of chaotic events happening simultaneously. Director’s criticism: the scaffolding is suspect. Confession: if you look carefully, one of them is only standing on all fours…about 4 storey’s up.

Have a gander at some of the drawings pinned up this year. There certainly is some great drawing talent being exhibited around the school – proudly carrying on the Carleton hand drawing individuality. My drawing is the last photo shown in the slideshow (and Tom's is second-last).

Hi everyone. At the moment I'm on a short holiday after finishing up at work last week. I just left Barcelona for Berlin and will be back in Dublin on Thursday. I'm sorry to keep you staring at the same old post for a while, but I'll have plenty of photos and events to recap when I get back to the Soo on the 16th! This isn't the end of the blog by any means...I'm going to try to transform it into an outlet for thesis and all-round trash-talk forum. Anyways, hope to fill you all in shortly and maybe see you face to face in the Soo or Ottawa!

Quick Update

Hi everyone, the last few weeks have been pretty busy. Three big events: second trip to Belfast with Jess, seeing the Leinster Final Hurling match at Croke Park, and a romantic getaway to the Siena region of Italy with mega friend Andre Ghione. There's plenty to report and I haven't even had time to upload the photos yet. Hopefully over the weekend I'll have it all sorted.

word of the day :: triskaidekaphobia \tris-ky-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\, noun: A morbid fear of the number 13 or the date Friday the 13th.

\/Take extra care today\/