divergence

schematic design review

Yesterday was our first schematic design review within the studios. Each of us stayed up for countless hours to produce work that was intended to thrill our critics. Overall yesterday was quite a success, I received good feedback from our professors and I’m excited for the work being produced this semester by myself as well as the other students in my studio. The next few weeks till midterms will be rough but I think that they will be a lot of fun and we all have a lot of possibility within our work.

site organization diagram

The intent of the project is to use the aggregation studies that we used earlier to create mixed use housing on the site of Santa Monica and Vermont in LA. The goal of the project is to create a development that integrates with the different user groups of the site and engenders interaction between the housing development and the larger urban fabric.

See More Pictures…

1 com

acbhm competition entry

a competition entry by my friend and mentor Kevin Kemner and myself (Aaron Malmedal)

The Holocaust consists of countless tragedies and moral insults, large and small, communal and individual. Memorializing genocide, remembering the Holocaust, is an architectural endeavor fraught with missteps, inadvertent references, the unintended trivialization of the victims, and in this instance, the Atlantic City Boardwalk, a site that challenges traditional notions of places of memorial and of remembrance.

Additionally, the immensity of genocide, the Holocaust, the magnitude of It, often leads to a dehumanization of the victims through the recitation of statistics rather than an understanding of the details of individual lives.

read more...

0 com

aggregating…

student work

It has been an exciting and busy week in studio. We have been creating models like crazy that look at the emergence of pattern and spatial complexity by utilizing aggregation. For these exercises we have been asked to create a cluster that propagates itself by attaching and connecting to one another in several different ways. As you can see from the image above the studio is becoming full of models that offer exciting potential. We are investigating these issues to engender ideas for our studio project which is to design multiuse housing. These clusters are being looked at as ideas of creating something that is spatially more complex than the typical single loaded and double loaded corridors associated within most housing projects. So far the investigation has opened up a lot of opportunity for further investigation and has been a new way for me to think about design. It is interesting to see what these bottoms up approaches will yield.

read more...

0 com

navigate la

As I sit in the turbulent metropolitan red line a sense of déjà vu passes over me. My body dances back and forth swaying in harmony with the other people occupying my cabin. For many of these people the sudden accelerations, sways, dips, and turns are all expected, every move is anticipated; they do this dance habitually and know how to eloquently shift their body with the expectancy of the next oscillation of the cabin. But for me, the newcomer in this cyclical pattern of travel, I sway awkwardly through the cabin trying painstakingly to not smash into the person on either side of me. The clumsy shuffling of my feet as the track jogs suddenly to the left is what sparks within me a sensation of déjà vu, or rather a reminiscent feeling of a past experience.

My mind has immediately conjured the inclination that I have switched locations. I feel as if I am now traversing the Bay Area Rapid Transit system rather than the Los Angeles Metro. The swaying and rocking of the cabin has brought me back to the memories of my first subterranean experience. Deep within I hope that this train has somehow shifted locations and when I reach the next stop I will be transposed to the Bay Area. Quickly reality settles back within me as we approach MacArthur Park, the stations next stop. As the cabin decelerates and the decrepit and lifeless station comes into view I am filled with disappointment. It is at this moment I realize what I am longing for…

Emptying My Pockets

I have wanted to start a blog for quite sometime but due to the rigorous nature of the degree I am pursuing I have continually failed at my attempts. I have been interested in a means of getting things out of my head and show them to other people, In essence a way of emptying my pockets. Now after having settled into Los Angeles for a semester and getting into the swing of things I am ready to embark on the creation of a blog.