they really like me! kind of.

This isn't really what I wanted to discuss here, but I'm going to see if this blog can't also act as a "news page" for the portfolio website I run.

This past week I was informed that I was a finalist in the eVolo Skyscraper Competition for 2010. Check it:

Almost Famous.

I didn't really know what to expect going into that project. The competition (done annually) has gained notoriety for showcasing a lot of loosey-goosey fantasy blob types. I wanted to do somewhat the opposite of that. A very primitive geometric profile within which some character could be expressed via an unusual program and cultural/meteorological context. I thought it turned out alright, and so did the jury, so that's something I guess!

It's going to be a few more before I start on this next project. At least, until I work through some workflow kinks in adapting to normalized work weeks again. It turns out I forgot how little one feels like doing after an 8 hour work day.

...but it's actually like...

I think I wanted to start this blog to catalog some of the things that I've been keeping myself busy with during my unemployment period within the Great Recession of 2008-???. The irony is that I've been unemployed (in the no-salary sense) for about fifteen and a half months, and just now decided to start this, after my first week of gainful part-time employment in over sixth months. Yes, I was recently employed by DAO Architecture, and am immensely enjoying the almost-new feeling of having a reason to shower before 9 am. For most of the week, at any rate.

This is the first architecture-related job that I have landed since the ladyfriend and I made our move out to Portland, OR. I'm taking it as a sign that the credit market is finally starting to loosen up for construction projects again. Because frankly, before this past month, it was a desert out there for the recently unemployed designer in the Pacific Northwest (and my native Midwest/Northwoods).

Okay, brass tacks. I'm going to use this place as a dump for the completely random, but this completely random will always have something to do with design (you could broaden that to "the arts" if I happen to want to complain/cheer about music or something). One of my goals over the span of free time I've had has been to brush up on skills of various sorts. This includes analog experiments like shop-related projects, and digital experiments in newer software(s) and generative typologies.

Along this line, I am in the middle of a little revisioning of a long-dormant idea from a past grad studio project that I've always been dissatisfied with. I'll bet I'm correct in guessing that most designers have a little dirty laundry they're a little embarrassed to show too many folks. This project counts as one of mine. It's fairly ingrained in the digital world (explanation forthcoming) so I thought it would be the perfect medium to use towards tutorializing myself with some programs and routines that I'm still a little timid with - namely the generative end of Rhino's scripting and Grasshopper's intuitive playfulness. We'll see what happens. This does mean that this blog will probably get quite jargon-y at times. I hope you'll bear with me if it comes to that. I get wordy pretty easily, and certain things that excite me brings it out.

I guess that's all for now.