I win...kind of

Hi blog,

Sorry for neglecting you, my dear readers, for so long. I've said this about a hundred times this year, but it's true once again: I just finished the biggest project of my life. Seriously. It was ridiculous. I worked pretty much nonstop for five days, averaging about 3 hours of sleep a night. It's done. It looks alright. It could be more perfect. I don't have time for perfect these days.

The project was to create three housing typologies (single family detached, single family rowhouse, mixeduse retail and residential) for a proposed new town, based on principals of critical regionalism and sustainability. My town was to be located in the Shenandoah Valley, so in keeping with critical regionalism, the housing styles, colors, and materials used all had to fit in with the architecture and landscaping and materials that are native to Virginia. We had to do site plans showing how each housing type would relate to the street as well as street sections showing sidewalk widths, bike lanes, streetscaping spacing. We had to do two drawings of each building, an axonometric (which is a 3-D side view) and an elevation. You have to use an architectural ruler so everything is to-scale. So if someone saw my drawing and it said 1"=20' they could get out their architectural ruler and measure a window and know that it was supposed to be 6' wide. Pretty neat.

And then we had to write it all up in a fancy report with a vision and ten principles of design like "the town shall be walkable from end to end" and each principle had to have three guidelines like "Pedestrian pathways will connect each residential street to the Town Center," or "pathways will be 4'-6' and be ADA compliant regarding grade and surface texture." And then we had to draw a diagram for each principle.
It was worth doing. It was excessively long. My professor gave the same assignment last year only they didn't have to write principles or draw diagrams. He was giving us shit for being behind - "last year's class was way ahead of you." But the assignment was twice as long. So eff him.

It was a huge ass project. It was a shit show. I did it all by hand. Some people cheated and used Sketch-Up which we weren't supposed to do b/c it distorts axonometric drawings, but whatev. Hopefully it'll be a good portfolio piece.

Anyway, I've finally gotten some sleep. That was lovely. It's spring here in Philly. I spent the last three months anticipating an impending winter that never came. Thank God. After living in Michigan no winter will ever feel terrible again.

I'm so unfamiliar with having nothing due tomorrow that I don't know what to do with myself.

Gotta get jazzed for six hours of class. Wish me luck.

<3
-K


PS I still have lots and lots and lots to say about New Orleans. I'll get to it tomorrow, I promise.