Thursday, September 28, 2006

Protfolio - Necco


This is the Necco project. One of my first designs as a professional. Located in Southpoint Ohio, this building was to be (it will unfortunately never be built) the headquaters for Ed Necco and Associates. A realitively small project (just over 10,000 sqft.) on an awesome site, the structure is all cast-inplace concrete, and copper panel.

The 3 story building is embedded into the cliff for virtually its whole height, with a giant 1/2 bridge that extends over the valley, about 50 feet in the air. The whole building is designed to be from the site, a discovery, or a carving of the landscape into this form.

I acted as the Project Architect for this project.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Canstruction 2006

Yesterday, I took part with our office team in the annual AIA Dayton 2006 Canstruction event. This is an event held around the nation by the American Institute of Architects to raise money, and food for various charities such as local food banks.

Our team from Lorenz Williams used over 11,000 cans to construct a Rubic's Cube with Keith Haring paintings on each side. It measured over 8 feet wide and 8 feet tall. We were not sure if the images would read, but as it turns out... they do. We couldn't raise enough cans (probably would have doubled or tripled our donation) to make the whole thing solid, so there are columns on the inside (all made from cans). Its pretty sturdy though, I was sitting on the upper layer, and it felt completely stable. It took our team the whole 8 hours (we actually finished with 12 minutes to go) to finish it... and we actually ended up with left over cans at the end.

The day went without mishap for our team, however, not every team was so lucky. One team built a car at a drive in... and with about an hour to go, their 6 foot tall wall of cans acting like a screen fell over. Luckily, they got it rebuilt in time. There were 7 teams total, and over 30,000 cans that will be donated to the local food banks next week. The event was held at the Dayton Art Institute, which were really awesome, and took care of us very well.


Thanks Matias for the photos.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

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Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Portfolio - All Projects


This is a slideshow of all my projects, undergrad, graduate, and professional.

Photo-Blog... PhoBlog... Fauxblog


The Split
Caye Caulker, Belize.

Comments?

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Washington Trip Part Duece

While in Washington, I had the chance to do some climbing, alpine style, for my birthday. Talk about awesome. The climb we did was the Beckey Route, on the Liberty Bell Mountain (the right most peak on the photo). It was a technically easy, 3 or 4 pitch climb, about a 5.5, or 5.6 with a few 5.7 moves. The Liberty Bell is 7,700 ft in elevation at the peak, and was first ascended September 27, 1946.
Alpine climbing is different to the style of climbing I have been doing. I have been climbing in a climbing gym, and on some sport routes. With those styles of climbing, once you finish a route, your belayer lowers you down to where you started the route. This climb finished with an incredible 360 degree view of the area around it, and then a long rappel (180 or so feet in this case). Its pretty sweet to actually get to the top of something.

This area of the state has alot of forest fires going on at this time, so it was good to get above the smoke, and in the clear air. You can see in this photo how smokey the air was... and in the video below you can glimpse the smoke plume from on of the fires in the area.

Thanks Janice and Scott for taking me on this, and for teaching me alpine style, and some trad protection.

Hit the play button below to get a 360 degree pan of from the peak.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Exodus has begun

Dayton is like one of those giant rubber bands they use for slingshots. The longer you stay, the more it gets pulled back. How far away you move when you finally leave is based around how long you stayed.

Jabari didn't stay long, he is only able to fly to the NYC.

Can't wait to visit you dude. Hope my rubber band has not snapped by that time.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

The new net... pNet.

The Internet is awesome... it has everything you could want. Movies, TV, music, knowledge, and sweaters. Problem is, it is too big, and you were always stuck staring into a computer to find stuff. Then came the devices, your cell phone, PSP/Gameboy, iPod, iPhone, PDA, smart phone, camera, camera phone, cellular iPDApod, yada yada. These devices usually live fairly independently, occasionally connecting to each other in order to share ability, or minor information.

With these, you can talk to others, listen to music, check your schedule, watch TV/movies, show off your photos, check your stocks, find out the current bid of the Wookie costume on eBay, or check the weather in Bolivia. Each device you have is tuned to do some of this better than others, but who really watches movies on their phones? Have you tried calling someone using a PlayStation Portable? How about making your calendar in your office computer, home computer, iPod, phone, and PDA all match?

I have a solution.

We need a Personal Information Server (P.I.S. for short). What is P.I.S. I hear you asking... it is essentially a tiny hard drive which stores all your media and information. Your music, your movies, your photos, your contacts, and your calendar. There is no screen, no buttons, just a few lights and a wireless connection to any available wifi or cellular network.

Then there are the devices that will connect to your P.I.S. to form a Ubiquitous, Redundant Information Network... or U.R.I.N. for short. Each device does its own thing... your cell phone no longer plays music, it just makes calls. Your PDA doesn't need to play games, it just acts as a data assistant. Your camera can dump photos directly to your server, letting you instantly free that memory card.

But why the shift in paradigm away from the wanna-be all-in-one type devices. They cost lots, when they break your hosed, they never do everything, or anything perfectly, and sometimes you don't want your "cellular iPDApod" with you, but you do need the cellular part of that. Device size alone is a huge reason... now your phone can be small enough fit in your jeans pockets. Another huge advantage is the dreaded upgrade. Upgrading your phone doesn't mean you need to upgrade your camera. Information sharing would also be extremely simple... want to try your buddy's camera out, just tell it to send the photos to your P.I.S. instead, and tada. Your phone breaks, and you need to make a call... grab anybody's phone, pass the biometric security, now your dialin'. Stream your music to your friends sound system.

The system comes alive when it gets smart. Your going to Vegas for your friends wedding, you put it in your calendar... now your P.I.S. goes and gets information from the internet for you. It grabs airfares, hotels, maps, show information, all the standard stuff. It also knows you like to climb, so it gets maps for Red Rocks, and digital guide books for the climbs. You can look at all this information when you are ready too, without needing a live internet connection, until you want to book something that is. When your in Vegas, your pNet suggests restraunts based on your location, it will even serve up the menus.

Apple just released what could be the first step for this. Their iTV Media Router connects your media to your TV without tapes, discs, or cords. It simply streams your media to your device, just like my hypothetical U.R.I.N. stream.

The 'i' is dead... long live 'p'.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Washington Trip Part I

I just got back from a trip to Washington where I spent the week hanging out on my dad's boat, with my dad, my sister, her husband Scott, and Josh and Jessica. It was a pretty fun time had by all. Dad has put the boat up for sale, so this might be the last voyage under his command.

Here is a picture of 5 year old Josh and 2 year old Jessica cruising around in the Kayak, and a picture of the boat... why ever give this up?

Friday, September 01, 2006

Anything for a thrill.

So, our lights in the atrium of our office blew out... normally if your boss wants you to change light bulbs, you should start preparing your resume, and getting boxes to pack up your desk. I not only jumped at the chance, I was the one who asked for it. See... the lights are really hard to get too, you can't reach them with a ladder, and you can't get them with one of those light-changing-suction-stick things. So... like anybody who climbs, I offered to rappel down, and change them myself. Only 2 bulbs got dropped... not too bad.

Thanks Matias for your help with this, and for the photo. Click it to see his Flickr, and other photos of light-bulb changing.