Arch Blog

P.L.A.T.F.O.R.M.

2012-01-30T14:56:00.000-06:00

2011-10-20T12:21:00.002-05:00

Thesis mid-reviews were this week. For an architectural thesis, the student decides where to design the project, what issues to look at, and what architectural techniques to employ. As the semester goes along each student must present to the school and receive criticism and feedback on the design and argument.

My presentation was yesterday. Here are the images I printed out to help explain my idea.

My proposal is to create a coastal defense for the slums in Lagos, Nigeria by strategically retaining and dumping garbage.Garbage dumping is used already in the slums to create new land, however, by formalizing the dumping system a coastal defense can be formed and leaching toxins could be contained.

Lagos: Migration

2011-08-10T23:55:00.004-05:00

More progress in research. There are no labels on this map, but the intent is to show how poor migrants in West Africa make their way to Lagos hoping to find work. The dotted circles show population. The color shading of the countries shows GDP, and the dark circles show GDP per capita. Per capita GDP is a little misleading because rural citizens make next to nothing in Nigeria. The largest circle shows how much greater the population of Nigeria is compared to its neighbors. The red dot is Lagos.

Lagos, Nigeria: Education

2011-08-09T00:14:00.003-05:00

Here's an improved version of the school map. On the other one you could barely see the street grid. More to come shortly.

Slowly some maps have been coming together. Here are all the schools in Lagos. The smallest squares are primary and grammar schools, the medium sized squares are vocational and high schools, the largest squares are colleges and universities.

Lagos Nigeria: Population

2011-08-03T10:07:00.001-05:00

Analysis of population and the increase in density within the Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Lagos.

Galveston Studio Spring 2009

2011-05-08T16:07:00.002-05:00

Unfolded weather station.

Explorations: Part 2

2011-05-07T16:49:00.002-05:00

Mary-Jane is on a quest to find some skin colored high heels, sounds beautiful.
I brought the camera.

This band was playing in front of Hotel de Ville. We always see these kind of events from our window and decide whether or not to go. They weren't bad; a European version of The Strokes.

Hotel de Ville.

More band pictures. Just down the street there was a band playing at 59 Rivoli, which Mary-Jane has mentioned in her blog. It doubles as an art gallery.

MJ listening to sound check.

Explorations: Paris.

2011-05-05T16:21:00.008-05:00

School's out for summer.
Now we have some time to explore the city.
Thanks to our good friend Ryan Odom, we have an awesome camera to take some great pictures.

Rue de Rivoli at Sunset.

A Ferrari we saw at Place Vendome

A white Triumph near Gare de L'est.

A mural at the end of Passage Brady.

Mary-Jane looking cool.

WEBSITE

2011-04-12T20:10:00.007-05:00

The semester is over and I've posted my work online.
Enjoy.
http://www.wix.com/brijlee/rsapspring2011

2011-03-30T17:44:00.005-05:00

Here's my thesis research up to now.
It's not the final, there are a few typos.

2011-03-14T17:39:00.008-05:00

2011-03-05T18:56:00.003-06:00

Last week was a beast. Two presentations and three thesis reviews. Somehow MJ and I found time to make this little diddy. Enjoy. (Much lighter subject matter than the last)

2011-02-27T15:45:00.004-06:00

Here's a video Mary-Jane helped me with for a film class I'm taking. I want to assure you all that we're happy and there is no need for alarm. The film was well received by the class and instructor. If anything, making this video brought us closer together. The goal of the film was to create tension using sound and represent the intangible notions of imagination and memory. If you are easily frightened, I recommend not watching the video. For everyone else enjoy.

2011-02-23T15:23:00.006-06:00

We've been working on "figura"; little folded pieces of paper that help us understand qualities of space within our project. Through an exhaustive model building approach like this, we find configurations and an aesthetic that we want to pursue. Archispeak.

2011-02-22T15:09:00.011-06:00

Part of the curriculum for the semester is a film analysis and production class.

We were asked to make a short film. I chose to make a portrait of the Eiffel Tower by showing the activity around the icon of the city. During the film the tower is never shown. The goal was to create an understanding of the space that surrounds the park without showing the tower. The music is by Calexico.

2011-02-08T16:32:00.025-06:00

The Grand Palais hosted an auction of classic and antique cars this weekend. I discovered that entry was free to the public on Saturday morning from 8 to 9 am. I decided to get up early and check it out, and I was not disappointed.

The Grand Palais is a megastructure of ornate, curving, art nouveau iron. The roof is made of glass paneled vaults that form a cupola where they meet. The cars were fantastic. The superior Italian motor companies were featured; Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Maserati, as well as the some lesser French models; Renault and Peugeot. My favorite was a sliver Volkswagen Golf from the late 1970s. Maybe our car will make it to an auction someday.

I spent more than an hour enjoying the architecture and the automobiles. As I looked I thought to myself, if MJ could have come with me and a sporting event were somehow thrown into the mix this would be the ultimate event.

2011-01-14T06:54:00.007-06:00

The Group: Will, Sohael, Seth, Carrie, Sanket, Lyon, Ethan, Nick and Garry.

Lyon and I walking the Cardo, the oldest street in Paris.

The Louvre on our walking tour.

2011-01-09T01:41:00.006-06:00

The apartment we have in Paris.
Small but nice, and great location.

2011-01-08T01:56:00.008-06:00

What an amazing place. Last night I slept from 8 pm to 4 am.

When I woke up I was anxious to do something.

Perfect time to go explore all the famous sites of the city.

The Seine at 5:30 am, the streets were empty.

Trying to take a self portrait in the vacant city.

Boats along the Seine. I think people live in them.

The scaleless Louvre, massive.
La Tour Eiffel at sunrise. This is after I jumped a construction barrier and was running away from security, bad decision.

View of the Seine from outside our studio apartment.

15 quai aux Fluers, home.

I can't wait till you get here MJ.

2010-11-11T01:23:00.001-06:00

This weekend MJ and I went to an air show in San Antonio.

Our friend Johnny (far right in camouflage) is an audiologist in the Air Force.

2010-10-14T23:45:00.004-05:00

Models from the semester.

My final project is going to be a combination of parts from all of these.

2010-09-11T01:06:00.009-05:00

Here are some pics from my Photo class

2010-03-09T19:35:00.002-06:00

Houston from Georgie

This is a video I made for work.

2010-02-09T21:49:00.011-06:00

Some ideas for the seawall in Galveston.

Sketchbook

2010-02-09T18:35:00.003-06:00

I have become a stranger to my own blog. Here are some sketches from my notebooks while I think of something clever to write about.

2009-09-08T19:50:00.007-05:00

School Time and the DMC or How the Summer Ended Unexpectedly.

Back at it. Over the summer the Option 1 Studio at Rice University was to compile a portfolio made up of the previous year's work. So the day before class started, most of us began. The mad dash to print and fold our 11x17s, reminded me of the beginning of last year.

-introduction to 95 degrees and 100% humidity
-a one month delay of all our possessions (there are five "s"s in "possessions")
-aside from an education in architecture, an intense immersion course in student loans (barely passed).
-a hurricane
-moving to the 2nd biggest state and the 4th biggest city

Thinking back on these helped me realize how easy this year's transition has been.
Being back has been great and I got a job at the Digital Media Center on campus. My job is to help people edit videos and use the adobe creative suite, so it's mostly just fun.

2009-07-25T15:40:00.003-05:00

Bears!
This week I had two bear experiences. First a bear came into our house.
Our landlady asked us if we messed up her fridge and took her milk. (Yeah, we knocked all the shelves down in your fridge) So I went to investigate. A few things had been chewed into and the shelves were knocked down. I also noticed that the trim around the door of the pantry had been ripped off the wall. So we concluded that a raccoon or some type of animal had snuck into the open window and tried to get at her food. End of story, or so we thought. David, our roomate came home and told us what had really happened.
At 10:30 pm Mary-jane and I were out of the house. David was in his room watching TV and he heard a large banging noise and thought we had returned home. The banging continued so he decided to check it out. The noise was coming from the closed laundry room. In the laundry room there is a washer and dryer, a pantry, and an extra fridge in which our landlady, Pamela, keeps some things. He opened the laundry room door and there crouched on the floor with its head in the refridgerator was a medium sized black bear. He promptly closed the door.
Not knowing what to do, David called 911. After explaining the situation to the call-taker, David returned to the door and found the bear had gone. The bear had allegedly climbed on a truck parked outside and entered the home through the open window.

Then again this morning! Just as I arrived at work there was a huge brown bear near the river that passes through Aspen. Right near the city! The bear looked and saw that a group of people (the aspen art museum staff) was watching him and ran down the Rio Grand Trail. The trail is a major bike and hiking path. I was so happy to see the bear by the river because I missed the bear that broke into our own house! David said the bear that came into our house was pretty small but the brown bear by the river was huge!

2009-07-20T11:55:00.005-05:00

Here are some awesome pictures I found of Cathedral Lake. The whereabouts of our camera are unknown at the moment, but hopefully we'll be able to post some of our own pictures very soon.
Today I'm going to hike to the grottoes with Mark and Ben, two guys from the Aspen Festival.

Cathedral Lake is #2 on the map. We also hiked #10, Aspen Mountain about two weeks ago. It was great because there is a gondola you can take from the top so you don't have to hike down.

2009-07-18T01:15:00.005-05:00

So far Aspen has been a lot of fun. Last week we hiked to Cathedral Lake, a pretty amazing highland lake above the treeline. It was tough but we made it.

Next week I start my job at Aspen Art Museum (www.aspenartmuseum.org) as an art handler. I'll be responsible for setting up and taking down exhibits and helping out with the art auction the museum holds to raise money.
Peter Coffin, Untitled

2009-06-07T22:15:00.001-05:00

Mary-Jane in Galveston

Pavilion

2009-03-16T12:32:00.000-05:00

I have been working like crazy on a competition entry. One student group at Rice will win $5,000 by designing a pavilion to honor the schools donors. I did this design with Timmi and Matt. Here's our entry.

2009-02-24T17:07:00.000-06:00

2009-02-24T14:26:00.000-06:00

I finished my Zumthor model in January here are some pictures

2009-02-22T21:56:00.000-06:00

Man, I'm supposed to be doing a project and I'm wasting time on here.

2009-02-21T15:03:00.000-06:00

SING ME THE JABER SONG! This is MJ's opera coach

2009-02-07T16:50:00.001-06:00

Here are some pictures of my final project from last semester.

2009-02-03T10:38:00.000-06:00

Things are going well. Mary-Jane just finished her Opera scenes and we've been celebrating.

2009-01-10T15:17:00.000-06:00

For Studio class we are required to construct a model of a built work. I chose Peter Zumthor's Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria.

Zumthor typically creates seemingly minimalist projects that, when dissected reveal a greater complexity.

The Kunsthaus is basically a rectangle standing on its small side, but the glass panes that make the shell surrounding the building create a scale-like pattern. Light filters through these semi-transparent panes in a space between the ceiling and concrete floor of the storey above. Really amazing building.

2009-01-06T16:12:00.000-06:00

This is a drawing I did this weekend while MJ was busy coughing.

2009-01-06T16:04:00.000-06:00

Here are some of my projects from last semester.

2008-09-21T15:48:00.000-05:00

In my program we're learning to use 3-D Modeling software. This is one of my first drawings. The greatest part about the program is that it is all to scale. It's not a representation of a building, it's actual size. Really cool stuff.

Rice

2008-09-18T14:00:00.001-05:00

Here's a picture of the front of the school.
My building is just to the left.

2008-09-16T12:52:00.000-05:00

Hurricane Ike

2008-09-16T12:35:00.001-05:00

We survived Hurricane Ike 2008!

Luckily the moving company still hasn't brought any of our things (It's been almost a month), so we weren't really worried about anything getting wrecked. We just locked the doors, parked our car on high ground, and waited it out.

Our hood wasn't hit to bad. Some people got trees through their windows and on their cars, and the power went out in the whole city. Even now power's not totally restored. Since the storm, the gas stations and grocery stores have been swamped with people. Someone even stole our grocery cart so we had to grab one of the racecart kid kind.

Here's some pics of the damage in our area.

The Long and Lonely Summer

2008-08-08T17:50:00.000-05:00

Timberwolf Cabinet Shop has been my home for most of the summer while MJ has been singing Opera in upstate New York. Mary-Jane comes home on Aug. 9. We're pretty excited to get to know each other again. On the 15th we pack up all our stuff and head to Houston.
Giddy up!

2008-03-31T22:07:00.000-05:00

Acceptances!! Yesss!!

We have been hearing back from all our schools.

Mary-Jane has been accepted at Rice University in Houston, and Yale.
I got accepted at Pratt Institute in New York, Rice University and University of Houston.

I looks like Houston is where we'll end up, both nothing's final. We're way excited because Rice University was our number one pick and we both got in! Rice University has close ties with the Houston Grand Opera, great for MJ. In architecture the school is ranked 6th in the nation!

On May 3 Erin, Mary-Jane, and I graduate!

2008-01-22T23:02:00.001-06:00

Whooa!!!!

2008-01-22T22:51:00.000-06:00

I finally remembered my stupid password and email for this blog. Sheesh!

Well, MJ and I are in our last semester. We have to take all these classes that we've been putting off 'til the last second (oceanography for me and math for MJ, at least I get to learn about dolphins and the Mariana's trench... really important for my career).

We both finished our applications for grad school and are anxiously awaiting the results.