Balboa Park Drawing

I did this drawing because I really admire the ornament of the exhibit buildings there and it was just such a fun place to visit!

Week Fourteen Journal:

This week my focus was mainly on time management, due to the fact that the semester is coming very quickly to a close. I learned that to get a Revit model into a physical model the easiest thing to do is just make elevations, sections and roofplans of a building. Then you put all of the hidden line plans onto a revit sheet and convert the sheet to a DWG file. Open AutoCAD and then insert the DWG file, then all that there is left to do is trace over the DWG file with the correct cut/etch layered lines and delete the imported view! After I was able to laser cut both townhouses and villa I just spent the second half of the week gluing together the pieces, spray painting the three models white, and working on the poster for presentations!

Lubbock High School

Week Thirteen Journal:

Thanksgiving week! This week there was not many classes to attend because of the Holiday so I was blessed to return home for the second time this semester. I am originally from Lubbock, Texas, so it was quite a bit of a drive but I made it safely. Along the very long drive I passed many old and broken down homes from many old and forgotten little Texas towns, this was an amazing reminder that beauty can still be found in the broken down. It was also very interesting to compare the older homes with newer ones when it comes to things like ornamentation on the front faces of the buildings and the size and shapes of the drive ways. A lot of the homes in central Lubbock are built in the mid-century style, so that made running errands around town a lot more interesting. In addition to just enjoying the design from the car, I was able to watch a lot of Mad Men on Netflix. The show is famous for its mid-century modern design and it just a fun and entertaining way to soak up the design of the 1960's through the New York advertising men!

Hatching Practice

Week Twelve Journal:

Another busy week at Texas A&M! This week my main focus was working on the Townhouse project with my group and we learned that coordinating is a little bit more difficult when your buildings are actually touching! We focused a lot on having similar styles for the townhouses and it turned out better than expected, similar colors and furniture don't hurt. While each team member is trying to blend in together I still love seeing how each of my team members style compares to each other.

Fort Worth Water Gardens Marker

I had to draw the Water Gardens again because I loved it so much. This time I tried to draw it without pen and just marker. It gives off a different vibe, but I do not think I enjoy it as much.

Week Eleven Journal:

This week there was a lot of late nights on Revit working on my Villa Model, so I learned a lot about working in Revit and my skills are getting better. Working in a group of people trying to get similar buildings is interesting because we all have very different styles, but seeing all of our styles blend and creating a unique style is very interesting. In the History of Design class that I am taking we watched a documentary about Charles and Ray Eames. I really love their style of work and it was so cool to see glimpses into their lives through interviews of people they worked with. Their lives look so interesting and I love how they lived and worked in a heavily creative environment. Their house is Santa Monica is the house of my dreams!

Fort Worth Water Gardens

I liked the sketch and then I tried to add copics and I don't know if it made it better or if it made it worse. Need to redraw it because I did not make the first set of stairs long enough initially.

Week Ten Journal:

This week me and some other girls in Environmental Design missed class on Thursday and Friday to go to Dallas, Texas for the Texas Society of Architects convention. On Thursday I attended three lectures: Transportation in Dallas, What I Learned Designing my Own Home, and Restoring an Old Church. The one on designing your own house was my favorite because the all three architects went about it differently and admitted each of their own mistakes. After the lectures we walked around and visited the exhibits and talked to some people working in the industry. That was interesting because it is easy to forget that there are jobs in architecture aside from just an Architect. On Friday we went and looked at the Perot Museum and we explored The Water Gardens. That was such a fun experience because it was a very interactive environment and the different types of water gardens was so interesting because water is not commonly thought of as a building material and Philip Johnson used it in three very different ways. All in all it was a very fun trip and I learned a lot.

My First Renderings

This is my very first rendering! It is of an exercise we did in studio in order to become more familiar with Revit. There is a lot of room for improvement, but that is what practice is for.

Then, later today I just played around with some of the tools Revit has to offer and I changed the materials and messed around with the landscaping

Week Nine Journal:

This week the studio worked a lot in Revit and for the first time in a while, I have felt very confident in what I was doing on the program. I had some help from my very kind friends, Katie and Landon, but I feel know what is going on right now! Working with a little model of a Palladian house was really neat because I was able to use a lot of different commands in Revit to make the little symmetrical house. I completed my first little rendering and although the timber beams are in the wrong place (still figuring that one out!) I am really proud of how far I have come. There was also a lecture on Wednesday this week covering the study away semester, it is crazy how large the globe really is, and I am looking forward to getting out there and exploring all the world has to offer.

Week Eight Journal:

This week there was a lot of due dates for all of my courses so it was a big lesson in time management. Aside from learning that breaks are important to take in order to recharge, something I learned this week was that when personal style shows in a project it makes project presentations more interesting. After watching my class work on their sculptures for the past few weeks, it is so cool to see the finished projects and how different peoples brains attack a situation differently. Seeing creativity at work is really encouraging.

Week Seven Journal:

This was the week that my project partner, Shelby, and I worked on our sculpture for the wall in studio. The most important thing that I learned was that connections are key. Almost every aspect of our sculpture had a different connection. Nail gun for the basic skeleton, drilling holes and band-sawing an "x" in each peg so they fit like tinker toys, slots in the pegs to hold the laser cut fins, staples to connect each milk jug triangle, and finally staple gun to connect our "fabric" of milk jugs to the wall! We got most of the project done this week, so here are some progress pictures!

Week Six Journal:

Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier are two architects that we talked a lot about in my Architecture History class this week. I never disliked Le Corbusier and his work, but seeing more of his work, in more detail this year has made me realize that I really appreciate him and what he has done for architecture. The Five Points of New Architecture is something that I have known since my first semester here, but it is hard to remember to apply them to projects,  so that is one of my goals to keep in mind for my next project. I also really appreciate Le Corbusier's drawing style! I am still not as familiar with Mies van der Rohe's work, but he did design the Farnsworth House and that is one of the most famous houses in America! His quote "Less Is More" is my second favorite architecture quote (Sullivan's "Form Follows Function" is my all time architecture favorite quote) All and all, I really appreciate Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, and hope to learn more about them in the future. 

Lorreto Chapel

This is a sketch I did of the Loretto chapel in Santa Fe from a picture that I took this summer. I did the drawing in pencil and tried not to erase any of my lines even if they were not accurate. After drawing it I used trace paper to outline the major parts of the building so that I could work on proportions of the building.

Quick sketch of the Academic Building

This sketch is incomplete, but my mail goal was to work on proportions. I have a bad habit of making the bays of things shorter than they actually are.

Week Five Journal:

This week I learned about the importance of the honesty of materials. The main idea of "materials being honest" began during the Arts & Crafts movement, Frank Lloyd Wright is probably one of the most famous architects to practice this belief although he was not a part of the Arts & Craft movement, just inspired by it. In the Making of Architecture class that I am in we focused a lot on steel connections this week, and the work in progress pictures that are shown during class are almost more interesting than the completed pictures in some cases. 

My partner, Shelby Parrish, and I are working together one what supplies to use for the expressive wall project in studio and we decided to use milk jugs to create the facade. The curves on the wall are based off of climate data and plastic is a recyclable material, so it creates a motif of being environmentally friendly. The first issue we worked on was how to create a "fabric" out of the plastic - we cut up the jugs into 3" equilateral triangles (the first jug produced 11 and the second one produced 23, we got way more efficient!) Then we went through trial and error and decided to use staples for the connections because it allowed movement and is quick and easy. Now we are just working out on the kinks and shifting our focus from the construction of the facade to the construction of the structure's skeleton. We have a lightweight design it is just down to the technical issues of how to connect the skin to the skeleton and how to get the skeleton to hang to the wall. Honesty of material is what inspired us for the construction of the skin, so is what will probably inspire us to fix the rest of our issues!

College of Liberal Arts

I'm working on getting better at proportions and but I really need to find some smaller buildings to draw!

Quick Copic of Langford A

Week Four Journal:

It was a pretty good week in Aggieland! We spent a lot of time in the wood shop during studio this week and I feel so much more confident in my chop saw skills now! Also, I used a nail gun for the first time, that was simultaneously super frightening and fantastic! I had help, but I have just worked a lot on my wood shop skills recently and I feel way more comfortable in shop now compared to the terrified freshman that nearly passed out during the shop walk-through!

Being in a History of Design course and the History of Modern and Contemporary design I have learned that on of my absolute favorite phrases of Art & Architecture is Art Nouveau. I already knew that I liked The Arts & Crafts style and Ancient Architecture, but Art Nouveau has been growing so much on me lately (the amount of total design in some of those buildings is ridiculous!!)! Victor Horta and Hector Guimard did amazing work and I plan to study their works more in order to figure out my style. I figure that if I make a list of the Architects that adore then it will be easier for me to define my own style based off of their styles. For example, I love the Metro entrances that Guimard designed and I like to think that I have treated the line similarly in my past projects!  

Some little Pinterest doodles

Week Three Journal:

This week I learned a very defined style is something that is very necessary for defining oneself as an Architect and just life in general. Without a personal style every portfolio, drawing, sketch, and poster just starts to blend in, but if you have a personal style people start to see things that you create and recognize it as such. I think it is just fantastic when we would pin-up all of our work in class and people could pick out who drew what just by viewing the work. 

Finding other Architects that I really admire and am inspired by is on my list of things to do because vocalizing a personal style and putting it all into words is something that I have a difficult time doing. We had a lecture on Architectural drawing this week and it really inspired me to draw more so that I can develop my drawing skills further and work on my own style. It is encouraging to see that most of the drawings that people put out are not the first version of the sketch, but at the same time I look back at the drawings that I produce and feel the need to redo all of them! Nothing left to do but practice I guess!

Scoates Hall

This is a quick field sketch I did of Scoates hall right by Langford in between classes. My proportions are off... but practice makes perfect! Also, I'm trying to figure out a good way to draw trees (as you can tell by the floating branch in the top right!)

Week Two Journal:

During my second week of class I learned in my History of Design course that furniture design really sparked during the Industrial Revolution (It makes sense because with the new extensive use of machinery people could mass produce designs much more efficiently than they ever could have previously). Because the use of machines was on the rise and there was now a middle class people could afford to have others come into their homes and help decorate, thus creating the role of the Interior Designer/Decorator! I always was overwhelmed by the ornamentation and pure amount of the furniture in Victorian settings, but I learned that the furniture companies would mass produce older styles of furniture, then people would buy as much furniture as they could afford/fit into their homes to make themselves look very blessed. It was also a form of expression due to the fact that they would buy furniture styled after their heritage. All in all, I have decided that furniture design is really interesting and something that I want to learn more about in the future.

Melbern G. Glasscock Building

Week One Journal:

During my first week of my second year of studying Architecture at Texas A&M University, I learned that everybody has a different opinion of Architecture and it is a much broader field than it appears. For as long as Architecture has been around (a.k.a. the beginning of time) everybody has had different opinions of what they think is best and what the definition of an Architect is. It makes things different and interesting and is so great, but it also means that there will always be people that disagree with what's happening. Without everybody having different opinions styles like Art Nouveau and the Arts & Crafts style would not exist (and that would be really sad). The comforting this is that there are so many different kinds of designers needed; Sustainable, Historical, Residential, Healthcare, Commercial, Teachers, Furniture, Product, and more! As of now I find sustainable designing and furniture designing the two most interesting.