Howdy!

I'm at Fermilab for the month (just got here last Thursday), working on MicroBooNE (click for link). I've been programing, helping design a frame to hold some of our detectors, and trying to avoid the ill-tempered, hissing, government-owned geese that flock around the High Rise (picture below). The novelty of living in essentially a town of physicists still hasn't worn off and I'm having a blast.

I'm staying on the Fermilab campus in one of the Fermilab Village dorms where I'm living with many different physicists from all around the globe. Since I forbid myself to take any of my office work back to the dorm with me, I've been spending the evenings socializing with my dorm-mates, playing my guitar, and concocting devious plans of art installation. (Hopefully more about this later, in another post.)

But! Four weeks have past without a peep from me, so I must "tell" you what has happened during this blogging gap. That's right. You know what time it is. It's picture time.

*cue your Flight of the Conchords groove*











That's all folks!

Labels: architecture, exciting times, Fermilab, geese, howdy, photos, physics, pictures, summer

Posted by Tess |

This was my clay wall. But it was too blah.

So I mashed it and cut it and threw paper and chip board boxes at it until I got this.

What a mess.
But a fun mess at that.I promise, it makes much more sense on Sketchup.

We'll see what happens. 0.o

Labels: 4.111, boxes, models, photos, projects

Posted by Tess |

So, in that architecture class that I'm taking (4.111 - Intro. to Architecture Studio, see studio above) we've begun building models for our first project - building a reading and writing space in a 10' x 16' x 2' wall where a lush meadow meets a calm beach. The material we are "using" to create these spaces in the "heavy" wall is thick insulating foam wedged between two planks of plywood, so it's very rigid and planar. Here are my first four models:

Model #1:

Front (Beach side) - The reading space would be the more angular cut in the 2' wall (right now everything is in chip board so it is a bit hard to tell what is the "wall" and what the added components are, so just trust me on what I tell you.) so the person can recline. And the writing place is the platform where the person can sit on the seat cut into the wall or sit on the platform itself. This design really didn't fit the project goals. Instead of creating a place to enjoy the outdoors if was more like a house and a unnecessarily big one at that.

Here's the open back (meadow side).

Model #2:

This is my transition model. It doesn't look pretty and it doesn't look terribly coherent, but at least I started thinking more about using the wall for creating my spaces.


From the front (to the left) you see the writing area with a cut in the wall so that a person can either is with a desk built to be infront or recline into the wall.


From the back you can see the reading space which is accessible by a ladder that leads up to a little room (one that you can just crawl around in but not stand) with a window that overlooks the meadow.

Model #3:

Here's where I begin to get a bearing on the concept of my design. I started using graph paper to fold identical boxes and then placed those boxes within the wall. Each box is average out to be about 6' x 3.5' x 3' (life size scale, this model is at 1/2 scale so 1/2'' = 1 ft.)


From the back (meadow side) you can see both the reading and writing places. The reading place is elevated and once again accessible via ladder. The person is also once again suppose to recline. The writing space, which opens up to the beach (I just didn't want to cut holes in the boxes in case I wanted to use them differently.)


From the front (beach side).


Model #4:

I made this model today after we had our in-class "pin up" (when everyone presents to their groups their current design and ideas). It's very similar to Model #3 just with more boxes, an additional cutout of the wall, and no ladders.


From the back there is a block to hop onto to get into the reading space (elevated once again, and once again I haven't put holes in the boxes where they will go in the final model). There is also the entrance to the writing area which will be a seat in the wall that can be hopped over to access the beach. Lots of hopping and climbing in this one, like climbing boulders at a rocky beach. The third hole in the wall is intended for direct access to the beach, to add yet another place to sit, and to make it a bit easier to climb up to the reading area if one is not up to climbing up 3'.


From the beach side we see the other half of the writing area set on top of another box that acts as a patio and a way to access the beach.


And from above:


That's as far as I've gone so far. I'll post the Google SketchUp version once I have that in the works around next week.

Gotta go study for by 18.03 and 8.022 exams for this week. Ciao!

Labels: 4.111, boxes, MIT, models, photos, projects

Posted by Tess |

...all jazz musicians, take your fakes books out now!

Anyway, being from California, I have never seen the trees turn to such deep reds and yellows. So seeing stuff like this (see below) is pretty amazing. Once again, these are just photos from my phone, but they get the point across.

Labels: fake books, jazz, leaves, leaves on the trees in the breeze before I freeze oh geez, photos, pictures, procrastination of homework, the autumn leaves

Posted by Tess |