Joe Frank

Sky and Dylan were listening to his shows quite often back in garage days. It took me while to start liking them, but now I'm so happy that I comprehend English to appreciate his shows.

"A Special Family" is one of my favorites. With slow music against intense pacing, he talks about a life of a girl who does not spend happy childhood. When she grows up, she marries a man who has lived in a shadow of his superstar brother. With the desperate hope of not making a same mistake that their parents made, the couple PLANs out their unborn children's happy life maticulously. But they make every single mistake they could ever make and the family falls apart in the end. The short plotline shows the sense of irony that audience clearly understands what those protagonists are doing wrong. Just fabulous!

Ryan's parents said that raising children is like playing pin-ball game where only controling method is to prevent balls from going one extreme or the other.

Vertical Studio

Stephanie Smith's Vertical Studio. Starting from case study of Archigram, I'm going to deal with very small dwelling units. I'm interested in how to COMPLETE the comfortable (active, inspirational...and so forth) environment for single family residences. It's interesting to play with minimum Utopian units and learn the concept behind them.

At this point (fourth year), nobody really think the challenge in class is "assignment". Instructors are flexible to accommodate with each student's interest. So, take it easy...and have fun!










Here is the yurt she is getting ready to put on a market.

Rhino Scripting

I'm messing around with RhinoVB scripting. I don't know how far I can go, but thinking that I had never even typed a paper until a couple of years ago, it's fun to think that I advanced :) It's not a good idea to familiarize myself to the operation of a certain software, since technology advances so quick. Rather I should be comfortable with learning softwares. There never is a case I have to start from scratch. What I learned in Photoshop helped me to pick up Illustrator. And Illustrator and AutoCAD are helping me using VectorWorks at office. One thing is that to use multiple softwares at a same time confuses me with navigation.

Phoenix AZ

Finally my Christmas! Ryan's family is very relaxed and welcoming. Sitting in front of fire place or lying on the carpet, all I did was reading Ryan's Japanese books.

The third picture is the installation by Cornelia Parker I found at Phoenix museum. Since my studio did hanging beer installation, I have become more interested in installations/sculptures. Though I really liked the exhibition, what made me disappointed was the black rope running in front of the art piece. I know it has to keep people out, but it could have been the tape indication on the floor. An art piece needs a physical context to be experienced by audience. The fact that it cannot communicate just through an artist's idea makes art much more interesting.

4A Final

This was the first time that I teamed up with somebody in studio till all the way to the final project. And first time that teacher let us play with our own concepts. Being on my own without the framework of the studio agenda made me see my weakness and strength. And thanks to Ye, I became comfortable with a whole different way of approaching architecture.




























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