Back from Holland!

I spent one day in Amsterdam...

Street Performers

The condom Museum

The world famous "RLD"...

the alleys in RLD

Let's dine together!

My main objective on this trip to work with the software development company Navigram on varies tasks. One thing I really love about this experience is that we always eat together for lunch! They first take out EVERYTHING (lots of breads and all the other things you can put on them) to from the fridge and spread them all out on the table and then the lady will call everyone to have lunch. Good times!



to be continued...

Working in Utrecht

It's the 3rd day I've been in Utrecht, the work is super exciting and challenging. Software development is not a easy profession.
But Utrecht is really nice, I'm really enjoying the city.

I think I'll post some pictures later this week.

Flying to Amsterdam tomorrow...

I'll be going to Amsterdam for a week on business trip. I'll be visiting our soon-to-be partner company in Utrecht.
Still haven't packed yet. I'm making a list of all the places I should be visiting on this trip.

What else should I be expecting...

Our LuminaireX Exhibition...

I've just realized that I haven't updated my blog for a long time... I need to pick it up again.

So after I came back to Miami I have been working in my old school as a teaching assistant. The pay is not great but I really enjoy the work. Thanks to Mario I get to do some teaching in studios. The students are really great, they're always curious, energetic and hard working. That had really gotten me excited about teaching.

Last Saturday we had a gallery exhibition at LuminaireX in Miami Design district. Apparently the owner of LuminaireX was intrigued by the students' work so he decided to do a show for our projects. It came out pretty great.

"X" COUNTRY ROAD TRIP!

I'm driving back to Miami.
This is is going to be my first cross country driving experience in my life. I hope this can be the first step of getting my life back together. The total distance for this trip is 2747 miles according to Google maps. I'm planning to take 1 week to complete this trip. On the way I'll stop by a few cities and places. I will have a lot of time on the road to think about my life and other things. I hope this will be a trip for me to remember for the rest of my life.

Good bye, LA!

I'm leaving LA!

Yes I've made my decision of moving back to Miami for a while to live with my family. I've realized that I need to take sometime to get myself reorganized: Things like making some money, getting back in shape and most importantly, I need to make a plan for myself--A plan that can guide me through the next few years of my life. In the past few weeks I've been asking myself a lot of questions, life, career, family.... I don't really have a clear vision of how to deal with all these elements in life. Maybe it's time to draw some diagrams to help myself learn and analyze the complexity of life dynamics :P Actually they've already got lots of books on that subject. I always thought that those people probably have had the some kind of psychological breakdown or life crisis before the wrote the books. The kind of breakdown like the ones I'm having right now.... Yeah, I need to save myself form the crisis. I've still got an amazing life waiting for me to go through, I need to be ready.

To all my friends in LA, You'll all be missed. And I promise I'll be back one day.

Good bye, LA.

Revisiting Studio Project: COHF

This is one of my portfolio pages for the project: Containment of High Speed forces.
Second year school project. The program is a train station.

Revisiting Studio Project: ELEMENTS

Lately I have been doing some serious Remodeling for my old projects. My fourth year studio project ELEMENTS is an investigation of the deep interrelationship between spatial sequence and action sequences within the space.

Montage

Montage Practice: Remembering my Future

WTF is with the Internet?

I haven't updated my blog for a really long time. I guess it's time to update a little and show the world that I'm still alive. So....

It's been 2 months since I finished my architecture school.
My thesis sucks ass.
I was depressed, but not anymore.
I'm in China right now.
It's been a month and 8 days.
That's right, I'm still here...
I have already delayed my returning flight to the US twice.
Something inside of me has been missing for a long time. and yet I've found it again.

It gave me the desire to love life again.

I love life.

Photography: Genre work...

Genre: Exit the city. Reference: Fairy Tale; Fantasy; Cubism Painting (Picasso)

Basically I did a field trip around echo park area, I was fascinated by all the narrow paths in-between the houses. They are all going up to the hill, visually generating a dramatic view for the house or elements far away. I received a very different feeling walking through these paths, for the moment I almost felt like I was on my way of escaping from the city. So I wanted to express the experience by manipulating the photographs I've taken from varies angles and collaging them into one composition to reinforce the dreamlike experience I'm trying to illustrate.

This was fun.

The making of MOVE...

We just had the thesis midterm, in the review I came to realize I still have problem with clarifying my thesis through the work I've produced so far. That sucks.
And now we are supposed to be fully engaged into the production of our project. As for me, sadly I really don't feel the drive in me at this point. in fact, I haven't really felt the drive since the beginning of the thesis semester. Some days I was actually thinking about becoming a concept artist might be more suitable for my nature.

But nevertheless, "I've chosen to take the path of doing architecture, therefore I need to be responsible for that decision as well as for my life." ... I kept telling myself.

Yes, I need to make a kickass thesis. So fuck everything else.

New LA Photography (2) Body and space

The theme our second assignment is body. We have to somehow capture the relationship between the body and its spatial environment. I'm interested at using the trace of varies movements to construct an image of the urban lifestyle.

NEW LA PHOTOGRAPHY

I'm taking a photography class at my school titled "New LA Photography". The subject will be mainly architecture or architecture related material. It seems to have the potential of becoming a really interesting class.

Taking a good photo is hard. Making the photo look good is easy.

Photo: Brock Real estate, Glendale ave.

First review / Part design 01 Stair/Path

Today we had the first pin-up review with the thesis advisers. I proposed the first design study--The hybrid STAIR-PATH. One significance is that the user needs to complete the first half of the stair before they can stop or they will fall. The juries were generally happy with the progress I made for my thesis.

Sumi Ink Painting

My Thesis / Parkour

This is an very insightful video documentary about Parkour. The development of my thesis have been heavily inspired by this new urban phenomenon. Although it's extremely amazing to witness those powerful movement that they're capable of doing, I'm more intrigued by the internal journey they were going through during every move. I believe what makes the Parkour concept valuable to our society is its training of one's mind. This goal is very similar to the idea of Buddhism but with a different method. The Buddhism method of mind development is mostly about passive behavior. The way of overcoming fear is to ignore it. Parkour is encouraging individuals to overcome fear by facing it. Both methods are about strengthen our mind. This kind of strength what our society is lacking. We need to look beyond our body and try to learn from our inner self.

A Bug to remember

Today I want to post an old piece I did years ago. It is a giant insect looking creature I designed based on a fantasy story background. I've been wanting to start working on this story again. But there is so little time outside my school curriculum. Sign...
These two images are after/before the final touch in Photoshop.

Studio Midterm

We just had the midterm this Friday. The project is to design a temporary classroom sized prototype using more efficient material and structural systems. We proposed a structural system based on curved fold morphology. This is our group's presentation.
During the review, we had a very interesting discussion about the idea of model making. Peter had a valuable point on the role of physical models in the design process. It shouldn't be made solely for the sake of formal representation. Especially in a studio where the focus is about structural performance. The physical model should at least have similar structural behaviors as the project in real scale or perhaps constructed with the same fabrication logic.