Week 14: Moriana, the Two-Faced City

Here is a link to our final blog post. This is a group project, so we published our paper together online.

http://whatsbehindthesecoldeyes.blogspot.com/2015/05/moriana-gleaming-bright-moriana-gloomy.html

I also have some comments on the overall city-cake building experience. I truly loved this project. It was really cool to work with such a big team of classmates to design something so unique and tasty. The incredible amounts of food involved was a lot of fun. I think we put at least 30 man-hours into this project, and honestly I probably had the most, simply because it was at my house, but I was totally okay with that! I love food so much, and I really enjoy making pretty food! I enjoyed reading into the deeper meaning of the city's depiction as well.

What a lovely city! My favorite part was probably the ice cream cones.

A Gatorade "river" welcomed our guests from the other project group.

Professor Hinders made the first cut, since nobody else really wanted to.

Week 13: Philo!

I love small town America - let's just establish that right now. I really love it.  And so, I decided to bike to Philo. Fortunately, I had HUGE tailwinds and got a ride back from a classmate. It's kind of cheating, and I'm totally okay with it. :)

The streets are named after presidents. The location of the town is the intersection of Route 130 and the railroad tracks. These are already things I knew because I'm such a small town nerd. I don't even live in one; I'm just going to go ahead and blame this all on my love for bicycling.

The town has expanded quite a bit. There are several public high schools: Unity High, and a private school too. As the town has grown, houses have become more modern farther out, and the churches have grown enough for the presence of a private high school.

This was a fun day! See below for more details.

Stereotypical bike shot - Casey's in the background. This defines the town: it's ability to have a successful Casey's General Store.

Bike-bus selfie! Such a fun class!

Here's the "McDonald's-style post office." Hinders calls it that because people just come in and grab what they need. It's a 70's-style storefront, if I recall correctly.

Here's the AMAZING Philo Tavern. The food was so good. Thank you so much, Professor Hinders!

Week 12: Education Building and Krannert Art Museum

Week 12

(No week 11 blog post; I missed class.)

We had a semi-student-directed tour today. We started with the Education Building, which is surprisingly bigger than it looks as a result of its extended basement. We moved onto the Krannert Art Museum and spent the rest of the day enjoying the art inside. I won't speak on that much because it's not the main point of this class. Photos below show what I learned on this particular tour. Finally, there is the exterior of the Krannert Art Museum, which is copper meant to not tarnish. It's interesting about how copper is used in ways such that it should oxidize or not - based on its orientation. Vertical metal will not tarnish, but horizontal or slanted metal will collect water over time and oxidize much more rapidly.

The education building has a lovely way of lining up its axis with the two buildings shown north of it. These buildings are Wohler's (left) and the Architecture Building. HOWEVER, the stupid lamp post being off-center with these two lovely sidewalks is driving me insane.

The cement ceiling tile pattern continues from the inside to the outside of the building - like the Erlanger House.

Outside of the Education Building is a beautiful garden. I might like to go study there sometime. It's peaceful and full of gorgeous trees in full blossom.

We got to go out on the balcony of the building! This was a really cool part of the tour! It felt like we were going to get into trouble, which naturally made the entire thing a lot more daring and fun.

The stairs at the Krannert Art Museum are decorated with a motif of the building's shape! Crazy awesome!

Week 10: Construction Site

Week 10

(There is no week 9 post because I unfortunately missed class.)

This was perhaps my favorite day of the architecture tours. Unfortunately, I was unable to take any photos, because I wasn't really sure if it was allowed or not. We visited the Center for Wounded Veterans, which is being built near Busey-Evans. I've never been inside a construction site before, but I definitely have a huge fascination for how things come to be.  I do recall observing the construction of a house across the street, as a child. My brother and I would go over when the construction workers were gone and walk through the sawdust-filled zones, wandering among the 2x4-shaped stud spaces. This house even had an elevator shaft to explore! In this particular site visit, there were dozens of workers, each doing their own specific job to contribute the entire project.

Also, seeing as I am planning to be a prosthetist/orthotist in my future career, I care greatly for people with disabilities. My research lab in the mechanical engineering department at Illinois is investigating an ankle-foot orthosis which can help people to regain the ability to walk. Moreso, I will be working at Georgia Tech this summer to develop a hydraulic lifting system for patients in hospitals.  This will get them safely from a hospital bed into a wheelchair. So, I thought it was cool to see the rods affixed to the ceiling which will allow for the dormitories to have lifting systems installed. There is a track which runs from the bed to the bathroom of each individual dorm room. The tour guide probably wondered why I had so many questions, but it's just my inquisitive nature.

Finally, this place was set up to deal with the PTSD that some veterans will deal with. It is an open, handicap-accessible building, and it is quite lovely. I can't wait to see it complete!

Week 8: Champaign & Campustown

Week 8

Tuesday we went downtown Champaign. It was great to learn about the complex history of the town, and how everything was constructed with the railroad in mind. We toured through all of the streets, moving along towards Park Avenue, which aligns with the West Side Park. Also, Church Street is the main thoroughfare out of town, but it is lined with churches alongside the park itself. The park is beautiful, and surrounded by churches because that's where people would come after the services on Sunday to congregate. The liquor store is not too far away, so that people can get their fix on days other than Sunday. Most businesses used to be closed on Sunday (I guess it's only Chick-fil-A and the I.D.E.A. Store these days), so the park was a main place to hang out. We also saw several banks and observed that they're stoic, as is the old post office - which is now the Springer Cultural Center. That's where I do pottery with the Champaign Park District!  In terms of overall layout, the town of Champaign was established after Urbana (almost named West Urbana) and placed upwind of the railroad. The railroad track actually makes for some really oddly-shaped buildings and blocks. The diagonal buildings are a result of some old railyards, and the way that the downtown has merged with the diagonally-intersecting train tracks. Honestly, I love downtown Champaign - it's a delightful place.

Here is a huge bank in Champaign. The banks are built to be stoic and strong, as if they can never fail. This is because the banks are a governmental institution. 

Here is the First United Methodist Church of Champaign. Instead of a steeple, it has more of a tower. I also know from experience (I stayed in a whole lot of Methodist churches last summer) that they tend to like castles for the overall architecture. It's pretty cool!

On Thursday, we walked down Green Street (Campustown), learning about the overall layout and how everything is put together with building regulations and expansions of the university population. I am astonished by how many new buildings are popping up these days. Honestly, I kind of hate how huge the skyscrapers have become on Green Street these days. Coming from Naperville, I love the small-town environment that is maintained in the downtown of a city of 140,000 people.  In Champaign, however, new apartments appear seemingly all the time. We learned how Campustown has developed over time, and how some store fronts which are older than others have been able to keep their overhangs - like the Campus Florist for example.

This new apartment building was just finished (by 6th Street).

Here you can see that Campus Florist has the biggest overhung roof. Other store fronts have limitations to the size of their Green Street overhangs.

Here's an old house in a Green Street alleyway, covered up by the storefront built in front of it.

Week 7: BIF

Tuesday, March 3rd, we went to BIF to learn about LEED certification and sustainability. It was a very interesting class because there was so much to learn concerning the construction of a building to environmental sustainable codes. I've been to BIF a number of times, but never considered that the University of Illinois is planning to create every new building to fulfill some LEED standard levels. We learned that every building built these days has the goal of lasting 100 years. That seems like a nice, long time, but also I can see how it makes sense, since the church I live by is over 100 years old and still doing great!

The floor itself is 16 feet deep and has five HVAC's (things we learned about during the TBH tour). There are a number of specific sustainability goals that these LEED buildings fulfill.  First of all, they must have recycling in their materials.  There are embedded energy costs in each material.  Aluminum is hard to extract (apparently it comes from nasty boxite mines), but cement is cheap.  However, aluminum practically lasts forever and is recyclable.  All these things must be considered when choosing materials for a building. Secondly, the building should be sustainable for water. Salt-water reclamation is a future hope for some buildings on the coasts. For BIF in particular, the goal is to keep water in the ground rather than running off to the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, the streets and sidewalks/gardens surrounding are permeable, slowing the water flow down. Buildings obviously do not allow for re-absorption of water. Finally, the building should try to be energy-sensitive. The giant roof acts to block the sunlight where it is not wanted, and the huge glass wall has shades for certain times of day. The lights dim or brighten with varied amounts of influx sunshine. The deep basement is a huge heat sink of concrete from the sun. Photo-voltaic (PV) cells function with limited success because if even the tiniest part of the solar panel is covered with snow (for example), then no energy will be harvested.

A panoramic of the building, showing the huge open space and glass wall.

The roof has gardens. Another main part of the curved over-hung roof can also be seen here.

The PV's cover the auditorium.

Week 6: Erlanger House

Week 6

Thursday we went to the Erlanger House. It is an absolutely incredible structure, quite incognito and businessy-mysterious from the outside. I didn’t realize until after visiting the Erlanger House that our modeling project is actually supposed to be inspired by this home. It gave me a lot of valuable insight into the project, but it was also fun to see this week how some of my classmates have come up with different ideas for the model project that involve concepts extremely different from those seen in the Erlanger House. I think I’d like to live in this house. I could not stop taking pictures of it – such a unique, rare find is this building.

The entire thing is based on simplicity and openness. There is really only one big room, with other rooms flanking it, yet they allow for some openness and crossing among the rooms with ease. The continuum between the inside and outside is interesting, including coarse gravel inside and a pebble-filled cement floor. The boxy nature of everything in this house allows the space to seem much larger than it is. Also, the space is utilized with incredible efficiency. Every nook and cranny is a storage space. I really enjoy the symmetry of this house, but my favorite part is probably how the loft is constructed. There is a small bridge from the stairs into the bedroom, which is actually like a dream. I love the potential for danger that appears to exist in this construction. There is a gap between the glass courtyard wall and the lofted bedroom, creating the illusion of a floating floor.  I attached some photos of the most interesting parts of the home.

The piano is the main focus of the open dance room area, including a huge glass wall for openness.

The exterior is quite mysterious - and boring!

The floating bridge-walkway, my favorite part.

The chiney has the only angles in the entire house. It's pretty cool how central it is to the construction.