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.

Week 5: Domes

Week 5

A tour of domes brought us to several different large buildings around campus. It was really quite exciting to talk about structural engineering. These topics greatly interest me, as a mechanically-focused engineer. Some topics I’ve learned about in TAM classes (especially solid mechanics) are buckling, twisting, and bending. This made a whole lot of sense in the context of TBH, which has huge I-beams supporting the entire building, periodically broken by horizontal supports. These horizontal supports prevent buckling. It’s really cool how the statics course I took has taught me about the distribution of forces through a truss. It helped me to better understand what was going on when we visited a lot of Domes on Tuesday.

First, we went to the football practice facility. It has an interesting dome which slopes downward from one end to the other. The massive concrete construction is covering a steel frame. Next, we went to Huff Hall. This building has a bunch of beams that at first appear to be curved, but are actually segmented and curve across the ceiling to distribute the forces to the alternating vertical beams on the sides of the building. Being an older building, it actually has a remarkably complex domed ceiling with an incredible branching framework. Then, we tried to use the secret passageway to get from Huff to the Armory, but unfortunately, the door was locked – see photo below. The Armory is a cooler dome, in my opinion. There’re two big sides that come together in a window running the length of the ceiling, supported by enormous pins. The pins are showcased by the skylights, a remarkable feat of engineering. I enjoyed this day a lot and learned about different types of domes.

Huff Hall has large columns supporting the complicated truss ceiling.

Pillars support the curved semi-cylindrical ceiling of Armory.

We were unable to pass under the street from Huff to Armory :(

Pin joints support the two sides of the Armory roof.

Week 4: TBH

Week 4

In exploring Temple Hoyne Buell Hall Tuesday, February 10, unfortunately we could not make it into the mechanical rooms since the locks were recently changed.  Still, Professor Hinders went ahead and showed us the overall ventilation infrastructure of the building. What’s great about TBH is that the entire building’s mechanical system is exposed. Actually, it’s put on display in a really cool way. Two huge ventilation pipes carry the cooled/heated air up to the top of the building – one to each side. The huge pipes slowly branch as they wind through the building. We ended up walking through the whole building, seeing how the pipes gradually shrink down in size through the studios and offices in order to force air out until they are very small on the first mezzanine level.  Professor Hinders showed us his office – which is barely tall enough for his tall stature. The cool thing is that he can actually open his ceiling vent to show the inside of the ventilation system.

There were many other things to appreciate about the building. I took some cool photos of the exterior, and enjoyed understanding how all the parts of the building work together in sweet unity. The paserelles cross from professor offices on one side of the building to graduate student studios on the other side, which is very symbolic. The interior materials of the building actually pass to the outside of the building in a flow which makes the building one with its environment. We also observed other parts of the infrastructure – different water flows and returning pipes. The entire system is extremely complicated, but well-designed to be exposed and shown off with the materials of the building. It was a fun tour and I learned a lot about how temperature-controlled air is transported around the building. The atrium has a set of vents at the bottom which allow for air to rise most of the way up the windows, too.

A panoramic shot of the exterior of TBH

What lovely reflection is the curved exterior of TBH where the pipes run along.

Week 3: Scavenger Hunt & Krannert

Tuesday, February 3

Here are the results of what Sam and I found on our scavenger hunt! It was quite fun. :)  Sorry we didn't hug the columns! We missed that part.

A: Tuscan columns at the Union
B: Doric columns at Lincoln Hall
C: Ionic columns at the Architecture Building
D: Corinthian columns at Busey Hall
E: Combined columns at the Halene Gateway


Thursday, February 5

On Thursday, we had a tour of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. We went into all the different theaters that were open, and also got a tour of the underbelly of the center. It was incredibly cool to see how complicated the back-workings of the center are. The area of the center is 1.5 acres, which is equivalent to 9 tennis courts, making it the largest footprint of any low building on campus. It was nice to see the model (made by an Illinois architecture student) to understand the overall building - at least the visible parts of it. Most of the building is underground. My favorite part was the scene shop. It is actually built on a different foundation in order to prevent the vibrations and noise from affecting shows in the surrounding theaters.  One other cool thing is that Mr. Krannert patented corrugated cardboard. I can absolutely see how you would be extraordinarily successful given the patenting of such an incredibly useful invention. It was an interesting tour!

Week 2: Quads & Power Plant

We had two tours during the second week of class.

Tuesday, January 27

On January 27th, we explored the main quad and engineering quad.  This tour took us all the way from TBH to the Beckman Institute, which apparently Prof. Hinders doesn't like... more on that later.  We started with the Undergraduate Library. I always wondered if UGL was supposed to stand for "underground library."  We noted its significance to the Morrow Plots, and also how the empty courtyard space in the middle serves as a way to make the building bigger and filled with light.  Pictured below is Foellinger Auditorium, whose front side is elegant and grand.  We have earlier noted that the ACES library does a horrible job "copying" Foellinger's grandeur.

All of the buildings are coming together to a table (the main quad) to have a conversation with one another.  At this university, we can use the word "universe" to describe the unity of many colleges at a place of learning.  Each building comes to the quad with something different to share, and they are equally important.  However, the Union and Foellinger Auditorium are the two which are far more important.

Shown above is the axis splitting the quad in half.  A train used to run through along this path, a tram of sorts.  What no longer exists as such a train is now a bike path.  Further away in the photo, you can see the short walls and nearby trees that used to form a tunnel of trees.  The hedges and walls were taller at one time, but they were shortened for women's safety at night. Also, the hedges are what make the buildings who they are.  The consistency in the greenery of these buildings allows for more interesting building fronts, and all the buildings are aligned with the quad.  Two other things I didn't realize is that there have been multiple Union buildings; and the Illini Union is supposed to be shaped like a "Block I" but failed to do so due to an important small building in the way.

The next thing we did was travel to the Bardeen Quadrangle.  I love this place.  The engineering quad is graced by the Boneyard Creek, shown below.  There is an axis-shift because of the important Engineering Hall which is rather in the way of a perfectly aligned axis.

The main focal point of the quad is, of course, Grainger Engineering Library.  It has an off-center construction, but the balcony half-circle "calls" to the balcony/porch of the Engineering Hall.

Next, we crossed over Springfield Avenue, where the axis shifts back to nearly its original east-west position. You can see below that there is a gateway of sorts, with several buildings on each side.  The main attraction is the Beckman Institute at the end.  Digital Computer Lab (right, below) is my favorite! :)

Pictured in the above two photos: the new ECE Building.  How exciting! It's beautifully constructed and has quite a bit of cool art in front.

I conclude with the Beckman Institute (interior pictured).  The problems that Professor Hinders has with it are:

 1) The front of it looks like a big dick. Interesting.

 2) It has an uninteresting exterior pattern.

 3) Worst of all, it serves as a wall to block off the poor communities north of University Avenue. I completely agree with Hinders on this one.  It's clearly a problem that there is no gateway from the north side of campus into the North Quad.  What a horrible, uninviting wall has been created.  I disagree that there are racial implications involved.  That community isn't just black people. It's poor people, so it is unfortunate that they are not "socially allowed" into the building, and the university.

Thursday, January 29

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION was quite apparent here.

We visited Abbott Power Plant on Oak Street.  There was so much to learn about this place.  I was extremely impressed by the numbers, machinery, and exciting engineering involved in making as much power and steam as they do.  This clearly didn't interest the rest of the class, but I thought it was all pretty cool.

The power plant itself was constructed out of multiple levels such that the floors were built around the machinery, such that metal grate floor were connected by ladders, interspersed with massive generators and some huge jet engines, too.  

My favorite part was definitely when the tour guide opened up the huge coal-burning oven.  It was incredible to look inside and see the orange flames dancing around, so mean and vicious, yet contained within this behemoth of an oven.  The systems all work together in an very unified way.  The steam is used to produce electricity, but the leftover steam is cooled through a complicated process, collecting as much usable energy as possible, before its un-condensed form is finally sent to campus through the steam tunnels - which they strongly enforced we should never enter. I still hope to someday.

There was a lot to learn - and much that cannot be written here. Since photos were not permitted, I did not take any notes on my phone.  The tour was mostly numbers and names of machines which are so incredibly beyond my understanding. It was also very difficult to hear with the noises of the machinery... I'm glad we used earplugs!

Week 1: South Quad