Here's what I submitted for the Berlin^Hamburg trip... I'm not sure if I'm actually scared for myself. I think I'm more afraid for Eric and Marissa. I still don't know when we'll find out... but hopefully soon. [ahhh! and what will I do about work? I'm pretty sure Norris won't be so happy...]
Essay:
Essay:
The chance to travel with the Bedford Initiative will only feed my disease. The disease all architecture students share. We crave knowing, knowing through interaction and engagement. We want to know what is out there, who they are, how they work, where they go… it’s a defeating, crippling problem. Sitting behind desks for thirty-six hours, we dream up small worlds, dialogues, people and their stories, we are constantly searching for meaning and purpose. I’ve tried to escape. I have tried to leave this dense, tangled field of dreams and shadows, but all I keep finding are paths that loop right back around to the interests involved when I started.
Every semester begins defining itself with my head clouded in the dreams of some other discipline: music, linguistics, sculpture, fashion, marine biology, astronomy. Looking through my diaries, they are laden with lists. I have yet to fully engage in architecture during my time-off from school, but I don’t think this is a bad thing. It must be next to impossible for someone to be completely trapped within the field of architecture. Just look at how it is practiced: we only hover over drawings, or somewhere deep inside computer-space. Our delicate work is reduced to a two-dimensional plane, only to be brought to life by a team of brawny construction workers. Our days are spent dreaming of spaces that do not belong to us: train station benches, hospital beds, and apartments not our own. So what happens when we leave the desk? When we turn off the world that is growing inside us?
For some, the escape may be in a “busy-work” hobby like model aircraft making, scrapbooking, or playing Scrabble. For others, it involves grabbing a drink with friends, escaping your own mind for a bit and learning about life through someone else’s lens. Many of my interests are flighty – they come and go in a matter of months. Sometimes I believe I have something I can latch onto and float away from this day-dreaming world of architecture, and then I am pulled back down to the Greene Building. The thing that gives me true inspiration is interaction with other people. My class here is a big, dysfunctional family, and I have come to enjoy sharing this open atmosphere with all the people I meet. My experience in Italy, at the Politecnico di Torino in 2009, gave me a friendship I will never forget, and someone who I still keep in contact with despite the distance. Ever since I have returned, my roommates and I have hosted a study abroad student, and have created lasting bonds. I now have places to stay if I ever visit Poland or India. And it’s not only the international friendship I seek. This semester I have started a repertoire with the Rensselaer Astrophysical Society. They are helping me figure out the needs of astronomers for my studio project and in turn, I am teaching them how we understand “space” in architecture.
It is such an inspiring and worthwhile endeavor to engage with the language of people from different backgrounds than my own. As Benjamin Whorf knew, the language we inhabit can re-shape the world around us, but it also sets the boundaries to what we can understand. The small, idiosyncratic details I see as an architecture student are very different from what astronomy or music students experience in their daily lives. I believe it is through dialogue that we broaden our knowledge, and satiate our thirst as architectural human beings. Here, miscommunication is a beautiful thing. It is an important facet of the human experience to learn from; to re-discover what was meant by another person can provide grounds for life-long exploration. Questioning the meaning of the life-work of people from other disciplines, can inspire us to develop a fervent search of our own. I am still waiting to discover what will be my undeniable, intellectual crux. Until then, I am diseased with the burden of the search.
2. Related Courses:
- Cultural Anthropology, Spring 2011 – [Professor Michael Fortun] studying the human species in its many diverse forms, using comparative analysis and interpretation to examine a variety of societies on many scales, across the globe
o special focus of my research in this class has been in linguistics/ language
- Analogical Models II: Contemporary Art Theory and Practice, Spring 2011 – [Professor Anthony Titus] this course is about understanding how conceptual thinking in different forms of practice/ crafts can have a profound influence on one another, it is about learning to be critical of the different forms of representation that are presented in artistic endeavors and also being able to understand and critique works in the field of architecture in a self-referential way, as well as through the lens of other disciplines
o my particular research in this class is focused on comparing architecture, fashion, and physics – how these three disciplines have uniquely shaped an understanding of “space”
- Design Development, Fall 2010 – [Professors Demetrios Comodromos and Jefferson Ellinger]
o my project was a critique of UN Studio’s competition entry for a “Newer” Orleans
- PIP Studio, Spring 2010 – [Professor Michel Oatman] participated in the first student-run exhibition to be held at EMPAC, Blindfield. This course is also significant because it was a cross-disciplinary studio in which EMAC and arts students from RPI were embedded within the School of Architecture’s studio environment.
o Particular responsibilities included: being a member of the “sound group” and learning from arts students about acoustics software and equipment, as well as being a part of the spatial layout team in the final stages of design
- Writing, Spring 2010 – [Professor Ken Denberg] this course was taken as an elective to improve my verbal communication skills, the course also covered the basics of layout design. The focus was on producing research documents and communicating the findings in both written and oral presentation form.
o My projects included: researching the relationship between sound and image, the process of book-binding and printing, and developing a traveling social mechanism within the city of Troy for the purpose of bringing local culture to both the downtown region, as well as to the campus
3. - c
Architecture, Class of 2012
GPA: 3.55/4.00
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