Very nice, Kris. That movie really does explain it well.

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

How are these units divided? They look a little bit like classic townhouses with a great deal more glass, but it's clear that they're not single families...or am I completely wrong about that?

@cheffey said:

That's Florida Cracker Style isn't it Lewis?

Yes....or rather, Yep. My father uses that term (he's trying to start a "revival"), but not everyone seems comfortable with it or thinks of it as a real distinction from other early southeastern architectures. The closer you get to the Spanish colonial capital of St. Augustine (where I was born), the more criollo features, like tabby walls and screens, creep in...or maybe it's the other way around, given the cultural history before the tourist culture swamped everything.

EDIT: Cheffey is correct, Diana...that's a tidied up version of the Cracker Style, with a bit of Carribean vernacular thrown in. I've never known the origin of the term...but you know, my grandfather raised cattle and they taught me when I was young how to use a bullwhip to herd them!

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

The early planters' houses in Florida and the pre-Greek Revival creole houses in southern Louisiana had such characteristics (I'm from that part of the world, and used to own such a house), although they tended at least initially to use cedar shingles for roofing. The style lingered on because it worked so well in a hot climate with heavy rainfall...this is my grandfather's place, now part of a county park in Florida. It's a bit larger and much later (1893) than the original models. Interestingly enough, a cognate for the style was the Adirondack "lodge" used as a summer home in nineteenth century NY.

http://www.pbase.com/trimoon/princess_place_preserve

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

Thanks, rhankc!

It seems this is the site of a SketchUp reseller...I think. It seems to me that @Last/Google should have copyright on both images and text, if I don't. I never really understood how that happened...but Aidan Chopra told me at 3D Basecamp that they were using the English version of this on pamphlets sent out to architecture schools. Oh well, who cares?...it was a long time ago.

I'll have to add this to my resume in some creative way..."projects profiled on Dutch, Portuguese, and English web sites" or something.

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

@ross macintosh said:

Regarding avatars: Grim is better than angry. In my new one I look surprised. That too is better than angry.

Lewis -- what do you remember thinking about Stonehenge?

We went there at my insistence...I had been reading up on it. Even though I was prepared and was waiting to see it rise up out of the downs as the car approached, I was shocked to find that I almost missed it, as if it had just suddenly dropped from the sky to the side of the road. I was also disappointed that we were not able to approach the stones more closely...there had recently been some kind of damage from a protest or ceremony, and they had been roped off. Now, except for special occasions, you are kept even farther back it seems. Avebury was much more approachable, but less coherent (to my 11-year old mind). I've since come to appreciate the uncanny atmosphere of the other isolated and incomplete Neolithic monuments more--the cromlechs, single menhirs, and lesser circles--although I only visit them through reading and photographs these days.

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

@unknownuser said:

Alfazet is a Dutch reseller of SketchUp yes. Often pictures from the SketchUp site are used without permission, this is just something people do. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand it's flattering and on the other hand they're making money with using your work as promotion material, for which royalties should be paid really.

It's old work, so I don't mind. I was just surprised to find this (I was googling myself, in fact, to see where that fantasy pavilion of mine was turning up, now that AIArchitect has profiled it: nowhere other than the AIA site, here, and PPB2, but I have had some nice email correspondence concerning it from an architect in Singapore.)

Actually, @Last never paid me either, and they used this project in printed advertising according to Aidan. But it was student work produced in almost no time for an assignment, and as Ross pointed out, no one has failed to credit me with the authorship, so I don't see reason to get upset.

By the way, Ross, I'm not generally angry...but I've been told that photo reflects my typical facial expression. Nothing like overwork and constant illness on top of four years at YSOA (a pretty discouraging place, actually) to give one a perpetually grim demeanor! I'll try to find something that looks more pleasant.

EDIT: How's this avatar? Age 11 (that's 29 years ago, in case you're wondering), visiting you-know-what for the first time. Come to think of it, I look a little grim in this one, too.

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

http://www.architectuur.alfazet.nl/gallerie/gal8.html

(This was seemingly cribbed from the SketchUp case studies...and that was something I did a long time ago, when I was a grad student! What in the world is it doing here? There's a Portuguese language version out there, too.)

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

@cheffey said:

Boo,
that will always get you a job.
I typically assemble mine in InDesign and can create a PDF teaser to send with the inital resume. Then bring a larger printed portfolio in with the sit down interview.

Exactly my recommendation...no more than a dozen two-page spreads, no project more than five years old (unless it got published). And panorama format, not portrait, for the pages...it's not an obvious gimmick, but the non-typical format seems to encourage the reviewer to open the pages and look at the contents. I bought a cheap spiral binding mechanism and some card stock, so I can make as many of these things as necessary. I also upgraded my cd-drive to a Lightscribe model, so I can make a CDs with an iconic image of one of my projects etched into the surface along with all my contact info. I'd carry around a half-dozen of the CDs with a pdf version of my resume and portfolio on each, and even if someone didn't seem interested in reviewing my portfolio I would leave one of the CDs with them as if it was a business card...eventually, out of curiosity, they'll put in a drive.

I'm going to be going through this drill myself again in the next few months...I've got a project with an Australian architect for now, but eventually I'll have to start beating the pavement here in New England for more CADmonkey work.
Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

@unknownuser said:

I wouldn't buy one.

I would, though. They're kind of a mixture of Memphis (the design style, popularized in furniture, not the city) and Eisenman's version of Deconstruction.

My architectural theory instructors at YSOA fried my brain, obviously.
posted by Lewis Wadsworth

@unknownuser said:

I still have all my old lego sets Me and my daughter play all the time.

Passed mine on to my stepbrother, and he to younger cousins and so forth. My old bricks are probably still out there, ruining vacuum cleaners somewhere.

My Micronauts (who colonized my room throughout much of my youth) are still in my parent's attic though, awaiting my second childhood:

http://www.bugeyedmonster.com/toys/micro/microplaysets.shtml
http://www.innerspaceonline.com/megacity.htm

...except for the evil Baron Karza ( http://www.innerspaceonline.com/bk.htm ), who went to architecture school with me. He is currently sitting in my parlor on a copy of a Lebbeus Woods' Radical Reconstruction.
posted by Lewis Wadsworth

Porn and booze as a defense against aliens. Wow! That's probably at least as effective as yodeling, which is said to work against Martians!

I used to belong to a group called S-P-O-N-G-E (Stop Powerful Organisms from EnGulfing Everything!), and some of the senior members always swore by wasabi. Until they got eaten, that is, wasabi packets and all.

(Great images, Durant!)

--Lewis

I used to drive one of these...just this color (although I just pulled this image from the web)...but it was only a two seater and therefore not terribly useful once my first daughter was born. So I sold it for almost as much as I had paid for it two years before. I actually see my old car fairly regularly parked in the neighborhood...there just weren't many of these things sold, although I enjoyed it quite a bit and it handled snow and ice beautifully. I never got the 70 miles per gallon that some claimed it was capable of, but consistently I did pull between 54-60 MPG when I was driving back and forth between Boston and New Haven on the highway.

(I also own a Toyota Prius, but we all know what they look like. My wife usually drives it.)

P:

Don't forget:

(dramatic pause)

Revenge of the Brick

http://starwars.lego.com/en-us/ScreeningRoom/Revenge/Default.aspx

posted by Lewis Wadsworth

Thanks for the link, Paul (and Kris, who posted it in its own thread). So this thing was largely based on the Plastico model? I seem to recall that this masterpiece of modelbuilding was begun in 1933 as part of the Fascist regimes' "New Rome" propaganda, although it wasn't "finished" until the mid 1970's. Is it still considered accurate? Matthew, do you know?

--Lewis

(Incidentally, I'm just an architect with an interest in antiquity, a hobby really...Matthew and Gaieus are the pros is this field.)

Poster: Lewis Wadsworth

Oh, before I forget, here is one of my original renders of that model, made nearly five years ago with my copy of SU 1 and Photoshop 6. It was for a terrible graduate class in "introductory urban design", where we were given a limited and bizarrely arbitrary choice of precedents to illustrate. I chose the Forum and Markets of Trajan because I had recently seen Packer's beautifully illustrated book on the Forum, and I had spent some time in the Markets at one point when I was younger and flirting with the idea of becoming a classical historian myself. And I could use the whole thing as an excuse to learn this mysterious new modeling program that I had stumbled across!

(I was also writing a paper on Pittura Metafisica and architecture at the time, so as opposed to working out a realistic representation I decided to make my renderings look as de Chirico might have painted the subject.)

poster: Lewis Wadsworth

@mcn2304 said:

Here are the close-ups.
I'm not so happy about the way the brick texture obviously repeats, but I do want to use this image: it's a picture I took of the brickwork of the building itself, so it's good to use for accuracy .

Matthew.]

When I have to do this kind of thing on a historic building, Matthew, I've often found that the best way to eliminate that kind of obvious repetition is to reduce the texture "tile size" down to a single, uniformly-colored and uniformly-illuminated brick/masonry unit and the mortar/joint at the bottom and on one side. I don't use Cinema 4D, but I assume that like most modelers/renderers there is a way to make sure the size of the tile corresponds to the real-world-size of the brick/masonry unit (I do most of my precision architectural material sizing and positioning in SketchUp, in fact, and export the file as a 3DS or obj so that the texture mapping is preserved for the more capable renderers). Once I have made the rendering, I'll post-process it in Photoshop or the GIMP, using adjustment layers, nearly-transparent tinted layers, and layer masks to add natural-seeming variation back to the surfaces. This becomes more of a painting process than a straightforward rendering, but it is an effect way to eliminate the obvious computer-generated look.

I'll see if I can dig up some good example of this that relates to brick masonry.

--Lewis

poster: Lewis Wadsworth

It's hard to believe that is the same model I made, Matthew. I'll see if I can find some of my old SU1 renderings and post them so everyone can see how much you have improved on my work.

Great job!

--Lewis

poster: Lewis Wadsworth

Very nice, Cheffey.

Are you looking to leave architecture and move into visualization exclusively? I'm in the same boat, with regard to looking for work, but since I started in visualization before I went to architecture and earned my m.arch., I'm trying to avoid taking a job that only involves the former profession.

--Lewis

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

Are you thinking about that competition in Japan, A.R.? "A House with Resale Value." Even if you are not, this is sort of interesting:

http://www.japan-architect.co.jp/englis ... compe2007/

I've been led to understand by local architects in Japan (and to a certain extent, South Korea) that real estate pressures have resulted in the actual terrain being infinitely more valuable than anything built on it (although I don't know if that is true only in large cities, or in general). Buildings of almost any sort are considered a liability...according to my friends, often demolition and clearing occur before a property goes on sale in order to increase its marketability.

poster-Lewis Wadsworth