Beauty Where I Least Expect It

So this won't be a text heave post. But I recently went on a couple site visits for projects of which I am in the battle. One was in North Minneapolis, the notoriously minority area of the city that I have always been told to stay away from. The other was along a path I have traveled many times, but never stopped on. This is the beauty I found in one day because I stepped "out of bounds" and slowed my pace to a crawl.

Mural on the 4th Street Saloon. I-94 and West Broadway

Hiawatha LRT, Sabo Bridge, Hiawatha Ave, and the Minneapolis Skyline

Austin City Limits

I decided to use the most cliche title for this post because being creative is hard, and I'm tired right now. Get off my back.

But in all reality, the Austin city limits are a very important boundary. If I were to ask you to think of the word Texas, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Old westerns, cowboys, wide open land and skies, but also conservative values, Southern attitudes, not the most progressive state in the union. This is at least what I think of. Not the most friendly place for someone like me. 

So when it was announced that the Gophers were going to the NCAA tournament in Austin, TX, I was excited for the warmth and travel, not so excited for Texas. After our recent trip to Houston, I did not have high expectations for this trip. Austin proved me wrong in about 4 hours.

The first thing that I loved was the warmth. We left a Minneapolis shivering in the 9 degree air. When we landed, it was a balmy 70 degrees. But beyond the obvious, once we crossed the city limits into Austin, we stepped into a world completely unlike the rest of Texas.

Minneapolis from the plane.

Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in Texas, and they are on the forefront of urban planning. Sprawl is a bad word in Austin. We never left downtown, yet we saw Austin. Downtown, bounded on the south by Ladybird Lake (it's a river--definitely not Minnesota) and to the north by the capitol building and the University of Texas at Austin campus was beautiful. It was obvious that rather than throwing all their money into the suburbs, residents of Austin were enthusiastic about their city center.

Congress Ave, the main N-S street in downtown, ends at the capitol, flanked with shops, restaurants, and wide sidewalks for pedestrians. This street made me fall in love with Austin,, even though I had only been there for a couple hours. It had the luxury of being a very wide street. 4 lanes of traffic still left room for diagonal parking and wide sidewalks perfect for strolling. But the area wasn't dominated by parking. They selectively places curb cuts for parking, leaving wide swaths for trees, bike parking, tables in front of cafes, even public artwork. It was a dynamic environment with people walking, sitting, eating and talking, parking bikes, playing music, everything. It was not simple a corridor to get from car to store. It was a place to hang out, to see and be seen. I'm sure we were seen by everyone there, with our pasty skin seeing sunlight for the first time since October. While everyone else there was in jackets (it had dropped into the lower 60s), we were in shorts and tshirts. Such a wonderful warmth!

Congress Ave looking toward the capitol.

Interesting statue

Parklet!

Congress Ave from the capitol.

Congress Ave ended with the state capitol grounds. It was a large and beautifully  laid out park space, with the capitol perched on top of a hill. It was everything that my two state capitols aren't, it had the prominent location of St. Paul with the proximity to downtown of Topeka. It was a very popular space, a large public park in the center of the city. The building itself was gorgeous, and trying to name the style left me a bit dazed. Like most American architecture, it took bits and pieces from different styles: baroque facade, French renaissance wings, etc.

Texas State Capitol grounds

Texas State Capitol

Off of Congress Ave on 6th Street is my favorite part of Austin. It is one of the most dynamic and wonderful bar districts I have ever been to. They block the street off after a certain time and the entirety of 5 blocks becomes a pedestrian's paradise. All the bars are open to the street; windows, doors, letting the fresh warm air in. By my estimate, a quarter of all bars have rooftops and at least half had life music. What an amazing place to spend an evening out. All of this in the shadows of the skyscrapers that dot the Austin skyline. If you only have 4 hours in Austin, go to 6th Street.

I've been rambling on, so I will finish up a quick rundown of what we did/why I love Austin. Next door to our hotel was Austin Food Park, a piece of empty land transformed into a food truck paradise. Excellent breakfast tacos. The University of Texas campus was gorgeous. Since it is warmer, campus was in full bloom. The one word I thought of to describe it is luscious. Plantings, trees, shrubs, flowers everywhere! And their stadium is HUGE. (We got a tour of it and within the first 20 seconds, the tour guide bragged about it being the 4th largest in the country). We got reservations at the Salt Lick BBQ. Let's just say I've eaten that much meat in one sitting in my life. Delicious! Finally, the reason we were there. The NCAA tournament was one of the best memories I've ever had. It is definitely a once in a lifetime memory. You can see the pictures and just search Gophers NCAA in the Google machine if you want to see how they did.

Austin Food Park

DNR Texas Memorial Stadium

Salt Like BBQ

That's all for Austin. My conclusion: LOVE IT. If you ever get the chance to go there, GO. Experience a city unlike any other in Texas, a city that embraces progressive values, one that threatened to succeed from Texas should Texas succeed from the union. Austin is a city of it's own. It's a place where you can sit outside, yell a song for the band to play, and dance to the song they play (which is not even close to the one called). The people share their life stories with you, and welcome you into their hometown without even having met you. And you can definitely tell, feel even, when you cross the Austin city limits.

Mill City Museum: Glass on Steel on Stone

As mentioned in my last post, I just finished my facades workshop. The class was set up as 4 projects all building on the last. We were able to choose a building (which came as a pair in the first project) and I chose the Mill City Museum. If you are not familiar with this structure, let me give you some quick background on it.

Mill City Museum courtyard

Mill City Museum

The Washburn 'A' Mill was built in Minneapolis in the late 1870s as the largest flour mill in the world. It continued to operate  until General Mills closed the building in the 1960s. The building sat empty. In 1990, a massive fire consumed the building, gutting it. All that remained was the shell. The city and the Minnesota Historical Society were determined to save it, and in 2003, with major renovations completed by MS&R architects of Mpls, the museum opened as one of the architectural icons of the city. This structure is, arguably, the single catalyst for the riverfront redevelopment in Minneapolis. The museum is a beautiful structure as well as an incredibly interesting exhibition of the city's milling history. I would strongly recommend it to anyone visiting Minneapolis.

Onto my workshop. I basically putzed around for the first 3 projects. Project one (with a small group that didn't exactly like working together) I explored the many layers that make up the facade. Steel, glass, rusted metal, concrete, masonry wall ruins; all combine to create a very three-dimensional facade.

Project 1 Board

Project 1 facade representation, by my partner Erin

Project 2 was material exploration. Let's just say I spent a lot of time on a study that took me nowhere. I studied properties of glass, through plexi, that could make it more like stone. My reviewers basically said it made them uncomfortable and that I should have never done this. In retrospect, I realize I was simply forcing them together. What am I, an engineer? (I kid)

Plastic studies.

(Failed) combination

Look at that beautifully carved balsa foam

Project 3 I stepped back and looked at the facade as a whole. I noticed that the upper floors, which are office floors, have a relatively flat facade, while the lower floors, which house the museum, are punctures by balconies, structural elements, doors, windows, and the courtyard itself. I realized that the programmatic functions are expressed on the form of the facade as well as the relationships between the interior and exterior spaces through the facade. This was by far my favorite study as well as one of my better reviews.

Project 3 Board

Project 3 model

The final project was all on us. We were to take what we had studied all semester and design our own intervention to the facade. It could be an addition, a change, even a deletion. I spent the first few days completely lost. My three projects were completely dissonant and I had no idea what direction to go. But after some studying, looking at pictures, and analyzing structures with in the courtyard, it dawned on me. I needed to add a new layer, one in which the interior was pulled out to the exterior. I wanted to add a glass observation deck over the rusted structure within the courtyard. Then I got a little too excited when I realized this really did cover all 3 of my previous explorations. My reviewers told me what all reviewers will say, "What if you had taken this further?" "How could you have created an entire layer, rather than the small piece you put in?" And my thought is the same as it always is. "Give me 2 more weeks (we had one and half) and I would have gone further." This model was my first experience with the laser cutter, MDF, and painting models. I cared so much about this model (not this class) that I spent way too much time on it. But I am so proud of the results, not necessarily because it is the best model, it is a long way from that, but it is the first model I have made that makes me feel like a college student, a true architorture student. I am not longer afraid of the laser cutter. I am man, hear me cut. Look at the pictures! They aren't as boring as my talking, I promise!

Project 4 Board

My big boy model

I love the reflection in the plexi

Compare this to the picture at the top of this post

Catch My Breath

It's FINALLY here. Spring Break! No, I'm not going anywhere warm or tropical. No, I'm not going anywhere at all. But the mere fact that for a week, I don't have any projects due, or deadlines to miss, or nights to spend in Rapson is enough to make me want to cry. Two of my classes ended last week, my Career and Internship Prep class and the class that was the bane of my existence, my Facades workshop.

A quick rundown of the first half of my semester:

Spent the last two weeks of break working working working. Put 5 student managers together of 8 hours a day for 10 days and order dissolves into high school. Cannot wait for graduation for those two. Also, continually contemplating getting a real job, like a research assistant. As much as it looks impressive to put, "I made fried food," and "I supervised gameroom attendants making fried food," on my resume, a research assistant position at, say, the Metropolitan Design Center researching how the design of parks and neighborhoods deters crime might look a bit better to potential employers.

Once the semester began, it was like the beginning of a 100 meter dash, sprint out of the blocks into a sprint for the entire length of the race. There was no falling into a pace. It was sprint or be trampled. Gotta love architorture school. This translated into my urban studies classes as well. I get it, we need to know how to write. But to write what equates to 15 papers, 3 actually papers and 12 critiques, with mini over-the-weekend paper assignments in a semester is just insane. That is for my URBS3001W class, Intro to Urban Studies. The lectures are all over things I either have already learned or just know via common sense. I forget how different a liberal arts degree is from a pre-professional degree. I'm  not trying to sound elitist or anything (I promise I am not), but after 3 years in the architecture program, and urban studies degree would be so easy, comparatively. Not easy just because it's easy, but easy because there would be no late nights in studio, no meticulous models. No projects that take 2 months, have 7 parts, and part 7 has to develop from part 1 with a singular narrative. Architorture vs the College of Literally Anything (CLA)

Pep band has also been dominating my time, not that I mind it. I LOVE college basketball. When you grow up in Kansas, it is in your blood (unless you are a KSWho fan. Then all you know about college basketball is how to boo). The Gophers have been playing my emotions this year as they peaked at number 8 in the country only to freefall to number 9 in the B1G, losing out in the first round of the tournament. The highlight of the season was when we beat the number 1 ranked Indiana Hoosiers (what's a Hoosier?) in the Barn. It was sold out, it was loud, I'm pretty sure the walls were shaking, and the raised court was stormed. It was a phenomenal environment (one college basketball fans dream of) and it was amazing to be there for free. I want to post a video from my phone so badly, but my computer illiteracy won't let me again. Depending on how generous the selection committee is feeling, I will get to travel to the NCAA tournament with the team. My first NCAA tournament game ever. Now let's hope CBS analysts are wrong and the Gopher's won't have to play the Jayhawks in the second round should both win their first games.

Stormin' the raised court.

Otherwise, it has been interesting to study different parts of Minneapolis. For my Street Life Seminar, we are working with an organization in North Minneapolis called Juxtaposition Arts. We are focusing on the West Broadway corridor to Penn Ave N. It is in the heart of what many call the ghetto of Minneapolis. It is lower income, mostly minority populations, but it is no different than any other neighborhood in Minneapolis. It is a community of citizens just trying to live their lives, pay rent, and improve their neighborhood. The main difference is the investment from the government. The reason North Minneapolis has deteriorated so much is disinvestment from the city. Everything from street and sidewalk repairs, bus service, even to I-94 cutting the community off from the river. North Minneapolis has been one of the areas of the city where major developments have not taken place. Now there are many community groups working to reverse this trend, such as the West Broadway Coalition and Juxta. This is a prime example of social inequity within a city. While many view Minneapolis as a prosperous city overall, there are areas in which this prosperity is not shared.

Mapping Exercise for my Street Life Seminar.

Finally, I'll end my rundown with my workshop. I'll create a separate post for a more detailed explanation of my projects, but we had a 7 week workshop in which we completed 4 projects. Just think about that. Normally 4 projects are assigned in an entire 15 week semester. We had right around a week and a half per project. That leaves very little time for experimentation and exploration (that is if I want to have a finished product for the review). It led to many late nights in Rapson, including pizzas, movies breaks, and walking the balcony in Rapson just to get some "fresh" air. By the end, I had been dubbed the "catty" b*tch of the studio (a term of endearment for me) and everyone decided that we hated the workshop. Too much work for too little knowledge/portfolio worthy work. But it reminded me just how much torture brings people together. You spend your weekends couped up in studio with the same people and you become family. BDA all the way.

And now, before the marathon picks up again, it is time to log off, shut down my laptop, and finally, catch my breath.

Weekly Wayfinding: Catalogue Litter on the Street

Litter Bug

Today, I noticed litter on Church Street. We all know what litter is: trash that is thrown on the side of the road instead of in the trash. But on Church Street, I noticed litter of a different sort. While yes, there was the McDonald’s Cafe coffee cup in the snow bank, there was also chunks of granite from a path somewhere on campus. On down the street, there was an orange construction cone leaning on a snow bank. Finally, at the junction with Scholars Walk, there was a traffic cone on top of a lamp post. This led me to wonder, is litter only trash? Or does litter encompass these anomalies I witnessed today? I believe the granite was litter because it was obviously from somewhere else on campus and just left in the middle of the sidewalk to trip people. The cone in the snowbank was litter, because, while originally it served a purpose, it was currently cluddering up an already dirty snow pile and becoming a larger scale model of the McDonald’s cup. Finally, the cone on the lamp post was definitely litter, because someone had deliberately put this cone where it didn't belong, causing someone else to have to get it down. I look at litter a bit differently now and will continue to keep my eyes out for the untraditional litter bugs.

Weekly Wayfinding: Street Observations (Same Place, Three Different Times)

Gameday

For this challenge, I decided to look at a street with no businesses on it, but still plenty of foot traffic. I chose the area where the traffic on University divides to westbound 4th Street. This stretch is home to most of the large athletic venues for the U, TCF Bank Stadium, Williams Arena, Mariucci Arena, and Ridder Arena. This was a busy day at these venues, with there being a home men’s basketball game and both a men’s and women’s hockey game occurring.

The first time I observed was around 11am. This was on a Saturday, so it was not too busy. Mostly car traffic with a few buses. A person or two passed, but very little foot traffic. This street is a bit intimidating, due to the high traffic volume (3 lanes) all going one way. However, at this location, a light at Oak Street and the arenas themselves act to bridge this gap. Also, the stadium was built with a large plaza for gathering before and after games.

The next time was after the men’s basketball game, 4:30pm. There was a lot of foot traffic, mostly leaving Williams Arena. I noticed that a majority of the people were crossing at Oak, due to the high number of parking lots around the stadium and Mariucci. There was very little movement along 4th Street, other than cars. There was also considerable movement between Williams and the Buffalo Wild Wings in Station 7. I wasn’t able to spend as much time observing during this time because I had my mellophone from pep band, and it was a but awkward holding it while observing.

The final time I observed was during the men’s hockey game (7:30pm). While there was evidence of large groups of people, there were very few on the street. The only pedestrians were the lone scalpers attempting to get whatever they could for their last ticket. Traffic flow was about average and there was more movement along 4th due to Mariucci’s location on the north side of the street.

What I learned from this exercise is that a street like 4th, which is mostly a traffic corridor, does not operate like a street in a business district. Rather than a consistent flow of foot traffic, the ebb and flow of pedestrians on 4th depends solely on events in the surrounding venues. When Williams’s doors opened after the game, there was a mass of maroon and gold flowing down and across the street. There was an air of energy because the Gophers had won. Ditto with during the hockey game. While there were not as many people on the street, the fact that there had been thousands only minutes ago as well as the energy inside Mariucci spilled onto the street and it felt strangely alive for how desolate it actually was.

11:00am

3:00pm

7:30pm

Weekly Wayfinding: Interact with Someone on the Street

Eye Candy

I’m not the kind of person who will walk up to strangers and say hi. So for this challenge I decided to experiment with eye contact. During one of my commutes to campus, whenever I was on a sidewalk, I tried to make eye contact with everyone I met. My results were quite interesting. Overall, I was much more likely to maintain eye contact with females (beyond the initial glance) than males. Also, as I got to campus and the number of people on the sidewalks increased, I made longer connections of eye contacts with people. I think this is because in a neighborhood setting with only 2 people on the sidewalk, it is more intimate, thus people are less likely to make eye contact with someone they don’t know. On campus with a very crowded sidewalk, it is possible to make eye contact with someone relatively anonymously. Thus, there is less at stake, less of an invasion of privacy. This was quite the interesting experiment.