Summer Jams

Here in Michigan, and I'm assuming in other places as well, we're having a very peculiar winter. Usually, by this time of the year, I would have to wear a balaclava under my helmet just to ride my bike. However, this year, our winter has been both too cold to ride at one time, and so warm that I hardly needed a jacket this past weekend. We seem to have settled between the 30-40 F range for the most part, which is still unseasonably warm. For the first time in my life, I felt a type of winter melancholy creep in the moment the trees became bare despite the mildness and my usual ability to enjoy Michigan's wide range of weather.

St. Benedict Chapel by Peter Zumthor: 1:30 Scale Model

I have to say that this summer has been the most productive summer that I've ever had.  Here's the next big project that I've finished.  This started out as the final project in my ARCH 202 (Graphic Communication) class in the fall semester of 2013 at U of M.  Each person was assigned a building to draw at a certain self-determined scale.  We were to draw horizontal and vertical sections, as well as an axonometric analysis (exploded) drawing. Later that year, many of my classmates decided to take ARCH 218 (Visual Studies) in the spring semester because the same instructor was teaching it.  Since about 70% of the class were 202 students, our instructor allowed the oldies, me included, to build a model from the old drawings for the last assignment.

Image from http://theadjournal.com/tag/saint-benedict/

There is a walk-through video in the link that I suggest checking out. 

Landmarks of Detroit: Fisher and Guardian

I've lived around Detroit ever since I was a year old but my parents never really had the desire to take me there.  They probably thought the possible things I could learn there were outweighed by the possible danger that our family could be in.  That's usually how people view Detroit: a dying city where murderers, robbers, druggies, and decaying buildings surround a small oasis that is downtown.  Of course, there's also the optimistic crowd that thinks Detroit is hip, the new cool, a blank canvas, and full of awesome opportunities.  In reality, it's not really either of those.  In the last four years, I've had a few chances to begin learning about Detroit from the inside: Playing at the Detroit International Jazz Festival for three years with the high school jazz band, taking a couple tours, driving around myself, and reading lots of books.  One major thing I did was to take a college course that had "real, live," big-name speakers from old and new Detroit share their experiences with us every week and normal residents of the city could sit in and offer their opinions too.  I don't plan to ever stop learning about the city and at no point will ever I say that I know "enough" about it.