too many fires close to home

in the span of just a few days, 2 places that are close to me will never be the same.

after coming back from a friends’ birthday, karin, adam and i found ourselves standing outside camden station, just beyond the camden lock, watching blooms of smoke hit the sky. we had to make a lengthy detour to get home. looking at my phone when i reached my bed, i realized that i missed an sms from the neighbors. all it said was “camden is on fire!“.

Namdaemun gate in Seoul, South Corea is the oldest piece of history in the country. i have been working on a project with the city involving the ancient city walls, and the south gate once marked the entrance to the old city. recently opened to the public again, its burning marks a major blow to the historical commodity of the culture and nation. this also forces us who are working on the project to rethink the relevance of our proposals after such a tragic event.

no matter how far we have progressed, no matter how far technologically has advanced, no matter how morally enlightened we may become, fire always wins.

make boredom official

i really wanted to post info regarding the cool projects i worked on this summer for OMA, but because of an NDA i wont be able to do so, which leaves me with very little to talk about, since not much in my relatively boring life at the moment can compare to helping design a prada fashion show.

probably the last excuse for posting inconsistently this year, i would like to now redirect your attention to another weblog i am working on with karin. it exists solely for our final research project for our MA course that will hopefully culminate with our successful graduation by the middle of next year and explores the phenomenon of boredom.

due to my focus on, well frankly, my focus on not screwing my final year of grad school, i will be contributing most of my meandering thoughts to the boring blog and less so on villainous.biz. hope you wont be too disappointed on missing practically nothing, but maybe you will find our grad project to be of some distraction while i get my act together.

thanks for hanging in there,

smallcaps

forget that. forget you even saw it.

look away! nothing to see here! whatever you thought you read, you didn’t. just look over there at the pretty pictures of our ultra-bland and non-eventful stay in Rotterdam, where we concentrate on a job we truly love to do:

the indispensable course of momentum

the time goes by so quickly. it’s blinding, the speed of it all. i will attempt to summarize my experiences so far this season.

how do i quantify the value of this last month? so soon the pang of summer will be upon us. as is in most states of change, this spring has been a torrential series of mountains and valleys; no doubt that king pendopoo himself need prove to one and all our (in)significance, as we walk the precarious landscape of the long now.

of all the events that can change the course of life in any given direction, some stand out as president, its true significance only apparent to some. the first was known to me back in march. karin, alex and i received news from OMA in rotterdam that we were to join them for the summer as an intern “dream team” for the thinktank section of the company called AMO. since that time, i have been steadily gearing myself towards our eventual move to rotterdam to participate in arguably, one of the most exciting firms in architecture/urban planing today.

meanwhile, with the new spark that collaborative strategies offered, karin, alex and i did some great work with violeta houbenova and niki lampaski for the Argent/kings cross regeneration in the city of london. while working on this project, i soon re-realized the importance of the virtual domain and its blurring of perception and paradigm. as the real and virtual became unified, so do our online experiences collide with real life making our lifestyle that much more intangible, the two complimenting one another more and more by the nanosecond. this project was so well received that the director of my MA course in london has decided that the project is worth pursuing farther. this good news of course, excited me. along with our joint internship with OMAMO, i felt as if everything i have learned up to this point was being harnessed and directed towards a bright future.

then my grandma in singapore passed away. it wasn’t unexpected, as she was sick already for quite some time, yet it is truly miraculous what she has achieved in her lifetime, with the cultivation of such an amazing and loving family that spans the globe. as matriarch of our widespread clan, she was our living ancestor from a time when life was very different and proved to us the invaluable skill of adaptation. my relationship with her was sparse but never temporal – i would say timeless. i will miss her very much but know that her legacy will persevere in the people she has affected in her lifetime.

and not only did i loose my grandma this month but i lost my OMA as well. just last week karin, alex and i received a letter from OMA stating that they could not find an appropriate project for us (but we suspect it was actually for visa reasons). this unfortunate turn of events completely disrupted my plans for the summer, already giving notice to our landlord that we would leave our flat in london, not to mention losing the dream of working for a company that so inspires such as OMA. my collegue Myrto put it quite bluntly to me; as a young architect, from OMA, there is no where else to go but down.

not knowing what to do next, i reached out to my friend and mentor Dan Hill, of cityofsound.com and monocle magazine fame. he was the first person i turned to and his help and advice has been spot on and extremely supportive. seeing more in me then i have wisdom to even notice, he has taught me the genius of personal experience. after talking to him i pulled myself together and began to rearrange my outlook of the future. he also kindly posted on his enlightening weblog about karin, alex and me, even in the midst of organizing Postopolis! in NYC. because of his invaluable input and the inspiration of just witnessing his own practice, i realized the immense work and passion that one has to endure to be happy with what they do.

this morning i set out to find a new place to live since i am about to be homeless on the 6th of june. when walking out of the finsbury park tube station, i noticed that alex was trying to call me so i took a seat on the curb and gave him a call. he frantically conveyed to me that OMA wrote back and said they wanted us, after all. then i asked myself, how can this month get anymore thrilling?

j.

an application for internship

Whew. And that was a tough term…

Lucky for me I am on break now and have some time to prepare for the next term. Part of the requirement of the 1st year of my MA is to participate in a professional internship.

For the first time in the history of the course, Karin, Alex and I are applying as an R&D team collectively for our internship. Our course director refers to us as “the 3 for 2 deal”, we hope to continue our collaborative strategizing and development that has been fostered at the course and contribute to a creative organization we could be happy to work for.

One of our dream companies that we have collectively approached is the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, also know as OMA and their alter-ego, AMO.

We have prepared a portfolio for them based on our past work, and details on a new collaborative work we specifically developed for the OMA application. We have bound and printed 5 copies of the book so far but if you would like a copy, let me know and we can work something out ;^)

A little more about OMA: OMA is the architecture firm of Rem Koolhaas and was founded in 1975 along with Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis. They are the architecture firm responsible for some of the coolest buildings and interiors, and have published books as their brainy thinktank alter ego, AMO.

In order for us to meet the deadline of application, Karin, Alex and I had to produce and publish a book in less then 5 days. In the end we had it bound before jumping onto a plane to do a re-branding project in Benidom, Spain. The final assembly of the package was done on a sunny beach on the Mediterranean. Our cover letter was written on a postcard addressed to our Oma, which happens to be German and Dutch for grandmother. There were a lot of grandmas out and about in Benidorm, BTW. Now cross your fingers. Thanks!

LUA – CSM – MA CPfNE – ARUP – STEEP group – manual research aggregator (that’s a mouthfull!)

This is a link to the blog for the CSM – CPfNE – ARUP project STEEP groups and those of us who are too lazy to remember or bookmark the actual URL of the address (like me) and have to navigate to certain pages by retracing the series of links visited before stumbling upon the one you actually wanted.

cpfne-arup.blogspot.com

come to think of it, i am starting to navigate and remember the psychogoeography of nodes around the internet through the use of virtual landmarks (kinda like “go to boingboing, left on slashdot under the -1 modded troll comment in whatever article, click through the banner ad, straight to flickr and then right on the link found in the signature of the dude who started the google cached discussion about monkey-less bananas on the LastFM forum). it kinda reminds me of when i first moved to the netherlands.

not really being able to navigate around urban spaces like i was used to in toronto (the grid of streets found in toronto and other north american cities pretty much ment it was “up and over or over and up” to get to certain places. this personal navigational system was replaced by concentric circles of streets, twisty roads, bridges and dykes that radiated from the center where the church was and became the “where the fuck am i and where the hell am i going, but i am riding a bike so try not to think about how stoned you are or you’ll get crushed by the tram” system of dutch city way-finding), so i had to begin to remember the progression in which i came across certain landmarks in order to get to specific places like my favorite coffeeshop for instance, only to realize that all the while i was taking inefficient routes to places for years after friends native to holland would actually, physically show me that where i wanted to be was just around the corner and not around the city in a downward spiral movement… or maybe i couldn’t navigate that well because of time spent in the coffeeshops… ah, i can’t remember any more… i’m hungry..

…oh and yes, i know i could use del.icio.us… and i do. just to confuse myself even more i have two accounts and also aggregate all the fii_research material on the CPfNE-ARUP blog… for those who actually get all the diminutives and abbreviations, this post is for you. come to think of it, bookmarking the URL would have been easier by now since i have started to make this a full blown blog post. i will make sure to tag this in the “excuses for posting inconsistently” category… ok… shutting up…

…now.

in the mean time…

as you may have noticed (or may not have noticed… nuts to you) i have been a little inactive.. i am currently in toronto enjoying time with my family and friends, so i haven’t really been perusing the metaverse as frequently as i would like to, but here is a vid to keep you entertained;

to use this great music video by weird al called white and nerdy as a lubricant; in october i will be starting my new studies in london, england so until i am fully prepared to face the new challenges ahead of me, i probably wont be updating this weblog too frequently, or at least less frequent than what is commonly perceived as frequently… which would make this authors frequency of posting not so frequent after all. i hope you enjoy this video like i have so frequently. stay tuned for more use of the word “frequent” real soon.

(^_^)

Technorati Tags: music video, puppy, smallcaps, villainous.biz, weird al, white & nerdy

GarageBandHer0: first year beginner strings

this is the first track of the latest net-album by GarageBandHer0. the name of the track is called a different tune and is from the album first year beginner strings.

idonno about you, but to me it sounds like the soundtrack to a really bad 90’s hong kong cinema police crime story gangsta flick where the only saving graces of the film are the mad-crazy scenes involving guns and blood, and the quatro stagioni sound track :^)

it takes some time for the track to roll in so please give it a chance before deleting this webpage from your bookmarks list forever.

what do you say to a friend that you haven’t talked to in a while

i am thinking about making a category for entries called “excuses for posting inconsistently” because this post is yet another one of those. writing this to whomever reads this seems a’lil impersonal i am sure from both your point and mine but in one respect, all that’s been on my mind lately are my interpersonal relationships; the people i love and care for specifically, whether we are in consistent contact with one another or otherwise. my connection with family, friends, places, etc. you know, all that stuff. i recently got into a bike accident (just two days shy of my 28th birthday) and.. well i guess this response to a letter my buddy david recently wrote wishing me a happy birthday can paraphrase my feelings in the past two weeks best:

thanks man! you are always good with the birthday greets and i loves you for that. shit. my b-day was weirdo. got into a bike accident. broke my bike and top two front teeth on someone’s head. woke up with blood and teeth in my hand, between two bikes and a man. went to two hospitals in very nice B-class mercedes benzos, had my two teeth shards glued back into my head with uv hardening epoxy. the doctor told me not to look into the light cause it could blind me. life is not a bore, as i find out again at 28. miss you very much good friend and hope to see you soon!

jef

but i know that ramming your face into another persons skull at over 20km an hour in a foreign country is not an excuse for inconsistent posting. neither is having to move or not having internet an excuse for inconsistent posting. i realize that i write these blurbs down in this log, not to try to mass communicate to all the people i care about but don’t bother with taking the time to write or call individually. i write these crummy posts because i have to remind myself of what the hell is around me. more often then i should be, i find myself day dreaming of people and places (and food) i miss. so when i use words to send my anonymous love to my anonymous loved ones, it is to at the very least, have that conversation with the part of you that i carry in my life from moment to moment. i guess i am trying to say to many people all at once is that i miss them. i miss you very much and hope you are doing well. i wish i could tell you that i am happy so far..

so far..

so far, so good