summery of thoughts regarding OMA internship, week 1

it’s hard to draw lines. no, i don’t mean lines that make drawings. i am talking about the virtual lines and psycho-geographical boundaries we make for ourselves and the world around us. now that kairn and alex have joined me in rotterdam, our internship is in full swing. it seems like we have been working on this together for months already…

on order for us to digest the massively huge amount of data that AMO has produced over the years, we came up with a simple but effective way to quantify the ideas, concepts, themes and typologies. here is a short video that we produced during our first week of research. enjoy!

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.

activating granary square through interaction

fitting that the final project for the first year of my MA degree involves working with fellow worshippers of the mightiest of all the of pantheon of gods, King Pendopoo. joining karin, alex and i on this final project is violeta and niki; video artist and scenographer, respectively.

the brief for this particular project involved generating sustainable and lasting dwell time within Granary Square, which happens to be the largest area of contingent public space in Kings Cross. this space is also important because it will link public, private, business and residential areas all together. i should probably also mention that Granary Square is situated directly in front of the site of the new Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design building which will finally bring all 4 campuses together under one roof.

The purpose of our proposal is to generate emotional durability within the social-geographic community known as Kings Cross Centre, focusing on the office worker and the cyber-slacking generation. Our proposal is a hybrid community building system consisting of three elements that are developed to engage members of the Kings Cross populace.

In order to generate sustainable desire to participate in the initiative, the proposal uses two easily accessible digital platforms that are facilitated with an essential third physical layer. The first digital platform is packaged in the form of a web-based, online community using Web 2.0 concepts. The second digital platform is packaged within the widely accessible platform of digital mobile phone technology to provide a personal, “always on”, portable interface device. we looked at accelerometer technology and other emerging technologies that would facilitate more intuitive game-play.

some other inspirational research included the Pacmanhattan geo-centric game:

Both digital platforms are used as interface to the physical “playground” of Kings Cross Centre for interaction with the various games and social networking systems. think Web 2.0 + Nintendo Wii + mobile phones using a physically real and unique space (Granary Square / Kings Cross Centre) as playing field; kinda like a giant Dance Dance Revolution game, er something…

imagine office workers getting a little exercise in the morning before work by playing a short game in the square with their phone:

or spending their lunch break virtual fishing with their phones by the canal:

and then meeting in the evening to play dating games or larger, league tournaments:

in terms of learning outcomes, the great thing about this final project is that we were not limited by technology when it came to proposing our ideas. we worked together quite smoothly which was proof that karin, alex and i could collaborate together successfully.

i hope this is a sign for things to come when the three of us collaborate together again for our up-coming joint internship at the Office For Metropolitan Architecture this summer in rotterdam.

for another perspective from one of our tutors, please check out his blog entry about the project here.

the gamelan gang strikes again!

So as to follow up on the on-going antics of the gamelan gang, for the past few months the MACPNE department has been generating research and development that encompasses the design of a user experience and deployment of a pavilion to house the Indonesian instrument know as the gamelan. This commission is to coincide with the grand re-opening of the Royal Festival Hall and renewal of London’s Southbank Centre in mid-June of this year.

The gamelan is considered one instrument in Indonesian culture but when we got one delivered to our studio on the 9th floor of CSM’s Red Lion Square building a couple of months ago we discovered it was so much more then what we expected. as part of our research we were instructed in its playing by one of the UK’s premiere gamelan players and gamelan expert in residence at Southbank Centre, Sophie Clark.

A lil’ diddy about the gamelan; a complex collection of percussion instruments, the version of the gamelan we played (there are several different types of gamelans from the various island districts that Indonesia is comprised of) is considered the “portable” version. the full-size version of the gamelan maintained by southbank centre is housed in its own room within the Royal Festival Hall.

Gamelan music is composed of intricate patterns that are unique to the each part of the gamelan and is quite mathematical; Bach would have had a handful to deal with. Every gamelan is tuned within itself, so every gamelan sounds different from one another. Playing a composition on one set could sound drastically different on another, and often players learn all instruments and rotate so that everyone plays each part of the gamelan throughout a performance.

The gamelan is the centerpiece of local Indonesian community. most Indonesian people that live around a pendopo (a building that serves as something reminiscent to a town hall or community centre) learn how to play or at least have heard a gamelan before at one point or another. It is an important element in shadow puppet theater (called wayang) and as accompaniment to Indonesian dance and ceremony. It is used for old-school jammin’, too.

Within the pendopo, the gamelan is played at ground level where musicians sit alongside spectators on even ground. Gamelan sessions have the potential to last days, and often people come to the pendopo and eat with family and friends, converse with fellow community members and even take naps in the shade away from the heat. Everyone in the pendopo is barefoot, which adds to the general coziness of the atmosphere.

right… so back to the project, other research conducted included people flow studies, ethnographic research interviews with gamelan groups, visitors to Southbank Centre and local skateboarders at the skate park adjacent to the Royal Festival Hall, reading of the ancient texts the Ramayana and Mahābhārata and site visits to the rebuild / retrofitting of the Royal Festival Hall.

After a consultation with structural engineers, the final pitch will occur this Friday, a day after another crit for a project for the master-planning of the new Kings Cross Center in London.

I think it’s going to be yet another tough and exciting week.

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!