Design I: Meditation Space

1.5 Weeks

scale: 1/4" = 1'0
instructor: Ely Merheb

I created a calm space for meditation inspired by a 'moment' in my previous project (line-square-rectangle). I emphasized the idea of progression through a rising, inward spiral pathway that leads inside to a wooden seat. In this project I analyzed proportions of shapes and thicknesses of the different components and their relationships to each other. I also experimented with how light entered the space; there were no 'windows.' Only slits of light between the walls, floor, and ceiling.

*The top photo illustrates the slits of light and a close up of the constructed wooden seat. In the center picture, the slat of wood is cut way at the bottom to allow light to enter between the layers/steps of the floor leading to the seat. The bottom picture illustrates the entire path/progression from outside to inside.

Compost Day 1

My first day to use our compost bins. They are sitting in the back corner of our little deck--between yesterday and today between the bins and the sliding glass doors, spiderwebs exploded everywhere. I don't know why every spider in our backyard decided to congregate and fill every space between me and the bins, but they did.

Last break, in an effort to make home with my mom feel more like home my at David Street in Austin, I took string and extra christmas lights and hung them up over our back deck making a nifty little canopy. It lasted two days before the rain pulled it down into a tangled, dangling mess; A hodgepodge web. One that i've been too lazy to clean up. I just pass the tangled mess everyday, never choosing a time to take it down. As if the initial effort and the attempt last year means something and that one day it will neatly tighten and fix itself back up.

Little beautiful horny spiders took over my ugly oversized web and made little beautiful webs everywhere. Between the wonder of the morning and all the gentle dew shimmering (corny but perfectly descriptive) on all the webs, I couldn't get myself to move the strings and lights over to get to the bins. It would have destroyed too many webs for me to handle. I would have felt guilty.

So I took on the challenge. bag of organic matter in hand, I tiptoed, ducked, stepped over, swung, balance-beamed (along the railing) my way to the bins and back. I think I fucked up a baby web. I can handle that.

It took me around 10 minutes to decompose to decomposable. my tea, in my absence, was screeching and spitting at me in the kitchen. The teapot threw up half the tea on the stovetop. That burned, smoked, smelled. lovely.

There's a big spiderweb over our front door. It's been there for at least a week now. If I see it in the light, I carefully walk under. At night, I duck into our door where I think it might be. She says bye to me when I leave and welcomes me home when I come back. I know I'll be disappointed the day I get up and Charlotte isn't there. This particular gal I think is the reason I so painstakingly avoided the webs out back.
There are more webs in my everyday life than before. that's all.

Dancing the Dog, Finding the Magic

My dog was barking at me to take her out for a walk this morning. I get annoyed and frustrated about this every morning, whether I actually need to go somewhere or not. I enjoy the outdoors, but somehow, with Salad (her name is Sally, but we give her loving variations as well), I'm impatient to get back to the house. This morning was no different. To pass the time, many days I've opted to snag my ipod and headphones. I dance the dog. I've also snagged a book, and will bury my head. 


This morning, I did the latter. Snagged a book: Outside Lies Magic. Salad was yanking me along, eager to get to that I-don't-see-what's-so-special-about-it patch of grass. It's not that far of a walk, but me and my impatience seem to transform it into a mountain climb, the hiking boots and parka jacket being my music and book. 


I was frustrated she was pulling me too quickly to open the book and continue reading about my need to aimlessly explore (and appreciate) outside. 


Fuck me. I laughed out loud about my blatant obtuseness/the irony. The magic is outside, Sabrina. It says that on the outside of the book. I kept the book closed for the walk. Looked around. 


1.Noticed these strange green rectangular things. They were about 2.5' tall. Ventilated something, because all the sides looked liked fixed horizontal blinds. The fear about the potential to step in dog poo prevented closer scrutiny. 


2. The trees leaves were really holey. Little creatures I can't see are devouring them. When? At night? (Who are you? I will research and report back!)


3. Someone in one of the apartments really cares about where they live. There are all sorts of plants, vines, knick-nacks, flowers, etc. in and around their front door. I've never noticed that particular door, but now I don't think I'll go by without sneaking closer (making sure Salad doesn't poo nearby someone's place who actually cares) and hoping to meet that person. Maybe I'll take initiative and knock sometime? "Hi, I walk my dog around here and couldn't help but notice what a lovely entrance you have. I just wanted to knock and compliment you!" 


other things i've noticed outside, other than this morning.


3. There is a bright yellow fire hydrant in the ditch across the street from Salad's favorite grass patch. I saw it, for the first time, last week even though I've lived in this house and walked this dog for 7 years. 


4. Driving on alligator alley there was a truck behind me carrying a load of huge concrete beams. What were they for? And it had 2 longhorn heads on the front grill. 


5. There is a big, beautiful dead moth on the landing between the third and fourth floor outside stairwell at my friend's apartment complex. It is burnt orange and brown and red. Very vibrant, the ground is grey. I say hi to it everyday when I go by. I pointed him out to my friend. My friend's roommate I don't think has ever seen Mr. Moth because he takes the elevator. 

Flamboyant Frugality. (And yes, still Gravity Wall).

When someone compliments me on clothes, I quip back with the brand, original price, and the discount price I paid. In the grocery store, free samples call me over. I'll drive out of the way to save a couple cents per gallon. I'll eat at odd times, at the bar so I can get the happy hour bar food. I won't order the full price drink. Basically, I become unusually excited, elated, thrilled, when I save money.

Architecture school, nope. I printed more than I needed to and bought more materials than necessary and my parsimonious (I just learned this word!) ways eluded studio. I'll be paying for that later through my student loans and their interest. Ugh! My time and the quality of the project somehow was worth more than the pleasure I would get from a bargain. It escaped and eluded this part of me.

Not anymore. Now I have a life outside architecture studio and I don't have every second and future penny to devote to studio. My immediate goal has switched to modeling. I'm calling off work (my precious paid time) and spending a tank of gas and six hours to go to a five minute casting in Miami. 

So, another side of my wall explained. I didn't spend a fortune on Gravity Wall--which makes me all the more excited and happy and proud. A bricolage of my pantry, car, backyard, home, room. Another part of me I want to examine. How and where did I flip-flop? Is there a way I can balance this part of me?

Architectural Theory: Gravity Wall

Gravity Wall

1.5 weeks
materials: food, paper, paint, string, books, plastic, ink, tape, push-pins, glass, photos, magazines

In my Design I Gravity Wall, I sought to challenge the idea of a 'wall' through the definitions of gravity.I used modularized units to create a 'wall' that was more mental than physical.

In recreating this project, I don't defy or challenge the notion of a 'wall.' In fact, the wall in this project is a typical, residential, exterior load-bearing wall. It's one of the four walls that box my space and make my room a room.


My Design I project had to do with repelling people in a way. The thought of passing underneath the 'wall', of having the weight just above your head, would keep you away. The wall was a barrier.


This time, I am exploiting the idea of gravity in the opposite way. Attraction. This wall attracts me. It is composed of the things in and around my life that pull me in. It doesn't talk about the gravity of things falling to the ground but what it means for something to fall to the ground. That when I drop an apple, it  falls to the ground because it is being pulled closer to the center of the earth. And that is how I understand what this wall does to me. I gravitate towards it. It pulls me in. I am the apple, it is the earth. No barrier. It defines me and my space.


My Gravity Wall is organized by density. Everything is composed of energy, and the idea is that the densest energy is in the middle. This is the matter. The physical things that attract me, like a caramel roll and my mom. The next layer, or ring is emotional. Emotions are real energy, but much less dense than the physical matter at the core. It reflects the emotions that I am attracted to and the emotions I have about what's at heart. The final level of energy is the outermost ring of the wall and is composed of mental energy, or my thoughts.

I gravitate towards the physical, and then this is reenforced and enhanced by the emotions and thoughts I have. I eat a caramel roll, it nourishes and satisfies my body. The flavor, taste, texture makes me feel good. It brings back memories of Christmas and Easter mornings when my mom would get up super early in the morning and bake them. My thoughts pull me back to the center. A new thread of the most dense to the finest, from the physical to emotional to mental can be traced.


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Like almost any idea, the idea of making something that I gravitate towards was one of those 'aha' moments. Not the kind that I want to pat my self on the back for coming up with, but one of those that just clicked and I immediately wanted to work with. My mind took off running with lists of what the wall could include but how I would build/construct/organize it weighed down on me. This 'how' turned this project into something I that intimidated me and hence I was avoiding it. Time seemed to easily be eaten up by everything else in my life. 

Architecture projects had been my life and eaten all my time. I'm working on finding a balance and harmony because when I think about it, my time isn't actually gobbled up by anything. I need to just continue learning how to work with it and how it works with me so the gravity wall doesn't become so grave before I see the light! So deadlines I set for myself don't get bigger and bigger. So things I want to explore and want to write about and blog about don't become tasks.

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Is there a shadow?

Design I: Gravity Wall

*the height of the lower cantilevered volume is proportioned to just above a person's height.
 
Gravity Wall.
1.5 Weeks
instructor: Ely Merheb


Defining the concept of a 'wall' through dissecting the definition of gravity: 1. the force which attracts things towards the earth and causes them to fall to the ground; 2.heaviness or weight; 3. serous or critical nature; 4. dignity, solemnity, importance; 5. grave consequence.

The wall I created in Design I was a wall, not because it fulfilled the typical notion of a wall and what we understand that to be, it was a wall because a person wouldn't want to pass through it. It was a barrier, dividing space. 1. The cantilevered volumes defied the first definition of gravity. 2. The layers and scale of the volumes fulfilled the second definition. 4. The nature of the composition and materials (stone and wood) answered the fourth definition of gravity. 3., 5. The third and fifth definitions of gravity were what made the sculpture a wall. The types of things that passed through your mind if you were to step into/under/through the wall.

Giant Journey on Foot.

Outside my doorstep lies a box inside which Outside Lies Magic lies. Yes? Hm. (Bring box inside home, open package: Marcovaldo, Poetics of Space, Flatland, A Place of my Own, Dirt.) No. Outside Lies Magic still lies outside of my reach.


I have more than enough to write about without it though. I have so many thoughts and ideas hiccupping and bubbling out of me it’s a little frustrating. I’m cringing right now because I’ve been writing myself crazy. I keep starting whole new threads of ideas without wrapping up or tying them together. Maybe they don’t need to be connected immediately. Or ever? Maybe I’m making it into too big of a deal in my head wanting to impress myself with really deep and profound insights, in which case I need to just (1) calm down, (2) breath, (3) accept the not-so-smooth start my brain is taking things and bringing them together. Maybe it’s just rusty from not working too hard lately.


Basically reading Anastasia is blowing me away and getting my mind spinning. There is this utter simplicity that is in your face. There also are things that are unbelievable. I mean that literally, I can’t believe them. It’s something like doubt but not quite. As if I’m holding onto something that is preventing my acceptance of these revelations. They are the sort of things that I say ‘I want to believe them’ or ‘that would be incredible if it were true’ but I’m definitely not there and I know it. My mom is though. She, whole-heartedly, is a lot more open to Anastasia’s message than I am. I can see it and feel it and am slightly awed, slightly jealous, and slightly wondering how she got there.


[A quick summary so far about Anastasia is as follows: Anastasia is a beautiful, strong, elegant, intelligent, naïve and childlike emotionally sometimes (‘she is human, after all’), while overwhelmingly wise at the same time. She lives unclothed, without shelter in Siberian Taiga. She uses her mind for telepathy or uses ‘rays’ to see people and perhaps suggest something to their minds to better their lives. Anastasia can learn and do anything she desires and lives in harmony with the animals. She eats whatever is around her the moment her body tells her she is hungry (like grass, or squirrels will give her cedar nuts), if she gets cold, she sleeps with a grizzly bear if she needs to keep warm. And she has an anxiousness to enlighten society with our potential because she believes that human beings are the most incredible creatures and the whole world exists to support and realize this. We just don’t get it, and she wants to speed up this process by opening her universal knowledge to this merchant (the author) who will share the message with the world through a series of books (which she predicted; and movie, in the future).]


The heart of the book gets at how humans are incredible creatures. That our capabilities and potential are so so so incredible, but we just aren’t there. It’s like we have systematically set up a complicated way to cut off our legs in preparation for a giant journey on foot. And then we are trying to invent technology to adapt and replace the legs or strengthen our arms in effort to waddle, as if this is the most reasonable and logical plan of action. As if cutting our legs off and haphazardly coping with this makes sense and, obviously, is the way to start all long, walking journeys. We praise our technological advances because they bring us closer to achieving something along the lines of our god-given legs that we already butchered. And that this is our story over and over.


For example, Anastasia discusses how people should plant gardens for themselves because in that way we can communicate to the seeds, soil, and growing plants what state our bodies and minds are in so they can grow specifically to heal our personal ailments.


“Every seed you plant contains within itself an enormous amount of information about the Universe. Nothing made by human hands can compare with this information either in size or accuracy. Through the help of these data the seed knows the exact time, down to the millisecond, when it is to come alive, to grow, and what juices it is to take form the Earth, how to make use of the rays of the celestial bodies –the Sun, Moon, and stars – what it is to grow into, what fruit to bring forth. These fruits are designed to sustain Man’s life. More powerfully and effectively than any manufactured drugs of the present or future, these fruits are capable of counteracting and withstanding any disease of the human body. But to this end the seed must know about the human condition. So that during the maturation process it can satiate its fruit with the right correlation of substances to heal a specific individual of disease, if indeed he has it or is prone to it.”


She continues with specific ways to communicate your current state of health with the seeds and plants. The idea of what she says makes sense and her steps are very simple. It actually seems so easy they way she puts it! I can plant those plants, walk barefoot through the garden every morning thinking good thoughts and maybe even build that beehive to your specs, an empty, simple box with boards at least 6 cm thick, roughly 120 cm long and 40 cm deep and 40 cm wide and prop it up at least 20 to 25 cm off the ground facing south. (There is plenty more detail!) But she lays it out all very clearly and specifically.
Hell yeah I want to give to try it, why not? How hard would it be? What harm could creating a beautiful bountiful garden do? And what’s the worst that could happen, it not work? What is there to loose?


Oh, wait Anastasia! My legs are cut off. I’m already handicapped.


How can such a simple thing as planting healthful food for oneself seem so daunting and nearly impossible to achieve? Do I begin my garden by ripping up the grass in my artificially fertilized and irrigated back yard and plant reengineered seeds bought in a package at the hardware store? Do I have time to instill my essence and care for the plot amongst all the other things in my life like making money by hostessing at The Jolly Cricket, pursuing my modeling career, and then pursuing architecture. I need to do those things in order to function day to day as well as pay back the debt I am in from my education, not to mention paying for the two courses I am currently enrolled in now, and nourishing my body in the meantime before the garden starts producing? Are these reasonable explanations for my lack of a garden, am I just lazy, or is it that I just don’t think this is the most important thing to me immediately? And why isn’t it?


It just seems like I am so deep and buried in ‘society’ that it’s already too late for me to opt out. As if this garden is a form of opting out. And as if opting-out was never a choice, nor did I realize it as an idea until it was too late to realize that I could have the option, before I accumulated debt, tying me down. This sort of thing reminds me in a way of smoking or drinking or something. All of society. We knowingly make decisions and live in a way that is harming ourselves; and we keep doing it. It’s just on a bigger level so the guilt or blame is less personal or direct. The tragedy of the commons? We point the finger at mass production by corporations that mechanically only recognize profit in maximum output numbers for minimum input > the highest yields. Reengineering plants for pure volume instead of health and nutrition. But corporations are ultimately made of people that are eating these plants. We are all victims of the system we have set up and it is so vast that I can’t help but feel hopeless to try to turn it around or escape it. Not to mention I can’t just shake off the values and goals that I have within this sickening structure. I want to be an architect. I want to be a model. I want to eat at restaurants and savor ice-cream. I want to travel around the world and read books and watch reality t.v. Is that so bad?


I’m not unusual or unique. There are many people like me that just go with it, accepting hypocrisy or, maybe more accurately, spending our lives making the best of this self-conscious hypocrisy. To me, it just comes to the forefront of my thoughts sometimes and fades back at other times when something more immediate confronts me.
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I volunteer at an organic garden that was started at my autistic sister’s group home. We put fish guts mixed with air and worm poop to fertilize the baby arugula, bok choy, lettuce, spinach, and other plants. We kill the ant colonies with grits. This winter, it’s been the coldest it has ever been in 20 years. The entire garden died. I wasn’t there for it, I was inside keeping warm. I went back out when it was warm again and came back in because it got cold again. I live in south Florida. Anastasia lives in Siberian taiga. Whoa. Thinking about the garden brings up my thoughts about all.


Driving in my falling-apart Volkswagen bug to and from Miami (about a 2 hour drive) along Alligator Alley makes me think of it, staring at the road, the cleared median and manufactured canal parallel to the road. I drove this drive 8 times in the past six days, 4 times since yesterday. I’ve spotted one alligator along Alligator Alley. Ever.
Huge parking lots make me cringe and think, especially when they are empty. I zoom in and out. When I step back--the little things I lose sleep over--I find myself laughing at their futility. How pathetic whatever it was actually is in the whole ‘scheme’ of things. Like this post. But then I zoom out even more and my existence seems futile and pathetic, which is hopeless. The thing with that is that I don’t think my existence is futile or pathetic. I don’t believe that. I have a faith that there is a higher power, greater plan, that there is a reason I am here. It’s the thing that makes me keep going. What makes everyone keep going I think.

the more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

~Baruch Spinoza