BMW 1-series

OK. I'm a sucker for nice cars. I didn't think I was until I started driving BMWs. What can I say? They are very fun to drive. When I got to Copenhagen, they had rented all the Toyota Yaris (which I had a reservation for) and they upgraded me to a BMW 1-series hatchback. I want this car. A small hatchback that handles amazingly and is really, really fast. Oh, and it gets about 55 miles to the gallon.


Alright, I'll stop talking about the car now. I'm not that shallow.

St. Petri, Klippan

Here are a couple of images of the church that I flew all the way to Sweden to study. I will try and write more soon because as I said in the previous post, with the lack of internet connections, I am playing a little bit of catch up. I wanted to put at least some architecture up first though.

The chapel was designed by Sigurd Lewerentz, a somewhat famous Swedish architect who is pretty much unknown outside of Sweden. It was completed in 1966 when Lewerentz was in his 70s and is his last major work (I believe).



I apologize for the image quality of this panorama. I just bought a new camera (the Canon Rebel XT, which I am so far happy with) and didn't quite know how to use it the first day. Hence, the blown out sky.

Anyway, the church is amazing in a quiet, subtle way. Comprised almost completely of brick with minimal openings it is dark, cavernous and not a little mysterious. I will try and explain as best as I can in the next few weeks.

Here is a picture of the main space which slopes slightly down towards the east and the main alter.


This is simply a cool little light fixture I found in the passage way that leads to from the sacristy and offices to the main space.

So I am in Sweden, a country with little to no internet

I arrived in Copenhagen about a week ago and I sure thought that I would be able to update these posts pretty frequently. Boy I was wrong. The countryside and area of Sweden we are staying in, Klippan Commun (which I assume is a rough sort of county designation) is spectacularly beautiful. When we pulled onto the farm where we are renting a house, I literally gasped with wonder. We are in such a bucolic picturesque setting that it is nearly impossible to describe. Here's a picture of the house we are (actually "were" but that's a story for another post). The family owns about 1,000 acres of farm land and we are staying in what once was a old mill (one of seven on the property).


As you can see, completely perfect in so many ways. However, I have also come to learn that we are staying in the equivalent of hicks-ville, Sweden. Think the farmlands of Iowa or Nebraska. Actually, it really pretty much looks like Wisconsin, except the architecture is much better and well kept and everyone drives new Volvos. This has the side-effect such that we have no internet or phone for miles and there is no one around besides older people who still work on the farms and teenagers who haven't been allowed to leave for the bigger cities yet. Very strange and in many ways confining. It is a magical place to vacation but not such a great place to get work done or meet people. Oh well. It's Sweden for Chrissake. How much complaining can I really do?

Simply Amazing.

Garfield Minus Garfield. So good. No words will fit right now. Brilliant.

Moon Unit

I love space and therefore I love this cabinet. I think it is in some kinda glow in the dark paint or print. Design by Sotirios Papadopoulos for ENNEZERO.

Edward Burtynsky

I've loved Edward Burtynsky's work for years now and I just came across this image. I think it is a ship being dismantled in Bangladesh.

A Badass Love Supreme Poster. Need I say more?

I've decided to try and restart this thing....

OK, so no one reads my web log. I've decided to try and start updating this thing more frequently. We'll see how well that goes. At this point, I'm primarily going to be linking to cool shit I find on the internet. I don't have time yet to post my own stuff, but maybe someday.... In the mean time, here's a cool jpg of the work of an artist that I don't know the name of. Does anybody else?

Germans have the right idea.

A group of German hackers have published the finger print of the German Secretary of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble. The club is protesting Germany's efforts to implement biometric data for things from passports to credit cards. From Slashdot.org:

Someone friendly to the club's aims captured Schäuble's fingerprint from a glass he drank from at a panel discussion. The club published 4,000 copies of their magazine Die Datenschleuder including a plastic foil reproducing the minister's fingerprint — ready to glue to someone else's finger to provide a false biometric reading. The CCC has a page on their site detailing how to make such a fake fingerprint. The article says a ministry spokesman alluded to possible legal action against the club.

Here's a link to the original German page, translated via Google.

Portland fun time

On Friday I caught a ride with my friend Laura down to Portland. It was nice to see that city again. I feel like I could live there.


Katie Risseeuw is moving to Austin. Here she is with some friends loading her "pod". Another Arizonan headed to UT. Dear god.



I also saw my good friend Dan Coates. Dan is a great bass player and human being. He's going to study systems science in the fall. I don't even know how to explain it. Obviously, he loves the maths and complex systems. We ate breakfast at an amazing vegan place. I had vegan biscuits and gravy. Mmmm fake meat gravy.

Last day with the Herlings

For the Herling's last day in Seattle we walked around downtown a bit. We went to the original Starbuck's and to a fancy candy shop. Both Ryan and Stephen got gigantic caramel apples. Stephen had just gotten his braces off and had been craving a caramel apple for 2 years. He got back into the game with the hugest caramel apple I have ever seen.

Stephen, Ryan, Aunt Ellen and Uncle Carl enjoying some Seattle sunshine.

Ryan apparently loves caramel apples as well.

Check this thing out. Caramel apple with layers of chocolate, marshmallow, rice crispies, and other sugar products. Insane sugar rush express.

I can't believe this guy is still around.

Bainbridge Island

My relatives, The Herlings visited Kate, Anthony and I this weekend in Seattle. They currently live outside Boston in Norwell. My oldest cousin, Ryan is about to start college at Vasser and Stephen is about to turn 16 and start driving. Ah, youth.

We took the ferry to Bainbridge Island, which was quite nice. There are all sorts of knick knack shops and the boys bought some fudge. Then we went to the beach but couldn't do a lot because we didn't bring our suits. Oh well, it looked really cold anyway.

I don't have a good picture of all of us together. Hmm. Maybe my Aunt or Uncle has a good one. If so, I'll try and track it down.



l-r: Stephen, Ryan, Anthony, Katie, Uncle Carl, Aunt Ellen.



Teatherball Action!

The Rock to Log Game

What to do on a beach, you say? Didn't bring a swim suit? No frisbee? Grab a piece of driftwood and start throwing rocks at it! A fun game for the whole (male) family!

Katie and I on the Bainbridge Island Ferry

If you couldn't tell, it was really windy on the Ferry back to Seattle from Bainbridge Island.

Seattle Skyline

Here's a nice shot of Seattle from the Bainbridge Island Ferry. On the right is obviously downtown and the hill to the left is Queen Anne Hill. Coop 15, where I work, is just about under those 3 cell towers.

Dear Architects, I'm Sick of Your Shit

Well, this has probably been making the rounds among those in the architecture world but it is just too funny for me to not join in. Pretty brilliant and spot on. Sure, some people can argue that they don't know CAD shortcuts (me for example) or they don't like Rem Koolhaas or new condo towers. But architects do brag about things they shouldn't: how much they work, how little sleep they get, how little they get paid.

This is like bragging how fat you are or how long you spend in your car commuting to work everyday. It's sad, and you really should keep it to yourself.

Anyway, what follows is an open letter by Annie Choi as originally published in PIDGIN:

Once, a long time ago in the days of yore, I had a friend who was studying architecture to become, presumably, an architect.

This friend introduced me to other friends, who were also studying architecture. Then these friends had other friends who were architects - real architects doing real architecture like designing luxury condos that look a lot like glass dildos. And these real architects knew other real architects and now the only people I know are architects. And they all design glass dildos that I will never work or live in and serve only to obstruct my view of New Jersey.

Do not get me wrong, architects. I like you as a person. I think you are nice, smell good most of the time, and I like your glasses. You have crazy hair, and if you are lucky, most of it is on your head. But I do not care about architecture. It is true. This is what I do care about:

* burritos
* hedgehogs
* coffee

As you can see, architecture is not on the list. I believe that architecture falls somewhere between toenail fungus and invasive colonoscopy in the list of things that interest me.

Perhaps if you didn’t talk about it so much, I would be more interested. When you point to a glass cylinder and say proudly, hey my office designed that, I giggle and say it looks like a bong. You turn your head in disgust and shame. You think, obviously she does not understand. What does she know? She is just a writer. She is no architect. She respects vowels, not glass cocks. And then you say now I am designing a lifestyle center, and I ask what is that, and you say it is a place that offers goods and services and retail opportunities and I say you mean like a mall and you say no. It is a lifestyle center. I say it sounds like a mall. I am from the Valley, bitch. I know malls.

Architects, I will not lie, you confuse me. You work sixty, eighty hours a week and yet you are always poor. Why aren’t you buying me a drink? Where is your bounty of riches? Maybe you spent it on merlot. Maybe you spent it on hookers and blow. I cannot be sure. It is a mystery. I will leave that to the scientists to figure out.

Architects love to discuss how much sleep they have gotten. One will say how he was at the studio until five in the morning, only to return again two hours later. Then another will say, oh that is nothing. I haven’t slept in a week. And then another will say, guess what, I have never slept ever. My dear architects, the measure of how hard you’ve worked and how much you’ve accomplished is not related to the number of hours you have not slept. Have you heard of Rem Koolhaas? He is a famous architect. I know this because you tell me he is a famous architect. I hear that Rem Koolhaas is always sleeping. He is, I presume, sleeping right now. And I hear he gets shit done. And I also hear that in a stunning move, he is making a building that looks not like a glass cock, but like a concrete vagina. When you sleep more, you get vagina. You can all take a lesson from Rem Koolhaas.

Life is hard for me, please understand. Architects are an important part of my existence. They call me at eleven at night and say they just got off work, am I hungry? Listen, it is practically midnight. I ate hours ago. So long ago that, in fact, I am hungry again. So yes, I will go. Then I will go and there will be other architects talking about AutoCAD shortcuts and something about electric panels and can you believe that is all I did today, what a drag. I look around the table at the poor, tired, and hungry, and think to myself, I have but only one bullet left in the gun. Who will I choose?

I have a friend who is a doctor. He gives me drugs. I enjoy them. I have a friend who is a lawyer. He helped me sue my landlord. My architect friends have given me nothing. No drugs, no medical advice, and they don’t know how to spell subpoena. One architect friend figured out that my apartment was one hundred and eighty seven square feet. That was nice. Thanks for that.

I suppose one could ask what someone like me brings to architects like yourselves. I bring cheer. I yell at architects when they start talking about architecture. I force them to discuss far more interesting topics, like turkey eggs. Why do we eat chicken eggs, but not turkey eggs? They are bigger. And people really like turkey. See? I am not afraid to ask the tough questions.

So, dear architects, I will stick around, for only a little while. I hope that one day some of you will become doctors and lawyers or will figure out my taxes. And we will laugh at the days when you spent the entire evening talking about some European you’ve never met who designed a building you will never see because you are too busy working on something that will never get built. But even if that day doesn’t arrive, give me a call anyway, I am free.

Yours truly,
Annie Choi

Beard or No Beard?

What say you?

Seth and Laura's Wedding in Houston

The week after my trip to Chicago, I flew down to Houston, TX to attend the wedding for fellow architecture student, Seth Borland and his wife Laura. It too, was a lot of fun. I got to spend time with good friends, eating good food, drinking and dancing. Not bad at all. The wedding was held in a beautiful methodist church and the reception was at the MFA of Houston. The Mies Van Der Rohe Building. Pretty amazing. Some of the galleries were open as was the James Turrell tunnel that runs to the Rafael Moneo addition. The wedding band was kickin and the night seemed fun for all. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get a picture of the bride and groom. Damnit! Maybe I can snag one from some flickr website....

A pic of the main reception hall in the MFA. Amazing room.

Jack and I at dinner and before the serious dancing got under way.

A collection of weird UT Architecture students. l-r: Stephen, David, Greg, Elizabeth, Jack, Erica, Seth, Wade, Doug, me, Roman. Yes, we do love the devil.


Entrance to the MFA with these awesome Japanese sculptures. I wrote down the name of the artist but lost it. Damn it. I want these in front of my house. Hideous and amazing.

Later, after the reception wore down we went to a house party and danced until 3:30am. Good times but probably not the smartest plan for feeling chipper the next morning.

Jack, me, Erica, Elizabeth

Elizabeth and Jack cuttin' it up. Erica drinks.

Liz Rench!

I also got to hang out with my cool friend, Liz Rench. We ate food and walked around downtown Chicago. It was windy.


Then we went to H & M because I needed to get clothes for my friends wedding in Houston. I did find some clothes but I also got distracted by coats and sunglasses.

Liz also has a new car that she's really excited about. It's a Honda Fit and is pretty bitchin'. As you can tell, Liz is happy with it.