About the Art and Architecture building

The Architecture and Design Building at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is a stunning example of modernist architecture. The building was completed in 2002 and is located on the North campus.

The building is designed in the International Style, with a sleek and minimalist aesthetic. It is constructed of glass, steel, and concrete, and features clean lines and a monochromatic color palette. The exterior is characterized by large windows, which allow natural light to flood the interior spaces.

        

One of the most striking features of the Architecture and Design Building is its use of materials. The building’s exterior is clad in a combination of glass and metal panels, which give it a sleek and modern appearance. The metal panels are arranged in a series of horizontal bands, which are punctuated by vertical glass fins. This design element creates a sense of movement and dynamism, and it helps to break up the building’s mass.

Inside, the Architecture and Design Building is arranged around a central atrium, which serves as the building’s main circulation space. The atrium is flooded with natural light, thanks to a large skylight above. The atrium also serves as a gathering place for students and faculty, and it is often used for exhibitions and other events.

    

Overall, the Architecture and Design Building is a beautiful example of modernist architecture and is a vital part of the university’s academic landscape. Its use of materials, light, and form creates a sense of elegance and refinement, and it serves as a beacon of creativity and innovation on the University of Michigan campus.

 

About the Burton Memorial Tower

The Burton Memorial Tower is a well-known landmark on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. Standing at over 260 feet tall, the tower is a towering symbol of the university’s history and traditions.

 

The tower, named after former university regent and Michigan Governor Fred M. Burton, was designed by Albert Kahn, a prominent architect who designed many buildings on the University of Michigan campus. It was completed in 1936 as a memorial to James B. Angell, the university’s president from 1871 to 1909. 

 

 The tower is built in the Collegiate Gothic style, with a blend of medieval and modern elements. It is constructed of Indiana limestone, with decorative carvings and intricate details. The clock on the tower, visible from many parts of campus, has four faces with a diameter of 11 feet and is powered by a weight and pulley system, which must be wound manually every week.

 

Inside the tower, there is a carillon of 53 bells, which are played by a carillonist on special occasions. The carillonist sits in a small room at the top of the tower and plays the bells using a keyboard and pedals. The bells can also be played automatically by a computer program.

 

In addition to its beauty and history, the Burton Memorial Tower serves an important function on campus. It is used as a reference point for directions, and the clock and bells serve as a gathering point for events and celebrations. The tower is a beloved symbol of the University of Michigan and a popular spot for students, faculty, and visitors to take in the beautiful campus views.

In the Eyes of an Architecture Student: About Mental Health

Hi Everyone!

I’m back again this week to discuss the topic: Mental Health.

More specifically, I will be discussing my take on what mental health is, how to deal with it, and what design potential there is in this field.

Disclaimer, these are by no means definite answers or correct answers. This is my own take on mental health and the field of architecture.

In my Health by Design course last night, I was struck by three thoughts during class, that I did not mention despite the open share quality of the course.

  1. Design has so much potential, yet we are constantly stuck in the aesthetic realm thinking about it
  2. Health, especially mental health, is a hot topic in today’s society, yet we have only just tapped the surface in the amount of research that has been done about it, over all of these years that humans have been existent on this planet.
  3. I think it’s ironic how much I value the idea of wellbeing and health, including mental health, yet it is still something I grapple with to improve within myself.

Why didn’t I share these thoughts in class? Well, first off, it would sound pretty irrelevant in context to what we were discussing during class, or more so that I would be going off on a dramatic tangent. We were discussing essentially different methods of using design to solve for issues for specific personas (people) that we made up, but are highly realistic. And it hit me that, sometimes, it’s hard to understand and believe that our field and abilities as humans can be limited. For instance, we often take the internet for granted. we expect everything to be stored and processed through this virtual space, yet so few of us really understand how it works, and mos importantly forget that virtual space still has limits despite how limitless or imaginary it seems. In other words, google drive, which a ton of people use (still an understatement) has a lot of space but it will run out one day, and you’ll be doomed, once you’ve already utilized all hard drives, etc. Now, think of architecture. Really, it is quite similar in the manner that architecture can only do so much to attempt to reshape human interactions and habits. But what both these fields share is the potential to do so many things, to say the least. Yet, we as humans are still in control of the decisions we make.

Perhaps this is the issue. We as humans, are surface creatures. We like pretty things above all, and this is shown with research that has been done demonstrating that people within the US value beauty care more than health care, and this is evident from the enormous gap of spending between these two sectors. And, this is not just because of the price ranges or number of products offered from either sector. This is seen once again even through design. Products are made to be most visually appealing to capture the eyes and hearts of consumers, and this includes everything from the plastic wrap around the toilet paper you purchase, to the home you decided to settle into. Even humans can unfortunately be seen as products, when we are commodified through apps like Tinder or Facebook, where the surface qualities are prioritized. All of these “little things” add up and you end up with the medical bills for poor physical and mental health.

What can we do, to improve our own health? If we each are able to easily answer such a task and do so, then health would never be such a societal issue as it is today. I found it sad, yet truthful that perhaps not all, but a lot of college students tend to prioritize anything but their wellbeing. I definitely see myself as someone that prioritizes work above all else. Peper not finished? I’ll sleep later. Model not done? Just a nap will do. Have class until 9? I’ll have dinner after (if I remember or feel hungry still). I laughed when my professor asked us these exact questions, and totally agree that it’s almost ridiculous how basic these questions are. Anthropologically speaking, these questions are essentially the basis foundation of how people survive. But this is what is different about humanity is now, than the humanity that really prioritized survival all those thousands of years ago. Humans today depend on more than just the essentials before being fully happy and satisfied with life. This varies from person to person, but it’s pretty much real and true for humans nowadays, and it makes me anxious to ponder how the future humans may be. So, what can we as humans, and designers do to reverse this habit and fully change society?

That is the big question in architecture today, and unfortunately I am still frazzled with how to even begin to process such a question.

Above all, I consider my interest in architecture to be about wellbeing. I want to design spaces to create a sense of comfort and serenity for people, not just in hospitals. I want to create spaces that inspire people to do the best they can for themselves and for others. Such spaces that would encourage people to desire to live, not just make living “work.”

Much of design is about aesthetics, but also a lot about functionality and efficiency as well. And, after having thought about this a lot, I argue that these are all qualities that we as designers need to let the consumers decide what is best for them.

Designers often mean well, doing mass research in attempts to “get to know” the person(s) they are designing for. But no matter how much we do, we will never truly be in their shoes, and we will always be designing for our own ideas about them. Designers cannot help but project a personal manifestation of their own thoughts and beliefs about the consumer and the context. This will never change, no matter how much we are aware of it or despise it; it is simply something that happens as humans, in any field honestly. But consumers also cannot do the design tasks themselves because they have not been schooled for such things. And to be fair, designers should really be working more with people from other fields, so that more voices are heard in the design process to provide the best possible results, partially because other fields are much more well-researched. I do also argue that architecture itself is a challenging field to do research in, mostly because of how long it would take to yield results, and how difficult it can be to take measurements of specific things, like the amount of happiness or anger that a space has resulted in. There are sort of ways around this to make it work, but these are also very complex “things” to take measurements of even if you can get closer to doing so through, say, taking measurements of blood pressure or vitamin deficiencies. Perhaps some issues were never meant to be “solved.” Perhaps this is the essence of existence. Not to be philosophical, but it really hits me that all of these fields on study were meant to be used together to yield the best possible results to help us as humans, and yet we are expected to “specialize” in one, being almost completely clueless about others.

I’ll let you ponder on these things, but I will definitely be thinking about them more on my own, and through the perspective lenses of that course. I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this subject, so feel free to drop a comment!

Ciao 🙂

In the Eyes of An Architecture Student: What Music do you Listen to for Studio Work?

Hi everyone!

Hope you all had a wonderful, restful MLK weekend!

I’m back again this week to discuss my answer to the question: What music do you listen to as you’re doing studio sketches or modeling?

First things first, I’ll just say, I have always been someone who’s been easily distracted no matter the context. So, getting me to focus and stay still to focus on specific tasks under a seemingly far away deadline is like pulling teeth. Whenever I do my structures assignments, I’d say that I listen to anything really, I find that classical music is alright too (I did used to be in orchestra, in case you were wondering how I don’t fall asleep listening to it for two hours straight). For any assignments that involve in-depth writing, like essays or reading, I listen to instrumentals. Again, orchestral music is great with me for this. I also really enjoy listening to dub step or even just instrumentals to tropical pop songs, and even remixes. I’ve even done quite well listening to non-English music. As soon as I hear English music, I find it inevitable that the lyrics will end up somewhere in my paper haha. As for my studio design sketching and modeling, I guess I do not really distinguished playlists for either of the tasks. I enjoy listening to anything really, as long as its upbeat. So, pretty much anything within the genres: pop, EDM, tropical house, and synthetic instrumentals, I find quite inspiring to my work actually. Besides the fact that sometimes I will find myself awake or still-awake at unearthly hours, I just find that anything upbeat and catchy just sets a great groove for me to “settle” into the work that I need to do. I oftentimes find that the beats and catchy lyrics keep me energized for hours, as I’m usually doing some sort of tedious, repetitive task either with my knives on the cutting mat or on my laptop with the software. I do also think that the devices that I use to listen to my music influence my ability to make this work as well. Sometimes. if there is just too much linework, or powerful renderings that need to be done, I will go to the BT Lab (our PC classrooms with very powerful computers) and I just end up listening off of their PC with my earbuds. If I’m at my desk doing my work on my laptop, I’ll just listen off of my laptop with my earbuds or my wireless headphones- the only downside with the headphones is I often get too warm or my head starts to hurt from the weight and pressure put on my ears for the extended period of time. Now, if I’m modeling, I find it immensely more convenient to use my wireless headphones- you can imagine, there’s a ton of materials and blades and sketches scattered on the desk, so the last thing you need or want is a tangled wire of your headphone getting caught on stuff, as you’re constantly re-positioning in order to produce the most effective cuts. I’ve definitely forgotten to charge my headphones and ended up using earbuds, and the result was just some wasted minutes to untangle things, or bring my phone and headphones along wherever I moved. Aaanddd, here’s what you would consider the click bait of this post: an excerpt of my playlist! I hope ya’ll will give it a go, whether you’re sprawled in bed or doing your own work. If you do, (or don’t I guess) and have comments or suggestions, feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments below, or reach out to my instagram at: themichiganarchitect Ciao 🙂

TheMichiganArchitect Work Playlist Winter 2020 🙂

Mike Perry feat. Tessa: Stay Young

Sistek feat. Tudor & Amy J Pryce: Pitfalls

Doja Cat: Say So

Far East Movement feat. Jay Park: Sxwme

Maggie Lindemann (Cheat Codes and CADE Remix): Pretty Girl

Bazzi (Bazzi vs Young Bombs Remix): Mine

Timeflies: Once In a While

Timeflies & Shy Martin: Raincoat

Alex Ross feat. Dakota & T-Pain: Dreams

Ali Simpson: Guilty

Allie X: Catch

Overstreet: Carried Away

Lovelytheband: Broken

Jax Jones & Ella Henderson: This is Real

Arizona: Electric Touch

Kim Petras: Icy

Alexandra Stan: Little Lies

Adventure Club & Crankdat feat. Krewella: Next Life

One Republic (Arty Remix): I Lived

The Knocks feat. Foster The People): Ride or Die

Austin Mahone: Better With You

Tiesto feat. Stevie Appleton: BLUE

In the Eyes of an Architecture Student: The Power of Writing and its Relationship to our Discipline

Hi Everyone! I know it’s a bit late, but bear with me! (Ahaha, this is the typical life of an architecture student)

I’m back again this week to discuss the topic: the power of writing and its relationship to our discipline!

I’m sure, no matter what age you are or what major in college you’re pursuing right you, you must’ve thought of English papers and all that unpleasant stuff seemed completely unreasonable and unnecessary to your discipline and life goals. I confess I’ve also had these thoughts at some point before when I took introductory architecture courses that required a ton of writing and I’d remember thinking to myself, “Ughhh I’m in architecture school, shouldn’t I be designing instead of writing all these boring papers‽‽
I do occasionally have these thoughts recurring as I continue to write papers, even as a fourth year in architecture. But I’ve finally grown to understand that writing and architecture are truly interrelated. As ridiculous as it sounds, let me explain.
In architecture, we use different drawing mechanisms as a language to convey our ideas visually. Although drawing seems to be the primary language present in architectural education, it is important to realize that it is still our thoughts and understanding of these thoughts that in turn inspire the abilities behind these drawings.

Let me rephrase more simply, I mean to say that if you cannot describe the idea in verbal language, then you cannot hope to understand the design well enough to effectively convey that idea visually through drawing. All this time, papers have been the root practice at structuring the way we think and understand ideas verbally as designers, but also serves as the universal method to communicate ideas with each other. To be a better writer directly correlates with being a better designer in that you are able to clearly understand what it is you want to highlight about your ideas in the representational drawings. To reinforce my point, these drawings and all your models are to be displayed at critiques reviews where you are expected to help your critics understand your project so that they can then give you feedback on what to improve in your representation, or even perhaps what to add to your design to further it’s successes. I canopy stress how important it is to understand our own work before we try to get others to understand it too. As expected, I’ve observed that my classmates who seem quite fluent in explaining their thoughts and ideas about projects are also quite fluent in representation as well, and they also make for quite amazing critics of our work as well.

So, bottom line: do the papers!! As boring as it seems, it’ll help you SO much in the long run, even just as a general human being in general. After all, humans were meant to communicate 🙂

Welp, that’s all I’ve got for tonight, but I’m so grateful for any one of you who’s still up this late and still reading my blog!

Ciao 🙂

In the Eyes of an Architecture Student: The Importance of Photography

Hi Everyone!

I’m back again this week to discuss this week’s topic: the importance of photography!

Yes, photography, as in the term corresponding to the Webster definition: “the art or practice of taking and processing photographs.”

In architecture, as you may have inferred from all of my previous posts, representation is VERY important. Representation makes or breaks our works’ proposal, and that is kind of a very big deal, even within the stages of education before a job in “the real world.” In architecture school, representation refers to everything (all types of media) you use to “sell” your work to your professor(s), and this includes the exact words you use to talk about the project, how perfectly orthogonally pinned up your work, how nice and stable your constructed models(s) are, and how sharp or effective your photographs are.

Even outside of classes, powerful photographs serve arguably more importance than how well you preserved your hand-drafted drawing(s) or even your original model(s). I say arguably because, when we apply to jobs and internships, the employers are likely to only have access to your work virtually- which makes photographs EXTRA important because that is their ONLY window into your skills and personality as a designer! Yes, employers want to see perfection and thoughtfulness in your work in the portfolio, but they also appreciate the honesty of sharpness of quality of photos- it’s a sort of stunning thing to see, even if you did Photoshop some blemishes or glue-globs out!

Photographs not only serve to simply document you work to show to employers, but also function as a very effective way to remember your work and (potentially) locate your improvements within your work. Of course, the sharper and better your image, the larger the file, but I cannot stress what pain it is to have to go back to old files only to realize I did not document the stuff well enough, and now it’s too late because my models may or may not be rotting in my basement now, very obviously not photo-worthy quality. So, in other words, after you make a model or ANYTHING (if you don’t think it’s worth remembering right now in this moment) it is safest to just check out a nice camera (Nikon, Canon, etc) and deal with a million AMAZING photos now, than to just use your phone (even that cannot compare to a really good camera) and take a few subpar images, only to realize the quality degrades each time you uploaded it to different platforms. The ideal process is as follows: make the model(s), get a good camera, yes spend time and get all angles of the stuff you’re documenting, and upload it straight to google drive for initial storage. But, I’d recommend you go through and eliminate to the images you’re going to keep, Photoshop them to the best of your abilities (or satisfaction, I guess), and save as a Tiff or PNG (or PDF if that’s an option). Fair warning though, Tiff files can get pretty big and jam up your memory, so I recommend saving as a Tiff without layers, or PNG to save memory.

Good luck to you all, happy documenting!

If you have any questions or further insight, comment! I love hearing from you all 🙂

Have a fun and safe Thanksgiving holiday break, everyone!

Ciao for now 🙂