Reflections, Part V

So that last one got really personal. Gonna try to keep in check, but if it happens, it happens. Trying to get all these thoughts together, well, stuff comes out now and then.

So, now some more.

Like others, I eventually was told to not worry, that I knew what I was doing, that I belonged, and that was nice. And I plodded along, making sprojects that worked and didn’t. 113 Main street, a model example of a failed second year project, which was then swiftly followed by the Wall Chair Window and the Chicago apartment facade project, which got me my first taste of actual architectural exploration and success in a project. Good times.

The next lesson came in the form of a final over-exertion effort put in by myself during my third year. This was the lesson to never spread yourself out more than possible. This was the hardest lesson for me to learn. As I have said before, I was in architecture school, working a twenty hour a week job to pay rent, and practicing and performing every other week with an improv troupe. But in my spring semester of my third year (taking 21 hours of course credit), that wasn’t enough. Because, you see, some good Mojo friends of mine introduced me to theater and set design. I started taking Acting I and II, and met some great people, who I’ll talk about later.

How do I describe how much I love set design? It’s like architecture, but everything is quicker and temporary, and you get to make and do whatever comes into your brain so long as it fits the story and you can connect it well to what’s happening on stage. It has a lot of challenges, but it’s so much fun. At the time, my friend Caleb Woodley was going to direct the show Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, a story about Charlie Brown and company in their teenage years, exploring issues of bullying and homosexuality. If anyone around you is putting this show on, go see it, cause it’s pretty great. But, anyways, my friend asked me to do the set design for it.

I had never done one of these before, but I knew how to design at this point (kind of) so I thought I would give it a shot. And what a shot it was. We ended up going for this wonderful design of a newspaper world dissolving in the rain, poetic am-i-right?, and we started playing with acetone and a hanging set that merged from ceiling to wall to floor, and it was just amazing to work with such talented young theater majors who were ready to kick butt on the project, giving 110% to every aspect of the show. At the same time, in studio we were doing our New York residency project, which, thanks to the professor I had at the time, was an intense exploration into paper folding and Revit. Also, on a higher note, my team from last semester was nominated to be a part of the Hansen Prize competition later in the semester, which we eventually won.

All of a sudden, I found myself sleeping in studio regularly, if I slept at all. There was a stint in March/April where I was sleeping an hour or two a night while regularly pushing all-nighters, just to stay on top of everything. It was too much, and it was a hard lesson to learn. It’s interesting when we are faced with our limits. Until that point, I thought I was pretty much invincible, indestructable, a beast for work that you could just pile it on and pile it on more, and I could just keep plowing. And boy was I wrong. I hit that wall, and I was forced to push through and finish my commitments completely worn out. It was such a tough pill to swallow, and it took alot to work through it.

Now, when I talk to new students in the program, the first thing I talk about is getting enough sleep while exploring life outside of the school, because it is such a big deal in architectural education. Iowa State University is a great school for giving people the opportunities to explore interests and become well-rounded, but in architecture school, it’s the culture that we produce in it is at times counter to the goal of being well-rounded. That’s because we have this idea that architecture, for one, makes us different enough we get to have an ego about it. I’m serious, go into any studio, and 9/10 times you can see the ego just hanging in the air. And it traps us, because we think studio has to be our life, that 24 hours a day we need to be working towards architecture. But, hopefully, we break out of that, and we come to realize that everything, EVERYTHING! affects architecture and can inform it, so we need to balance things out and make time for the outside world. I have so many sources of inspiration. Cooking is huge one. I love cooking and if you are just starting out trying to figure out how to talk about a design, seriously, watch Chopped or Iron Chef and listen to the way they talk about food, and that is how you need to talk about architecture. Comedy and improv influence my process. Theater is a huge inspiration. Technology and information are great ways to look towards the future, and the arts and classical forms are great ways to look at the past.

We have to make time for the outside world and sleep, which sometimes is surprisingly hard. But you have to make time for it, you have to sleep and you have to keep things within your capabilities. It’s such a tough lesson and most of us learn it the same way, by hitting the wall.

So, I hit that big wall and learn a tough lesson. The semester ended with an A- and the show went up with only one major crisis (redoing the set in a night), so we lived. After though, I had to recover, and that’s when, at the end of this semester of hard work, my professor at the time, Samantha Krukowski, approached me and told me that I should take her summer studio, the Burning Man studio.

Now that’s a story all of its own.