IAT 233 Seattle Design Charette Day 3 - Post-presentation

Arriving home back in Vancouver, it's a relief and nice to be able to just relax from the exhaustion that set in. The less than 3 hours of sleep for the last 35 hours is ridiculous and clearly showed during our team's presentation.

We didn't win the design charette, though we, the Rem's Righteous Rebels, did come a close second. Ramy and Jason had come up with a solid urban space concept about focusing our space on highlighting the existing landmarks of Seattle, and Mark came up with the design for the current form we have in mind.

The proposal was meant to create a space that helps channel the people from the area to either channel them to the market or at least re-direct them back up the hill so that the flow is not merely going down towards the waterfront. It's hard to sum up the entire concept as there are so many elements that are going into the proposal including movement of people, way-finding and highlighting the landmarks of Seattle, incorporating denial and reward in our structure into the center of the pavilion space, entry/exit flow from the 3 streets flowing into the site, affordances built-in to the structure of the lighting and shade with our light fixtures, and the focus on the citizens of Seattle and the surrounding area instead of drawing tourists.

That's about as succinct as I can put it although hopefully our presentation next week with better fleshed out conceptual renders will be able to elaborate it more thoroughly.

Overall, I think we're happy with what we learned and the bond we've created through our blood, sweat, tears, and sleep deprivation. For me, I'm a little disappointed we didn't win first, though that's a little greedy as I'm surprised we even got second because our presentation was so fractured even though our concepts were mostly(not all) there. [N.B. We left out some key aspects because our slides broke and we forgot to mention them]

The trip to Seattle was awesome. I really enjoyed seeing the Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle Public Library (a Rem Koolhaas building!), and the tour of Knoll's Seattle office. I am sad we didn't get to visit the Chapel of St. Ignatius, especially so because my team did a previous precedent project on a building by Steven Holl. I was really hoping to see and experience one of his spaces incorporating his ideas on phenomenology and parallax.

Rem's Righteous Rebels

Back from Seattle!

Now I'm sad, home alone.

I went with my sis and her husband down south on Wednesday night. I'm so exhausted driving the whole week. I had to drive all night considering we left as soon as I got home from work and it was raining heavy all night all the way down to Renton.

Our first stop was Boeing. We did the Boeing tour and it was awesome! The tour consisted of an hour trip around the factory. We could only see 2 of the 5 (or is it 6?) hangars of the factory, which is only about 1/4 of the entire complex. It is MASSIVE. It's 1/3rd of a mile deep. I don't think any words would be able to describe the immensity of the building. You have to see it yourself. The hangars we could see were the construction areas for the 777 and the new 787, also known as the Dreamliner.

Next stop was the SuperMall in Auburn. The mall has turned into a pretty quiet place. It's really crappy now, and it shows with the lack of people there. But, with slow business, comes GREAT deals! Even without using the discount card we got from the information centre, the prices were so low that I would feel bad not buying their merchandise!

We pretty much blew our allotment for our trip based on how much we spent that one day that we didn't buy anything when we went to Seattle Premium Outlets. I'm so disappointed when I realized that the personal exemption limit was bumped up.

My sister left yesterday and so now I'm home alone. =(

Dazed

I'm a little knocked off balance right now. I went on a 1-night cruise last night from Vancouver to Seattle. Got back this morning. Basically we left around 6 yesterday, and then arrive in Seattle in the morning and take a bus back so we got back around 12. It's a really short trip, but it's something to do. Haha It's like a mini-vacation.
The fare was pretty cheap, it was only 120 CDN per person, including transfer and taxes. I'm not too happy with the cruise line though. The restaurants were closed pretty early. I usually expect some place to be open 24 hours since, well, that's what cruise lines are good for, food, food, and food, whenever you want. We rode NCL, or Norweigan Cruise Lines. The food is my only complaint since we didn't really get to try much of the other facilities. But as is, it's a cruise ship and if it fails on food, it fails in a very major way.

The cheap fare is good though, hopefully I can find some other ones like this but on other cruise lines, they're pretty fun as a weekend trip if you have nothing else to do. :D