Troy Davis, Juergen Chill, and the Built Prison Environment

In researching the recent incarceration and execution of Troy Davis, I was reminded of Juergen Chill’s photographs of prisons, bordellos, bedrooms, and dormitories. Most interesting about Chill’s photographs are the very clear similarities between each kind of room. What significance lies in the fact that a room in which we spend most of our time so closely resembles a prison cell? What sort of effect does such an environment have on our mental trajectory?  //

wanderlust | a guide to studying abroad

Georgia Tech has as a tradition of furnishing students with a plethora of study abroad options. While the College of Architecture has temporarily suspended the undergraduate year abroad and are in process of securing new exciting possibilities (check back for a subsequent post!), I wanted to highlight in this post some of the active summer abroad programs as well as the many exchange programs offered. Stay tuned to this series for further in-depth information on programs, exchange experiences, as well as atypical ways to study abroad. If you are a student that has studied abroad with Tech I invite you to post a link to your blog or photos in the comments area below. //

dust_matter(s)

“…she said: What is history?”

“And he said: history is an angel being blown backwards into the future…the angel wants to repair everything that was broken…but a storm keeps blowing him backwards into the future. The storm’s name is progress.”

//

distance interviews: lisa west | strathclyde

This week’s interview comes from Lisa West, a senior here at Georgia Tech, who chose to go to the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK rather than the Paris Program. //

distance interviews: professor gundula proskch

Investigating foreign studio culture: Professor Gundula Proksch from the University of Washington in Seattle. //

karl oscarsson: tu delft

Investigating foreign studio culture: Karl Oscarsson on TU Delft via Lund University. //

Distance [pt 2] The Interviews

The cry sounded into the architectural wilderness: We wish to know you for we are curious! The second part of Distance is an investigation of studio culture, habits, and personality through a series of interviews. The interviewees are design students and professors at different schools ranging from Berkeley, IIT, and Harvard to La Villette in Paris, France to Lund, Sweden. //

Distance [pt. 1]

At the beginning of the semester we all wait with bated breath to hear either which professor and which students we will be working with. Sometimes the answer can be quite overwhelming and other times the answer can be intriguing. This semester I found myself classmates with two exchange students, one from Germany and one from Sweden. At first I was nervous! Yet, slowly I have been realizing that there isn’t that much distance between us. //

Fast-Food Aesthetic

Hansaviertel Burger King Berlin, Germany

While sitting in a drive-through I was reminded of a phrase one of my architectural mentors mentioned to me: “We must constantly be evaluating the buildings we are in.” He said this to me as we sat in a Steak and Shake. I most certainly had a smart-ass comment to make to him as a reply. What it amounted to was “What does the steak-n-shake building offer me?!” As most good mentors have a tendency of doing, he replied to me making me wish I hadn’t spoken so quickly. “Our buildings help define us as a culture.” He went on to explain that nearly all commercial buildings need an architect at some point and that someone out there is providing a stamp for these things.

It is with that in mind that I present the following: //

Ruth Dusseault: Play War Opening

Play War: Homemade Recreational Battlefields

At 6:30pm on a warm Thursday afternoon I walked into the Emory Center for Visual Arts to see Ruth Dusseault’s second showing of Play War. The gallery had selected twenty works, all of the same size, to be placed along its walls. This was a bit of a surprise since the photographer usually shoots with a wide format camera that lends itself to large prints. However, the intimacy of the 24×30 prints allowed the viewers to enter into the world that Dusseault has discovered. //

Discussing Image: Diane Borsato

Diane Borsato. You Go to My Head. Video. Toronto. Fall 2009.

Images are worth talking about. They stimulate conversation. We discover our companions by listening to their interpretations. We grow in our own understanding of representation through our discourse with each other. Let us discuss.

//