The first site visit is always the most intense. There is a sense of excitment at the reveal of the site location quickly followed by the inquisitive investigation of every corner of the site.

This site visit was made much more intense simply by the weather. The Friday of Labor Day weekend is no time to be traveling on the road. There are so many people traveling to visit family and friends that the drive to the site alone took 40 minutes. Many people were late, surprisingly the professors were the last to arrive.

Their late arrival gave the class a wonderful bonding time in the pouring rain outside the site. Those of us who drove could have stayed in our cars. However when half the class has to uber there it hardly seems fair to leave them out in the rain.

While our site visit may have barely scraped the surface of the site due to weather. The class has arranged a return visit on Monday to scramble around the site measuring, mapping, and documenting it over time.

Hopefully we are as happy as we are in these photos but a lot drier!

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I remember my first week of architecture being overwhelming and extremely hectic. Perhaps becuase I am acclimated to the school now I am less overwhelmed. However there is an eerie relaxed feeling to the first week.

I find the classes quite interesting. Theory will definitely challenge my mind much more than it has in the past. Generally I have felt “theory” courses to be more like historical timelines retold. This theory course is much more about the ideas across time rather than a single era retold each week.

My three other classes have already begun to blur together to become a single class with an enormous pile of assignments, of course, with various due dates. I love that the classes feed into one another! However, it would be nice if it didn’t feel like they were one class.

That being said, perhaps they will distinguish themselves more once we are in the semester.

Workshop is what I would call a field trip class. I am super excited to go out every Tuesday and see a different region, understand how it is developed, what occupies it, and how to relates back to design. These field trips contain elements of technical drawing and identification of plants and the elements of the regions we visit.

Media is essentially a drawing tutorial class in which more specific skills are taught. Hand drawing, experimental methods of representation, and digital drawing tools are all taught and explored.

Studio, naturally, is the bulk of the credit load and so the most important. Essentially all the ideas, knowledge, and techniques of the three prior mentioned classes are used to assit students in presenting design ideas in studio. The studio therefore draws on the other classes to help structure some of the deliverables and topics of the class.

Overall I would say these courses value process more than product. The idea of iteration, tests, experiments, and process is really key to success in each class. I am excited to continue to share my progress through this program during the semester!