design for flu season

It’s strange that I have not had a serious fever for so long (middle school? elementary school?) that I thought I was immune. Obviously this is not the case since I am officially in ’self-isolation’ mode for flu at the moment.

The best things to come out of this experience so far are 1 – I’m being asked to drink ginger ale and 2 – super sweet disposable thermometers from 3M. Given the terrible state of hospital decor (terrible patterned/textured draperies, gloomy lighting, strange spotted linoleum), the 3M thermometers were the sole bright spot in my afternoon at MIT medical yesterday.

The red dots turn to blue dots are the thermometer goes into your mouth. Each line is a degree (i.e. 95, 96) and each dot is a .2 degree increment. The blue dots are filled in more uniformly when it first comes out of your mouth.

Sleek, compact, and legible. 3M is doing it all with Tempa.DOT.  This makes me want to take my temperature every 4-6 hours like they said.

fashion, it is irrelevant

I am putting off Chinese homework, diagramming the uses of my building, reskimming S,M,L,XL (a canonical architecture book), scanning for thesis because I just received The Sartorialist by Scott Schumann. It is the first compilation of his work as a street style photographer and it is a bible, treasure chest, a gem, an encyclopedia, a wunderkabinett of style . Too many cheesy words come to mind.

I discovered The Sartorialist the summer after freshman year in college and it has since held my absolute loyalty and respect. Within the first week of discovery, I had gone through 2 years worth of the blog’s archives. There was some inexplicable magic in Schumann’s photographs that revealed the thoughtfulness and true skill with which these people dressed, but also conveyed, somehow, that good style was easily within reach. I remember thinking “Of course, I can do this too”. Over the course of the summer, I went from being superficially interested in fashion to completely being fascinated by the details and grammar of style.

Studying the diverse range of Schumann’s photos gave me a language with which to understand style. Suddenly  I realized that a good outfit which I previously understood as a lucky, magical set of matching clothing, could be dissected into the choice of proportions, choice of fabric/texture, and choice of color (there is much more variety than you think). Schumann’s work has been and still is one of the greatest influences on my ever changing ideas about ‘good style’. The magnitude of his influence is up there with St. Andrew’s preppiness, a handful of fantastically and individualistically dressed friends and the T style magazine.

Despite my complete admiration for his work, I do have some criticism. After two years of following the blog,  I find the proportions and silhouettes he captures too repetitive  and his photos compositionally look too much the same. Ironically, someone who does these two things very well is his girlfriend, Garance Dore, who constantly shocks me with the beauty of her images. What Schumann does consistently well, and better than any other blog, is capturing the texture of clothing. It’s obvious that he is obsessed with it and if you look closely enough, his blog is an encyclopedia of matching textures, contrasting textures, unexpected textures, everything textured.

Below is a few excerpts from Schumann’s book of my favorite ‘texture’ photos. (Sorry for the terrible quality. In fact, I’m not sure you can see any texture at all. This will be fixed later.)

Giorgio Armani. To pull of monotone is all about getting the weight of the materials right.

(Right) Rubber, cotton, knit, tweed, silk, canvas. He's got it all.

(Right) This is probably my favorite. I love the lightness of the shirt dress in contrast with the kind of bag I would normally categorize as a 'winter' bag. It's perfect because the thick texture of the bag makes her shirt seem even more weightless.

(Left)A soft, fitting cotton/synthetic turtleneck with an extremely structured skirt. It's unexpected and beautiful.

(Right) A heavy jacket with smooth light + pajama looking pants.

(Right) Denim vest and tweed jacket? That is daring. And corduroy pants on top of that!

fashion and/or architecture

It is both frightening and exhilarating that after 6 continuous semesters under the constraints and demands architecture studio, we will next year be designing our thesis, an entity completely of our own ideas and obsessions. This fall we have started to define, research, and edit our interests, architectural and otherwise, into the beginnings of a thesis. Under the guidance of Yung Ho Chang, the head of the MIT architecture department, the thesis prep class has taken on a more architectural/physical angle than in recent years past. His approach has been a source of debate. In Yung Ho’s mind, a design thesis goes like this: define an architectural/material/physical question that interests you, then from the exploration of that architecture some greater idea, purpose, “world benefit” emerges. But some prefer the reverse: an idea that is realized through architecture. To me, the emphasis on physicality/materiality is a good and useful constraint that (hopefully) leads to more thoughtful design rather than the long, convoluted discourse that too often results in lukewarm architecture.

Perhaps I enjoy Yung Ho’s approach because the only constraint I gave myself at the beginning of the semester was to avoid any serious social, political, environmental, economic issue in my thesis and his assignments never asked me to put my ideas in a more ‘worldly’ context. Our first assignment was to define our thesis in three words: a critique on what exists (RESTRICTIVE), a physical material (SOFT), and one other word (ENERGY).  Explanation – My thesis questions whether building materials can be something besides the typical concrete, steel, glass, brick, wood. The almost universal use of ‘hard’ materials is restrictive to how we experience spaces and the kind of architecture we create. An alternative is textile or ’soft’ architecture which can provide a different way to think about space and also a new way to incorporate the technical needs (energy, ventilation, insulation) of a building and its users.

The turning point for my enthusiasm for my thesis was when Yung Ho suggested that fashion could be incorporated into my work somehow. Since then it has infused itself into all aspects of my thesis. For the first draft of our thesis proposal, we turned in a page with three words (above) and three phrases with three explanatory sentences as well as a page of sketches. Here are some excerpts:

1) Tool+ Method for initial research into our thesis
Re-stitching the Membrane – Can the fashion industry’s innovative use of textiles inspire architects to think beyond a thin membrane roof?

The idea is that I will actually create (scaled down) clothing that explores a variety forms. This is partially an architectural exploration into rethinking how ventilation, enclosure, energy amongst other things can be enhanced/reimagined with textiles, and partially a practical necessity to be familiar with sewing/patterning/(laser)cutting fabric.

2) Site for the building
Softscape/Hardscape – Hunts Point and Bruckner Avenue, Bronx, NY and/or Near Fordham University, Bronx, NY

The decision to site the building in the Bronx is completely arbitrary. It is driven solely by my desire to actually learn about the borough where I grew up but never knew. Both sites are near commercial centers in the Bronx, but the Fordham site would be an infill while Hunts Point is more free form. Perhaps both sites will be used as a way to explore the adaptability of a textile enclosure to different site conditions. Obviously siting in the Bronx brings up issues of contrast between softscape and hardscape and maybe issues of textiles as effective building security.

3) Program is architecture jargon for building use
House of Street Style - The popularity of low cost, well designed clothing from stores like H&M and the omnipresence of street style photo blogs have ‘democratized’ fashion and challenged notions of fashion as a top-down system.

The building has three uses: one part clothing exchange store, one part concept store, one part workshop.

The exchange store is in essence a thrift store, but people receive store credit for the clothes they bring in, so it is more of a barter system than a commercial store. The clothing would be curated to some extent, so that only the ones worth keeping are in the store (i.e. not Salvation Army, more Beacon's closet). The clothing collection would begin before the store opening and for the first week after opening, the clothes are displayed as an exhibit of Bronx style. Exchange happens afterwards.

The concept store is for a brand heavily worn by Bronx residents to publicize and get feedback for the newest lines of their clothing. They would also be the main financial source of the whole project (if it were real). Brands like North Face, Nike, Ecco, Adidas, Timberland etc. etc.

In the spirit of the innovative textile building, the workshop also teaches about working with interesting textiles and hopefully provide underprivileged aspiring fashion designers with skills that would be difficult to get elsewhere.

As much as I would love to dwell in the world of intersections between textiles, fashion, and architecture, it’s now time to do real research + cataloging and actually create these articles of architectural clothing I keep talking about. But on the blog, at least I can continue to dwell in this conceptual architecture/fashion world and talk about how Yung Ho completely floors me every week with his extensive knowledge of contemporary architecture, how I have come to have more appreciation for Rei Kuwakabo’s clothes, the mind-blowing book from MoCA’s exhibition Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, and the pretty badass blog, Street Etiquette, about Bronx influenced style. To be totally honest, I could forget all the architecture and just do the fashion…..

the highline revisited

Our project for the final undergraduate studio this year is titled ‘The Museum of Unnatural History’ and is sited on the High Line in New York.  More on the strange title will come later. Our studio is heading to New York tomorrow to see the High Line + other projects in New York. What  I love about traveling with professors is that they always have some in on tours and info. This time, it will be tours by members of Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Field Operations, the two firms that co-designed the project.

The High Line during its period of disuse and neglect resulted in something un-urban and quite beautiful.

This trip will be my fourth visit to the site, but this time through a more architectural and rigorous lens. Over the summer, I fell in love with the project and wrote about it as part of unpublished blog entry called ’summer favorites’ (unpublished because it seems cheesy?).  Hopefully, I will come back from with a more balanced, critical view of the project, and its the success and inefficiencies.

One of the features that make Europe feel distinctly different from the U.S. is its omnipresent public space.  Barcelona felt like a endless series of plazas and Monselice’s square in a town of 12,000 in Italy, is buzzing with life on a weekend summer night.   After spending four weeks wandering, eating, sleeping in campos, campiellos, plazas, and ramblas, I was glad to have the High Line awaiting me when I returned to New York.

In fact, I had been waiting for the High Line since its MoMA exhibition years ago. The project was less than I expected but more stunning than I could have imagined. Architecturally, it is designed in every detail. DS+R invented a system that allows them to do everything they need for the project. My disappointments are only those differences between the subtle beauty of the renderings and the practicalities of real construction, and also that it is only a few blocks long at the moment.

The real beauty of the High Line is its spatial (sectional) relationship with New York. There exists no other place like it in the city. There are few things as surreal and beautiful as seeing people walking in the sky in Manhattan. From the street below, the pedestrians seem weightless as if they’ve defied the gravitational laws of New York. This feeling of surrealism derives from the fact that the city for many New Yorkers is a (under)ground level universe. The vertical real estate of Manhattan is an exclusive commodity usually reserved for those individuals who can pay to live there or work in places that can afford it. But even then New York is seen behind glass or from the stagnant view of a balcony, never traversing intersections in the open air like you do on the High Line. In the end, it  feels more ‘public’ than ground-level public parks  because it gives access to a previously exclusive and privately owned vertical dimension of  New York. What is also impressive is that the architecture is never a distraction. The design stays quiet without lacking complexity and power,  encouraging the public to experience the city in a way it never has before.

- August 2009

The High Line today with the tapering concrete strips and wild looking plants.

internet famous

I’m not quite there yet, but maybe this is a beginning. Tiffany interviewed me about living in Alvar Aalto’s Baker House as part of a ‘back to school/living in architecture” series for her Dwell blog. Thanks Tiffany!

“well, I would say I am just drifting”

I once thought animal prints were tacky, skanky, pretenious, a simple straight-out-of-the-book faux-pas. I have since fallen in love with everything animal print from the $249 cow skin rug at Ikea to the snakeskin clutches from Prada. (Let’s forget all the politics for now). In any case, animal prints are challenging. Even though I’ve changed my mind about it, it still walks a fine line between trash and elegance.  It seems to require firstly, high quality and secondly, a good choice of fabric – some sheer is better than none.

Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate is a master at the animal print. Somehow she wears them not only elegantly one at a time, but  in combination with each other.

Here she is seducing Benjamin Braddock. He clearly finds her animal print bra irresistible.

Leopard + Giraffe = ??

"You are the most attractive of all my parents friends". That's because she's stylish, Ben.

Overall, The Graduate is a stunningly stylish movie, not just because of Anne Bancroft. Dustin Hoffman’s outfits are actually wonderful. They don’t over stylize his jacket and khakis ensembles and thereby maintain an element of effortless preppy (effortlessness  is the key to true preppiness, not the over slicked look a la Rugby). At the same time, they give him skinny ties and good jackets that have personality. Moreover, I find the way Hoffman is styled more interesting and intricate than the kind of outfits seen in movies like Ocean’s 11 series. This is because what Hoffman wears is a real outfit where every banal detail can have a huge impact like the striped pattern of his tie or the specific shade of  pale yellow shift matched with the shade of navy jacket.  In constrast, a costume for Brad Pitt with white jacket and white pants renders the color of his tie and the colors of his shoes to be relatively insignificant details….

The Graduate is a good lesson in style. Watch it!

like a pro

Standing out in today’s shows were:

Oscar de la Renta — Solid. Stunning.  It is always appealing to accentuate the waist, but he manages to not make it look repetitive or like a flash back to some other decade. Also another thing that stands out is the variety of types of clothing which is different from some more conceptual designers. Rodarte had almost only dresses + a few other items. Oscar, on the other hand, has  covered with almost everything you need. This is both a commercial move and probably just what he wants to do. What’s impressive is even when he creates a range of clothing that matches daytime/nightime/whatever occasions, the collection still manages to read cohesively.
Prozena Schouler — Unlike some people who became popular around the same time, Prozena Schouler is always produces beautiful items. Whereas Zac Posen is a hit or miss and generally missing for the past few seasons.  PS just churns out cool dresses obviously targeted at young women who party. I like that they are always  playing with textures. Last season is was a lot of chiffon like fabrics.  This time its leather with cotton (or jersey),  leather with wild prints, and feathers. It looks kind of weird and crazy without being messy and because of that it stands out.

another fashion month

I usually await the beginning of fashion week(s) twice a year, but this time I barely noticed that it began. It is easy to be so far removed from the world of fashion. My google reader of mostly fashion blogs is at 210 unread entries right now, a record high.

In most ways, fashion shows are irrelevant to my life and the lives of most of the world. It’s a display of outfits that I cannot  afford, many of which I will never have the right occasion to wear to, and some of which are just so bizarrely strange that one wonders whether the human body is even relevant in fashion. Yet, I think despite its outrageousness, impracticality, I still manage to draw some kind of inspiration from it. I love the strange mixing of colors, the exploration of proportions even if they seem/are wrong,  and unexpected the pairing of fabrics.

I am determined to follow fashion week for the next 3.5 weeks (NY, London, Milan, Paris) even in the midst of a coming wave of studio/thesis prep work. Mainly because I am tired of my closet and feel like I am wearing yesterday’s clothes  and using yesterday’s inspiration.  Putting on clothes that feel like just another stock outfit no matter how simply stylish it may look is an uncomfortable and uncreative way to start off the day. What I want is not more shopping, I just want to rediscover everything in my closet  and to mix them around yet again to find something new and something inspired.

Some favorites from NY fashion week so far:
Rodarte –Their aesthetic is largely crazy patterns and textures mixed together and strategically cut tight fabrics. Their clothes go from dreamy (with an edge) to tough season to season. The season it’s tough, hard, and kind of dirty looking, but still so incredibly femine.
Marc by Marc Jacobs –Marc Jacob’s fun commercial, and sometimes even affordable line. It’s nothing unique and the collection with appeal to an Urban Outfitters shopper who takes colorful risks in clothing. I like it because it’s a good reminder of all the strange ways you can mix things.

along barcelona’s kebab trail

We arrived in Barcelona straight from the Veneto countryside and the winding streets of Venice. The city immediately hit me with its endless stretching avenues, crowded streets, chain fast food, cars, vespas. It felt like stepping back into reality after three weeks in some faraway land called Italy. We retreated into our hotel room that afternoon and napped a long nap.

Barcelona streching into the hills

By midnight, we woke up from hunger and began our journey through Barcelona following our stomachs.  We headed towards las Ramblas, a pedestrian strip bordered on both sides by one lane streets  and touristy shops. There we found empanadas, Estrella for one euro, hash, “anything you like” being sold by men of Middle Eastern or North African descent. I saw small clusters of girls standing together and only realized they were prostitutes when they slipped their arm around a man or whispered something in his ear as they walked by. In an American city, a street like this may be one to be avoided, but in Barcelona it made for a strange, but lively place to walk and hang out at night.

Eventually, we headed off las Ramblas, through an arcaded plaza, onto a side street, and straight into a kebab diner. Kebab, one of the three main food groups in Barcelona, is readily availabe especially late at night and consistently better than the other two food groups: ham sandwiches and tapas. (Expensive tapas though is another story and quite good). The kebabs were not overly greasy like the ones in New York and filled with  interesting ingredients that varied from diner to diner. That night we hungrily wolfed down our first kebab with some distinct looking hummus and slowly enjoyed our second at another diner serving kebab with red cabbage with a can of Estrella.

For lunch the next day, doner kebab with green olives on a less crowded side of las Ramblas

The next day, following, a lunch of doner kebab with green olives, we headed off in search of a place to sit and watch Barcelona. On our meandering path, we walked past a shop advertising vintage sunglasses which had just reopened after siesta . I had decided earlier in the trip that my only personal purchase would be a pair of good sunglasses, so we went in.  What we discovered was a small room filled with shelves of glamorous, flashy, intricate sunglasses. As I looked through the shelves, the owner brought out  boxes filled with even more sunglasses from which he picked out specific ones to try on .  The owner whose name I forget is a young guy in his twenties. He told me that he always loved sunglasses and began collecting them seriously around the age of 19. He was particularly loved those from the 60s, 70s, and 80s and now takes trips to find vintage sunglasses to sell in his store.

Everyone looks cool in these sunglasses by Police from Wilde Vintage

I finally decided on some ridiculous, super glam 70s pair for 65 euro.  As I payed for the sunglasses with cash I borrowed because of debit card issues, I looked up and saw the top shelves lined with super chic vintage bags and the glass case by the door filled with large, bold earrings. The guy has impeccable taste. I took a few bags down from the shelf but restrained myself and swore to come back the next day with a full wallet. Unfortunately, I passed the store during siesta hours and no purchases were made.  When in Barcelona, Wilde Vintage is a must.

Leftover from doner kebabs with delicious fresh tomatoes. A dog came by and licked up the mess for us.

We finished our 6th and 7th kebab (within 36 hours) in George Orwell plaza. We sat and looked at two old shirtless men standing on their balconies with their stomachs hanging out.  It seemed like New York in many ways; dense, gritty, endless, diverse,  filled with people whose crazy past lives you cannot begin to imagine, but without New York’s ambitious upward drive. As we sat there, someone’s black dog came sniffing by and eagerly lapped up the grease from our kebabs and then trotted along on its way.

Europe is full of small balconies like these. It's less structurally demanding, more practical, and inhabitable than our standard balconies in America.

We skipped Gaudi and went to see Mies van der Rohe's famed Barcelona Pavilion which was surprisingly worth the all the talk. Afterwards, we saw Joan Miro Foundacion by Sert but were too hungry to venture further than the gift shop.

It's easy to forget that Barcelona has a beach. It's nice, but bring your own beer. Estrella costs 2 euros on the beach.

half truths about venice

There were warnings before I left for Venice: I hope you are good with maps, it’s impossible to navigate.  You’ll get hit on a lot.  The food is terrible there. It’s so hot, you don’t even need clothes.

The warnings, it turns out were true, but somewhat inaccurate.

It was blazing hot our first day in Italy as we dragged our luggage up the hill in Monselice, but cold enough for long pants and sweaters for the rest of the week. My only pair of jeans which were unfortunately white became increasingly colored as I sat at the end of streets eating pizza next to the rio or in the shade of a church in a large campo sketching (dirt, grease, graphite = irreversible stains).

Jackets, scarves, long pants and warm cappacinos to shield against the cold. In Padova outside a surprisingly good illy cafe. Photo credit: Reem

The Venetian men, for the most part, greeted with a  “ciao bella”  and a genuine smile which felt complementary and unthreatening as they glided by on their boats. Far less questionable than anything that happens in Brooklyn or the Bronx.

Depending on your luck, a young handsome Italian with stylish sunglasses might call "ciao bella!" to you from his boat.

As for navigation, Venice is quite impossible to navigate with a map but not impossible without one. We found that walking in the general direction of something with the sun as our guide was a far less frustrating and more colorful way to get around Venice given ample time, comfortable shoes, and willingness to enjoy ambling into dead ends. When time, shoes, or lack of patience was a factor,  a few  ‘Dove Campo ____?” set us back on the right track. But more often,  pride was in the way of asking, so we wandered through rhythmic changes of dark and light until we came up that bright open space we were looking for.

An attempt at an artistic map of the streets I wandered down off one of the biggest campos in Venice. The city is small streets some as wide as one person connected by small square and big plazas.

When it came to food, the best and worst of my trip were both in Venice. The worst:  pizza in  Campo S. Margarita at a cafe with orange chairs. It was undoubtedly on the same level of New York Public School lunch pizza – the thick and flavorless crust, bland cheese, sauce reminiscent of tomatoes only because it is red.  There were other terrible things in Venice like places that charge 4.50 euro for a cappacino or gnocchi with salmon that could have only come out of a can.

On our last night in Venice,  I was brought to a tight, cozy place called Osteria ai Quattro Ferri just off of Campo S. Barnaba. The menu was all italian, hand written which made it all the more impossible for the Californian couple next to us to decipher with their electornic dictionary (they were actually much more versed in the ways of Italian menus and explained a few things to us).

I have no pictures of food at Quattro Ferri or a sign or anything! When we went back for lunch the next day, a waitress' dog was running around the restaurant looking dignified and alert. Here he is asking for a stomach rub.

We gave our order to a tough looking Italian hostess for mista verdura and a pasta that we pointed to at random. The grilled mixed vegetables were deliciously flavorful. The  pasta we choose was apparently spaghetti with tomato sauce and small-lobster like crustaceans (or were they large shrimps? I forget) In my memory, however exaggerated it may be, the tomato sauce was magical,  richly infused with full  seafood flavor, and good with the house red wine. Somehow the food, the atmosphere, the waitresses made me feel as if I had reached some small nook that existed there because it is Venice and Venice is wonderful and not because it is  good business to feed hungry travelers.

I went to Venice three times this summer. Once for the first time as a day visitor, another as a night-life partier, and for a third time as a passerby whizzing through Venice on my way somewhere else. Each time the city seemed to unfold and fold back in different ways reavling that what I had thought was truth to be untruth or at best, half-truth.