Art School

When I was in high school, my dream was to become a comic book artist and draw funny comics for people to enjoy. I seriously considered applying for art school. A few of my good friends applied and got into art school.

For some reason, I never applied to an art school. Life has a way of throwing the unexpected at you, which dramatically changes the direction of our lives.

When I was applying for colleges, I focused on places I was comfortable going to and where most of my high school friends were applying to as well. In one alternate universe, I would be following the footsteps of both my brother and my father who both studied at Case Western Reserve University. In a completely "what the fuck why the hell not" decision, I applied to Washington University in St Louis, which would've been my last option.

My first two options ideally would have been Cornell University and University of Pennsylvania, 2 great Ivy league schools. I got rejected from both.

Wash U accepted me though, and in a bold and completely "what the fuck why the hell not" decision, I moved down to St Louis. St. Louis, a city I really didn't know anything about other than the Gateway Arch.

I actually got accepted into their BFA program, so maybe I was going to be an artist after all! But in another "what the fuck why the hell not" decision, I transferred to the architecture program at the last minute.

Well 4 years later and I do not regret these decisions. At some point in that period I decided to apply for graduate school and looked primarily at architecture programs. This made logical sense to me, and yet my heart told me I wanted something different. There was something about site, and landscape that I gravitated towards and in another "what the fuck why the hell not" decision I decided to apply for a Masters of Landscape Architecture Program.

At first I looked at local programs such as Wash U's new landscape program, or OSU's program back in my home state. I knew I would never get into Harvard, so I said "what the fuck why the hell not" and sent the Harvard GSD my application materials. It only took a few edits of the statement of intent anyway.

Well one day I wake up, check my email, and Harvard GSD just sent me an acceptance notification email. Great, another unexpected twist. OK, I'll visit the school during Open House weekend and see what it's like. I was impressed by what I saw, and little did I know I was walking past a lot of the friends I would eventually make here, unbeknownst of our eventual intersecting destinies.

Here I am now studying landscape architecture at the GSD, and I think back to how lucky and how weird my life has been. Nothing has been happening according to plan. This summer, I will be interning at the firm I was sure would least likely accept me, and yet I will be moving to San Francisco for the first time in my life.

I still think about going to art school. Its never too late to continue your dream. I'm still young, maybe in a few years I'll return to school and pursue what I've always loved doing: Drawing cartoons.

flux city project #3

After speaking with professor Niall Kirkwood, a minor adjustment was made to the overall scheme. Instead of agriculture directly feeding off of the canals that cut through the site, a secondary canal peels away from the main ones in which water will undergo a series of constructed wetlands within which water is cleansed. The issue of salinity and pollution in the water is the main hurdle in proposing agriculture for this site, but a hybrid system of water cleansing plus rainwater mixing will help create a solution suitable for crop growth.

Urbanism on the site will primarily be buildings adjacent to or over the canals of the site. Buildings adjacent to the canals will actually help shade the water, helping to prevent overgrowth of algae in the water (algae water is not suitable for agriculture because due to the depletion of oxygen). A building catalog will consist primarily of the types that react/butt against the canal.

One issue that hopefully I can resolve soon is how the highway interfaces with the construction on the site. The highway over the southern shoreline is lower than anticipated.

In general, the overall productive ecological system is figured out, I will now need to dive in and work on the details (plant/crop types, zoning, phasing, seasonal patterns/changes, building distribution). In particular, I would like to have a planting pattern decided since that is very conditional on the quality of the water, the amount of sun it receives, and its growing season.

The issue of food production and urban agriculture is not new in landscape architecture and one that I have been interested in since my days at Wash U.