Peotone Rail Station

I was talking with a friend last night and realized I hadn't posted any renderings from my latest project - A high speed rail station in Peotone, IL. The first two images are just to give some context. The third is just a birds eye view, and the last is an interior shot of the stairs/ramp system.

All the renderings are done in the Maxwell plug-in for Rhino. There's still a lot more to post but I'm letting some of the renderings run for a day or two to clean up all the noise.

Preliminary orthographic drawings of the structural system - it's missing the cabling that runs from the base of the arches to the other side and instead has foundations.

Exploded axonometric drawing of the wooden parabolic arches with cabling.

I'll explain more of this later but basically the structural idea going on is that the canopy structure is 120' wide and 40' tall (1:3 ratio). The arches are parabolic and self supporting (angled to support one another) and are a closed system in that their ends are tied together with steel cable running underground. The arches themselves are glue-lams, which is engineered wood that resists bending, warping, etc. far better than solid timber. The glue-lams are 2' deep and 1' wide. The whole thing is covered by 7 ETFE (ETFE is a polymer developed by DuPont that has a tensile strength of 6,000 psi, weights 1% as much as glass, lets in more light than glass, is not made from oil, is completely recyclable, and is not affected by UV damage - sort of, the take-away is that as far as anyone can tell it has an indefinite lifespan) pillows which run about 320' long, 18' wide, and at their deepest are about 2' thick. They're kept inflated by a low pressure air compressor that uses about as much energy as a 40W light bulb. The ETFE is held by aluminum extrusions which are supported by steel cabling to prevent uplift and bending due to gravity. The arches are supported by brick and concrete steel reinforced piers... that's all for now.

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"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." - Buckminster Fuller, New York Magazine 1970

Fuller believed that work was largely obsolete - and by extension so were many full time jobs. His notion was rather that of projects. People would assemble for projects, bring their expertise, and disband when they were completed. Of course, this is how most architecture firms and how every construction site I've ever been to has operated. Interestingly though the trades embrace this and have a system for dealing with it whereas the (large) architecture firm must go through periods of cyclical hiring and firing. It's very similar to monogamy in our culture.

That is, humans tend to be slightly polygynous (men tend to have more than one wife/lover when they can afford it) but yet this is unacceptable to just come out and say. How do men get around this? By being serially monogamous - getting married and divorced repeatedly (women rarely do this especially when the marriage involves children). In much the same way many employers must go through the process of essentially pretending they want an employee for a long period of time. The reality is that this is untrue and both parties would be better off if both sides were honest and acted accordingly. I'd expect the work situation to change before male/female relations as monogamy tends to be in the best interest of men.

Fisher Studio Houses at 1209 N State Street in Chicago.

Bourdain on Choosing a Career

I read a lot - really disparate stuff. I have no idea how much of it I retain, but every now and then an article or book keeps reappearing in my ideas. This is one of them. It's Anthony Bourdain giving advice on whether or not someone should choose a career as a chef.

It's incredibly applicable to anything that requires real work and effort and a high probability of failure. I looked at architecture through the prism of my paintball experience knowing the years of crap I'll have to deal with and the requisite luck to get to a point where I can actually have some degree of freedom over what I want to do. Should be worth the price of admission.

Here's a series of shows by Bourdain that I really enjoy about Ferran Adria:

Critters Talk Macro Econ.

I just had to make one of these. There's one on YouTube right now that "explains" quantitative easing... I don't even know, it's just all wrong, but yet it has 3 million views and the comments page is filled with cheers from idiots.

Sorry that it is rather dry.

Brief Overview as to the State of World Macroeconomics II

Part one can be found here.

Here's a depressing round table with Krugman and some other huge macroeconomists. It's 55 minutes and grim.

To add to that Ezra Klein talks about pretty similar scenarios in which growth is basically stagnate for the next 10-20 years.

Almost no one, not even my most liberal friends, want to hear about more stimulus spending. Yet, government size has decreased by 350,000 jobs since Obama took office, and over the last two years government expenditures have risen a paltry 3% - well below what they were for the previous two years and far below typical economic growth rates. But year America is somehow now socialist. The point is to fill the gap in spending temporarily until it picks up again. Exact numbers are given and they're huge - the initial bill was about half the size it needed to be and 40% tax cuts. Of course it was going to have a weak effect.

The market has been doing fairly well recently and some people are calling for a correction (essentially a devaluation) of anything from very little to 90%. The Big Picture's writer, Barry Ritholtz, is guessing that about 25% is perhaps at the high end, but at the same time - do you want to make money or do you want to be right?

Staying with Ritholtz for a minute - he says we need an intervention as a nation. This is in light of the fact that the foreclosure process (great article) has recently been shown to be in tatters, or rather, businesses that serve foreclosures are falsifying documents proving ownership of a loan that courts then use to seize property. Yeah, that's illegal.

Peter Diamond and two collaborators won the Nobel Prize in Economics (I know, I know - it's not the original) this morning. Why does his name sound familiar? Obama selected him as a Fed governor but the Republicans in the Senate blocked his nomination citing his lack of relevant experience. Then why did Obama choose him? Well, besides the fact that he was Bernacke's professor he also wrote the seminal paper, which he's now won a Nobel for, on... wait for it... unemployment in a distressed market (see: America, present).

Tax receipts get proposed:

I often get asked, or rather chided, about my support for TARP. It's somewhat hard to explain shadow banking to someone who doesn't really know how a reserve ratio works. Anyways, America get its money back and may even make a profit. PLus the banking system didn't collapse... yay? Somehow I feel as if that would have led to zombie attacks... I know, it's weird.

And the real reason I wanted to write about this: "China has an unloaded water pistol at our head"

Everyone knows that we trade a lot with China. They are out second largest trading partner after Canada, but what most people don't know is that China keeps its currency undervalued on purpose in order to increase its export volume. Normally if an import country taxes a good coming in, a tariff, the country where the good originated from gets mad so almost no one does that. Trade is mostly open in the world today - as in most cases it should be. But China "sterilizes" its inflows. What does that mean? When there's a trade imbalance one countries monetary base (amount of currency in its economy) gets bigger, so every year money flows from the US to China faster than the opposite. Every year Chinese currency becomes stronger in proportion to our currency as their monetary base grows. Normally this would mean that their currency, the renminbi, would be appreciate relative to the dollar. Literally, a dollar would buy less in China. Chinese exports would cost more and the US would buy less. That's how trade usually balances itself, so why doesn't that happen.

The Chinese sterilize inflows. That means that the Chinese government uses that excess domestic currency to buy US government debt so that their monetary base won't expand which keeps prices low and exports up. This essentially allows the Chinese to put a tariff on US imports and a subsidy on exports, but most people don't understand sterilization and thus it isn't perceived that way (Krugman's explanation).

The US recently passed the Levin Bill allowing the government the power to place a tariff on any country that manipulates its currency. The Chinese are pissed. They keep saying they will let their currency float (act naturally on the markets) but they never do - they just keep stringing us out.

Plywood Table

These are some screen shots of something I've been working on recently. It's a design for a table that I plan on building soon. It'll be made of varying thicknesses (1/8"-1/2") of baltic birch plywood. The design is an expression of how the table deals with loads - it's also overbuilt to withstand young drunken men - but none the less the design incorporates very little extraneous material.

The table top will be all ply facing vertically. I plan to file and sand quite a bit to give it a less rigid look. Plus, forces don't like to go around sharp corners - it stresses them out (our structures teacher loves to drop that one).

Plutocracy

I read this article in GOOD that pointed towards this paper - I recommend both. It's worth really looking at and thinking about the implications of this. The basic takeaway from this is that the bottom 60% of the US populace has no stake in our country, the top 20% for all intents and purposes - own everything, and even rich republican men think the world should be more fair than it is.

Sweden seems to be doing just fine. I'd really like to see this study done throughout the world and within even more specific groups of people - by age, by neighborhood in Chicago, by education, etc.

And yet the Right and even members of economic academia that are pushing for tax cuts for the rich. Deeply troubling and disturbing is an understatement.

The percentage present between the pie charts is explained in the paper. When shown two of the charts unlabeled (didn't know what country it represented) at the same time Americans preferred the Swedish income distribution to our actual distribution. Americans also preferred the Swedish chart to perfect distribution - which in and of itself is fascinating if not surprising.

B&W Europe Photos

I still haven't finished posting my photos from Europe on here but here's a few of the B&W 120 film photos made with my Mamiya 645.

A note on my film: The borders of the negatives are shown because my particular view of photography requires that I show what I saw when I took the photo. Hence, the images are not cropped. I rarely if ever dodge and burn. The only adjustments I make are to brightness and contrast - especially since my film of choice is the newer Kodak TMY-2 whereas this is Kodak's older 400TX, so a lot of my film turned out grainy and overdeveloped - I was being willfully dense when I developed it. C'est la vie.

The following three photos are of the Sony Center in Berlin and were hand held at night...

The Cathedral in Cologne.

The lead covering on Renzo Piano's Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.

Richard Meier's Jubilee Church in (the ghetto of) Rome.

Pantheon in Rome - excellent.

Random Rome. Plants grow everywhere and here some vines had turned into a shade for this small gas station. It reminds me of those bridges that people grow in Asia.

Pompidou Center in Paris by Piano and Rogers. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter's Tietgen Dormitory in Copenhagen. This was one of if not my favorite contemporary building I've ever visited. The concept/program actually works to form a community.

BIG's (Bjarke Ingles Group) 8 House in Copenhagen.

Big's Mountain Dwelling in Copenhagen.

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"The work ethic is not lost; work is largely obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller

I made this portrait of an Algerian protester in front of the Opera Bastille (Carlos Ott) in May this year. They were protesting citywide for fair pay and job opportunities that resulted in a clash with police later in the day. Regardless of what the French claim they are deeply protective of their culture and it manifests itself in this case in the form of prejudice. The irony is that for many of these workers French is their first language and under French law they are French citizens. Colonialism is a bitch.

Aid That Works

I've read several articles and have seen at least one TED talk about aid situations, usually Africa related, where the writers and speakers, themselves natives to Africa, claim that the vast majority of aid is either only effective temporarily or totally unsuccessful. Apparently building a hospital is only successful if the generator that powers it works too – which it often doesn't after aid has ceased and no one can pay for replacement parts or has the knowledge to fix it. The lack of doctors doesn't help. Wells dug that provide clean water often give out after only a few years and no one is there to help fix it. It essentially becomes useless.

I've never heard of anyone/town of doing this but I think a new model should be tried.

List of assumptions:

1 - There are a lot of skilled people in the US who can't find a job.

2 - Given a sufficiently large group of people there will be members in that group who have expertise in broad topics (i.e. on an airplane there is almost always a doctor on board).

3 - There are towns throughout the world who could benefit from sustained and informed aid.

4 - A lot of aid (especially in Africa) does not seem to work as it's a one time thing. There is very little follow-up.

5 - Areas receiving aid generally have a better grasp of what goods and services they need most. A lot of receivers of aid complain that aid givers do not really understand the local problems and are thus inefficient or unsuccessful. I have a feeling a lot of this is pride too.

6 - Volunteers get more out of charity work than those who just give money (multiple studies have shown this).

7 - There are people who would be willing to give some form of aid but do not because a general sense of apathy. I'd probably fall into this category.

The idea:

A town in the US or anywhere (we'll call this group the givers) partners up with a town in an area of need – say, somewhere in Africa (we'll call this group the receivers). The givers agree to help out the receivers basically indefinitely – it'd be like having a sister city except it would actually mean something. The receivers would form a body that decides what it needs most and the givers would form their own body that would decide how best to accomplish what the receivers are proposing they need.

The group forming the givers would work something like this – ideally the entire town becomes involved and everyone participates in some way. It would seem that a somewhat small town would be a more realistic fit fort his type of scheme. Maybe initially people donate money individually or if the town is really into it they could raise a ½ percent sales tax or something of the sort. Remember that the dollar goes a long way in Africa. The group would use this money to buy the needed goods and materials for infrastructure. The givers would then send volunteers on a rotating basis. For example maybe in the first few months the givers send over a civil engineer and a contractor who help upgrade the towns infrastructure. As they return an architect and doctor get sent over and work on those problems. This continues allowing most or all of the givers to send members of their group.

The benefit for the receivers is that they have a very real hand in helping themselves by choosing what their town needs most and by housing and helping the givers who come to work. The givers are essentially acting as the mentor in an apprentice style relationship. Eventually the receivers will become self sufficient, and in the mean time each culture will benefit by learning about other ways of life and sustained trade – not that economic benefit is the motive but rather in this case an unintended result. It also allows the givers an opportunity to gain experience and experiment a little. I know if I were allowed to do such a venture I would go nuts designing efficient long lasting standardized homes. The point is that people are involved both in giving their money and time, but each reinforces the other as everyone in the group of givers has a chance to be part of the process and can see tangible results.

Piracy Bill Misses the Point

Congress is pushing through a bill that would require domain hosting companies (people who register web addresses) to block US users from pirating sites. If the sites are located overseas then the bill would force ISPs to block access to the sites.

I don't necessarily advocate piracy outright, but when government reps are making statements like this:

“But it’s also become a tool for online thieves to sell counterfeit and pirated goods, making hundreds of millions of dollars off of stolen American intellectual property." - Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah) (Taken from the Wired article above)

... you know progress is about to get stifled. Piracy just isn't a black and white issue, and the numbers they quote are often ridiculous. I thought Republicans supported the free market? No pun intended.

Is piracy stealing... kind of. If you steal a tangible object the seller literally has less, but this isn't true of a digital copy. The price for one is the same as the price for infinity. You only deprive the creator of income if you would have paid for the content otherwise. How many times have you downloaded a piece of software or music because it was free that you otherwise would not have? In these cases where you have stumbled upon something you never knew you liked you have opened up a discourse with the producer of the content under which they could potentially profit from you in the future. Think of how broad most younger peoples taste in music is compared to their parents.

My broad taste in music means that I go to a lot of concerts, but I don't buy records. What does this mean for the band? They make more money and have broader appeal. Their pirated online albums serve as event flyers. Another example is the plethora of super out of reach expensive software for architecture school that I need to study and learn but can't afford. I learn these programs and when it's time for me to go to a firm they have to buy it. A copy of just plain AutoCAD costs $4,000 and every firm in the world has that. Why? It's not really the best drafting software necessarily but Autodesk does allow free downloads to students... is it any wonder that Google's Sketchup - a clearly inferior program - is now gaining traction because it's free?

There is a cost to users for pirating - that is - buggy software, older versions, no updates, and the time and knowledge to crack and obtain such things. Basically, people at the lower end of the economic spectrum engage in it - people that wouldn't have access to it otherwise. It's simple opportunity cost for the pirater. The real problem is with the pricing and distribution of media and software. I could bore you with this but I won't. Distribution must become intangible and prices must be cut drastically. A dollar a song and $600 for Photoshop CS5 is ridiculous. Content providers need to seriously consider ways of extracting higher amounts of consumer surplus (the amount that a buyer is willing to pay in addition to the asked for price) after dropping prices. Take for example ipods. Apple charges a base price for the unit with say 4 gigs, then so much more for 8 gigs, and so on. More people buy the product this way while at the same time Apple is able to get people who are willing to pay more to spend more. Look at what Microsoft is doing with Windows 7: Home, Home Premium, etc.

Of course there are problems with pirating but I think that often the benefits outweigh the costs. Pirating has changed the way we consume media and information. Bittorrents, a byproduct of pirating, is almost unarguably the best way to download anything. In some odd way it's almost tragic that a different generation (see, old white affluent men) feels the need to deprive us of something they do not and possibly cannot understand. There always seems to be debate in Washington about topics that my generation considers a moot point, but I suppose it's always this way. One day my generation will mold the world in the defunct image of their youth to the detriment of that times generation.