July 2

I woke up this morning to Nicholas punching the side of my mattress. When I came to my senses he told me that it was 8:40. I had 20 minutes to eat breakfast, somehow make myself presentable, and be in my seat in the studio. I got to a vertical position, and when I looked around me, Nicholas had already left for class. Somehow I left my dorm room at 8:55. I sprinted across State Street with my backpack on and my vellum perspective drawing rolled up in my hand. I was in luck because one of the elevator cabs was waiting for me. There was only one other person in the elevator, and they were going to the twelfth floor too. I ran out of the elevator, scanning my student ID without stopping at the security desk, and looked at my phone just as I opened the classroom door. It literally turned to 9:00 as I opened the door. It sounds like it's from a movie, but I kid you not, it happened.

Here's the completed rendering of the perspective drawing I did for homework this past weekend. Ms. Slaughter is going to demonstrate how to realistically render the windows, water features, floor, and shadows on the last week of the program.

Today, Monday, we started our new project: an Actor's Loft Apartment at a cool theater in Chicago. It's on the second level of the theater, and right now, the space it will occupy is vacant right now, and there is no way to enter the space. Part of our task is to design a catwalk to cross over the part of the second story that is open to the theater lobby. The catwalk will be connected to the mezzanine, which people "behind the scenes" use to look over the different theaters and use all of the control rooms.

Ms. Slaughter presented the design project to us for about 30 minutes, we discussed other ways of entering the space, and asked some questions.

We walked across the street to Blick, an art supply store. We purchased two sheets of foam core. One of them was about 2 feet by 3 feet and was half an inch wide, and the other sheet was about 3 feet by 5 feet and was a quarter of an inch wide. These will be used in the final models which we will be building either later this week or early next week.

Our first task on the project was to create three "bubble diagrams" to show adjacency between all of the required spaces: entry, kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom, bedroom, and study area.

Once we were finished with our three bubble diagrams, we pinned them up on the wall and went around critiquing the logic in the adjacencies of each space within the apartment.

When we were finished critiquing, we traced the existing floor plan onto trace paper and since we knew which spaces would be adjacent to each other, we just had to do a rough sketch of each bubble diagram, except no more bubbles, and it was in the existing space with really rough wall measurements, just to get an idea of how much space we had to work with. We did three of those really rough floor plans:

My First - My favorite

My Second - My least favorite

My Third - My second favorite

Our homework was to create three "masking models" that correlated to our three rough floor plans, but we were only supposed to include our kitchen counters, cabinets, and the walls for the bathroom. This was to show us roughly how much room was left for other necessary spaces. Masking models are basically little three-dimensional cardboard models that are somewhat to scale, but are still pretty sketchy. I got a good start on them in class, and stayed after with Zoe and Andrea until about 4:30, 30 minutes after class finished.

1 - Floor Plan

1 - Model Floor Plan

1 - Two Point Perspective

1 - Three Point Perspective

2 - Floor Plan

2 - Model Floor Plan 

2 - Three Point Perspective

2 - Two Point Perspective

3 - Floor Plan

3 - Model Floor Plan

3 - Three Point Perspective

3 - Two Point Perspective

After we finished, we walked to Starbucks. I got a chocolate chunk cookie and a strawberry and creme frappuccino.

We walked to the dorms and hung out in Rachel R. and Zoe's dorm room. Rachel was using rubber cement, which created fumes, so we opened the door to the hall to circulate more air. Claire, the SRE who took us to the zoo on Saturday, passed by and saw us and decided to stop and chat. We talked for probably 30 minutes when we decided to go get thai food at this restaurant outside of the loop called Star of Siam.

Rachel R., Zoe, Claire, and I went to the third floor to see if Andrea wanted to come with us. She had already gotten Panara, but stuck it in the fridge really quickly and joined our crowd. We passed by another really cool SRE, Hannah, in the lobby. Claire and Hannah are really close friends, so Claire invited her too. So in total, there are six of us walking to the restaurant.

At the restaurant, I ordered Vietnamese Spring Rolls and Chicken Panang Curry. I didn't like the spring rolls because there was something in them that I don't like, and the Chicken Panang Curry was okay; it was a bit too flavorful for me, but it wasn't terrible. It ended up being pretty expensive: $22 including tax and tip. I was feeling brave and adventurous tonight, but next time I would definitely play it safe and just get Pad Thai. It would be a guaranteed hit and it probably wouldn't have been nearly as expensive.

Bottom Row left to right: Andrea (Puerto Rico), Zoe (India), and me
Top: Rachel R. (Minnesota)

Rachel acting crazy

Zoe acting crazy

After we finished dinner, Hannah went back to the dorms and Claire showed us where the Trader Joe's was. I bought lots of groceries including lip balm, milk, snack foods to bring to class, and a frozen dinner.

We all walked back to the dorms, and by that time, I was exhausted. The walk is a little more than a mile - a 20 minute walk. On the way home, we passed by the hotel that I stayed at with my mom and dad when we arrived in Chicago. 

I went back to my room to put my groceries away, and went to hang out in Rachel H's room (the cool room) for a little while. After about 30 minutes, my eyes were slowly becoming heavy, so I went back to my room to shower and get ready for bed.

I wanted to show you some better pictures of our studio space: 

Facing the board and door: The space with the yellow chair, black bag, drafting table, models, and papers is mine. I didn't realize until today that those chairs are actually Hermin Miller! Fancyyy

Facing the Windows. I don't know if you can notice, but the whole space isn't just what you see in this picture; the whole room is actually three classrooms combined with black curtains that can separate them. What you see in this picture is only one third of the entire open area.

Facing the board and door: in this picture you can sort of see how that black curtain can extend to separate the space. In the nearside of the photo are cutting boards we use for cutting with x-acto knives. 

This is another view out of the window; its a water tower!