elkin, the ballard estate

Until April 5th I am regrouping in North Carolina with my family, three cats in various stages of living decay, and a black lab too obese to do anything but sprawl out and emote. Every man needs a hobby that he can hyperbolize, and mine is dry-stack retaining stone walls. It's a heroic task of domestic proportions. I hunt down the rocks, wrest them from the earth, drag them to my wall, wrestle them into position, and tamp new ground behind them. Not to mention, of course, the intellectual rigors of interconnecting irregular geometries. The image presents my interim project: fitting my parents' toolshed into its sloping terrain. After walking around thinking about cities for a few months it's refreshing to douse myself with sweat, coat myself with clay, and sleep like a sonofabitch.

new york, long island city

An explanatory drawing for Aranda/Lasch's Color Shift project.

new york, columbia university

Interior elevations for Aranda/Lasch's Color Shift exhibition at Columbia, which opens on the 19th.

philadelphia, loews philadelphia hotel

Yesterday I attended two sessions of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture's annual conference. I'm not a fan of conferences...even architectural ones...but it was nice to hear how the speakers construed the term "infrastructure" and positioned it and the architect in terms of the city. Although I could have just found the publication later because everyone basically read the paper they had submitted. But Philly's a nice town and it has some strange goings-on, what with Edmund Bacon's underground passages and all.

expense list, page 4

expense list, page 3

new york, brooklyn

I landed in New York last night and, with the good-spirited help of a college friend chauffeur, I shot straight out to Brooklyn to get a glimpse of Aranda/Lasch's latest conspiracy. It was pretty easy to spot from the highway. They've commandeered an enormous free-standing video billboard, shorn it of its usual FreshDirect banter, and altered it into a color-evolving neighborhood nightlight. On the left is the board and on the right is its effect. Over the next two weeks or so, I'm going to help the duo set up an exhibition of the project for Columbia University.

alaska, dawn

sendai, mediatheque

naoshima, yayoi kusama pumpkin

The rest of my recent tagential travel, tenuously tethered by the color red as a thematic thread. I have made use of my Japan Rail pass for the last week, taking a break from Branner dictation to acclimate to the larger country. Tonight I fly to New York to assist Aranda/Lasch with their new project ColorShift and to attend a conference on infrastructural urbanism in Philadelphia.

miyajima, torii

nara, kasuga taisha and nigatsu-do

Please note the roving fireball ceremony in the lower image.

kyoto, kyomizu-dera temple complex