Vdara Death Ray

I found this article interesting - and it reinforced my dislike for fully glazed buildings. Silly architects, stop trying to cook humans.

"The tall, sleek, curving Vdara Hotel at CityCenter on the Strip is a thing of beauty.

But the south-facing tower is also a collector and bouncer of sun rays, which -- if you're at the hotel's swimming pool at the wrong time of day and season -- can singe your hair and melt your plastic drink cups and shopping bags.

Hotel pool employees call the phenomenon the "Vdara death ray."..."

Read more.

Wanted: Library Book

Has anyone recently looked at the book 'The Themed Space: locating culture, nation and self' from the library? The catalogue says it's available but when I went to look for it, it was missing. Thought maybe one of you might have taken a look at it and shoved it back on the shelf somewhere else...

UNLV Charette Follow-Through: Desert Condition Example

Unlike other programs that only learn about architecture and design within a single climate zone, Ryerson and UNLV were able to leverage the charette as a platform to learn about the regional differences in construction practice, sustainable design strategies, and biomimetic approaches. 

It should be emphasized that all the work presented from the charette was done in large groups of seven students with relatively little familiarity with the design challenge.  Aside from the logistics and organizational behaviour issues that precipitate entropy and prolonged design decision making, the extremely limited time constraints created an interesting challenge for the students.  Fortunately the students were able to develop a good starting point for their designs during the charette.  The subsequent resolution executed by individual students at Ryerson kept the same rigor as they were only given 40 hours to reassess their design responses to the critical feedback from the charette at UNLV.

Once again, this is a sample of the material from the initial charette concept except in an arid condition:

Samples of Razmig's Design:

Samples of Marcella's Design:

Samples of Jessica's Design:

UNLV Charette Follow-Through

Though the 6 hour charette between UNLV and Ryerson was a success for many of the faculty and critics in attendance, the final component of the project for the Ryerson students was to take the work proposed at the end of the exercise and use it as a "beta test" for yet another iteration of the design challenge. This allowed students to examine a biomimetic design idea and refine it on an individual basis.

For example, while the charette may have elicited a project such as this:

The charette design only served as a beginning point in the iterative biomimetic design process.  Below are three iterations prepared by individual Ryerson students in less than two days as a response to the charette proposal outlined above.  Take note that the biomimetic concepts and sustainable strategies have been retained yet the formal, tactical, and aesthetic dimensions vary as each student has adopted a different stance on the initial concept design.

Samples of Tricia's Redesign:

Samples of Sam's Redesign:

Samples of Mitch's Redesign:

Vegas Stuff

home sweet home
Tropical resort in the desert

Chinese Lion/Dog Stepping on baby lion/dog

Sam Winning $40

Duck Flying away from Mirage Volcano (Vince was right)Sirens of TI

In Hindsight...

So I have returned to Toronto and just did some grocery shopping at Metro in order to replenish my fridge. Let me tell you, it feels very strange being back on campus and to our Canadian climate.

Going from this:

To this:

photo source

How could we not have learned a ton about designing under different climatic circumstances?

Looking back at the trip as a whole, I realize that there is just so much to see in Vegas and I will have to head back eventually to check out what I missed. I, for one, did not get a chance to visit every single hotel. In addition, I snapped some photos on the plane and, though I'm not 100% sure we flew directly over the Grand Canyon, I was in awe at the rugged landscape. A trip to the Grand Canyon is certainly on the itinerary for my next visit. It's unfortunate we didn't get to see it this time around but, as I mentioned, Las Vegas Blvd itself was a lot to take in.

Also, just to quickly add to Tricia's 'Crystals' post, in addition to concerns for maintenance we were intrigued by the lightshow on the cladding as well (Louis Vuitton portion). We suspect that the light source is on the cladding itself (as opposed to projected on to the building by an external source).

Night 'lightshow' (left of the palm trees)

Lightsource: the grid of 'dots'?

Component Design

QuaDror from Dror on Vimeo.

Though many of you are still coming off the Las Vegas and Nevada high, it is important to keep a focus on the remainder of the term's projects - most notably the final design assignment, P4. The first part of the assignment deals with the development of a base component or prototype of an envelope for an arid climate.  As a source of inspiration, the QuaDror design is an interesting precedent to get you thinking about the project and develop your own approaches to innovative design.