The Grind

I escaped Hong Kong for a weekend. Off to the tiny village of Shanghai.
When I arrived, I found a city in love with the new, the large, and the great. Displayed through their love of the automobile and their love of enormous (hideous) buildings.
They may have a top GDP, but they have a long way to go before they are a top country.

Heres a brief video I shot while I was there.

Day 42 in Hong Kong

Horrible. The only way I would describe work here. The office I work in, with all the other consultants on this project, is in such a horrible neighborhood an hour train ride from my place. People at the office, make it even worse. There are few places, that are not in war zones, that could be worse.

So the weekends become my refuge. They make me feel like I could actually like Hong Kong.

This Sunday I went to Lamma Island. It is a 50 min ferry ride from Central Hong Kong. Its a small island that takes about 2 hours to walk, but has some nice and clean beaches with a laid back local culture. A nice break from the noisy, busy, smelly and packed city.

Lo So Shing Beach was the one I was looking for. I found it just in time for sunset. To make it even better, I was the only one on the beach.

Dear Internet...

Let us just pretend that we have kept in touch the last couple months. Things have changed a lot and now I live in Hong Kong working on a project for a French architecture firm SAL (Schinko Associes Luxembourg), formerly Vasconi Architects.

You can read a little bit about this shitty project (literally, it's a sludge treatment facility) here.

http://www.waste-management-world.com/index/from-the-wires/wire-news-display/1291578580.html

There are no cool pictures there, but just trust me that it is a cool project.

In the meantime, I have been eating rice, drinking beer, and exploring this massively dense city.

Hopefully soon, I can make it to some other places in Asia and have a look around. When I do, I will certainly upload some photos, as I have been doing already, to possibly entice someone into visiting me!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16925188@N06/

The Limitless Plotter.

I meant to post this when it was completed. Nick compiled most of the clips we have had of the machine running in order to best demonstrate its varying uses.

And now we wait...

Eight years of work, wrapped into a package weighing less than a pound. All with the purpose of getting a job as an architect. Hopefully, one of these firms I am sending my work to will take the bait!
The only problem is that I never was lucky when it came to fishing.

2010 Portfolio 1.0

The goal was to complete my portfolio by the 4th of July. I was 5 minutes late.

I am not going to ship this one, everything printed incredibly too dark. Getting closer to being finished with it though!

What I'm listening to...

While spending most of my time in coffee shops working on my portfolio, I thought I would share what I'm listening to. This awesome website called soundcloud.com allows people to upload their own music and remixes for others to listen to. My favorite part is their music player. It allows people to comment at certain points in a song and makes it fun to read what people are thinking about the songs.
Massive Attack Remix (FREE DOWNLOAD) by Bassnectar

Returned from a brief vacation.

Now what!?

Now that I graduated and returned from a trip to the Bahamas with the family, I have to ask myself what to do next. All I can come up with is moving back to Lawrence while I search for a job. I hope employers will just take my word when I say they won't regret hiring me.
By the way, this photo is not fake, but actually is me crowd-surfing at commencement.

Finished College

I can finally check college off of the "list of things to do". Printed out my final studio project and kicked up my feet. 

Here are several interior shots of the train station, retail, and cafe.

go go gadget CNC AIRBRUSH!

Trying out one of the more exciting of all the possible z-axis mounts.

Soon we will attach this to the rest of the machine and have some

real fun.

Day of the Earth

Happy Earth Day!  Slightly on topic... I recently received a bike. It has become my new love. My poor car just sits out in the parking lot all day, never getting used. My goal was, with the help of my bike, make my tank of gas last an entire month. It appears I will easily make this goal. The image shows my tank as of today. Not only has biking been saving gas, but its been burning calories. Not that I like to brag (I do), but I am becoming more fit from all this biking too.

America has an addiction to oil and a large obesity problem. The solution looks quite simple, BUY A BIKE!

Qatar National Museum Expansion

The project I worked on in Switzerland was recently reviewed in the New York Times. Though they did not mention the fractal bathrooms I produced, it is still really cool having a project I know so well seen by so many.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/arts/design/23doha.html

183 CANVAS

Now would be a good time to introduce a new project I have been working on for awhile(if that makes sense). Working with fellow Architecture student/designer Nicholas Reed, we started 183 CANVAS as our little design group for creating whatever little project we want. Today we completed a major part of our first project. The goal is to make a computer controlled machine that can write/paint/draw/spraypaint/takephotos whatever on a wall or canvas of any size. I hope to post some works of "art" soon.
http://183canvas.blogspot.com/

Back to Studio

It has been a welcome slow start to my final semester of school. My studio professor is out of town for 2 weeks so the class has taken extra time to construct the site model for our project. We chose to use the CNC machine (a computer controlled router) to cut the model out of several layers of MDF. Its been fun watching the machine cut through it but a lot of work to coordinate people to sit there while it cuts for a total of about 20 hours.


CNC mill from tim williams on Vimeo.

Out to Lunch

Out to Lunch
Originally uploaded by powkey

Back in the States! After 6 months in Europe, I have made it back. Without a doubt, it has been the most significant part of my life thus far. Though it still feels good to home.

As part of my last day of work in Geneva, everyone in the office took me out to the Boeuf Rouge, a classy old school French restaurant near the office.