Wise Trailer

I DID IT! here is my WISE trailer :)

and some other good news ! I´m done with my sketch of the Taj Majal tomorrow I will post it OH YEAH

SUCCESS!

Today was the day I had to give in my Architecture trailer introducing my Wise project. I feel it came out pretty well. Just the music at the end may have came out a bit awkward because I just let it go on and on with no stop. Then the CD wouldn’t burn! And I had no USB with enough memory space to save it there. My solution was to take my oversized laptop to school and try to fix it at coach Love´s class… and so I did. I sat next to my friend Christina and we listened to some presentations students were giving about a in-class career they picked for their “Budget Project”… it had to be Coach Love´s crazy and interactive project ideas J I remembered when I presented my career presentation about my in class career as an advertising manager; I had to interview a person that worked in my same field and I interviewed Reynaldo Varela who works a marketing director. It was pretty interesting and I got to dress up for the interview to portray a serious look.

Yeah… now I got new projects ;)

I hope I can somehow post the trailer on my blog so you can see me and my “progress” … At school I´ve been having long weekends and it makes me a be a little of a lazy butt. 

Trailer making... oh yeah!

This weekend was totally dedicated to the making of a trailer for my Wise project. I bought clay so I could make a video and i modeled some buildings to make a colorful city with different design buildings... I made them appear one by one creating the city. I went over my whole project and I got to see what I have been doing correctly and what else could I do to get a better to have a greater outcome. The trailer came out pretty well, and I´m excited for the music :P I used Molotov, a mexican band, and its going to be awsome :)

Mentor Meeting

Great day to visit my mentor...not really.
Today she was super busy with all her students and P.R.I.D.E. club, so we didn´t have a very productive meeting, we basically talked for a while about what I was going to do for next week and what I had been doing this week I showed her my sketch of the Taj Majal and she told me that I should focus on drawing building that actually have something to do with my project and not just random buildings... but oh well I liked it, it is my first sketch of a building and I´m proud that it actually came out very good :)  ... I´m focusing on sketching not so random buildings for the sake of my project, also I´m doing the trailer making for my WISE project presentation. I´m going to use playdough for it and it will be super cool ;)

Back from Spring Break...

I welcome myself back to blogging after a beautiful spring break, current update for my project is that I bought a sketching book and I´m drawing my first building :)  I´m drawing the Taj Majal because it was requested by an Hindu friend in my first period and its a pretty cool building so ...here I go... I have basic structure sketched out and soon I will be adding all the details to the building.

Here is a picture :P ->


This week I´m planning on reading one of the books Daniel downloaded (he downloaded all this cool books for architectures and how to sketch , I have them in a CD). I also asked miss Jenkins, the art teacher at Cypress Bay High School, about perspective drawing (because that is what we are going to focus on because we´re drawing buildings) and she showed me these posters that she has for her lessons on perspective; I learned that there are 3 types of perspective drawing which are defined by the amount of  vanishing points in the drawing. There are 1 point, 2 point and 3 point drawings. But the real help I got with this was today that I ran into a very artsy friend who is an incredible artist and she explained with drawings what perspective is about and we saw pictures in books and identified the different types of perspectives. Sara is her name, she also explained how you can have aa birds eye or worms eye effect to your pictures by drawing the objects either lower or above the horizon line.

A good example for 1point perspective is a picture of a tunnel or a hallway; its an image that is pulled from one point.
Ex:

Then two point would be like a picture of a corner where you can see both sides of a wall, building, etc.
Ex:

Then Three point, according to what Mrs. Jenkins said, is the reality of how things are. It shows the 3 dimensions of objects by adding the third point. An example would be :

....
I feel good about where this is going, Ill have pictures of my next drawings and the Taj Majal complete soon :)
good night

Spring Break oh yeah!

Now that Spring Break is getting closer I went to go see my mentor and say goodbye cause I´m not going see her for a week, so we caught up with all the conversing about how my project is advancing. We concluded that the only big goal for this spring break was to go and find the TD Bank that is supposed to be in Ft. Lauderdale, but the webpage where I found the information about the building doesn’t say the exact address! … so that is going to be  one of my adventures this Spring Break, I already told Daniel we are going on a building hunt. The building, from what I read, is pretty well thought out, I would like to go see it and maybe someone knows about the building J

According to the Sun Sentinel the building is in:

TD Bank builds first branch to run on sun energy

February 23, 2011|By Doreen Hemlock, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

TD Bank is building a new branch in Fort Lauderdale that can supply all its own energy, reportedly the first bank building in the country that will not need to draw from the electric network and can be registered as "net-zero."

The branch at 665 NW 62^nd Street will be powered by the sun energy captured in nearly 400 solar panels. It also is designed to be energy-efficient and meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED standards at the platinum level, the highest level of certification.

.....
Yeah lets see if its true... i´ll let you know.

New idea :)

Daniel and I were talking about out visit to the architecture campus at FIU and got this awesome idea to get together and have sketch study! The plan is to get together and sketch several objects so I can start building a portfolio for my architecture future :P …this is when I know that  I have an awesome boyfriend J With him the sketching sessions are going to be really effective because we are both decided to do good sketching.

So he has a book called "The (New) Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards, that is going to be the first book we are going to use. This Spring Break we´ll definitely get together and start J at least begin one sketch haha because… hey … it´s spring break the beach is waiting, lets not make it stay waiting!  
But knowing Daniel he is probably going to find alot of good books so we can actually learn to be almost professional sketchers ;)  We saw some books online but we havent bought any, YET!
So I´m going to get a pretty portfolio when we´re done with our sketching sessions :P

FIU campus

So tODAY …Daniel picked me up from school to go to FIU. My meeting with the architecture campus was scheduled for 12:30 and we were there at 11a.m. because he had to go to an macro-economics class, so I went to the class with him; The class was pretty cool I felt the whole university lifestyle and the hunger for learning in the air. I have to say that I did want to pay attention to the class especially because I had been talking to my government/economics professor, Coach Love, about the differences of his economics classes and the REAL DEAL university classes… the major difference is that the university classes view more graphs and formulas… and I totally found out it is true. The professor starts his class with huge graph of the supply and demand curve that later connects to another graph that connects to another, that connects to another and… uff. Cool stuff ;) , might have made more sense if I listened to the explanation carefully but there was this big guy, next to the desk I sat in, that wouldn’t stop moving! And his bench would squeak and the “EEEK RICK RIK EEK REEEH”  of his desk would let me concentrate!  
But oh well… Daniel gave me his computer to surf the internet while the class ended, so I got more distracted and I only had the chance to listen to the professor explaining how the unemployment affects aggregate production thus decreasing the oil price.

After the economics class we went to  my meeting with the architecture campus people. They lady that talked with us was super nice and she gave us a tour around the architecture and design classrooms, workshops, and expositions.
I loved the working style, and the working creative minds all around. I have pictures of the final projects the students present and I got to see the BIG binders they have to make with all the research, ideas and advancements for only ONE project.

 c´est moi! expecting the lady to have all the answers to my questions

The BIG binders with all the juicy architect work.                    

"The cool ass building " according to Daniel. This is one of the abstract models the students build before starting to build the more sophisticated building and city models.

Some more of the models in the expo:

:

AND... the overview of  the exposition.

THE END

InterviEWED!

The interview yesterday was very helpful because it opened my perspective to another branch architecture works with. The first interview with Carmen Mora, architect in Venezuela and now part of an engineering company called Gamma USA, I learned about job demands in the field of architecture housing and the different types of floor plans needed to create one project. Carmen described her life as an architect and the transition to become an engineer with Gamma USA due to the low wages architects of housing receive in FL. She works with the outer part of buildings making sure they are well structure and have the correct materials, she works with skyscrapers and right now they are working on the remodeling of the Miami National Airport.

The second interview I interviewed Guillermo Maceda who graduated as an Urban Planner from FAU. Urban Planners, as he explained, propose construction codes which respect both architects and developers. They plan cities and decide where and what type of buildings are going to be used and placed. These are projects that can last up to 15 to 20 years because cities will always be in development. He explained important factors like the budget and all the electrical and water tubing, and sewer plans that have to be considered to create a city. Guillermo told me about the University life as an architecture student; all the hours I would have to put into, and he described what my projects and classes would be.

Now Im going to visit the FIU Architecture campus and see the university life of architecture in action!

And for Spring Break I am going to go find and photograph the TD Bank Net-zero energy building!

INTERVIEWING today!!!!

OH yeah I feel so good hahaha I just called the guy I wanted to interview about the scholar life of an urban architecture and I am going to meet him in half an hour!
I have to prepare some good questions to ask him, his brother told me he is a pretty straight up guy so I have to have good questions because I know he will have very good answers :)
As of now, for this week my plans are:
1) Interview Guillermo Maceda
2) schedule and maybe visit this week the FIU Architecture and Design campus
3) take pictures of buildings in either Ft Lauderdale or Miami
4) mentor meeting
5) be really happy on friday b/c its the begining of spring break!!! :P

so... I´m going to prepare my interview, write to you tomorrow!

I´ll leave you with some cool watercolor architectural paintings by Grzegorz Wróbel...

Rain rain go Away...

For this week I had thought about going to Fort Lauderdale and take pictures of some cool buildings or maybe pass by the design district and enjoy a day around art art art, and crazy furniture but MR. RAIN decided to ruin my day... : /

Oh well, at least I know now exactly where Im going to go to take pictures of buildings; my mentor sent me an e-mail telling me to research about “an Net- Zero Energy building in FL” and this is what I found :

TD Bank Constructing the First Net-Zero Energy Bank Location in the U.S.  !!!

The new net-zero energy TD Bank store will open this spring in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

A June 2010 report by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory defined a net-zero energy building (NZEB) as a residential or commercial building that produces and exports in a year at least as much renewable power as the total energy it uses.

According to the report, an NZEB has two key energy features: The building is constructed with energy-efficient technologies that significantly reduce its energy demand, and renewable energy sources supply at least as much energy as the building uses over the course of a year.

The new store, which is connected to the local utility grid, will require approximately 97,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a year to operate, but it will produce a minimum of 100,000 kWh a year on site.

The net-zero energy TD Bank store will also target the highest level of LEED certification, LEED Platinum. Only eight buildings in the nation are registered as NZEBs with the DOE, and TD Bank will be the first to register a net-zero energy bank. TD Bank has opened 17 stores and offices targeting LEED certification for their green design. LEED evaluates buildings for their overall environmental performance in five areas: sustainable sites, water use, energy efficiency, materials and resource use, and indoor environmental quality.

Buildings account for about 40 percent of total U.S. energy use and are responsible for about 50 percent of CO2 emissions. Those of us involved in the design, construction and operation of buildings have an opportunity and a responsibility to work toward maximum levels of energy efficiency, thereby, significantly reducing CO2 emissions.

NZEB Buildings

A NZEB is a building that, on an annual basis, produces as much energy as it uses. This means that at certain times of the year it may produce more energy than it need

SOUNDS PRETTY COOL AND GREEN... :)

Phone Number

Today a group of friends and I got together at Pedro´s house and we played a little bit of soccer, went in the pool, and ate this amazing dessert his mother prepared for us … mmm just to think about it my mouth waters :P  

Well… apart from the delicious dessert… I met this guy, that is 27 years old, that is studying to be an orthodontist and I don’t remember how we ended talking about environmental architecture and he seemed to have a pretty good view on what it consists, then he brought up that he has a twin brother that just graduated from urban planning and is about to enter the law school for further studies of urbanism. I was really excited at the  moment because I thought “I HAVE AN INTERVIEW!”  so I told him about my Wise project and asked him if it was ok if I interviewed his brother, seconds later I had the urban planner twin brother´s phone number… now … I had to call and schedule a date for the interview.

WHAT!? GREEN IN FLORIDA ? YES!

Cost implications, value in the marketplace and special building requirements are among the factors that keep many builders from the green market.  Find out if it’s right for you, by discovering:

1. What is the environmental and economic impact of green building.
2. What is the impact on densities, construction and appearance when building green.
3. What does it take to start building green — is it all or none or can you get in slowly. What design, regulatory, production, liability and marketing issues are involved.
4. Who is attracted to green homes and communities and how do you reach them. Learn how the marketing efforts may change.

Courses:

Building Green with Sustainable Profits
CILB Course #: 0608297 CEUs: 1-General

Field examples of basic as well as advanced green building strategies will be critiqued — what worked and what hasn’t over the past twenty-five years.  How various building components interact with each other to effect health, building maintenance, water conservation, and energy efficiency will also be addressed.

Total Hrs: 1

……

I just found a Calendar for me to go to different conferences of architecture… and guess what! It’s all about GREEN architecture!

I’m going to have to check prices for these conferences… the one on march 3^rd costs $30 …

2011

March 3-4, 2011
MiaGreen Expo
Miami Beach Convention Ctr
Miami, FL   www.MiaGreen.com 

March 10, 2011
Local Sustainability:
SW Florida Case StudiesSW Florida CSI Chapter
Ediston State College
Fort Myers, FL
Contact: kbuschle@gora-mcgahey.com

March 24-25, 2011
Renewable Energy 101
For Housing & Community Development
Intercontinental Tampa
Tampa, FL www.ipedinc.net/

April 20, 2011
Greater Orlando CSI Green Product ShowCentral Florida Fairgrounds
Orlando, FLhttp://greaterorlando.csinet.org/productshow

May 12-14, 2011
American Institute of Architects (AIA)
2011 National Convention and Design Exposition
New Orleans, LAwww.aia.org 

May 31, 2011
FGBC Certifying Agent
Annual Verification CoursePlaza Resort & Spa
Daytona Beach, FLRegister

June 1-3, 2011
GreenTrends 2011
Plaza Resort & Spa
Daytona Beach, FLMore Information 

August 11 - 13, 2011
Florida League of Cities
Annual Conference
Orlando World Center Marriott
Orlando, FL
PH: (850) 222-9684

Aug. 23-28, 2011
FL Association of Realtors
Annual Convention & Trade Show
Rosen Shingle Creek Resort
Orlando, FL

September 26-28, 2011
Florida Housing Coalition
Affordable Housing Conference
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, FLwww.flhousing.org