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Inspired by the Barrio Workshops, students of Bryan Finoki in his “Contemporary Issues” class started brainstorming on ways they could impact the Barrio Logan community positively.  So far, Woodbury has kept itself somehow separate from the community for various reasons, but is there a way the students could go out into the neighborhood and implement small changes that would benefit the community?  They were not concerned with a grand scheme, nor anything too elaborate, rather we wanted an excuse to reach out to the community in a very subtle and friendly manner.  Thus, they started  cleaning up the alley behind our school, in an attempt to create a clear canvas that could be filled in with various small programs by the community, according to their needs.  It’s not a matter of designing anything necessarily, but to set up a space in a way that it could create opportunities for adaptive uses.
The alley has a long way to go and it is a much bigger project than the span of our semester. However for the time being, Finoki’s students are building some creative benches from scrap wood pieces found in the alley.  These are going to be a series of hinged benches that could be moved around, disassembled, re-configured, etc. These students are attempting to start a dialogue here between the Woodbury community and the Barrio residents.  This space has the potential of becoming a common ground and will hopefully be an opportunity to create a relationship.

]]> http://wusd.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/314/feed/ 0 Payam dsc06236 dsc06235 dsc06233 dsc06237 dsc06238 dsc06240 dsc06242 dsc06243 dsc06244 dsc06246 dsc06248 dsc06252 dsc06254 dsc06256 dsc06257 title dsc06234 dsc06239 dsc06258 dsc06259 dsc06260 http://wusd.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/ultimate-tube-fighting-champion/ http://wusd.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/ultimate-tube-fighting-champion/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:18:34 +0000 Payam Rad http://wusd.wordpress.com/?p=307 Continue reading →]]> What: Ultimate Tube Fighting
When: Last Week of School
Where: Woodbury’s Parking lot
Who: Everyone is invited!

Rules:
1) First Rule: Don’t break your tube. In a duel, the last person with
an unbroken tube is declared the winner. In the event that both
participants break their tubes at the same time, the game is a draw,
and both duelists are considered losers.

2) No blocking or swinging with your arms. No body slamming.

3) No stabbing. Lunges involving tubes are never allowed under
any circumstances. Participants who exhibit this behavior, will be
ejected from the entire event.

4) Hitting people in the face is heavily frowned upon and can force
your ejection from the event.

5) Once your tube is broken you must stop fighting.

6) To participate you must be using an official tube, which will be
provided at the event, and have signed a release waiver.

7) You may not block your opponents tube with your arms hands
or legs.

8 ) Your tube must always be held near the bottom. Holding your
tube in the middle at any time is illegal.

9) Cardboard shields are allowed.

Watch this video to see how it’s done:

Jose Castillo holds a degree in architecture from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City as well as a Masters in architecture and a Doctor of Design degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he finished with his dissertation Urbanisms of Informal: Spatial Transformations in the periphery of Mexico City.

Castillo is the co-founder and principal, along with Saidee Springall, of arquitectura 911sc, a practice of architecture, urban design and planning based in Mexico City. The firm has designed and built extensively for both public and private clients in housing, cultural, educational, infrastructure and retail programs, including the award-winning competitions for the expansion of the Spanish Cultural Center in Mexico City and the CEDIM in Monterrey. The new offices for the SGAE in the Historic Center of Mexico City (with Anton Garcia-Abril), and El Mayor Restaurant. Their urban planning work, includes the Eje Central Zero Emissions Corridor and the Tlalpan transportation corridor as well as the new Neza-Chimalhuacan bus rapid transit project. arquitectura 911sc is currently designing a 750-unit housing development in Iztacalco, Mexico City, and developing along Arup and JSa a 50 hectare master plan for the former rail yards of Pantaco, Mexico City.

Castillo’s built work and writings have appeared in several publications including Praxis Journal, Bomb, 2G, Domus Geographical UK, Monocle, AD, the New York Times and Architectural Record. He is an author in La Casa Latinoamericana Moderna and 2G Dossier Iberoamerica, published both by Gustavo Gili and the recently published book The Endless City, by Phaidon. Castillo has lectured extensively including at Harvard, Tulane, Princeton and Berkeley Universities; at the New Museum in NYC at Casa Encendida in Madrid and at the Deustche Architectur Zentrum in Berlin. He currently teaches in Mexico and in the US alternating semesters at the Universidad Iberoamericana’s School of Architecture and at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design, where he teaches a seminar titled The Spaces of Tourism.

Since 2005, Castillo has curated various exhibitions including Mexico City Dialogues: New Architectural Practices at the Center for Architecture in New York City in 2005; Tourism is Life, at the 2nd Rotterdam Architecture Biennale in 2005, Living the (Mega)City, at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 2005, Mexico City: The space of potentiality, at the 2006 Venice Biennale, Mexico City EAST: Territories of Growth at the 2007 Canary Islands Arts and Architecture Biennale. The work of arquitectura 911sc has also been showcased at the 2007 Rotterdam Biennale, Visionary Power and as part of the Mexican pavillion of the XI Venice Architecture Biennale in September of 2008.

Castillo is member of the editorial board of Arquine, an architectural journal, and member of the Advisory board of SCIFI at SCI-Arc, Southern California’s Institute for Architecture Program for Future Initiatives. He is also a member of the advisory board of Urban Age, a series of global conferences on the future of cities coordinated by the Alfred Herrhausen Foundation of the Deutsche Bank and the London School of Economics and directed by Ricky Burdett.

David Fletcher, founding principal at Fletcher Studio, is an Urban Designer and Landscape Architect. His research and writings address infrastructure, ecology and landscape urbanism. His practice ranges from strategic site design to regional planning, with an emphasis on performance and process. The firm is committed to a collaborative and contextual approach to spatial design practice, and to the design of performative landscapes, urban spaces, and living infrastructures.
Fletcher Studio has been named finalist and winner in a number of recent international open space design and planning competitions. The firm recently won the Urban:Revision Dallas competition and
placed 2nd in “A New Infrastructure”, sponsored by SCI_Arc. Current and recent work includes alternative transportation networks, green streets, public parks, reclamation projects, and waterfronts. David has taught at the Harvard Design School, SCI-Arc, Woodbury and Otis College, where he was the Assistant Chair of Architecture.

website: www.fletcherstudio.com
email: dfletcher@fletcherstudio.com

Due to the overwhelming success of the annual Comic-Con event in San Diego, the city is considering increasing the size of the Convention Center to accommodate future Comic-Cons and other large conventions. This got the San Diego Architectural Foundation to wonder, “What would San Diego look like if Comic-Con dictated the designs of all of our buildings?” What would a new library, football stadium, airport, or city hall look like if it were designed for superheroes or villains? Use your imagination and pop culture savvy to create architecture inspired by comic books, horror, fantasy, or science fiction. Create or modify a San Diego building, street, or the whole city. The more playful and fun, the better!

All entries must be submitted via email in Jpeg format, oriented horizontally, with a resolution of 1024×768 (5MB max). Each submission must include a description of the image (25 words max). There is no entry fee and there is no limit to the number of entries per person. Up to 15 images will be selected by the San Diego Architectural Foundation. Winners will have their designs displayed during the Orchids & Onions Award show on November 12, 2009 and will receive one complimentary ticket to the event ($50 value).

Entries must be received via email no later than Noon, Monday November 9

Email entries to: info@sdarchitecture.org

(Note: This contest is in no way affiliated with Comic-Con International.)

Benjamin H. Bratton  is a sociological, media, and design theorist.
Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego and Director of the Design Policy Program at the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology, an interdisciplinary research institute in advanced ICT including supercomputing applications, cloud architectures, nano-engineering, and large data set visualization.

He is the former Director of the Advanced Strategies Group at Yahoo!, and taught at UCLA and SCI_Arc (The Southern California Institute of Architecture) for many years. His work sits at the intersections of contemporary social & political theory, computational media & infrastructure, and architectural and urban design problems & methodologies. Current research interests include: the philosophical problematics of interfaciality, digital urbanism & networked architecture, the rhetorics of exceptional violence, contemporary continental philosophy & aesthetic theory, institutional technology transfer protocols and platforms, design research management & methodologies, classical & contemporary sociological theory, the history of social sciences, the history of science and technology, and interaction & interface design.

Among his most recent writings, “The Logisitics of Habitable Circulation,” Bratton’s introduction to the new edition of Paul Virilio’s Speed and Politics was recently published by Semiotext(e)/MIT Press. Suspicious Images/ Latent Images (with Natalie Jeremijenko), “IPhone City” in the Digital Urbanism issue of AD: Architectural Design.

Bratton has published widely, from AD and Volume to HCI:Interactions and Theory, Culture and Society, and has been an visiting lecturer and critic at Columbia, Pratt, Yale, Architectural Association of London, Penn, USC, UCLA, Art Center College of Design, Brown, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, among many others.

He was also co-chair of ambient:interface, the 54th (and final) International Aspen Design Conference. This venerable institution was run by for many years by Reyner Banham, among others, and closed with the theme for our third machine age: ‘all design is interface design’

Itinerary

Thursday October 29th 2009

1:00 pm  -  Introduction / Workshop Objectives

1:20 pm  -  Lara Gates presentation: existing conditions of Barrio Logan

2:00 pm  -  Studio/seminar research presentations
Rene Peralta/Bryan Finoki
Andrea Dietz
Jose Parral
Brian Dick
Ted Smith/BrettFarrow
Stan Bertheaud/Miki Iwasaki

3:00 pm  -  Barrio visit

5:00 pm  -  Closing remarks

6:30 pm  -  Lecture: Peter Zellner

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