On The Ground

On The Ground welcomes YSoA’s incoming students. In the spirit of feeding the school’s collective curiosity, we’ve solicited a few introductions.

Home is:

Maryland; Sri Lanka; Henderson, Nevada; Beijing; Berkeley; Minneapolis; Shanghai; New Haven; Orange County; where the heart is; Tokyo; where the bed is; Ocean, NJ; NYC; Cincinnati; Warren, OH; Bucharest; Bombay; where you no longer feel homesick; California; Cairo, Riyadh; Bay Area; true sense of bond; wherever I am; Los Angeles; Paris; and, where one is free to lie down under the stars in a state of dishabille.

Architecture in a tweet:

“Architecture is not only about domesticating space, it is also a deep defense against the terror of time. The language of beauty is essentially the language of timeless reality.” -Karsten Harries (Seth Thompson, M.Arch I)

Where one moment you headed exactly where you need to and the next you’re completely lost; and again. (Armaan Shah, M.Arch I)

Architecture is everything and nothing. It’s like the dot suspended in space and the space around it. It is limitless. (Minakshi Mohanta, M.Arch II)

Architecture is a spatial manifestation of identity. (Michelle Badr, M.Arch I)

“Whatever good things we build end up building us.” –Jim Rohn (Clara Domange, M.Arch I)

Architecture is covfefe. (Jonathan Hopkins, MED)

Why architecture?

To put it in terms of knives, I’ve always been more of a Swiss-Army than a scalpel or machete. I think architecture permits one to unfold in many ways. (Darryl Weimer, M.Arch I)

Our thoughts and desires enclose us. (Anonymous)

Architecture allows for a never ending opportunity to learn and to explore topics that are tangential to the built environment (i.e. social issues, art, technology, psychology).  (Nicole Doan, M.Arch II)

Everything exists within a certain context and I believe architectural spaces may one of the strongest tools to perceive a higher order/truth. (Dina Taha, M.E.D.)

It’s just as difficult as it is comfortable. (Armaan Shah, M.Arch I)

Why YSoA?

YSoA values multiple perspectives pushing boundaries together, rather than one language being pushed on all perspectives.(Michelle Badr, M.Arch I)

The ghost of Charlie Moore. (David Schaengold, M.Arch I)

Nowhere else has such a strong diversity of opinion while maintaining a close knit class size. (Andrew Miller, M.Arch I)

Deborah Berke and MFG.  (Armaan Shah, M.Arch I)

Some programs were too big, some programs were too small. I got “the feeling” at Yale. It felt just right. (Katie Lau, M.Arch I)

Carpeted concrete. (Anonymous)

A Current Fascination?

How plants talk to one another (Jen Shin, M.Arch II)

Texas blues country music (Darryl Weimer, M.Arch I)

Elon Musk (Michelle Badr, M.Arch I)

Origami (Tayyaba Anwar, M.Arch II)

How urban spaces shape societal ideology. (Andrew Miller, M.Arch I)

IKEA (Cristina Anastase, M.Arch I)

Ennio Morricone (Minakshi Mohanta, M.Arch II)

Topographic maps of Ancient Rome (Tianyu G., M.Arch I)

Read this summer:

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure; The Classical Language of Architecture; Jarry Mag; The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead; Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer; Log; An Anthropology of Architecture; Why We Build; Wolf in White Van; The Poetics of Space; The Sun also Rises; Kate Nesbitt’s Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-95; James Joyce; Andrei Bely; George R. R. Martin; The Global Architect: Firms, Fame, and Urban Form by Donald McNeill; Nabokov; The Universe in a Nutshell; Architecture and its Interpretation by J.P. Bonta; 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami; The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran; Essential Sufism; The Distance Between Us by Kasie West; Ontology of Ethics by Hilary Putnam; Barragán; A Dog’s Journey; Modern Lovers; l’Élégance Du Hérisson; The Houses of Philip Johnson; Where’d You Go Bernadette?; Dozakhnama (Conversation in Hell) by Rabisankar Bal; Houellebecq; The City in History

Whitney or Met Breuer?

Met Breuer: 77%

Whitney: 13%

Both: 5%

Neither: 5%

Thursday, August 31, 2017