Wintertime in the Northwest is a wonderful time for reading. Among the books I recently unearthed in my local library was REM Koolhaas’ Delirious New York, an urban architectural history of the city that he penned in 1978. I mentioned this publication earlier as a unique example of a book making an architect a star long before his building career. It also chronicles a city that I recently spent some time in, and examines it on the level of urban design, a subject I have always found engrossing. As such, I thought to pick up this odd little history and give it some first-hand thought. I am not nearly done yet, but I thought to go ahead and mention it for reasons other than its actual content. That analysis shall be left for a later entry.

I find this work worth more immediate mention because of the way it managed to capture my attention by the end of the first chapter. I already understand why this particular book elevated its author to the level of architectural celebrity upon its publication. It accomplishes a task that many non-fiction writers fail to deliver- it is well written enough to be entertaining. Not only are his theories of the city unusual and intriguing, but they are presented in a way that is clear, concise, and engrossing. And well-reasoned, of course. I find myself getting drawn into the book in the same way I get absorbed into some completely ludicrous statement that I cannot reason away simply.

Not to say that the theories presented in this book are ludicrous. They are more surprising. Trends that I never noticed seem so blatantly clear that I wonder how I ever missed them before. The true trademark of a convincing argument, and a good read. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in urban design, New York City, or just plain good nonfiction writing.

No post last week or this week as I have been hard at work on the more technical aspects of this website.  However, I thought to share a group project I did for one of my classes last week.

The class is a seminar on Green Building Structures, and for this project we had to invent a green structural component and then speculate on its performance.  My group invented the EcoPaper Beam, a supposedly light,strong and easy to recycle spanning alternative.  There are lots of inherent problems as it was a initial idea meant to spur discussion in class, but take a look and see what you think.