parts : wholes : and everything in between

up for week 4…
haley preston, riley smith, aubrey loyd, neal mickey, charese allen….

haley preston starts our odyssey (get it? it’s about greece) through the week 4 material independently defining each of the vocabulary words, with her greatest success in bringing pat’s chair into the description of ARCHETYPE : PROTOTYPE : HYBRID. her closing summary does little to move forward the discourse of parts to the whole, though her idea about three scales…details, parts, and wholes….makes sense in light of our study of the built environment and the artifacts within it. her careful annotation of images and inclusion of citations both deserve mention.

image courtesy of riley smith

riley smith attempts a more synthetic view, characterizing masculine and feminine qualities in the greek ORDERS in the first part of her entry. she turns on the gas with stellar images from her own trip to rome, bringing to bear her direct experience of those buildings in helping the reader to understand HIERARCHY. good words about greek and roman architecture as SOURCE. nice photos, riley!

up next, aubrey loyd achieves synthesis, particularly when writing about SOURCE, drawn from the greek and roman worlds, and bringing to bear on her own experience in drawing class. linking SOURCE and ARCHETYPE : PROTOTYPE : HYBRID, aubrey reminds us that the great traditions of design rest on the traditions of the past. in this way, we carry sources on our shoulders as we continue forward in our designs. remember the nautilus shell from the first week of class?

image courtesy of neal mickey

neal mickey weaves a narrative that demonstrates a fine command of the various vocabulary for the week, summarizing in diagram form, his “big bang theory.” the bang comes, not so much in the final diagram but in neal’s wise use of images throughout his post. in this way, he creates a HIERARCHY for the post, with the visual images shaping and explaining his argument, even without a read through the text. but don’t let that stop you from his constructed and convincing story.

charese allen's thumbail sketch in the euc.

charese allen is all about collection and speculation and we see in her blog post this manifest in her clever writing and her salient drawings and diagrams. reminding us that we all seek order, she then goes on to carefully explain how ancient civilizations embraced this and other concepts for their buildings and artifacts within them. through careful annotation and ample reference to the assigned readings, charese shows skills as a master weaver from many SOURCES across the first year curriculum. she distinguishes between out and out copying versus inspiration from the past. this is a smart view worth considering by all of her classmates.

in all, this week’s summary statements lean more toward a synthetic view. every author’s goal in the class should be to strive for seamlessness and for observations like charese’s connecting the unlikely juxtaposition of the egyptian hypostyle hall and the elliott university center. given that the goal of all this OPUS activity is for every student to more confidently speak AND write about architecture and design, charese and neal show insight and originality beyond the expected…a very good thing and much more interesting to read than simple definitions of vocabulary words.