Thanks for coming to Floyd!

2nd Year Ladies!  So good to have you out in Floyd.  I had a couple cute pics from lunch so I thought I would post them.  I put a couple of others up on the JCA Facebook group page if you want to check them out, look for "Floyd's Jacksonville Center for the Arts."  I hope you have had a nice weekend after all of your hard work. I know folks have enjoyed looking at your concepts and fabulous models.  

Good Luck!

We are so happy to have you out in Floyd on Friday. I can't wait to see all of the hard work your class has been doing!  Good luck this week and be well!

weekly calendar (and what a week it is!)

Get ready, here we go! Monday is a bit of a three-ring circus, with seniors pinning up their final presentations, second years discussing their boards for the Jacksonville Center project, and Pella Final presentations by the architecture thesis students beginning at 1:00 pm in Room 300 in Cowgill. At 3:30 pm, interior design studio faculty will be meeting to jury the thesis award for seniors. On Wednesday, second years will submit their entries for the poster contest. The winning entry, selected by Martha Sullivan, will be plastered all over the school, distributed to faculty mailboxes, etc., to let everyone know about Friday's review and exhibit of work in Floyd. Wednesday is the last in-class opportunity for second years to revise and refine before "pencils down." All work must be complete and in my office by Thursday at 5pm. No exceptions! Second years will meet out at the JCA in Floyd to set up around 11 am. Friday in Floyd will be a great opportunity for a conversation about the semester's work, and a chance to celebrate the students' learning and achievements. The exhibit immediately following will allow us to share the work with the community, and we will finish the night off at the famous Floyd jamboree, so wear your dancing shoes!

weekly calendar 6+7

Last week, we had such a flurry of activity that the weekly calendar never made it onto the blog! Some of the highlights were the Eva Maddox lecture, the storyboards made by the second years for the Jacksonville Center project, and the week long thesis exhibit in Cowgill lobby. This week, second years are working on plans and sections for the JCA, seniors are getting ready for their final individual pin-ups before the April 27th end-of-year review. Wednesday at 7 pm, Marlon Blackwell will be speaking in Hancock 100. Thursday, all classes will be cancelled in observance of the April 16th Day of Remembrance. Friday at 3pm, Sarah Crouch, Michelle Pyne, and Amrita Raja will present their projects for critique. All are welcome to join in the discussion.

weekly calendar 5

This week will be full of fabulous adventures! The second years begin on Monday with a pin-up and discussion of their diagrams for the Jacksonville Center for the Arts. On Tuesday in Felt Constructions, students will be continuing the pattern making project organized by Jessica Lamb and Olivia Tsonas. At 2 pm, there is a lecture by Philippe Baumann in Hancock 100. The architecture thesis students are preparing for their thesis pin-up in Cowgill next week, and Sarah Crouch, a 4th year interior design student, is pinning up at 2 pm on Wednesday. On Wednesday at 7 pm, there will be a lecture by Juhani Pallasmaa from Helsinki. He is the author of "The Eyes of the Skin." On Thursday, the Felt Dyeing workshop, organized by Jeff Miller, Eirini Asprouda, and Adriana Serrano will take place in the FabLab between 12:30-1:45 pm. Come join us! Here are a couple links to cool things in Portland, where I just attended the 97th annual meeting of the ACSA: Rhiza A+D, a firm that does public art installations and architecture projects, Cacao, a crazy chocolate cafe, and Powell's bookstore, a dizzying labyrinth of books!

weekly calendar 4

This week is very compressed for me and us, as I will be attending the ACSA annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. On Monday, the second years discussed the Time Capsule exercise, and began working on the diagramming portion of the SD phase for the Jacksonville Center. The seniors had a small group pin-up to discuss progress on Michelle Pyne and Tara Bahavar's projects. The architecture thesis students, Jessica Fulk and Ryan Hausmann, also had a small group pin-up in preparation for the upcoming Cowgill lobby reviews the week of April 6th. On Tuesday, the second years will receive the section model portion of the SD tasks, and perhaps begin a dialogue between diagramming at the macro scale and zooming in to study spaces at the micro scale. Also on Tuesday, the felt class will be making felt from cleaned and carded wool in the FabLab, and there will be a lecture at 2 pm by Margarita McGrath in Hancock 100. On Friday, Martha Sullivan will be stopping by the second year studio to discuss progress on the diagrams, and will do some strategizing with the group regarding display for the final pin-up at the Center. From last week's Ferrari symposium, a link to Bruce Mau's latest endeavor, and looking forward to next weekend, a link to the Fashioning Felt show in NYC!                

weekly calendar 3

The first studio meeting after Spring Break is packed with excitement! On Monday, the second year studio will wrap up development of the powerpoint presentation that demonstrates their take on the POTENTIAL of the Jacksonville Center for the Arts re-design exercise. We will also be discussing the third round of sketching exercises and completing the binding of the case study research into a book that will be available as a reference to all students. At 3:30 or 4 pm, we will present the powerpoint to Martha Sullivan, President of the JCA, and get her feedback. If time permits, we will go over the Time Capsule exercise due next Monday. On Wednesday at 11:15 am in Cowgill 300, Professor Marc Baraness of the graduate faculty of the Ecole Nationale Superieur Architecture in Lyon, France will give a lecture entitled, On Urban Design: Between History, Industry, and Nature. At 3pm, fourth year students Amrita Raja and Jessica Lamb have their second pin-up of the semester. On Thursday and Friday, there will be lectures and other events in connection with the Ferrari Symposium. Follow the link for more information. Welcome back!

On topic for JCA research, an interesting excerpt from a publication listed on Bustler.

weekly calendar 2

Wow! Look at all that SNOW! Things on the radar this week:

Monday, 2nd years will be celebrating sketchbook session 2, doing a CAD tutorial in the materials library, and getting their research and documentation of existing conditions together.

In Tuesday's Felt Constructions class, there will be a presentation on sheep shearing/Robert Morris by Hunter Wilson, and on Kathryn Walter by Kacey Huntington. All are welcome.

On Wednesday at 3pm seniors Sarah Crouch and Tara Bahavar will be pinning up and discussing their projects. All are welcome. At 7pm in Hancock 100, there will be a lecture by Rosa Kliass. On Thursday in the same location, there will be a lecture at 2pm by Kevin Smith. Friday morning, a handful of the seniors will be speaking with a special visitor from Bloom Miami. Come join the conversation. 

Also, check out the Felt Constructions blog.

Another J.C.A. Blog!

Hey everyone!

Here is the link to the other Jacksonville Center for the Arts blog that I came across: http://studioschool.blogspot.com/ . It looks like it hasn't been updated in a while, but it's interesting to read about past events and see pictures of people actually using the space. Enjoy!!

Hope everyone is having a great weeked :)

Jessie

Architecture Website

This is a great website that I found last semester that features buildings and architects from all around the world. http://www.arcspace.com/index.shtml

Blackle!

Check out www.blackle.com, and set it as your home page! It saves energy from just being a black background page instead of white. It has saved over 1 million watt hours so far. :-D

Maryb

Picture of the Jacksonville Center Barn before renovations

This is a picture of the barn before we began renovation. Notice the front parking lot isn't there!

Floyd County Jamboree

Here's the website for the Floyd Country Store, host of the Friday Night Floyd County Jamboree.  We should plan a trip!

Website

Here is the contact information for Mary Tartaro, the director of the Perspectives Gallery in Squires Student Center. Martha Sullivan mentioned she had an exhibit at the Jacksonville Center before the renovation took place.

http://www.uusa.vt.edu/artGallery/index.php

weekly calendar

What's up this week?

Monday: Career Day in Cowgill lobby. 

2nd yr studio will be looking at and discussing the sketchbook assignment, pinning down the case study format, and continuing research and analysis phase, with an eye towards getting all the existing conditions documented and teasing out the potential of the site. 

Tuesday there will be presentations in the Felt class on Basic Felt Making and LTL, by Sarah Crouch and Jeff Miller, respectively.

In 4th year studio, Amrita Raja, Jessica Lamb, and Michelle Pyne will be pinning up at 3pm on Wednesday. All are welcome.

Thursday the Felt Constructions class will be cleaning wool procured by student Hunter Wilson. The venue has yet to be determined, but will most likely be off campus.

Second Year Project - Jacksonville Center for the Arts

Yesterday was our first site visit as a group to the Jacksonville Center for the Arts, in Floyd, Virginia. Martha Sullivan, President of the Center, gave us an extensive tour of the campus. She and Monique Dufour, Educational Programming Coordinator, answered the students' questions about the roles the Center plays within the community, and how the building(s) currently function in embodying those roles. The students have three tasks; 1. research and analysis, i.e., What is the Jacksonville Arts Center? What untapped potential exists within the site? 2. interior space planning How can the space best contribute to the larger mission and accommodate or engage the community's access to art? 3. detailed development of the Straw Bale building interior How can an interior intervention define and manifest the best possible life of a space?

What's this all about?

The purpose of this blog is to promote and facilitate information sharing and interaction between students of the second and fourth years of interior design, the Felt Constructions class, and thesis architecture students at Virginia Tech.