Daddy's Daycare

The past week with Miles home from daycare has been both fun and exhausting. I've tried to keep him educated using my own fortes as a point of departure for his tutoring. Below are some images from our learning activities. Please enjoy.



The first week we started each morning with the breakfast of champions: cheerios, milk, coffee and maybe half an Eggo.









From there we usually dive straight into history, theory & criticism. In my experience its usually best to preface any design related activities by first learning how others addressed similar problems and challenges before us.




















After history/theory usually comes the design studio. Its at this point of the day that we experiment with different structural shapes, loads and how their adjacencies can influence the design in unique ways. After completing each design strategy we usually step back and have a moment of self-criticism, reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of what we've just built. Issues of structure and proportion are discussed and then expressed a different way in the following design. We constantly self-criticize and often complete multiple iterations of a single design before we are satisfied.








No design education is complete without a session of freehand rendering. I encourage creativity and often suggest the use of multiple colors when blending and shading. Our medium of choice is typically Crayola on college rule note paper. Miles is very expressive with his renderings and often, like many artists, elects to extend his work onto more non-traditional canvases. His favorite non-traditional surfaces include but are not limited to: the dining table, livingroom walls, the kitchen floor and his own body.





Sometimes between design studios and freehand rendering, we find time to integrate digital studies into the day. Here Miles is analyzing the use of digital animation techniques as they relate to a multimedia film.










Today was especially educational in that we were able to experiment with ephemeral tensile structures. We've discovered that the right combination of layering, stacking and stretching of material can result in greater structural integrity. Often self-supporting spans of greater distances can be elucidated by experimenting with 1:1 scale mockups prior to employment in the final design.
























I will continue to keep you updated on Miles' progression toward being the next great architect of his generation (despite Kelly's STRONG disapproval). After all, the future of the profession rests on the back of budding young talent.

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The future of our profession

Posted in: Miles,Nathan