It's a 1/4 to 9...

The Waterloo Architecture Film Club is kicking off its fall film series tomorrow night with A Single Man - the first film by designer Tom Ford.

"1/4 to 9" will feature four other films to follow throughout the term, ending with a night of short films created by the school community. For more information about the films to come, keep an eye on our blog. If you want your film screened on closing night, send your entry to us via Twitter.Support the film club by checking out their collection of films available in the library!

Knit CamBRIDGE - the finished product

Knitting was contributed by staff, students and faculty here at the School of Architecture, as well as some nervous-looking parents during admission week! Thanks to everyone who took some time to add a few stitches to the knitting in our basket.

Congratulations to Cambridge Artist-in-residence Sue Sturdy for bringing the community together to pull off such a large scale project. See our earlier post for more information about the project.

We have a great view of the bridge from our reading corner in the library... drop in and check it out!

Drawing the line

Drawing the Line runs during the summer months here at the School of Architecture. The course's aim is to shine a light on "the importance of sketching in the study of architecture."

Under the direction of Hugh Thompson, students work to further their drawing skills with a focus on sites of historical significance.

While this year's students are busy putting pen to paper, the works produced by last year's class of 18 graduate students are now on display at Musagetes. Many sketches outline the architectural forms and details of buildings within walking distance of the school. Drop by the library and see if you can recognize any!
You can find more photos of the display over at our Flickr photostream.

Why Architecture Matters

Because this guy says so.

Paul Goldberger, Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, will be part of the Critical Mass speakers series on May 3rd in Toronto (tickets at hotdocs.ca). The conversation will also include Sasha Frere-Jones, Robin Givhan, Eric Friesen, Michael Enright and Jeanne Beker.

If you can't make it to the lecture you can watch his interview on The Colbert Report, in which Paul and Stephen argue about whether or not American architecture still has "big tits".

You can also check out his latest book, Why Architecture Matters, and many others on display in the library.

...together at last!

Two of my favourite blog topics - Bjarke Ingels and parkour - join forces in the new documentary My Playground.

MY PLAYGROUND - PREVIEW from KASPARWORKS on Vimeo.

The film explores the changing perceptions of urban space and interactive architecture by speaking with freerunners, architects, planners, politicians and philosophers across Europe and Asia. It also follows Denmark's Team JiYo through the process of creating the world's first and largest dedicated parkour park in Copenhagen.

A YouTube search for JiYo Park will bring up plenty o' videos showing the park in use.

Knit CamBRIDGE

Sue Sturdy is this year's Artist in Residence at the Cambridge Centre for Arts.

Her goal is to cover the Main Street bridge in downtown Galt with knitting. We're sure to have the best view in town of the colourful finished project!

We have a basket of knitting in our reading corner. Drop by the library to take a break and help contribute to the project...it's good for your health! You can knit a full piece or just a row or two, and add your name to the knitting journal.

With the [re]growing popularity of knitting, there are similar projects popping up all over the place. Check. This. Out.

Worth watching...

The Third and The Seventh is a "full CG-animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal." Always beautiful.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

More than meets the eye

We live in a world where we Google the closest cafe, get directions from our phone, send tweets while standing in line and blog about the whole experience over coffee.

Reality is becoming so much more than just what we see in front of us. It is being created by companies and individuals at the global scale and in the palm of our hand. Want to change the world? There's an app for that...

Check out these two examples of the potential that exists to augment our perceived reality of buildings and space:

SARA brought to you by the Netherlands Architecture Institute is "the worlds first mobile architecture application featuring augmented reality with 3D models."



And Microsoft demonstrated the astonishing capabilities for augmenting reality in Bing Maps at this year's TED conference... and you thought Google Earth was cool.

Do you have a burning desire...

...to express yourself in verse? Well get your imagination warmed up for the 2nd Annual

Musagetes Poetry Contest!
February 10th - 24th
This year's theme is: FIRE

Poems can be any length and any style, ranging from witty one liners to passionate epics spanning continents and generations.

Drop your entries into the bag in the library, or post them on our contest board for all to see! You can win Hot, Hotter and Hottest prizes!

Main Entry: FIRE

Pronunciation: \ˈfi(-ə)r\

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English fȳr; akin to Old High German fiur fire, Greek pyr

Date: before 12th century

Function: noun

1 a : the phenomenon of combustion manifested in light, flame, and heat b : burning passion : ardor : liveliness of imagination : inspiration
2 : fuel in a state of combustion
3 a : a destructive burning b : death or torture by fire
4 : brilliancy, luminosity
5 a : the firing of weapons b : intense verbal attack or criticism c : a rapidly delivered series

— on fire 1 : being consumed by fire : aflame 2 : eager, burning

Function: verb

1 a : to set on fire : kindle : ignite b : to give life or spirit to : inspire : to fill with passion or enthusiasm c : to light up as if by fire
2 a : to drive out or away by or as if by fire b : to dismiss from a position
3 a : to become irritated or angry —often used with up b : to become filled with excitement or enthusiasm
4 a : to emit or let fly an object
5 : to tend a fire
6 : to transmit a nerve impulse

Going bananas

Waste not...

This month Maclean's magazine exposed the horrific amount of food wasted every day around the world. In many cases more food is wasted than consumed.

"...58 per cent of all the carrots grown currently went in the trash. That is, Stuart says, “for every carrot you eat, you have paid for at least one more to be thrown away.” Lettuce is even worse: for every serving of fresh salad eaten [...] another two have been thrown away"

More than institutionalized, the practice of throwing out perfectly healthy, fresh food is often legislated:

"...bureaucrats [...] have cooked up laws to ensure that all EU citizens are eating fruit and veggies of the same shape and size. In 2008, one British wholesaler was forced to chuck 5,000 kiwis for being four grams lighter than the 62 gram cut-off—the equivalent of being one millimeter too thin..."

But we can't put all the blame on the bureaucrats, everyone from farmers to consumers are getting their hands dirty in this mess.

"...Torontonians generated 70 kg more waste per person last year than just 10 years ago. Indeed, from 1990 to 2005, we increased our municipal waste by 24 per cent, compared to the OECD average increase of just five per cent."

This waste is not limited to the fields, but plagues our streams as well:

"The European Commission estimates that 40 to 60 per cent of all fish caught by European fleets are thrown back to sea because they are too small, or the wrong species (Greenpeace puts the figure even higher, suggesting that 117 million of the 186 million fish caught in U.K. waters are tossed back to sea). [...] the amount of fish-based protein actually consumed amounts to just 10 per cent of the marine animals removed annually from the oceans..."

Not only are these practices painfully counter-intuitive to feeding the hundreds of millions of starving people (mostly women and children), the consequences are also looming for the rest of the world:

"Factory farms have become one of the biggest sources of pollution on the continent. So when we waste from the industrial food system, we are also wasting oil, releasing greenhouse gases, polluting waterways and hastening global warming. Even worse, many of the environmental costs of creating, then wasting, so much food—such as deforestation, water depletion and soil erosion—are being foisted on developing countries, where increasing amounts of cereals, grains and produce are being grown to sate the West’s growing appetite. When we pay Brazil to chop down the rainforest to grow soy, or have Kenya drain the Tana River delta to make sugar, we of course also hasten the never-ending extension of the agricultural frontier into the world’s last, remaining forests and wetlands."

The added linkage is my own. You can read the entire original article here, or in the reading corner of our library. Get angry, get active!

Want not...

The silver lining in this dark cloud came when I found this article today in the Hamilton Spectator. The Ontario Christian Gleaners are an inspired and motivated organization, just down the road from us. They take some of this perfectly good, but unwanted food, and divert it from the dump.
Their over 150 hardworking volunteers process 9,000kg of food each week into dried snacks and soup mixes which is then donated to relief organizations and distributed around the world. Find out how by watching this video.
The operation costs $150,000 and runs entirely on donations. If you're looking for a place to channel you energy after reading the Maclean's article, this is a great place to start. Your time, money and food can help them keep up the good work.

Want to learn more? The Gleaners are hosting open houses tomorrow (Dec 2) and Monday Dec 7th at 10:30am.