celebration time

The 1st-year landscape students hosted a picnic at school for the department, including a special cake that celebrated the graduating class:

my table!

It's the time for finishing projects (and soon, beginning new ones...), and my table is almost done! I am very excited about it. Last Friday everyone from the class set up their pieces on the stage and we talked about each one. The work was very impressive, including two Donald Judd-designed pieces, a Wright one, a bed, a headboard, and an original chair design.

This class taught me a bit about types and qualities of wood, how wood is transformed from a board to a finished piece, joints and fasteners, hand tools and machines, finishing, and furniture design. I do feel that what I learned is only the very beginning, and was impressed by how much skill and understanding it takes to create a piece of furniture. My project was really a team project with Steve in the wood shop and Theo, the professor.

Steve cleaned up some old bolts for me, these hold the table legs on:


Marking where the short cross-rails attach to the long rails. You can see almost all the pieces here, except the table top. The legs have rabbet joints cut into them, where they fit into the long rails:


Then all of a sudden (after several months) we assemble the frame!


Theo and the students:


My table:

Final Project!

It is hard to believe it still, but this is my final studio project for grad school. It was a hard push to the end, but now I get to relax and enjoy this summery Virginia day.

The project is an extension to San Michele cemetery in the Venetian Lagoon. The scheme creates a movement sequence from openness and lightness to more enclosed, heavier spaces. Mourners enter by boat and proceed down a veiled walkway to the chapel/crematorium, then on to the tomb walls or columbaria labyrinth.

Depaving project

This semester I've been taking a class that looked at ways to redesign overpaved areas on grounds to make them more active spaces with healthier plants and greater permeability for rainwater. Our first plans, for an herb garden in the lot behind a dining hall, were rejected, so we regrouped to complete this smaller-scale project.

This small plaza is the main bus stop and entry point to Hereford College at UVA. The plaza has six stunted maples and was entirely paved with a gray-purple brick. We removed the compacted gravel and clay from the maple beds, added new soil from a local compost operation, planted lavender and bright flowers, and broke some of the bricks to make an unusual stripe of "brick mulch." In future years, perhaps the project will continue to make this a more active space with tables and seating.