wednesday, december 05, 2007
Unlike the artificially coherent city of Santa Barbara
This is the De La Guerra dining commons at UCSB:
I like it because it’s one of the only new-ish buildings on campus that has an exterior style like the older buildings on campus. The lower right corner of the picture shows a little bit of this sandy stone/concrete pattern that you find on some of the older buildings, like the library:
Those brown textured walls and lots of windows are what a friend pointed out to me as making up the UCSB style. Nerdy amazement! I used to be faintly annoyed by the mixed-up randomness of UCSB architecture, but when he said that obvious thing, I realized I could develop extensive naive theories about why I got faintly annoyed by the architecture. Anyway, this is the style I like for my Southern California beach campus because it helps the buildings live comfortably in their surroundings:
But a lot of the newer buildings on campus have been built in a bland neutral postmodern style with lots of orange and yellow and red, and it doesn’t look good in context:
If you look closer at that one though, it references the older style:
I don’t know why the newest developments — the ones built in the past ten years and currently being built — forgot about all that in favor of pastel lameness:
A good example of the difference between the styles is these pictures showing off the old and new Engineering buildings, on one of the department websites:
The old building has that nice sandy style with vegetation and visual variety; the new one is flat and boring with no local character.
The interiors of the old buildings aren’t so great though, with their own ugly orange stuff. That’s why I like the pretty De La Guerra dining commons so much. Also because of its unlimited cookies and horchata.
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sunday, july 22, 2007
Little creatures on my shelves
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thursday, march 08, 2007
An orange’s slow decline
Who? Me.
What? An experiment in fruit decay.
When? Indefinitely.
Where? The CCS Computer Science lab.
Why? Perversity.
January 22 — shiny, happy.
March 8 — wrinkled, deranged.
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monday, march 05, 2007
Pictures unreasonably tinted yellow
I miss San Francisco, with its good food and public transportation and excellent people. Instead, I have Santa Barbara and a gigantic line of eucalyptus trees planted a long time ago to defy the wind. If you look into the distance, you see the ocean.
I also have my desk, chosen and arranged like everything else. Each object has an origin story: the IKEA in Irvine, Los Angeles’ Chinatown, San Francisco garage sales, the pirate store, New Orleans, sisters.
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monday, february 26, 2007
Dandelions, daisies, buttercups
A survey of common weedflowers in Isla Vista, California:
None of them are native plants. (More about buttercups.)
What are the weedflowers in your area? Show me! You have an exception from this assignment if you live here too.
