I’ve been thinking about the boring wood. All the ways you can stack it, pile it, blah, blah, blah. But, more importantly, all the things you can build with wood. After the Magazine Street adventure, I thought about the idea of balconies and why people enjoy being up there so much, whether it’s for afternoon lunch, after work drinks…mardi gras… Balconies allow you to see what’s going on around you, under you, down the street. Perhaps, it goes back to Frank’s history class and one of the ideas that sticks in my mind the most…refuge, prospect…What? Anyway, yesterday, as I was staring out the window and daydreaming, I payed attention to something I had been looking at for the past week. Right outside our studio window were men on a scaffold, working on a chimney. That was when I had an ingenious idea…treehouses! At first the idea seemed juvenile, but I just kept thinking about how fun it would be to be at Chelsea’s and be able to go up in the treehouse and hang out with friends while listening to music and looking over the edge. Or during the day, people could have lunch, read, birdwtch, etc… So, as I researched treehouses, I came across this cool picture. Now, I’m going to…think about it.   

Today we surveyed Magazine Street from Louisiana to Washington. Well, actually we started at Foucher and headed towards Washington. We were to survey and document things such as relative density and rhythm. Our area has so much activity from all of the boutiques, restaurants, and bars. It was beautiful weather today, which made it a nice, comfortable walk. It was nice to walk around and see stores and cafes with their doors propped open, making it welcoming and inviting. We made an occasional stop here and there. I especially enjoyed the two blocks between Louisiana and Pleasant. They included many boutiques, as well as Reginelli’s and the Bulldog. Finally, after a nice afternoon walking around and observing, we met at the Bulldog, had dinner, returned to our area for more pictures, then headed back to the studio to document our findings and photographs. From here, we will present our information with a circulation map, particularly vehicular circulation, a land use map, identifying buildings, and a figure gound study. Also, we’ll include an overall map showing the density of our area to other areas, showing how it changes along that stretch.  

So, I was really fascinated with the pervasive wood on our site. for my good surveyor, i was interested in finding out more about it, like where it came from and what it was there for.  So I obsessed about it for a while and it turns out that it’s a tree cutting service. they cut the trees during the summer and sell the firewood duringthe winter. there was something intersting to me about the fact that it all comes from around baton rouge and is brought to this site, then essentially recycled, redistributed, and reused. i talked to the guy who is in charge of it and he taught me about all the different kinds of wood out there. it’s mostly oak, ash, cypress, cedar. however, they also get wood from fruit trees such as pineapple, cherry, peach and pear. others include hickory, pecan. Also, different types of wood are used for different things, not just firewood. For example, the red and white oak is cut into 2 foot pieces, quartered, then stacked so that it can season for the next 6-8 months till it’s needed for firewood. it’s stacked in a way that is easy to count, a cord. In other words, form follows function. The forms that are created are because of some specific function. For example, the quartered oak is stacked on top of logs so that termites don’t infest it while looking for water. There were also piles of red oak and pecan stumps, used for stoves. Cedar is mostly used for furniture…and the list goes on. As for my evil artist, I made a palette of textures and forms. I explored the different forms that the stacks could take with miniature pieces of wood that i cut from quarter rounds. turns out the possibilities are endless, so i glued the most typical forms together into mini-models.