It's Labor Day weekend and summer's at an end. Based on the last couple of weeks, it seems fall swooped into Portland overnight. With that, thoughts on re-grouping and re-tooling are definitely on my mind. I'm on to finishing the last two exams for my architectural license, there's no reason I shouldn't be an architect by 2016 - please hold me to this, accountability is my magic!
As I had mentioned in my previous post, being engaged in all things architecture exam has made me a lot more aware of the process of design and wanting to understand it better. So, to that effect, I'm carving out more time for reading, podcasts and articles devoted to the practice of design. I'm currently reading Matthew Frederick's 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School and am reminded of so many reasons I do what I do. There's a fair amount of reasoning that you can't quite articulate as you go through the process of solving a problem that this book highlights and celebrates. All 101 things are paired with images and a bit of text, so it's quick reading, which I thought was a good segue into the deeper academic tomes. I stumbled on this post at arch daily listing 25 free architecture book you can read online, coming soon to a nightstand near you: Surrealism and Architecture!
As well as loading up another dozen or so podcasts onto my iPhone for my commuting education, um entertainment, I found an app called Shoebox which keeps all your phone photos in a cloud allowing for some much needed decluttering. Having my iPhone storage constantly maxed out made it so I had to decide between taking a photo of my daughter's first day of school or this fantastic color mural that would make for a good blog post, you can guess who won out on that one! So, unloading all my photos to the cloud has liberated my phone for spontaneous inspiration photos galore! Next step - organize my new photo stream into some Evernote folders & I'm golden.
Enjoy your long weekend and here's to fall!
Image sourced at Lauren Adams