Mitchell Stroud

ARCH 3013

Blog assignment 2

For my first blog assignment I talked about my home. This blog is about a building I spent more time in than my own home during high school, The Chesapeake boathouse in the boathouse district. Unlike my actual home that was filled with only good memories, the boathouse was quite different.

I absolutely adored the boathouse district the moment I set foot there in 7^th grade. However, rowing for the next 5 years, I would come to learn the true, gilded nature of the district. I loved the large bay doors and oddly industrial but sleek design of the buildings. They were beautiful and purpose-built. The large, open bays held millions of dollars of rowing equipment and looked good while doing it, in theory.

The sad reality of the district is poor management and upkeep. As you mentioned in class, the facilities are world class and the USRowing High Performance team does train here out of the Devon boathouse. The rapids are great for international kayaking competitions, but made them too difficult for the average consumer, on the off chance that they had the rapids running. Furthermore, the single stall of the men’s bathroom in the Chesapeake boathouse was broken for an entire year and a half before it was replaced.

All of this is to say that I made my second family with the other rowers that rowed here, and we saw the potential that these facilities had. But we also saw these facilities be beaten down and fall into disorder. I have too many demotivating stories to share all in this blog, but I am glad for what the district fostered. As much as I disagree with its management and their sketchy legality, they did bring provide the necessary tools for us to grow as a rowing program and we got some impressive results from that. However, if we had the ability to row for another team, the majority would have.

Mitchell Stroud

ARCH 3013

Blog Assignment 1

My Parent’s House

I thought I would start these blogs off pretty easy by starting with my parent’s house. They have had the house over 25 years, and they bought it as a fixer upper. The two things I always hear them say about the house when talking with friends or new people are that the house was one of the first California contemporary homes in Oklahoma and how there was purple shag carpet in the bathroom.

Of course, there is the obvious meaning of this house being my childhood home, but beyond that it functions as a mental time capsule so to speak. Now that all three of their kids have moved out of the house, whenever we all visit it takes me back to when I was a little pest and my older brothers would pick on me. Whenever I go home, I feel like I can completely be myself. I do not have to maintain a façade of having my life together or act neighborly. I see my parent’s house as a sort of vacation. Although when I am there it is usually breaks from school and some weekends, but I feel like I can fade away from the real world and float in a suspended state of relaxation and good times. Unlike many aspects of my life, my parent’s house is the only place where I only think of happy memories. The good memories always shine through when I’m thinking about their house, whereas other parts of my life I have to remind myself to see the positive instead of dwell on the negative.

Overall, from the purple shag carpets my parents removed while renovating it, to the loving memories that its wall elicit, my parent’s house functions as so much more than the wood, glass, sheetrock, and concrete that it is made of.

AT&T Stadium is where I went to my first NFL game. It is significant to me because not only was it my first NFL game experience, but also it an amazing architectural structure. I remember how in awe I was simply because of how massive the building actually is. I remember looking around and wondering how do you even begin to plan and coordinate the construction of something like that. The number of people it could hold and all of the surrounding monitors and screens truly amazed me.

The experience also has some negative memories tied to it because Dallas lost that game. I remember leaving the game a little upset because of that but it still all in all it was a very good memorable experience.

Minute Maid Park has always meant a lot to me. My first encounter with is was when I was around 5, and I absolutely loved baseball. I was overwhelmed by how big the venue was and how it was able to fit an entire baseball field inside. I was also amazed by how the roof could be stored away and the field could be exposed to the world. It meant a lot to be there. I was able to watch the sport I loved with the people I loved. The building meant less to me at 5 years old than it does now, but the intangibles of the building and the way it made me feel are things I will never be able to replicate.

The Mitch Park YMCA opened in 2014 and is absolutely beautiful in my opinion. I went here quite a bit and have good memories of making friends and having fun. I love the aesthetic of the building and also the surroundings. All the windows and curvy design of the building make it look very modern as well as give it a great view of all the running trails surrounded by green trees and grassy areas.

That part of Edmond has seen a lot of business developments built recently as well so everything surrounding the YMCA is fairly new. This makes the area very attractive for all kinds of people and created a great atmosphere for hanging out, being active, and meeting new people.

In Antalya and its surroundings, postmodernism, which has become unvariegated in most areas of social and cultural life, has been rendered visible in its most superficial aspect. The design of Minicity Park, in which will be distributed 1:25 scale models of buildings from different regions of Turkey, confronted us as an actual product which conforms to all the scenarios for attractiveness regarding will, which is gradually eroding the grandeurs of the different areas of high culture and in its place is increasingly pumping in the consumption of signs and images.

This building is have amazing components indoor and outdoor. Outdoor is designed very modern. A fragmented, angular plan is faced on the south side by a long, high wall, which fulfills the client’s desire to separate the commercial and recreational functions of the building from those of the theme park. The architect describes the building as a “series of shells that constitute their own specificity.” Broken or “torn” at several points, the rear of the building allows for terraces on the side, where the scale models are located. On the western side, the building is “detached from the ground, somewhere between dividing and not dividing the interior and exterior”.

This project was one of the works short-listed among the finalists and featured in the traveling exhibition in 2005 for the EUROPEAN UNION PRIZE FOR CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE/ MIES VAN DER ROHE AWARD

This building gives me feeling like Emre was already living in future. In 2005 he designed very modern theme park. Maybe future architects are influenced by his work. This is my favorite design

Two summers ago I visited Italy and I specifically loved the Piazza Grande. This was the first time I had been out of the country as well as my first time seeing these different styles of architecture in person. I remember being in the middle of the Piazza Grande and feeling like I was in a movie. I had seen pictures of it before but seeing it all firsthand was truly breathtaking. There was something about the whole experience that made me see architecture different and if I’m being honest I don’t feel like I truly appreciated architecture until after this experience.

This is Ulus Savoy residence in Turkey, Istanbul. It took 8 years to finish this complex residential buildings. The reconstruction of the topography with a structure of shells as the roof of the continuous garage creates the new ground, most often partly concealed by the layer of vegetation. Conventional apartment blocks take shape according to decisions concerning mass, which are determined by the codes, the surfaces of which are characterized as continuation of the landscape by the use of natural materials and colors that disappears the complex on the ground as opposed to its similars in the neighborhood.

This buildings used modern external design. Also it build on uneven spaces. Some building are build n higher ground than others. Emra Arolat fixed the issue and used his extraordinary architect skills to build one of the best looking and sustainable residency area on the world

The building was designed as a response to the Sancaklar Family who wanted to build a mosque on a site overlooking the Buyukcekmece Lake, at a neighborhood of many gated communities. One of Emre Arolat’s amazing design in Turkey.

This mosque is completely different from traditional mosques that are around the world. In this courageous project, Emre Arolat treated the spaces traditionally included in the mosque in an entirely new way, demonstrating that it is possible to go beyond conventions and give a place of worship a new form without threatening the beliefs underlying it.

The architects drew their inspiration from caves, designing a simple space that goes beyond formal issues to strive for simplicity, a suggestive, evocative place where the faithful can gather in prayer or have their own personal dialogue with God.

When I first see the building I had no idea it was mosque. But looking for more pictures, I am amazed that this revolutionary designer mosque. This space feels like very calm and perfect for meditating

Lissa and Cy Wagner Hall was the first building I visited as well as had my first class as an incoming freshman at OU. I have positive memories tied to it as I remember the feeling of excitement and anxiousness inside this building knowing that my college career was about to begin. I have always loved the aesthetic of OU’s campus, but this was the first building I remember noticing in detail.

The colors, textures, and artistic way it was decorated on the inside made me fall in love with it. Now, I hardly ever go inside, but in passing, I look at it and it’s like all the emotion and memories come flooding back and I can still remember exactly what it felt like those four-ish years ago.