The idea of  Lifecycles Center focuses on sustaining and extending healthy lifestyles of individuals of all ages, encouraging healthy and organic activity and dieting both outdoors and indoors.  Before digging into the project plan, I wanted to incorporate this organic movement into the design of the site, while concentrating on the gathering of natural light and water through logical strategies.  i have imagined the building as a tree, with a core trunk of important governing rooms and a flowing network of  foliage rooms around the core.  So in a sense, I strive to create a circular non-axial space of interaction rather than a linear axial one.

I have been inspired by the theme of progression in age and knowledge and how architecture can tell a story of progress.  With these ideas in mind, and through this process, I have developed three main focal points that I want to elaborate upon and explain in the design of my Lifecycles Center:

1) Utilizing circulation of the skateboards, bikes, wheelchairs, pedestrians on site by creating a kinetic landscape.  The landscape and structures should urge movement and activity for people of all languages, kindling a kinetic energy to fuel knowledge and health.

2) Concentrating on accessibility between spaces and the different programs.

3)  Creating coexisting spaces that visually and spatially interact with one another by emphasizing an ambiguity in storeys/floors.  I am still considering the terraced gardens, but will probably include them into my “landscape” section.

This is a rough draft, mostly because I am still inspired by many different ideas, but will take more shape in the next couple of days.

Continuously revise your project statement to refine the essential concepts that answers the question:

What is your project about?

This will be your “elevator pitch”, the first words that you speak when introducing your project for any crit or review. Do not short circuit the process by talking about morphological aspects of the project and architectural strategies that you want to pursue. Instead talk about your interpretation of the site and program that lead you to making analogical associations. Visualize in words the attitude, character, and identity of your project.

The Links page of wp-admin is a place for you to add academic/professional links to websites that will appear in your blog sidebar as a blog roll organized into the categories, Architecture and Studio.  Studio is reserved for links to colleague sites within the studio blogging network, however, you can add additional links to Architecture and create other categories within the blogging guidelines.

There are at least two ways to draft/save/publish a post to your blog site.  You can access all of the “Tumblog” post types through the Dashboard of the wordpress admin area, which include a Standard post type called Article as well as Image, Link, Audio, Video, and Quote.  You can also navigate to Posts | Add New to start a new Post item, and select Format, Categories, and Post Tags.  iPhone and iPod Touch users can use an app called Express described here to upload posts including photographs to their blog site, which has been enabled for this type of connectivity.  Note that you can start and save a post as a draft and choose to publish at a later time.

Gravatar stands for “globally recognized avatar” administered here.  Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. You should register a “G-rated image” of yourself using the email address you will use to administer your blog.

Your blog comes pre-loaded with widgets in the sidebar of your page layout.  One of the widgets requires some editing to reflect your (academic/future-professional) personality.  In the wordpress admin site of your blog, go to the Appearance tab, and then Widgets.  Look for the Blog Page Template, Primary widget menu and the Blog Author Info widget.  Add your name, edit the bio information, and if you have registered your email at Gravatar, then add the appropriate email address.

Customize the default blog template by making the following changes to the settings accessed through your individual wordpress blog administration site  (wp-admin).  One way to access your administration site is to go to your blog page and login through the Meta sidebar link.  You can also access your site by remembering the URL:  [your_name].design-manifold.com/wp-admin.

1. Theme Options:  contact form email,
2. Settings | General: admin email replacement with your registered user email account,
3. Create a Gravatar for your user email account,
4. Theme Options | Homepage: edit the About Message, and add public social media accounts as desired (twitter, linked in, etc.),
5. Edit your sidebar widgets.  You are welcome to add the Flickr widget if you are a Flickr user,
6. Edit the custom footer by replacing “Schaeffer Somers” with your name in the Theme Options | Footer Customization | Custom Text (Left) field,
7. Replace default Portfolio items and add new work from A2010,
8. Tag Portfolio items with one or more of the following post tags: ANALOG DIGITAL DRAWING MODEL PHOTOGRAPHY RENDERING, and
9. Write a blog post related to your studio project.
10. Have fun with your blog, although not too much fun.  Refer to the studio blogging guidelines.

As a new user you will receive an email with a password for logging into your new wordpress blog.  The directions for setting up your studio blog are contained in the how-to blog posts, of which this is an example.  After you have completed an initial customization of your blog, you should delete the how-to posts in your blog wp-admin site, and start generating new content.  Content will consist of featured images on the home page, as well as conventional blog posts and tumblog posts.