What else has been going on?
Well, Fun House's brilliant version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is over... hope you caught it. A great experience. Gidion's Knot at Kitchen Dog was struck this last weekend - it took 30 times as much time to strike all that classroom set dressing as it did to strike the two walls! Venus in Fur is now open at WaterTower Theater and The Other Place is about to open at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth.
Now for me theater design is just simmering, while architectural things are boiling. I've been very busy with continuing ed sort of stuff. First came the yearly ADA seminar (that's the Americans with Disabilities Act), which is always amazingly persnickety. Don't get me wrong, I'm entirely for the goal of removing architectural barriers... but is it really sensible that the government mandate emergency flasher alarms and roll-in showers for all those deaf, wheelchair-bound firefighters? Or that the rule is that, if a company's breakroom has no stovetop or oven and only a countertop microwave then that food prep area need not be wheelchair accessible (i.e. kneespace at sinks, limited reach ranges etc.) but if that microwave is built-in then it MUST all be accessible? ADA rules are filled with such logical... idiosyncrasies.
Also a front burner project for me right now is learning to use Sketchup - a very cool, free, 3D modeling program (with its own amusing idiosyncrasies). I'm researching CAD classes too, as it seems time to improve those skills.
3D Sketchup model of Circle Theatre: non-commercial, self educational use!
Here you can see my first ever 3D CAD (computer aided design/drafting right?) project, a little Sketchup model of Circle Theater's stage. Those fat tubular columns at the corners gave me an extra tool to play with. Just don't look too close at the klutzy construction, huh? I've since started a much more complex model of a hypothetical architectural project which also has cylinders - tilted at weird angles, sloping surfaces, cut-in windows.... And I'd thought making this little stage was a bit of a monster!
But I can see that, once I get practiced enough with it, Sketchup is going to be rather fun.
So... Think AutoCAD is going to be a real hoot then?
No comments:
Post a Comment