Worm food

Last Christmas I received the lovely gift of a food composter fueled by the hungry bellies of 100s of worms. Why would you want that? That sounds gross! Doesn't that smell? are all the usual responses I got from friends and family at the time. But I stand to make some facts out of these claims..

Tremors II 1996, Universal Studios @ badmovies.org

I really fell for the idea of composting after moving into the city and seeing all of the local neighborhood gardens. I wanted a garden of my own, grown right, and grown with the produce I like. I also came to realized that a lot of the meals I like to prepare at home produces scraps such as stems, husks, crusts, etc. I felt pretty wasteful throwing these things out. Looking for alternatives, I came across last December's issue of grid magazine, "a free, monthly print publication focused on sustainability issues and initiatives in the Greater Philadelphia area", featured D.I.Y. composting. In that was an article focusing on  on vermicomposting, or composting with the help of worms to break down organic matter into soil friendly nutrients that can be added to your garden later on.

After doing some research, and some positive feedback from friends at work, I was looking forward to get a system of my own started to help me get a good kick off to this coming Spring urban garden experimentation. 

The setup I got from nature's footprint is pretty simple. It comes with most of the things you need to get started except for the worms and food waste. Basically you assemble your system and as you gather food waste or paper you can add it to the composter and the worms will get to eating. They can eat half of their body weight per day, so over-feeding is not too much of a concern to me. Also composting your garbage is very helpful in reducing what ends up in the landfill, imagine all the trash you throw out that is food waste.

hands-on action

So far I think that answers the Why would you want to do that?, the other important question to answer is about the smell. The answer revolves around the diet of the worms. If you keep the contents of their diet strictly vegan (no meat or dairy) then you won't notice an odor. I know many people who keep their systems in their kitchen; mine is currently in our basement for lack of space reasons, but hope to move it outside when the lows get above freezing.

For more worm fun check out Super Mega Worm for the iPhone:



Anyway, if anyone has any questions about the composter, process, or anything related feel free to let me know.

Underlying Locations pt.1

It was about this time two years ago that I submitted my application and proposal for the thesis program at Philadelphia University. At the time I was studying in Copenhagen and had no idea what I wanted to spend the next year and a half researching and designing.

I won't get into all of the details of my final project. I think it is pretty well explained in what is posted on my Archinect.com portfolio here. I will however talk about my thesis process and how my initial proposal evolved into what it became in the end.
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[image: phenrydelphia @ Flickr]

I was just getting settled into my Kollegium when thesis proposals were soon due back at Philadelphia University. At the time I was very uncertain what I was going to send, and made numerous mock proposals with all kinds of crazy ideas. The one topic that kept coming back to me was the idea of development underground. I am not entirely sure of the root of this idea. It probably has something to do with either my passion for 80's and 90's science fiction or that I didn't see much daylight while studying in Scandinavia. Also though, this was around the same time the Burj Khalifa was really picking up in the media, and I was thinking to myself rather then a mile up, what if a project was a mile down? So these were the grounds (get it?) that I started with to launch my thesis research.

While in Europe, I looked for precedents that I could use to get my imagination going. A little while later on a tour of Helsinki I walked into this:

[image: Fanatical Apathist @ Flickr]

And I was at a lost of words.
I had truly walked into one of the most inspirational pieces of architecture I had ever come across. This is the Temppeliaukio or "Rock Church" located in Helsinki, Finland. This structure was built from the inside out of a large rock formation near the center of the city. You enter in through a hillside that resembles a cave entrance and then into the huge expansive room seen in the photo above surrounded by bare rock and an enormous copper disk floating over a clerestory of light. Everything about this place was what I wanted to focus on in thesis: inhabiting the underground, the sculpting of daylight, the hollowing out of immense masses; it was definitely a huge push to get me going in the direction I wanted.

Temppeliaukio sketch

The rest of my time abroad was spent refining my proposal for when I would return back to Philadelphia the following semester. During the summer months I spent time creating visuals and collecting resources to help illustrate my developing ideas. I think for pt.II I'll talk a little about those readings and collages.

Introduction.

I have finally decided to get this started. For the first post to this blog I hope to explain two things: who and what

So for some background: I come from a rather large town in rural Pennsylvania but have spent the last couple years growing and learning in the city of Philadelphia. I am a recent graduate from Philadelphia University‘11 where I earned my degree in Architecture and am currently assistant visualizer at a landscape architecture firm in center city.

A lot of the things posted in this blog might come from around the Philadelphia area. I have been a resident here since 2006 and believe that there is a character here that I really enjoy and I hope I can persuade others to see it too.

I have been looking for the best way to document my growth as a designer and share my interest. I hope to keep this blog up to date by posting what projects I am working on or other things I might come across that I find interesting. As the title suggest you can expect all things related to art and architecture, built and unbuilt, as well as some experiments and works in progress.

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The work has begun on gathering topics for future posts, but I decided that I would begin early with some pieces from my undergrad portfolio to give a better understanding of my thoughts on design.

Recently, I received the great news that my 5th year thesis project was featured on Archinect.com as one of the top projects of 2011 on their website. In keeping this news fresh, I’ll be posting this project first and later decide where to go from there with the others. Considering these are past projects, I plan on posting some current thoughts about them, what I would have done differently, yada yada. Comments are welcome of course, I miss studio critiques..

Lastly I’ll include a piece I have been working on recently, I’ll explain the relevant details another time.