A Zahner

My friend, the comedic genius that he is, does an excellent YouTube show called the Oreo Reviewer. A riveting, edge of your seat experience. You should check out the latest episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SvXxbeC2rs

Also, if you notice the genius channel art, that's all me.

Anyways, A Zahner! A family-owned company that started over 115 years ago that has blossomed into one of the leading metal fabricators. Their main clients are architects and artists looking to fabricate complex metal facades. Their job is to help take the ideas and make them a reality. Ideas are discussed with engineers and designers, and tests are made before final pieces are made and shipped. Often, tests can be quite large, built on mockup towers for the architects to see.

The main tools used in fabrication are the Chimbo Punch, Waterjet, and Mill. The punch is used to perforate or dent the metal in particular ways. It's ability to program it to make complex perforation makes it unique. The waterjet is used for cutting metal using water at high speeds, and can get very exact and detailed cuts. The mills is used for thicker steel or more simple cuts. It is quicker and more cost efficient.

The different metals are also treated with different chemicals processes in order to get unique finishes. One in particular, called Interference Colored Stainless Steel is treated so that the light reflects off the metal at a different angle, allowing our eyes to perceive it as darker.

They work in strictly metals. Steel, copper, ect. Some aluminum, but rarely composites, because of their difficulty to work with.

They like to innovate. Currently, they are renovating their old building to become another section of the shop.

And that's A-Zahner!

Frank Gehry

Here's an interesting fact about coffee: there is no such thing as a 'coffee flavor.' I mean, there is for ice cream or other crap like that, but real coffee is just a combination of multiple flavors. There are six parts to a cup of coffee where flavors can reside: the aroma, the body, the flavor, the sweetness, the aftertaste, and the acidity. Each can be ranked on a scale of 1-10, and is also assigned a different flavor profile. My favorite roast is an Ethiopian SOE called Deri Kocha, which originates from the area Ethiopia of the same name. Roasted at only a 2, it's incredibly light and full of floral flavors. As a pour over, it's similar to a raspberry tea, and as espresso, it has a similar taste to Blood Orange. Unfortunately, it's out of season at the moment, so I need to wait a year to get some more. 

And now, onto the homework. 

I don't love documentaries. As one who has studied film, I understand that the purpose of film is not to portray reality, but rather to give the viewer the illusion of reality, which is excellent in fiction and disastrous when applied to actual events (and we wonder why the news tells us nothing). Thus, even after watching a documentary about Frank Gehry, I feel I know very little about him. Was he a genius? Was he crazy with enough smart engineers behind him? I was bothered by how he had people building the models for him. I liked his bluntness. I disliked how he left his wife to become a better architect. 

I shall therefore comment upon what I know to be true (and even that tainted by music and camera angles): the process and the architecture itself. 

Of what I saw of Frank's process was this: making lots of loose handed sketches, free handed and wild, and then building model after model, very quickly, then scanning the models into a computer to get all the technical measurements. Initial models were quick, made from whatever elements were lying around. As they became more technical, craftsmen would make more technical ones out of wood and plexi. Models can then be made in the computer using a 3D scanning tool. 

The architecture itself is wild, unlike anything I've ever seen. It's full of compound curves and movement, weird angles. When looking at it in the midst of a city, it's like seeing an aborigine in the midst of a business meeting.  My initial feeling is one of wonder and awe, which is rare. Buildings bore me unless they're old. 

However, there seems to be something missing in his work. The structure is a sprawling jazz piece, an epic cacophony of structure, shape, and material, but still a cacophony, never the less. Parts awkwardly jut out here, curve there. It's all very free, individual, but not cohesive. It does not point to something greater than itself. This of course, is fine. I just feel without it, it feels lacking. 

In the video, his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, was called to a cathedral. I cannot agree. Cathedrals point upward, spiritually. The purpose of a Cathedral is to remind humanity that it is small, that us as artists do not create, but rather tap the great beauty. 

However, Frank's work does have an aspect I love: whimsical fun. Every piece I look at of his feels like it was fun to make, as if he were playfully putting his middle finger up to stodgy architects whenever their backs were turned. And I like that a lot. He seems to tap a simple, childlike joy in his work that makes the impossible possible, and trades practicality and utility for laughter and beauty, a feast for the human soul. 

[Matthias Pliessnig]

Did you know that the famous YouTube video Heyyeyaaeyaaaeyaeyaa was actually a morph off of another video? Funny world isn't it. If you haven't seen the video, here's a link.

Anyway, back to that design stuff.

Matthias Pliessnig is an artist and furniture designer who's work is made out of bent wood. Using a machine called a steam bender, he heats the glue-like fibers in the wood, allowing it to bend with considerable ease for about thirty seconds before hardening again. The wood he uses is mostly white oak, all air dried (as opposed to the process of placing the wood in a kiln to bake). Forms are wrapped around plywood struts that act like a cast for the wood to be bend around, and the pieces are glued or riveted together.

Usually, when people talk at Hallmark, I am looking at my watch, quite ready to leave. For this one, I was still looking at my watch, because I had a date I didn't want to be late to, but I sincerely hoped that these two events would not end up conflicting because I was thoroughly enjoying his speaking. I even asked a question, which is about as rare as a baboon giving birth to an elephant.

The organic shapes captivated my imagination. That would could bend in such unique ways was truly amazing to me, how it could resemble such a living, breathing mass while still being incredibly light and functional. What struck me most, however, was his process. Matthias talked about how often he would experiment with shapes. His early works of simply free-bending the wood were inspirational, how he would ignore the computer in order to get in touch with the wood itself. I dislike doing creative work on a computer (except when I'm writing, because I can write faster. Even then I print off to re-read,) and to see a designer who, while used the computer, was not reliant upon it was incredibly encouraging. Rhino was used as a tool to give a visual idea to clients, not as the creative process itself.

Also, I like boats. Perhaps I'll build one soon.

*Sigh* Up

Well, let's start this blog with something fun. I watched two great films over last weekend. One was a French New Wave film by Jean-Luc Goddard called Vivre sa Vie, and the other was a Japanese film by Akura Kurosawa called Rashomon. Both are excellent, and I highly recommend them highly. My girlfriend and I also went on a date to the new Lawrence Library (what horrid Lawrencians we are-we hadn't even been there yet!) and I picked up a few comic books by an author known as Jason. Check him out.

Alright, now on to the homework stuff: Sign Up!

Sign Up is a local company that manufactures (say it with me, kids) signs, from small wayfinding signs to large aluminum facades. Their main clients are colleges, along with businesses. While Sign Up does some design, their job is most often to take their customers ideas and make them into reality, which may mean altering some parts of their dream sign so it can actually exist.

Sign Up's shop is an industrial building on the east side of Lawrence, large enough to deal with the larger signs (often up to 20 feet). Most signs are made out of aluminum, being a lighter metal. Cutting is done on a CNC router, along with jump shears. Welding and riveting are common methods of attatchment. For more precise cutting, or the need to cut thicker aluminum (below 6 gauge), they ship out of house.

Paint is mixed in house and sprayed on in their super badass spray booth, and then can be moved into a super badass huge oven to heat dry.

Digital decals can be printed in house in various manners.

And yeah, that's what they do. They were kinda cool, I guess

Pics from Reuter

[organ trippers (wat?)]

This is a new year for this blog I am forced to write at the expense of my teachers beating me within an inch of my life (or something like that, I don't really listen) So lets welcome in the new year with pazazz.

great, now that we have all that excitement out of the way, we can get down to the boring-err, very important and informative... stuff? that we are supposed to be writing about.

Also, a technical note: due to technical problems, involving my lack of internet, my roomate's not lack of internet and a flying space-monkey (don't ask, the whole situation is rather confusing), I am unable to post my photo's with my text. Therefore, I will post two separate articles, one on my thoughts, other with photos.

And now if you will raise your seatbacks to the upright position, and raise your tray tables up, we will begin making our descent from the air of my brain to actually talking about important things like....

THE REUTER ORGAN COMPANY

I have very little interest in mass production. It is great for toothbrushes and staplers. I don't want to build those. And so, to visit a company that creates these massive structures unique to each location in house from start to finish was an inspiration. How unique each of their pieces fit each client's needs declares their excellence of craft. And what the heck-I love classical music! 

Within the first few minutes of our tour, we learned that very little has changed since the invention of the modern pipe organ (Organs have apparently been around since the Greeks, but the organ we know today was pioneered in the 1700's). Main changes include the use of electricity to power the system, an idea which the Reuter company pioneered in 1917. The client base has remained static as well, as the main consumers of organs are firstly Churches, and then concert halls, universities, and occasionally very rich private owners. 

Organs are highly complex systems. The Keys that are played are simply a tiny fraction of all the movements happening behind the shutters. Those keys are housed in the console, the cockpit of the organ. The modern organ uses electrical signals sent down fiberoptic wire to trigger sound. The signals travel to the wind chest and reservoir. The signal triggers a specific flap to release air into a single pipe, which then produces a tone. 

For every specific sound an organ makes, 60 separate pipes must be manufactured. Larger organs can house up to 50 sets of pipes, making for thousands of pipes in each organ. 

The housing, cockpit, resivoir, etc. are all made of wood. For the wind chest, Poplar wood is used because of it's lack of knots, better for holding in air. Outsides and finishing woods vary upon color and taste.

All the wood is stored in house, where it is milled per project. It is then taken to the shop to be finished. More complicated work, such as the holes cut for the wind-chest and the ornamental work are cut with a CNC router, which apparently sounds like a jet taking off, so you know the thing is damn cool. 

Reuter Organ company is the only company to still produce their own organ keys. All are a base layer of wood, and are then overlayed in plastic, bone or finished as plain wood. 

Pipes that are over four feet long are rolled sheets of either copper or zinc, and finished with either automotive paint, varnish, or specifically for copper, flamed (a technique which includes exposing the copper to flame) smaller pipes are fashioned from a smelting of lead and tin, done in shop using a floating method. Pipes are all fashioned by hand, due to the difference in size of each pipe.

The final variant is valves, which are fashioned from sheep leather. These valves attach the pipe to the reservoir The reservoir is also lined with kangaroo leather, which stretches in two directions.  

In the final stages, the whole organ is constructed in house for a trial run, and then deconstructed and shipped to its new home.

Aren't organs cool? I'm done.