Architecture "Cymraeg"

 [Photo from the BBC.]

Yes, it's the Senedd!  That's Welsh, and it's pronounced sɛnɛð...oh yeah, I broke out the IPA.  It's also known as the National Assembly Building, and is essentially the Welsh parliament - I gather there have been some efforts for decentralization or devolution or what-have-you in British government, and so this is where it all happens for Wales. 

It's quite an impressive building, intending to bring together nationalistic history and cosmopolitan technology...I was pretty intimidated when I went there, although that may have been less because of the acoustic panels and computer screens and more because everyone tried speaking Welsh at me.  All I know how to say back to them would have been cariad, the one word I picked out of a song by the Welsh band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, which means something along the lines of 'beloved'.  Yeah.  I'm not quite comfortable with projecting pseudogaelic hippie vibes to government people?

Inside, you can see this nifty structural device...the brochures I read at the time said it was supposed to represent a tree trunk, but it kind of looks like a smokestack?  (Orrr a mushroom cloud???).  And underneath that is a skylight that illuminates the debate chamber.  Anyway, since its opening in 2006, the Senedd has won several awards for aesthetics as well as environmentalness...it's made from local materials, gets heated geothermally, and! the toilets flush with rainwater collected from the roof.

Oh, and I nearly forgot...the thing is located on Cardiff Bay, where several key Dr Who moments have occurred.  And it's not too far from the Dr Who museum.  So you can just go ahead and scooch this one to the top of your tourist list, eh?

More Pickles (what a surprise): Architect Edition

Not really edible this time, though...

I was trying to write a post about skyscraper regulations - has anyone heard something about how skyscrapers used to totally shadow city streets but then 'they' made rules about tapering and so on that changed everything for the sunnier?...no?...well neither has Google.  (What is up with the new Google, by the way?)

Anyway, that put me in mind of the London Gherkin.  This notable structure, located at 30 St Mary Axe in the financial district of London, sparked the BBC headline: Erotic Gherkin for London Skyline.  Perhaps you dirty-minded individuals can see why.  I certainly can't imagine...

 [Photo from here.]

Right, so if you do an image search of the word gherkin, all but one of the first twenty are of 30 SMA.  Big stuff.  It won some awards when it was first built in 2003, and is quite 'green' - apparently it uses half the energy needed for a typical building of its size.  (I wonder if its glass panels include aerogel insulants?)  Great Britain's most expensive office building is also aerodynamic and "improves the wind environment for pedestrians in the area" - something I hadn't thought about, but which I'm sure is worth considering as an architect.  It's also quite economic by the manner in which floorspace is used, although I can't say for certain how, never having been inside.  I've only ever peered at it through the windows of the London Eye, or else from somewhere like the Tower or the Tate Modern's Bankside Power Station.

Hmm.  Tomorrow, another modern UK architectural feat!  One I've actually been inside!

Aerogels

What looks like blue smoke and feels like styrofoam?

Well...aerogels, obviously...

So these are pretty cool, actually.  Aerogels are the least dense of all solids (natural or otherwise).  Wikipedia - my faithful friend - tells me that they are made by replacing the liquid in a gel with a gas.  Seems logical.  Tricky to do though...evaporation has to occur really, really slowly so that the whole thing doesn't collapse like my mom's puff pastries (sorry, Mom).

Anyway, they are quite strong (though they shatter easily), they are great insulators (all that air), and they can leech all the water out of your hands if you hold onto them for too long (darned desiccants). 

Go ahead and do a quick Google Image search of these things - they're quite sci-fi and pretty.  You may think you've never come into contact with them...but you just might be wrong.  Apparently they've been used in paints and cosmetics, for insulating skylights and windows, and as a delivery system for certain drugs.  And yes, also in the space exploration, nuclear technologies, and environmental cleanup industries...but that's another story.

Update

Yes. Sorry for the minimal effort of late. My bags are by now neaaarly unpacked though, and today is my mother's 50th birthday (!) - we are watching the Pens game...real celebrations occur tomorrow, and that, my friends, is fanhood. 

Anyway, Interpol (the band, not the crime-fighters) is back?  Is anyone even interested?  I kind of outgrew them, but if you like, they've got a free download from the latest album online.  Huzzah.

Okay, time to cook a pear tart.

Some More Poetry

Hope this isn't too highbrow for you...

Games!

Cool things - made by math whizzes.  Go figure?

I first by started playing GridLock, and of course Theseus and the Minotaur, but then through that found a lot of cool Alice Mazes, and I quite like the BoxUp Puzzles (I wish there were more of them).  I'm not very good at any of these things yet, sadly...anyway, maybe you are?  Or perhaps you can find a mathy game of your own, either here or here.

Enjoy!

Precipitous

Been packing and driving all day, so this one should be brief.  I hope.

Anyway, amidst suitcases and sixteen-wheelers, I've come up with the perfect answer for when people ask me what I plan to do after graduation.

So they'll ask, "Why hello, Emily - what are your plans after graduation?"

And I'll respond with a winning smile, "Well you see, I haven't the foggiest."  Which is a fun little phrase meaning I don't know, but with a fresh and interesting spin.  Then, depending on who I am talking to, I will either (a) go on at length about how I've been very busy and important setting up an ERP lab, conducting research, etc., etc., (b) say that I would like a break from academia for a year or so to 'discover myself', or (c) laugh/cry hysterically.  Or (d) all of the above.

Then I will make a rueful little comment about how many graduates experience the lemming-like sensation that they are sprinting off of a cliff. 

Okay, I looked it up, and lemmings - the real, live, Arctic rodents (cute little guys.  maybe.) - don't actually have collective suicidal urges.

But the image is a colorful one, one which hopefully will further distract my audience and move them along to other, pleasanter topics.  Like rodentia.  Or suicide. 

Seriously though, isn't it strange that probably 90% of people my age have been set since age five or something ridiculous on this track that culminates with an undergraduate diploma?  And now I'm here...and it sort of does feel like treading on thin air.  I suppose the title of this post is inaccurate, because this moment is anything but abrupt and unexpected (quite the reverse, in fact); still, for whatever silly, stupid, melodramatic reason, I can't shake the idea of a sign post reading CAUTION: PRECIPICE AHEAD. 

Ehh...circling back to lemmings...this isn't a sudden plunge or death spiral so much as it is one of those cartoony moments where the legs pinwheel in space before shooting ahead across a canyon.  So I guess the moral is that we'll all get there soon enough.  Just stop asking me where precisely 'there' is...I think I'll need a month or so to find my bearings (or embrace freefall) and move beyond these college years.