Michael Graves Essays - Design, Architecture, Michael Graves

Michael Graves Michael Graves Michael Graves, born the summer or 1934 in Indianapolis, knew he wanted to be an artist by the age of six. Encouraged by his mother to seek a more practical career, Graves choose architecture. After studying at the University of Connecticut, he got his master's degree at Harvard University. After finishing school in 1959, he moved to New York City where he worked at the office of George Nelson. While working in New York, Graves received a fellowship to study at American Academy in Rome, Italy. Graves studied the classical architecture, which inspires much of his work. It was his time in Rome that allowed him to make the connection between ancient and modern architecture. In 1962, Graves started teaching architecture at Princeton University. He designed buildings upon commission, but not until 1977 did his work become nationally know. Graves received a commission for a cultural center spanning the Red River on the Minnesota/North Dakota border. Although lack of funding never allowed his design to be built, he gained a lot of attention. Graves' next project, the Portland Building, is a fifteen story postmodernist skyscraper. It can be defined this way because of its unusual use of color. There is also a reference to Greek columns on the facade of the building. As more commissions followed, Graves began his own design studio in Princeton. As a privileged member of the designers at this studio, I can witness the process of Graves' design. His firm is split into teams of designers. There are the interior and architectural designers in one building and the industrial designers in a separate studio. Michael and the team leaders primarily plan each project out. The teams then develop the project. Computer drawings are then sent to the modelers and painters. The atmosphere at the Graves studio is extremely laid back, but professional. For example there are several dogs roaming around the studios, but the conference rooms double as display rooms for Michael's previous projects and libraries. There are several reasons why Michael Graves is considered a post-modernist. The typical modernist based their designs on structure and technology and used plain surfaces such as glass and steel. Graves' designs are decorative and use natural materials. The colors used for most of Graves' designs are gray, soft blues, green stucco, and terra cotta. These colors add human qualities to the design. In an essay by Ivan Zurich, the classification of Graves' design is discussed. Is Graves a modern architect, a post-modern, a late modern, an eclectic, or a classicist? He would answer: I am just an architect. 'I don't care what people call me,' he says in response to the publicity; 'labels have the negative value of making smaller boundaries for people.' The Team Disney Building is Burbank, California was built in 1991 as Graves' first project for Disney. One face of the building uses seven 19-foot dwarfs as columns. These characters from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs reference Greek columns in a playful manner. This side also has a pediment structure. The roof on the opposing side of the building has semicircular arches. These may be referencing gothic vaulted ceilings. The large glass plain walls of the building are typical modernist design, but they are colored terra cotta. The Engineering research Center at the University of Cincinnati was completed in 1995. At first observation, this building seems to be four separate rectangular buildings connected perpendicularly by a structure with a semicircular roof. The four extruding buildings have many rectangular features. The setback connecting structure has circular windows. These few circular elements make the building less like a modernist box. The main entrance building has columns which reference Greek architecture. The most recent nationally acclaimed design by Graves is the scaffolding on the Washington Monument. The scaffolding contains 37 miles of aluminum that drape over the obelisk. Standing 575 feet tall, Graves uses nylon fabric and 800 lights to illuminate the monument at night. The original purpose of the scaffolding was to aid workers as they repaired and cleaned the national monument, but it has become an artwork in itself. There is currently a bidding war over the deconstructed scaffolding to have it resurrected as a

Tips for Writing a Community Sample Essay

Tips for Writing a Community Sample EssayIn the course of writing your U of M community sample essay, one of the most important aspects is to make it a well-rounded story. To do this, you need to choose an appropriate topic. A few tips will help you out:The first tip is that the more people that take part in the writing of the essay, the better the essay will turn out. This means that you should include a range of viewpoints, and that you should include the perspective of multiple people. Try to think of the person that might read the essay, and try to imagine how they would feel if they are the person who ends up reading the piece.Another tip is to write the essay from the perspective of the writer or speaker. Consider what kind of experience or educational background is presented in the piece. Remember, if you speak on an issue to a large audience, you will need to be able to communicate something to the audience. Don't forget to include the voices of the readers too.The third tip is to be yourself when writing your essay. As a student, you probably know how important it is to present yourself correctly. You should be yourself in your community sample essay. If you end up sounding like an opinionated professor, your essay will only end up as one more piece of literature that other students use in their curricula.Your topic needs to have some impact on your life. It doesn't matter if you are a fan of the sport you are writing about. The point is that your topic has some bearing on the way you see yourself. That is why it is crucial to consider how your writing will impact others. And, in case you are not used to thinking this way, this should be the basis for all your writing.Your topic also needs to be relevant to your class. Write on issues that are currently affecting your school, or the students. This will also help you identify an appropriate topic for your community sample essay.Writing a community sample essay shouldn't be as difficult as it may seem. W ith these three simple tips, you will have a foundation for a great essay. Once you get used to writing about your school, you will find it much easier to write a good community sample essay.

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buy custom Small Team and Group Paper essay Modern work environment incorporates a great use of team work because of the higher level of effectiveness in performance that team work offers to the organisation compared with separate individual contributions. Team work has been given immense importance in research studies, such as by Tuckman in 1965 relating to the stages of team development and work. It is crucial to set targets of the team, organise teams, assign roles and measure performance of the team effort. The main reason behind using team work in organisations is to benefit from the different perspectives and insights that each member contributes to achieve the targets but working in a team is not an easy task at first. Business schools for this reason prepare their students to work in teams and learn to work out differences and make the best out of each others strengths. Working in teams has allowed our groups to achieve the target we were given quite effectively and successfully and we have found that working in a team is nothing like working individually on a project. But most useful thing that has come out of working in a team is to get a hint of how formal group work takes place in organisations which we all will be soon taking part in. Our team progressed which comprised of 5 members through the five stages of team development based on the team development theory of Tukman. The first stage of forming began as the group first assembled and sat down to discuss the presentation assigned. The topic and related information that each member had about it was jotted down. Each member was asked to self-evaluate themselves relating to the grasp of concepts and based on the strengths of each, the roles were assigned informally and tasks were distributed. The group members were asked to further explore the topic and bring back to the next meeting any disagreement or contribution they have. The next meeting was much more heated with several disagreements as members discovered some new ideas and strengths for which they required separate tasks to be assigned to them. It was then understood that in order to settle down the disagreements a strong leadership was required and the one with the most effective communication skills and leadership skills, based on previous personal experience in the school, one of the members was chosen to be leader. This was the second stage : storming, where arguments were settled. The leader allowed the group members to choose the sub topics themselvs, and a coordinator was chosen to transfer information and bridge all gaps among the group members and using minimum authority and avoiding strict control the members were requested to transform their ideas into writing and paper to bring to the next meeting. In the next meeting, the leader evaluated each members work, in the form of drafts of the subtopics of the presentation. He evaluated the actual strengths and weaknesses of each member based on their work. The member were clearly communicated the evaluation and based on the analysis of the drafts prepared by each member, they were assigned new tasks, that is the subtopics that they were found to be better at. This resolved all conflicts and the team came into harmony. This was the start of the third stage: norming. By the end of this meeting, the leader gave each member the sources to make use of for gathering the information and requested each to use others if necessary and complete the content required for the presentation. This marked the start of the fourth stage: performing. Members were asked to communicate with the coordinator, with each other and the leader at all times so as to help each other out, when needed. The leader communicated by now that these two essential components are to be kept intact and should be followed. Communication allowed social learning to take form among the members. During the perfuming stage, the members benefited from communities of practice theory of learning. Lastly, it requires a practice. The practice implies the performance to achieve the goals of the domain. This theory was largely depicted practically when the team started to function. The members communicated to each other, sought help from others whom they thought knew about something they didnt and had access to a source they required to use for preparing their part. Some people had difficulty using powerpoint, which was settled by others who had expertise in that area. This allowed social learning to cultivate among all members. During the performing stage, several meetings were held, where each member showed and discuss his or her findings and progress of the work and allowed others to critique and suggest improvements. Viewing each others work, the members were able to improve their own work and learned how to better communicate. This allowed preparation for the presentation even before the preparation for preseenting had begun. Each member was given freedom to suggest and critique and explore new sources. This depicted the very important foundation of the management of the group which the leader had established in the earlier stage, empowerment. One by one each of us came up with excellent strategies for improvement and when the implementation period came, we were allowed to request any of the other members to assist us if we required any help. It taught an important lesson about empowerment. The final stage was adjourning, when we were ready to deliver our presentation. At this stage, the group understood and learned several of real organizational lessons. In the group work several problems were faced which related mainly to what to include and what not to include as upon hitting Google, we found that the brands were common in news, blogs, research journals, newspapers, etc. thus, to find out which piece of information was necessary and relevant for the paper and which wasnt was a challenge on its own. Our group leader was the most profound in this regard who created a system whereby each of us, with whatever information we obtained regarding the companies, was supposed to produce original reflections on it, and record it as we proceeded. By the end of week 1 of our research, we had gathered ample original reflections with their sources mentioned. These were peer reviewed to discover the ones not required and were discarded. When we began to prepare the report, the indiv idual reflections came in great use in producing a plagiarism free report and citation was also easily conducted. Being part of group work at three different areas, the group learned the successful traits of a leader, in terms of getting work done effectively from people to meet the deadline. The leaders job is not just to get the work done but to inspire the subordinates to do a work that is worth appreciating. Also, the team learned that through group work the importance of empowerment, and how well workers can work under decision making power vested on their hands and how well it eventually works out for the leader himself in the end. As the team progressed through stages namely: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning, a different form of group based learning and motivation took place which contributed towards the overall performance and accomplishment of the target assigned to the group. 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10 Ways to Keep Your Class Interesting

10 Ways to Keep Your Class Interesting Have you ever been in the middle of teaching a class, glanced at your students, and caught them staring into space? Just when you think youve created the perfect lesson plan or engaging activity, you may find that your students are unfocused and out to lunch. Yet its essential that you find ways to keep your classes interesting so your students can absorb and retain the information that you present. For decades, educators have been trying new teaching strategies to keep their students on their toes and get them excited about learning. Although some strategies have failed, others have been found to be quite effective. Explore 10 teacher-tested ways to keep your class interesting so your students will stay engaged all the time. 1. Incorporate Mystery Into Your Lessons Learning may be the most fun for your students when they dont know what to expect. Try to incorporate a sense of surprise and mystery into your lessons. When youre about to unveil a new lesson, give students a new clue each day up until the last day before the start of the lesson. This is a fun way to make your lesson mysterious, and you may find that your students are actually looking forward to finding out what theyll be learning about next. 2. Dont Repeat Classroom Material Its appropriate and essential to review classroom material, but try not to repeat it verbatim because this can make it less interesting for students. The next time you need to review material, try playing a review game during which you present the information in a way thats different from the first time you taught the students. The 3-2-1 strategy is a fun way to review and not repeat material. For this activity, students draw a pyramid in their notebooks and write down three things they learned, two things they thought were interesting, and one question they still have. 3. Create Classroom Games Whether youre 5 or 25, playing a game can be fun. Games are also a great way to keep lessons interesting. If your students need to remember their spelling words, conduct a spelling bee- a contest in which participants are eliminated when they misspell a word. Or if the students need to practice math, have a math bee, which is similar to a spelling bee, but with math problems or facts instead of spelling words. Games make learning fun, and games in class are a prescription for happy kids. 4. Give Your Students Choices One strategy that teachers have found to be effective is offering their students the ability to make their own choices when it comes to learning. Choice can be a powerful motivator because it helps to foster student interest and independence. The next time youre planning an activity, try making a choice board. Print out a tic-tac-toe board and write down nine different tasks for students to complete. The goal is for each student to choose three tasks in a row. 5. Use Technology Technology is a great way to keep your lessons interesting. Children love electronics, so try incorporating it into your overall teaching strategy. Instead of standing in front of the room and lecturing, try using a Smartboard interactive display. Expand your cooperative learning activity lessons by connecting to a classroom in another city or country via videoconferencing. Use technology in a variety of ways, and youll see the interest level in your classroom increase by leaps and bounds. 6. Dont Take Teaching so Seriously Being an effective teacher is an important job, but that doesnt mean that you have to remain serious in class at all times. Try to loosen up a bit and acknowledge that your students may have different interests and learning styles than your own. Its OK to laugh at yourself at times and to have some fun. You may find that your students are more interested when youre a little more relaxed. 7. Make Your Lessons Interactive In a traditional classroom, the teacher stands in front of the room and lectures to the students as the students listen and take notes. Unfortunately, this is not the most effective way to hold students interest. Make learning interactive by creating hands-on lessons that involve students every step of the way. Try using the Jigsaw cooperative learning activity in which each student is responsible for his or her own part of a group activity. Or try a hands-on science experiment. When you involve students and make your lessons interactive, your class becomes more interesting. 8. Relate Material to Your Students Lives Try to create a real-world connection to what your students are learning. This will give them a better understanding of why they need to learn what youre teaching. If theyre constantly asking you why they need to learn something and youre always answering with â€Å"because,† you will soon lose credibility. Instead, try giving them a real answer such as, Youre learning about money because in the real world, youll need to know how to buy food and pay your bills. By giving a straightforward answer, youre helping them make a connection between what theyre learning in class and how theyll use this information in the future. 9. Flip Your Lessons The flipped classroom has been gaining in popularity since the term flipped entered the broader education world in 2012. When it was first presented, the idea that students could learn new information at home and then come to school and use class time for critical thinking activities and reinforcement of concepts was unique. However, many teachers are using this strategy and achieving positive results. Students in a flipped classroom are able to work at their own pace (which is great for differentiated learning) and engage with their peers in a more interactive, meaningful way when theyre in the classroom. Try using the flipped teaching strategy for your next lesson and observe the depth of your students engagement. 10. Think Outside the Box Lesson plans dont have to include worksheets or lectures during which students sit and take notes time and again. Try thinking outside the box and plan a lesson thats completely out of the ordinary. Invite a guest speaker, go on a field trip, or take learning outdoors. When you try something new and different, theres a good chance that your students will respond positively. When planning a lesson, try collaborating with another teacher or taking your students on a virtual field trip. Learning that engages students is the most effective. Your students will find it more interesting to learn when you present the material to them in a variety of creative ways.

Knowledge Encounters Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Knowledge Encounters - Essay Example Majority of scholars working on post-colonial effects in diverse fields like history, literature, geography, anthropology, and other sources of knowledge have led to complications when comprehending encounters and their socio-politics as a moment of hegemonic and totalizing dominance of culture and knowledge production. Rather, they make it out to be more variable, difficult, and nuanced moment, as well as space, of encounter as Kant would put it (Durkheim & Fields 10). However, according to Cruikshank, the encounter and its aftermath is about how our relations are structured and how man constructs knowledge about his physical surroundings. After European accounts following their encounters with landscapes supersede the accounts of the natives, travel and scientific discourses took up, position as the fundamental means through which northwestern geography could be understood (Cruikshank 88). For the people who were indigenous to the St. Elias Mountains, the glaciers were considered t o be permanent boundaries that separated the static landscape from the humans. In their case, they were moving structures that they endowed with the sense of hearing, taste, and smelling. However, the native accounts should not be valued as historically fixed or as the truth that needs to be examined and discovered by scholars or explorers (Cruikshank 89). Rather, the native accounts about sentient glaciers show the fact that nature and man mutually make, as well as maintain, knowledge of a world that is habitable. Cruikshank is careful in asserting that glaciers must not be reduced to metaphors or scientific data (Cruikshank 108). Glaciers in their forcefulness, unpredictability, complexity, and changeability give a model for cultural history and knowledge production. The author makes her argument in a way that pays careful attention to representative politics, which is made difficult by the fact that she is using oral testimony in her work, while also discussing the representative difficulties of nature. She discusses in her book the account, in glaciers given by the natives, an examination of accounts by western explorers, and the US. In addition, she discusses a critical look at the nature of the glacier as part of the border between Canada and the US, and mapping’s role in the context of nationalism (Cruikshank 115). By giving a history of the Alaskan Gulf region and juxtaposing it with historical accounts from Europe about their ice age and histories from Tlingit, the glaciers became social spaces where people produce knowledge, rather than discover it. Oral accounts also allow the ability to examine the relationship between culture and nature, as well as how knowledge was constructed according to their cultures. Glaciers as used by Cruikshank aid in the examination of how glaciers are depicted and how social and natural knowledge is entangled. In the latter Ice Age period, social upheaval and geophysical changes in the mountains coincided (Cruiks hank 120). The visitors from Europe came with conceptions about nature as a spiritual and sublime resource for the progress of man. To them, glaciers were inanimate features that needed to be measured and

Mapping and The Geometry of Form and Function of Cities Dissertation

Mapping and The Geometry of Form and Function of Cities - Dissertation Example However, these models fail to address the very issues related to urban form. The development of these contemporary models does not take into account the urban development geometry. Instead, these are developed at an aggregate level. Batty and Longley (p. 72, 1994) comment ‘The best way to begin describing fractals is by example. A coastline and a mountain are examples of natural fractals, a crumpled piece of paper an example of an artificial one. However, such irregularity which characterizes these objects is not entirely without order and this order is to be found in fractals in terms of the following three principles. First, fractals are always self-similar, at least in some general sense. On whatever scale, and within a given range you examine a fractal, it will always appear to have the same shape or same degree of irregularity. The 'whole' will always be manifest in the 'parts'; look at a piece of rock broken off a mountain and you can see the mountain in the part. Look at the twigs on the branches of a tree and you can see the whole tree in these, albeit at a much reduced scale.’ Although, it has been observed that there is an acceptable level of consistency between such models and urban form but when it comes to the geometrical considerations of urban development, these are not dependent upon the processes and mechanisms (Bertuglia et al, 1987). The urban system models which are theoretical in nature, like the urban economics models, have shown a dependency upon the urban form through a set of assumptions. However, urban form has been defined by these models in terms of treating urban space as quite simple (Thrall, 1987). Hence, building a model which links a given form to statics and dynamics is very difficult because the relevance of form is considered as given and not something that arises out of the forces in action. As a consequence of this, all the research that has been conducted in urban form is considered to be highly idiosyncratic. However, as a result of some major developments during the last decade the science of form has seen some significant changes, especially within the areas of mathematics and physics. These developments have been brought about by the requirement to establish a connection between urban form and growth processes. In addition to this, another driving force has been the analysis of natural forms on the basis of the occurrence of the geometry of the irregular. Remarkable developments in the area of computer graphics have initiated the mathematical description and visualization of the urban forms. Making use of mathematical principles on fragmented structures, visualization has achieved a milestone (Mandeibrot, 1983). The developments have come about in terms of simulating natural forms (like landscapes) in a simple, yet realistic manner. This majorly involves addition of fractal ideas to produce simulations which are more conventional. This gets further deepened into theoretical ideas whi ch involves the generation of fractal structures through physical processes. The physics of critical

Essay --

Courage and Honesty in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Approximately 6000 years ago in the late 1300’s, a poem by the title of â€Å"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight† was written by an anonymous author. The poem was initially written in medieval literature with a very unique rhyme scheme, but was later translated to regular English for the purpose of studying and reading by high school students and researchers. The setting in the beginning of the story is in King Arthurs Court at a New Years Celebration. The celebration seems to be going well until the arrival of an uninvited guest. The Green Knight is introduced to the story when he arrives at the feast and asks the bulk of knights if they are willing to join him in a game. The point of the game is that he will allow which ever knight that chooses to challenge him one swing with an ax to try and chop off his head, but in order to play the game, the accepting knight must meet the green knight one year later at the green chapel so that he may do the same. After a great deal of taunting, the Green knight had finally provoked one of King Arthurs knights to accept his challenge. It just so happens that the bold knight Sir Gawain was the knight to step up to the plate. With only one swing, Sir Gawain is successful in chopping off the Green Knights head. To much astonishment, immediately after the knight is decapitated, he stands up, picks up h is head and is on his way. After a year, Sir Gawain sets off a journey to find the Green Chapel. While on his travels, Sir Gawain arrives at castle and is invited by the Lord to stay for the remainder of his trip.On the first morning of his stay, the Lord makes a deal with Sir Gawain. The deal is that the Lord will go out and search for the Green Cas... ...ed what he got. On the third day while the lord was hunting his wife gives Gawain this magic girdle that she tells him it will save him from the green knight. Gawain takes it and doesn't share what was rightfully the lords. For that woven garment you wear is my own girdle. My wife wove it, *so I know it well. I have missed no facts concerning your acts and kisses, Nor my wife's wooing of you; I brought it all about. I sent her to test you. You withstood her stoutly. You're the most faultless solider who walks on foot! This is explaining how the lord set up this trap for Gawain to fall into. This was to test his honesty and see if he would share this magic girdle that would save his life. Gawain was to the point were he wasn't looking to be honest with the lord and give him back the girdle. He knew if would of given up the girdle the green knight would of killed him.