Now that the transportation planning component of the project is mostly complete (although I still have a bit of work to do in documenting the process behind choosing the proposed transit routes and station locations), I need to shift the focus of my efforts in two ways.
First, from now on I’ll be concentrating more on the architectural portion of the project, in the design of the typical stations as well as the main transit hub at Fountain Square. The typical stations will fall into three broad categories: Subway, Elevated, and Surface. The prototypical station designs won’t apply to every single proposed station on the Metro system, but they’ll cover the most common station types, and even the atypical stations will be variations on the same design concepts. The Fountain Square station, being the hub of the system located in the heart of downtown, will require some special treatment and further development.
Secondly, even though I’ll be producing content that applies to the project and will ultimately be published on this site, my primary focus over the next six weeks or so will be updating my design portfolio for grad school admissions. Even though this project is far from complete, I plan to include it in the portfolio, which means I need to get lots of design ideas down on paper even if they aren’t fully developed. The College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati is having an open house for prospective M.Arch. applicants on October 16th, and I’m hoping to make the trip back home to Cincinnati for the occasion. My goal is to have a final draft of my portfolio complete by then.
After I get back from the open house, I’ll make whatever changes I need, and then have copies of it printed and bound for inclusion with my admissions packets. (In addition to DAAP, I’ll be applying to three or four other programs as well.) Meanwhile, I’ll complete the design portion of the project and add that content to this site. I hope to have that largely done by the holidays, at which point I’ll shift my focus toward the written portion of the project before submitting the final draft for review in March.
On top of all that, I’m now taking an evening Algebra / Trigonometry class at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, completing additional work for my BA degree at DePaul, and maintaining full-time employment. As such, this fall will be pretty intense for me, but hopefully I’ll still find time to post updates and commentary here.
Wish me luck…
