The Frank Garry video we watched last week was very inspiring. The reason Frank Garry is so unique is because he is both an artist and an architect. He is open minded looks at design as "design is design is design" as Richard would say. It is also his spontaneous attitude that is not afraid to fail. He tries crazy things that other architects would find impossible or to crazy.

We went to Zahner an architecture and design company in Kansas City a few weeks ago and it was the first company that we went to that experiments with materials regularly. They mostly make big metal features for well known companies such as Burberry, Denies and many others. They had a lot of tools for cutting mettle and such but the most unique one we saw was the water cutter that could actually cut through metal.

Interesting fact they designed an architectural piece for the "vomitory" of NASA.

Our third trip for Materials and Processes was to Hallmark which was a lot more of what I expected when thinking of a factory. But I never expected so much work to be put into a single card. There is printing, cutting, more cutting, sparkles, felt, pressing, folding, packaging and more. The sparkle machine was cool because the way they applied the glue to the specific spots was by having a plastic sheet of the design of the card with wholes in it, the glue then was spread over this piece while the cards ran under it. Then sparkles sprinkle over them.
The company also makes their own machines with the engineers they hire. These machines are very secretive because they are the only ones in the world. I think its impressive that hallmark takes the machinery into there own hands instead of waiting for some machine making company to come up with something.
The background of Hallmark was also interesting. Hallmark started from nothing and became so much, but it was because someone took a risk with their whole life. I think this dare devil attitude is really intimidating and hard to have, but I know it is something that is necessary in the design world.

The second trip we went on in Materials and Processes was Stars Signs. Stars had a lot of interesting machines, my favorite was the lazor cutter because of all of the intricate cuts it was able to do. The paint room was also really impressive, it was big enough to fit at least two cars in. Something fun I enjoyed was this little devise that held a bunch of screws that you could then paint over. Its just interesting how they have a device for something as small as that. Over all I think this trip was an interesting experience.

First Trip

A few weeks ago for one of my classes at KU, Materials and Processes, we went on a field trip to an organ manufacturing company an Lawrence KS. I found the whole process very interesting, specifically the amount of work done by hand. I think most people assume that everything is done by machines, but there is still a great deal of work done by hand. One thing being making the aluminum, also the leather that is attached to the bottom of each organ. I really admired the quality and effort put into making each organ. I think it would be really amazing and interesting if more companies made products that were meant to last.