Happy Thanksgiving to all my US viewers! Unfortunately I didn't get as far as I wanted to in my thesis book. I did get pretty far though, I just have a few more diagrams and some text to add in, then it is just minor changes. I have my next and final meeting with my thesis adviser a week from Friday, by then I will have my entire book complete. So right now it is just another week!

For today I have been working on fixing my existing diagrams and making new one, following the list I talked about last time. I have a plan to cross off three things off the list, and that should get me to finish all the major things until Thanksgiving; it helps that I'm off from class this week, so I have more time to work on them. My book is almost there; right now it is just the final stretch. One of the new things that I included in my thesis book is a basic week by week schedule for next semester, so I know what I want to produce and have at the end of thesis. Right now it is looking like a new dynamic facade that influences the interior spaces and responds to both environmental and employee conditions and specifications. For now though, it is just to get this book as complete and well-presented that I can in the remaining few weeks.

Today I talked to my thesis adviser today before Thanksgiving break. There are several things that I have to work on in my thesis book. Things that I have to work on are: quantifying my design and performance criteria, finish my environmental data diagrams and do environmental diagrams for my specific floor plate, reorganize my context pages, fix some of the existing diagrams, make my tree and food web diagrams relate more to an office, start designing my dynamic facade and see how it affects the space, and lastly outline my what I am going to work on next semester to finish my thesis. Doing all that will complete my thesis book, then I just have to add page numbers, make everything refer to my color scheme, and figure out how to bind it.

Since Thursday I have been working on my thesis book. I've drawn an axon around the Willis Tower, started making the weather data my own by re-diagramming it into a more readable format, and I have done some work on the precedent diagrams. By Thursday I plan on having very close to my entire book complete, so that after that I just have to work on small things. Overall I think it is coming out nicely.

Sorry about the really late post tonight. Today I spoke with my thesis adviser and I have a clear path to finish my thesis prep book. The project that my book will lead to next semester is a dynamic facade that responds to environmental conditions, user specifications, and plays a part in heat gain of the space. For next Thursday I will get my book as complete as human possible so that I can get feedback on the entire complete book and make minor changes to it until my final review. Aside from completing the book, there are some "minor" things that I need to complete by next Thursday as well, namely putting a scale on the plans and making the weather data my own diagrams and more readable - I plan on doing this by incorporating this information into the site plan.

Over the weekend I didn't do too much for thesis, as I had other projects that I had to do work for. However I did find some new precedents that look exactly at what I am looking at: day-lighting. These include:

Office Building of the Future, by William McDonough+Partners

(http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com/projects/view/office_building_future)

Sinosteel International Plaza, by MAD Architects

(http://www.arch2o.com/sinosteel-international-plaza-mad-architects/)

Institute du Monde Arabe, Jean Nouvel

(http://www.archdaily.com/162101/)

One aspect of those projects is that the facades play with the day-lighting. I have also begun mapping out the area of Chicago inside the "loop", so that I can see how the Willis Tower relates to the greater city area, and how one influences the other. For Thursday, I plan on having my mapping of the "loop" complete, and to have at least what else I need to make my project richer.

Yesterday I had my second thesis review. I thought it went better than my first one; the conversation about my project was a lot more focused. I now need to focus on a few things, the first being how the Willis Tower relates to the whole city of Chicago - I have weather data for Chicago so I need to relate that to the city and to the Willis Tower. I need to have my work present biomimicry not as a metaphor for sustainability, but as a tool to accomplish sustainability. Some of my diagrams are overly simplistic, so I need to add the appropriate complexity to them. I need to focus exactly on what I think is important for an office space, so far it is day-lighting and how it affects the interior of the office and the people who work there. And finally I need to decide what it is exactly that I want to design, currently it is looking like a responsive facade. I'll use the specific office that I chose as a testing ground for the facade and show how it can be applied to the building and see how that affects the city. This will bring my research full circle.

Sorry for posting so late again. For today I have been working on new diagrams and my book layout. I have a different color scheme, and the general feel of the book is different now, I think it's a marked improvement. So far it is still a work in progress, but by my review on Wednesday I will have more diagrams and have the layout more finalized. Not all the pages have been converted to the new layout, and for one of the "chapter" pages I am trying out an idea (the image does not belong to me). For Wednesday all the pages will follow a single layout instead of the testing ground of layouts that they are now.