t
Arts
Page 8 Daily Nebraskan Wednesday, February 28,2001
Architecture Hall
The Final Years
Fifth-, sixth-year students
prepare in spacious setting
BY CHRIS JACOBS
If third-year UNL architecture students dwell in
the pit of Architecture Hall, fifth- and sixth-year stu
dents live in the attic. They earn their way up there,
gaining more space and even a few windows here and
there.
They seem more relaxed and laid-back, yet much
like their younger brothers and sisters, they con
tribute large amounts of work to the architecture fam
ily.
The same story: No sleep. No consistent meals.
Projects with a multitude of conclusions. But the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln fifth- and sixth-year
students look healthier and don’t seem as high strung.
There are a number of explanations. The attic,
separated into fifth- and sixth-year sections, is spa
cious. There is enough room for each student to cre
ate his or her own home. They have couches and
chairs.
By die fifth year, the students have figured out that
it's easier to take a coffee break if you have your own
coffee maker right next to you. By the sixth, there’s a
student-run store - yes, a store - where students can
buy a can of beef stew or a computer disk by leaving a
few dollars in a can.
They have dividers between each work space. If
they want to, they
can exclude
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Robert Shafer assigned,, said
UNL architecture student jixth'yef5 s.tu‘
- dent Maxine
Karam. In the
third, it’s more focused practical-room issues.
“They sort of throw you in there without really
knowing anything,” die said.
Robert Shafer, another sixth-year student who
works in the attic next to Karam, said the program
became more focused from the fourth year on.
“You do detailed models like one-half scaled
models,” Shafer said. “You do light fixtures. You do
carpet You do walls. You can even put in furniture.
“I’m designing a hand-rail right now. It gets down
to that I’m designing a hand rail that’s based on how
you actually hold onto it I don’t even have the whole
building, yet I’m designing a hand rail. You come
across these little details, you write them down and
you end up putting them in there somehow.”
Sixth-year architecture students are given the lib
erty to choose their own final projects. They have the
entire year to finish them, working in conjunction
with a professor. Karam said there were about three
students for every one professor.
Though the workload may become more person
al, the amount of time spent working on the projects
stays the same. The graduate students, however, seem
to have better methods for using their time.
“I think there's a stronger need for time manage
ment," said Joel Pehrson, a sixth-year student from
Lincoln. “In the earlier years, because you’re younger,
you tend to stay up later. You can go until three or four
in the morning and bum that oil
“As you get into the graduate level, you become
more professional. A lot of students get here earlier
and go to sleep around 11 or 12. You learn from the
experience of pulling all-nighters. Your work, as far as
quality of work, is better if you go home and just get
Derek Lippincott/DN
Fifth-year architecture students work on designs and models
for a parking garage near Memorial Stadium.
four or five hours of sleep.”
Pehrson, who’s working on a hypothetical project
for a non-traditional art school in urban St Louis, said
he hadn’t pulled an all-nighter in two years.
Shafer and Karam both agreed all-nighters
weren’t necessary, but the program still required
extensive hours.
Said Shafer “I get up in the morning. I come here.
I work until dinner time. I go home, eat and come
back. I work until one o’clock in the morning. I go
home and go to bed. Wake up in the morning...”
Karam, whose project involves a renovation of
Whittier Junior High School at 22nd and Vine streets
into a student apartment complex, said it was advan
tageous to spend time at Architecture Hall.
“For you to do your homework, you have to be
here,” she said. “So you could be at home, but then
you wouldn't get feedback from people because
you're not here.”
Shafer painted a more poetic portrait of his task as
an architecture student
“It’s like an artist,” he said. "An artist can wake up
in the middle of the night and think about stuff. It’s the
same thing here.
“If you don’t love it, get the hell out. If you don’t
love it and you’re not willing to be here all the time,
then I don’t think you have enough passion to do it,
and you should leave.”
Fifth- and sixth-year students also said their pri
vate lives were dominated by the program.
Nick Schulz, a fifth-year architecture student, said
it could be hard to relate with students outside the
college.
“You don’t have much to talk about (with other
friends),” said Schulz, who’s engaged. “‘So how’s stu
dio?’ ‘Well, I did this and this’... ‘That sucks.’
“You have your own private conversations with
(the people in your studio) because they know what
you’re going through. If you try and explain it to out
side people, it’s like talking gibberish because they
don’t understand you.
“You have to have very understanding girlfriends
and boyfriends. The only time I see my fiancee is
when she’s in bed sleeping.”
Karam said she didn’t really have friends outside
the college, and Shafer said he grew close to others
because he slept at Architecture Hall every day of the
week during his fourth year in the program, rather
than commute each day from Omaha.
“I went home on Friday night and Saturday,”
Shafer said. “Other than that, I slept in a cot, brought
my clothes down and took showers at the Rec Center.”
Many students expressed diversity within the
program. During graduate school, each student must
take an elective outside of the college, said Pehrson,
who took life drawing class to expand his interest in
art Karam said many students took filmmaking class
es.
The majority of the fifth- and sixth-year students
have had experience studying abroad, much different
than in Nebraska.
Said Shafer "There is hardly anything in this state
that’s considered decent architecture. There’s the crap
that’s being built across the street (the Embassy
Suites). People perceive that as ‘Oh wow that’s great;
it’s a nice building’ when actually it’s doing a disserv
ice to the architecture business. It takes their ability to
recognize good architecture, and it brings it down a
level.
“They take Embassy Suites, with what we refer to
Derek Uppincott/DN
Robert Shafer, a sixth-year architecture student works on a model in the sixth-year studio.The sixth-year studio, the most spa
cious at Architecture Hall, was once the building's attic
Derek Lippincott/DN
Ryan Pavlik, a fifth-year architecture student, works on his laptop computer late at night at Architecture Hall."When I'm feeling
slow, I just drink a pot of coffee," he said.
as rubber stamping, and put it here and there and this
state and that state. The aesthetics are always the
same. They have nothing to do with the surround
ings.”
Corey Hoelker, a second-year graduate student in
architecture, said the program could be closed in its
effort to extend to a diverse curriculum.
“They have a really restricted curriculum that you
have to follow in order to graduate with a degree,”
Hoelker said. "So you find yourself taking classes with
the same 45 people. In that sense, I feel like we’re living
in a glass box.
“It’s good in that it helps gain the technical knowl
edge and really gets into the issues of architecture in
depth with the people you’re comfortable around.
But after taking a 900-level English class, I see how
that doesn’t allow us to be diverse here. There doesn't
seem to be as much openness to different things. It
makes for some isolation.”
The struggle for absolute diversity is understand
able. The college does require a lot out of the students.
Does it really have room for outside curriculum? It's
hard to tell.
Nevertheless the strength of this program cannot
be denied. Students work as hard, if not harder as is
suggested, in this program than students in any other.
They fight deadlines. They can be weeded out They
don’t sleep. What more can you really ask?
Dave Matthews Band discovers a new sound with 'Everyday' CD
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Dave Matthews and his band
have been coasting on a reputa
tion for the past few years, pack
ing houses and filling seats with
their own choir members ready
for a conversion speech.
Meanwhile, the rest of the
world has been sitting with their
ears closed. Once you hear the
same sermon a few times, you
stop listening. Even if the chorus
changes a little.
I liked “Under the Table and
Dreaming” a lot. I had never
heard anything like it... until
“Crash.” And it didn't take long
until I couldn’t tell one song from
the next That’s when they lost me.
It has gotten to the point
where if you’re a DMB fan, you
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not, you never will be. The Dave
Matthews Band has become an
exclusive genre of its own.
This is dangerous for a band.
If you’re sonically stagnant, you’re
not going to win recruits. In fact,
the only thing you can do to
change your number of fans is
bore die die-hards away.
listening to their new album,
"Everyday,” I think Dave has final
ly figured that out because finally,
this album is different
Whereas old DMB tended to
saunter, shimmy and bounce
around, this new material struts
and stomps with a sneering confi
dence that seems fairly self-aware
of its guaranteed reception and
prepared to sink its teeth into
those feeding hands.
This album has an overall
darker, menacing sound, and if
that scares the hippies, then rock
on.
I couldn’t help but get the feel
ing throughout this album that
Dave is not only aware of the criti
cism of his band, but he has no
choice but to agree with it.
Take the lead-off single “I Did
It.” Double-tracked snarly Dave
spits out lines like "Do you think
I've gone too far?” and “You’d bet
ter lock me up - I’ll do it again,”
which, on the surface, seem to
scoff at critics and stand defiantly
proud of the band.
But were he so proud and
confident, why bring about the
evolution in the band’s sound?
Why not more songs full of love
and hippiness instead of these
dark, alienated songs that border
on the emotional territory of the
best of today’s emo-rock?
I think Dave is sad and frus
trated. If I were selling and playing
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around, I think I would be too.
And if you’re a Dave fan who
likes things the way they are, you
might be sad too because he has
gone and made an album that
caters less to you and more to
those of us who have sat content
edly outside of the church for the
past few years.
Non-Dave fans: Start with “So
Right,” “What You Are” and “I Did
It” for the best examples of the
change.
Now, it’s not like he’s gone rap
metal or anything drastic like that
If old fans are turned off by this
slight alteration, I’d question why
they liked the band in the first
place.
But there are those little
excursions into the emo-rock ter
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guitars that definitely enrich the
sound.
In another example, fairly
trad-Dave tracks, such as "When
the World Ends” and “The Space
Between,” are touched with such
a slight dreamy, post-grunge
Seattle arpeggio treatment that I
could be branded a heretic for
even suggesting it.
If there is to be a Dave album
to break down the walls, this is it
Non-Davers, if you don’t like it,
then you can rest, confident in
your anti-Dave conclusion.
But give this one a chance
because you might be surprised.
This band is pretty good. In fact,
UPC should bring them here.
Dave Matthews Band
“Everyday” RCA
