Dragon Day was one of Cornell’s oldest traditions traced back to about 1900 when the architecture students built a long green snake and paraded it around campus. By the time I arrived the tradition had been expanded and regulatized to become a series of events linked across the entire school year.

It begins with Picture Day near the beginning of the fall semester where the second year students orchestrate a highly visible prank on all the freshmen (the particulars of which I will not disclose in order to preserve its integrity). This sets up a second prank day, Sprinkler Day, the night before the freshman final reviews. By the spring the onus of organizing these school-wide events shifted to the first years (now properly indoctrinated) whose primary obligation was Dragon Day, just before spring break.

In just half a semester, a life-sized dragon would have to be designed and built, in addition to all the fundraising efforts (primarily from t-shirt design and sale) and party planning. In our year we made a competition out of the t-shirt design and logo design (necessary for creating a stencil to tag the school with green spray paint). Some of my ideas were incorporated into the final designs, though I didn’t win the full commission. I was also very active in the design of the dragon itself where we made a radical departure from the upright structure of previous years on a shopping-cart-style chassis. The new design would be for a horizontal dragon in the flying position, with a pivoting cantilevered neck and as many moveable parts as we could think up. The first years, whose job it was to parade to beast around campus, would be protected inside the welded steel frame of the body and the Chinese-dragon-style tail from projectiles being hurled by our traditional nemeses, the engineers.

[As a quick aside, the engineers also have a role each dragon day: to make sure it doesn't happen. That has meant anything from them stealing the dragon's head during construction to building a castle in front of their quad filled with dragon slayers. I've never heard of a time when they were ultimately successful]

This new design required a new type of chassis. Instead of building one ourselves from scratch we decided to buy an old Volks Wagen van for a few hundred dollars and tear it apart. Dismantling that van piece by piece until only the chassis, four wheels, the driver’s seat and a steering wheel were left is still today one of my fondest memories.

A couple other design innovations that I was involved with: the square cardboard scales, rotated at 45 degrees and fixed at 3 corners in an overlapping fashion (the previous year they used tear-drop-shaped scales fixed only at the top: much harder to cut efficiently and much easier to blow upward in the wind); and the retractable wings made of metal conduit and fabric on an elaborate pulley system (these lasted for about 10 mins on the day. They got snagged in a tree and broke off).

Dragon Day itself begins really early. Actually, it begins the night before with a massive toilet papering of every tree on the entire campus. The upperclassmen then stay up late to work on insane constumes and wake up early for a breakfast of beer and pancakes. The first years, who have been up for about 3 nights in a row, make the final adjustments to the structure as everyone assembles waiting for the festivities to commence. Onlookers from the University and the entire city of Ithaca come out to watch each year. The parade takes a route along the main campus roads making a large circle towards the center of the Arts Quad. Along the way the projectile hurlers get tackled by architecture students protecting the dragon, then the skirmishes get broken up by campus security dressed in riot gear. Once the journey is complete, the dragon is laid to rest with a ceremonial burning (burning the dragon is now apparently not permitted on campus). Each member of the parade then gets their turn to scamper around the growing bonfire. The fire is then safely extinguished be the local fire department and the clean-up crews go to work.

For the architecture students the evening is capped off with a massive party in first year studios. I missed my first post-dragon party. Having been awake for 72+ hours and pushed a massive sculpture around for about a mile, I passed out for a few hours in the living room of my dorm before heading to bed for 12 hours. I had never given so much time and effort over to anything in my life up to that point. This explained why I got a C- for that half of the semester (the minimum passing grade was a C). Luckily I had a very strong support network in placed that staged an intervention once they knew I was failing.

I look forward to the big alumni celebration happening the March for the new Milstein Hall building. I hope to catch a glimpse of what this semester’s Dragon Day celebration will be like. Maybe I’ll see a tag for the class of ’16 on the newly constructed building.

The review featured high highs and low lows with a generally consistent level of discourse. I plan on posting some images (with the proper permissions) once I receive the materials from the students. The review also included by sister, Nina Cooke John, on the jury; her first visit to Syracuse since she taught here herself about 8 years ago.

The rest of the semester will be final conferences with my students (exit interviews as they call them), and thesis and thesis prep reviews. I’m very much looking forward to these and will be posting some thoughts on those students’ performances next week.

The winter break will be focused on finalizing construction documents for the South Side Food Coop and writing lectures for next semester’s furniture design class.

For the second year in a row, my work has been included in a group showing of the architecture faculty here at the SOA at Syracuse University.  Though my contribution was not as extensive as last year’s “Motive Force” (a three-person show including Larry Bowne and Richard Rosa), this year’s “Furnished” still gave me an opportunity to design and build a new piece.

The show is a collection of furniture and product design pieces, built or designed by SOA faculty.  Each piece, as curated by Lena Vassilev, is organized in a series of vignette displays, each with it’s own combination of white surfaces (from wall paper to ceramic tile to faux-fur).

My own entry is a small bench made with laminated Homasote panels connected by hidden bolts, a custom-fabricated pair of metal brackets, and (don’t tell my students) glue.  Since the piece was originally conceived of as cast concrete, I was very happy with the finish of the Homasote.  It clearly looks like concrete, but is half the weight and soft to the touch (almost velvety).  I can imagine creating a series of these in different sizes, configurations and made of a variety of laminated and cast materials.

I was happy for the students to be exposed to the variety of work that the faculty thinks about and produces.  Dean Mark Robbins refers to a scalar difference between furniture design and building design.  I prefer to think of both scales in the same way and to include furniture and product design in the expansive skill set of the architect.  To that end, I’m also happy to have at least one piece in the show since I’ll be teaching a furniture design studio (the first of it’s kind at SOA) next spring.  More on that class in later posts.

The content of the blog will be extremely varied. From current and proposed project updates, to gallery and lecture events, to new publications, to school updates, to general thoughts and insights (rants and ravings) on architecture, architectural practice and architectural education.

I hope you enjoy the content as it grows and develops, and I hope you visit often to follow my trail of thought.