This and this remind me of a HBR article I read last month. Yes, this fits in very well. I'll have some comments on this later.

“You can either buy clothes or buy pictures,” she said. “It’s that simple. No one who is not very rich can do both. Pay no attention to your clothes and no attention at all to the mode, and buy your clothes for comfort and durability, and you will have the clothes money to buy pictures.” –from A Moveable Feast.

THE END

Today I thought I'd do an entry about my Real Estate thesis project, which I just finished a week ago. It's a proposal for a mixed-use development for one of the last remaining parcels of developable land on Baltimore’s waterfront. The entire report is nearly 100 pages, so I won't link to it from here. What I will link is the executive summary of the report and the animated fly-through I created to sell the owner on the project.

Click here to view the Executive Summary.
(79K PDF - Acrobat Reader required)

Here's an excerpt from the report: Celebrating the city’s past, but with a decidedly forward-looking attitude, Canton Marine embodies the essence of everything that is wonderful about urban life in Baltimore: waterfront living, 24-hour recreation, a mix of fine retail and dining, and a place to work where you won’t mind staying late in the evening. In fact, bring the kids to the office—they’ll find plenty to do here.

Click to view fly-through animation.
(2.54 MB - Windows Media Player required)

It was a lot of work, a lot of fun, and at times a serious emotional strain. It was a semester full of blood, sweat, and tears. Through it all, I realized that making team dynamics work is often more difficult than developing a good project. Thanks to James, Koo, Charles and Jaekil for all their help, skepticism, critical thought, financial wizardry, marketing genius, and of course, hard work.

Human beings need to create a space of existence that is their own. The world has too much information for one person to begin to comprehend, and in fact it is not necessary to attempt to understand everything. Ideas and things that are simple—that help individuals establish their place within the universe and understand the chaos around them—are quite valuable.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Every May 4th while I was in architecture school, hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people would congregate around our building to remember the horrible incident. Sadly, we were too busy working on our projects to really care. Academic life can be a sad existence at times.

Work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work. Almost done almost done almost done almost done almost done almost done almost done almost done almost done almost done.