I went all out during my first attempt at making soap. I only used techniques that were used by homesteaders in the past.  I used potash to leech and collect the lye. I used natural leaf lard from one of my dad’s pigs for the fat. I even boiled down the lye to a solid to make for more accurate measurements. But, as you can see from the pictures from Part 1 and Part 2,  it did not end well.

“The Secret of Secrets” by Sant Darshan Singh is a spectacular book recommended to me by my roommate, Raji.  It is a bit tricky to find, but you can find it with a bit of digging on amazon or barnes and noble.  I wouldn’t normally post about books, but since this one is both obscure and amazing, I thought I should put it out there.

It is a great book for people who have a basic understanding of eastern spirituality and religions, but who want to get a bit deeper into it.  The book takes a slightly unorthodox structure; instead of drawing out topics through flowing chapters, Darshan Singh instead focuses on a particular issue for each chapter.  I find that this style makes for a more logical and easier read.

Star Wars Uncut – Scene 437 from Nirav Patel on Vimeo.

A project done over the summer with Nirav Patel. Link.

See Part 1.  These are with a bit more practice, although it may not look like it.

Paintings should generally not have descriptions.  These are some watercolors from when I did not really know what I was doing.

I wanted to make soap from scratch for two reasons.   The first was already generally discussed – I knew about the ethical and health problems associated commercial soaps and I wanted to try to do something about it.  But the second reason had slightly fuzzier objectives.  I believe that true knowledge is gained from struggle.  And so going through the fundamental processes of soap making was my way of struggling with the problem in order to uncover the fundamental ideas it contained.  I always remind myself that “scientists can explain the world through science, mathematicians can explain the world through mathematics, and sheep-herders can explain the world through sheep-herding”.  Also, I think because I grew up on a farm, I tend to enjoy old-fashioned, do-it-yourself projects.

So, by making soap from scratch, I was attempting to do something that is not done anymore by most people (including myself).  I was attempting to do something the hard way.  While doing it, I spent an entire day just thinking about soap.  I think that is a pretty powerful idea in itself.  Technology gives us width and breadth in our knowledge, but it often has a way of discouraging us to go deep into one particular idea.  But if we never go deep, how will we ever continue to discover those fundamental essences that make up our individual foundations?  How will mathematicians explain the world through mathematics if they are sitting on a computer being bombarded by incalculable amounts of stimuli?  How will the scientists explain the world through science if they are out with their credit cards wading through an endless number of possible shoes to buy?  And how will the sheep-herder explain the world through sheep-herding if Monsanto just bought all of his sheep?

In Environmental Systems, our main project was to design and produce a complete set of construction documents for a small 1800sf house. The house needed to be environmental, sustainable, and cheap. It also needed to have different options for different climates.  Throughout the class we learned about a wide range of topics, from passive and active solar strategies, to thermal envelopes, to the pros and cons of HVAC systems, to how to use and draw psychometric charts. I wanted to produce a building that took advantage of simple passive techniques that applied to all kinds of climates without too much change to design. The most obvious is the large overhanging roof that shades the strong summer sun and lets in the winter sun, protects from northern winter winds and directs southern summer winds, and shelters an outdoor living space. But beyond this, I worked to incorporate sustainability into every scale of the project, from the window placement to the corner stud details.

Soap began as a simple technology; combine lye leeched from wood ash with water, and then add pure animal fat at the correct temperature to make soap. But as most things in this world, advancements in technology have told us that we can do it better, faster, and cheaper. And soap became just that: better at cleaning, easily available at any local grocery store, and cheaper. But as this shift was taking place, names of unpronounceable chemicals began to be listed on the sides of soap packaging. “Triclosan” is an FDA approved pesticide. “Dioxin” is a chemical that was used in Agent Orange. “Sodium Lauryl Sulfate” is a chemical that has numerous health risks, including cancer and infertility. And stories of animal testing appeared on local and national news sites. And some began to question.

Soap is just one small battleground in the larger war faced today.  I decided to make soap because it is often forgotten amongst the “Global Warmings” and the “Stem Cell Researches” that control popular discussion. And it is a bit funny, “Who would ever bother to make soap?”

Studio 4 with Tim Love was by far my most academically stimulating studio at Northeastern.  Studio 4 is the housing studio at Northeastern, and this semester we worked on wood frame courtyard housing in Boston while dealing with all of the code issues that plague and inspire architects every day.  But the brilliance of this studio was not entirely concentrated in the design problems we faced, but more through the academic approach of the studio.  Instead of following the traditional practice of getting a site and putting a project on it, we instead did the reverse.  We developed a courtyard housing prototype, aggregated it to form a block, and then placed it along with the rest of the projects in the studio into a mock city in South Boston.  The end result is an instant city where we could literally count the number of pillows throughout or do FAR calculations of each block.  The profoundness of this studio is pretty obvious when you put it into this kind of perspective.

Studio 3 took place in Rome, which is almost all I need to say about it.  The program was treated less as four distinct classes and more as one entire experience, which is the best way to treat studying abroad.  That being said, our studio was a complete engagement with Roman history and architecture, and the result was incredibly stimulating and profound.  Our project was to design new space for the school’s architecture program in a ruin of a boathouse (the Arsenal) on the Trastevere bank of the Tiber dating back 500 years.  Instead of inserting a form into the Arsenal, I instead chose to strip down the building to its raw structure.  By doing this, the building embraces the Roman tradition of the piazza, but in a way that is unlike any other piazza throughout the city.  Each other piece of program (an auditorium, café, classrooms, dorm, dock along the river, and administration) was designed as a reaction to the Arsenal, the site, and Rome itself.