joe singer's blog

Your first impression of the Ice Arena is not a good one. The parking lot is rough, the building is unlandscaped and without any signs identifying what it is. I entered through some bland doors and sat in a dark lobby. We were greeted by our host who gave us a run-through of what the plans for the building are. There are four phases for the building, the first one just completed.

“I wonder what phase the lobby is going to get redone,” I think to myself as I try to get comfortable.

“Our lobby has just been redone as part of the first phase,” our guide somehow answered me.

“Oh…” I thought  with all the disappointment that I could muster at 8am. But as she began to tell us about the changes they made and the changes they have left to do the situation improved. The dark rubber flooring was made specifically so that you can wear ice skates on it going back and forth between the two rinks, and the old vending machines were going to get replaced with a nice new shop. My heart suddenly dropped as she referred to the curling rink as “the area that used to be the curling rink”. That was my favorite part of the school! It was whimsical in a weird and unique way! I didn’t even want to go in. But luckily the curling rink was still be used to curl on, only now other sports could be played on it also. Our guide somehow had a way of toying with my emotions.

Afterward the curling excursion we traveled to a room shining with bright blue engines with the noise of jet engines. The guide gave us neat bits of trivia like the main ice is between 14 and 16 degrees while the curling rink is between 16 and 24 degrees. There are now seven locker rooms and everything is within the ADA. I was excited to hear that some new events are coming to the arena such as MMA fights and rodeos. And they even through some green technology in for good measure with a new lighting system.

How can you not love this guy?

As I was leaving and jogging down my notes I realized that I didn’t know the official name of the building. I thought that it just had to have somebody’s obscure name in front of it. But apparently its the only building I know of on the entire campus that doesn’t. Ironically, because the most famous guy to come out of this town was an ice skater. Scott Hamilton Ice Arena? Well, maybe they should wait until a much nicer arena is built in 20 or 30 years.

As an environmentalist, I chose to write a critique on research article on ecotourism. I found the perfect article with Oliver Kruger’s article “The role of ecotourism in conservation: panacea or Pandora’s box”. Kruger himself works for the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. As his explanative yet cliché title suggests, the article explores the pros and cons of bringing in humans to see rare places or animals.  As he writes in his introduction “the dilemma of conserving nature while achieving short-term economic gains to satisfy people was faced by many countries, especially those less developed”.

Ecotourism at its cutest

The logic of his research and the paper as a whole is very solid. In the paper you can hear somewhat of warning tone that the ecotourism is not a cure all. The author manages to keep most of his biases out of the paper although the premise of the paper is a loaded question. I think this was because he took a fairly neutral approach to his research. He used every case study written about ecotourism he could find (251 of them) and evaluated the subject of each to see where they took place, what species they were looking for, and how sustainable the trips seemed to be. He then looked to see if there was a correlation between those three things. I thought this was a good method as most of his data was good from the start, and because he used a huge number of them, he was ensured that he would have a statistically diverse set of cases.

 The execution of his diagrams had significant problems. His pie chart used several patterns and shades that are nearly impossible to separate with the naked eye. Furthermore on his bar graphs he compares things with different units on the same graph which is takes the reader awhile to decipher.

The format of his paper follows the traditional layout of a standard research article. He opens with an abstract and an introduction and includes sections for methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements and references. His language is very clear and, unusually for a research paper, is very active. I detest scholarly papers that are written so passively that it sounds like they were written by Yoda.

I’m not quite sure what to think of his conclusion. His ending argument is that the best way to protect the environment is to pick a “flagship animal” and to stay away from Africa and Asia. He goes until great length discussing how 63% of the case studies were deemed sustainable, then gives three reasons why no weight should be given to that number. Then why include it all? Yet overall, the paper is important and takes a pretty hard look at the greenwashing that is typically associated with ecotourism.

Full article found here

 A few weeks ago I attended a speech given by an NFL Official named Bob Waggoner. I’m not a huge football fan myself (as in, I’ve never actually watched a game), so I didn’t know quite what to expect. I actually thought that all the guys on the field where the “referees” and an official was one of the NFL’s lawyers or something. So, while I learned more about football than I ever have in my life, I also learned quite a bit about what it takes to start a career in the NFL and the certain person it takes to do the job.

Bob has been an official for 14 years now and was a probation officer before that. I had no idea that the background of officials was so diverse. Some were lawyers, others were officials from other sports, and some others were teachers. I thought teachers was sort of random at first, but considering the amount of high school coaches that are involved in with their schools sports I guess not. The work week of an official is pretty rough, they often work six days a week during the season. I couldn’t believe that some people were able to be an official and keep a normal day job. Bob said “it just depends on the life style you want to live,” which I think meant “how much money do you want”. Still, all the money in the world is worthless if you don’t have time to spend it. Bob himself reminded me a lot of a judge; very neutral and collected yet still with an unspoken authority. I could tell though that he very much enjoyed the thrill of the game. He started with a montage of clips of coaches exchanging words with officials and the whole time Bob was smiling against the wall of the room. He had to have seen that video a hundred times yet he still loves it. Even the position of official (if that’s the correct term) that he wanted most was be next to coaches because simply that’s where the action is. I understood the amount of stress that is put on these officials. He is essentially graded by the teams, the media, and the fans, and expected to be perfect. I like how he acknowledged that there is an average of three mistakes per game, yet they are still accurate 98.6% of the time.

Ultimately I learned that being an NFL official is not for me, but Bob was pretty inspirational in proving that hard work pays off if you do it long enough.

The 2000 summer Olympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia, leaving behind a mixed legacy. Glen Searle, a professor of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology in Sydney wrote about such in his article “Uncertain Legacy: Sydney’s Olympic Stadiums”. One of the major long lasting problems seems to be that primary focus of the buildings was just for the two week long games; the fact that the facilities would be there for decades later always took a backseat in the design stage.

The biggest headache has come from the largest Olympic building called Stadium Australia. The article points out two main reasons why Stadium Australia has become such a white elephant. First, there is a lot of competition from other stadiums that the Australia Government had either built or renovated within ten years before the Olympics. Second, the national teams that are leased to play there bring in only small crowds. The author also points out that the stadium is perhaps just to big to sustain itself. It once held 110,000 people, and was reduced in size to 83,000 in 2003. The goal for the stadium was for it to be filled to capacity 41 times in two years ( nearly every other weekend) with football games. However, the stadium only ended up hosting 8 games. This resulted in a 24 million dollar loss in its first year, and a loss every year after that. Years later, a new problem arose in that that it is in the way of new urban expansion. I agree with the author that overall, the stadium was great for the country in the shortrun, but has been a source of concern ever since it was built. 

I found a New York Times article called “So, You Want to Hold an Olympics” that explains how the Atlanta Games were fianced. It seems that Atlanta paid for all the infrastructure such as roads, airport expansion, public transportation, etc., while all the venues were commercially funded. This might have been a better system for Sydney because the stadium could have been torn down when it was no longer needed and profitable.

Overall, I must say that BGSU’s Perry Field House is a wonderful building that is in fairly good shape for being 18 years old. I was particularly impressed at layout and size of the main entrance, information desk, offices, and conference room. Our entire class was in the lobby and various other rooms and it still seemed spacious. The designers seemed to plan ahead in this respect to the building. The exterior of the building is rather plain, but it still looks better than many other buildings on campus. The masons added some extra brickwork detailing that looks sharp. And at first glance, the main track and field room and football room are nicely laid out as well.

It wasn’t until our guide, Scott, pointed out a few serious design flaws that I had some second thoughts of the building. I had thought that the track and field room was meant to be just as a place where students good practice at various events, similar to the Rec Center. And in that respect the room is adequate. But as it turns out, the room houses some pretty large competitions at both the collegiate and high school levels. There is almost no room for bleachers, and when they are being used they are on the inside of the track facing outwards so that observers have to turn backwards to see most of the race. According to our book, most codes require that bleacher s have railings above 42 inches, and I believe those bleachers had them. Interestingly, most of the codes are written after 1999, and because those bleachers were built in 1992, they may or may not be meeting other codes. Furthermore, our book states on page 307 that a designer must give “incredible attention to facility layout, including plenty of space for equipment storage”. Clearly this was not as the storage room is crowded with bulky sports equipment. It has gotten so bad that they wanting to build a pole barn behind the field house.  

 In other respects, the building meets the standards in our book with ease. For example, it recommends a 10 foot unobstructed zone of space around the basketball courts. Our courts do that by being surrounded by the track and having the nets suspended from the ceiling. Also, enough height was given to the building all around to include events such as pole vaulting.

Technology is seems to be everywhere these days, especially in the tourism business. I really don’t do a lot of online shopping, but when I do, it’s most often on those websites that get you deals on airline tickets and hotel rooms. I’ve used them for a few years and have gotten quite proficient at them. Unfortunately, those websites were about the full extent of my knowledge in travel software before this post.

Upon researching, I never realized that there were so many types of software that are used “in-house”, meaning that they are designed specifically for the staff to use. I can see that there are some benefits to using technology in this field. For one thing, if the employees know the system well enough, it can save a lot of time by organizing the data so that it is always ready to use. Also, it appears like these programs are great planning tool and can help find mistakes far in advance. There are a few drawbacks however. Like anything else, overuse will create dependencies, meaning that the staff won’t be able to function if the program suddenly stops working. I’ve also noticed that in many cases the users can’t override the system if the user is in the right and the system is wrong. Think about how many times somebody has tried to help you with a travel problem only to end with “ya, sorry, I wish I could, but the system won’t let me”.

I found one software package called Big Easy Travel by Bold Endeavour that sounds promising. It is made for tour operators, hotel reservations and car rental reservation systems. It was originally released in 1999 and has been continuously improved ever since. This shows that the company is fairly stable and has had repeat costumers to stay in business. One big plus is that the company tailor makes each and every module for all of its costumers. I found two weaknesses with the program. The company is in the United Kingdom and it might be harder for companies in the States to do businesses with them. I would also guess that because the every package is custom made for a costumer that it is more expensive then just getting standard software from another designer. Their website gives almost no examples of their work, although if their software is radically different for different costumers that might be an advantage.

The Conservatory, United States Botanic Gardens, Washington D.C.

*Special note to the Professor: This is a make-up blog as I had military duty during the week that the class toured the Sebo Center.

I a few weeks ago I was able to visit Washington D.C. and while I was there I toured several of our national museums. Although the Botanic Gardens didn’t immediately appeal to me, we happened to be right next to it at about the time when everything else was closing. We went in on a whim, but I’m I couldn’t be happier that we did. It ended up being one of my favorite places in the entire country.

Exterior of the Conservatory with the Capital in the background

The United States Botanic Gardens hosts two large outdoor gardens and the main building, called the Conservatory, pictured here at the left. The building was originally constructed in 1933 and a four year major renovation was completed in 2001. The facility allows thousands of visitors a day to tour several ecosystems in natural lighting, rain or shine. There are several permanent exhibits, most of them with a dedicated room custom built for them. For example, the desert room has very dry air and a high temperature to make it feel like your actually there. My favorite, however, was the Jungle Room. It features a 93 foot tall dome with trees nearly reaching the ceiling and a two tier catwalk that allows guests to travel high up into them. The room is amazing decorated with federal architecture elements scattered throughout the large room. It gives the appearance of a Washington DC in ruins, but somehow in a harmonious way.

The Jungle Room viewed from the second tier catwalk

Map of the Conservatory

I think the conservatory is a great tool to teach large groups of people about the diversity of plants. The Jungle Room in particular is a marvelous showcase to educate and excite children.The layout of the building was thoughtfully laid out to provide a nice flow throughout the different themed rooms. One can walk from the Jurassic themed room to the medicinal plants room with ease. By clicking on the image to the right, you can see a larger map showing the layout of the conservatory. My favorite aspect of the facility is how it can be used as an active place to learn, or as a relaxing place to sit down and relax in the busy city. The designers did a great job at making the paths wind through the plants so that you can feel secluded if you want to. I was also glad to see that the staff followed a “green” theme throughout the building. Even the hands-free faucets were solar powered with little signs explaining how much energy they save. In short, the Botanical Gardens were successful at make plants interesting to everybody.

http://www.usbg.gov/

I actually thought that the Rec Center was a newer building then what it really is. I feel that the building has been updated pretty regularly in it’s forty year existence. Of course, I have only been in one other university rec center, so I don’t have a lot to compare it to.

Although the main pool hasn’t been updated very much, its design when it was built proved to be a good one. As our book talks about in Chapter 13, our pool isn’t a “box of water”, but has a diving well with two high dives and spring boards. The lap section of the pool is marked on the bottom of pool and is complete with the platforms that racers jump off of. The recreational end of the pool is large enough to accommodate a large crowd for water aerobics and other activities. The only problem I see is that because the pool is one giant basin, if there is a chemical imbalance or body fluid contamination, the entire pool will have to be shut down. I was only able to find one example on the web of a YMCA that had two separated pools for diving and laps.

I thought that the staff did a job installing a climbing tower into a space that originally didn’t have one. According to our book, our wall is right within the average of 20 to 40 feet high. I also remember our guide telling us that the wall could be rented out to small groups. However, I don’t recall him saying that the rec offers a teamwork course or something of that nature to outside groups. When I was searching on the web I noticed that a lot of climbing walls are considerably wider then ours. I think this would allow more variety in routes that climbers can use to go to the top, and also allow more people on the wall at once.

Upon walking around the university I observed quite a few things that help or hinder the handicapped. Overall,  many older buildings on the BGSU campus have been modified to meet ADA requirements. I found that all of the newer buildings had a much better design for those with disabilities. I think that the most improvement has to be made outside to help people get around campus easier.

Positive examples

1. Most classroom signs have braille on them
2. Older buildings like the library have ramps on them
3. Newer buildings like the union are built at the ground level
4. There is a desk in most rooms for a wheelchair
5. There is plenty of handicap parking spaces
6. All buildings that I’m aware of have elevators
7. Starbucks has a table reserved for wheelchairs
8. We have a student disability services office
9. Hallways and common areas are fairly wide
10. Drinking fountains are lowered

Negative examples

1. Some common area computers you have to stand at
2. Some buildings like Eppler South are far away from handicap parking
3. Elevators have long wait times
4. Spots for wheelchairs are either at the very front or very back of the room
5. Food in the cafeteria serving trays would be hard to see
6. If an elevator breaks down they cant go to class at all
7. Most of the Rec’s equipment can’t be used in a wheelchair
8. Snow doesn’t get plowed off of sidewalks very fast
9. The campus layout is difficult for the blind
10. Not many things on campus to help the deaf

In class we had two representatives from Capital Planning talk about two major projects going on at BGSU, the Wolfe Center and the Stroh Center. In a few aspects, I can see their jobs as being incredibly rewarding. They get to see huge project go from the design table all the way to completion.  Because I’m an Environmental major, a lot of the things I’m working with, particularly global warming and energy conservation, really have no end product that I can stand next to and look at. If I single-handedly saved the planet from global warming, the world will look the exact same and most people in the world could question if I really did anything at all. That’s why I’m jealous of architects. They actually make something. They can actually touch the thing that they dreamed of and spent years working on. Other people can see there product and marvel at it; even at a glance.

But its not all glorious, they were sure to tell us. The project managers assured us that they’re often frustrated at a variety of things. Delays, beaucracy, changes, mistakes, people constantly adding their two cents; that can really get to a person after awhile. One of the most memorable things I learned is that you can’t rush time money and quality all at once. The manager can make something great, and in record time, but it’s going to cost him. I also found the multi-contract method very interesting. In Ohio, a public organization (like the university) is allowed to contract out all the different aspects of a project to entirely different entities. I think this not only creates a communications headache, but as the representative said in class, it probably costs more in the long run.

I’ve chosen to compare the Stroh Center to Auburn’s new basketball arena. I think the most obvious difference is that Auburn’s was designed to “seamlessly blend into the acclaimed aesthetics of the Auburn Campus”. BGSU apparently chose to go stick out like a sore thumb approach. It has the basic exterior angles of a Wal-Mart, with the exception of the main entrance which was upgraded to look like a cross between an airport terminal and a Dick’s Sporting Goods. Auburn’s arena seats about twice as many people (9,600), but at $92 million it cost about twice as much as the Stroh’s $40 million. The only win that I can find for the Stroh is that is going to be LEED certified.

On the other hand, BG’s Wolfe Center seems to be better than Owens new Center for the Fine and Performing Arts. I actually went to Owens for a couple semesters when the center was brand new. The building was horribly designed and the they seemed to take every shortcut they could. The theater’s shop was reduced to just a quarter of what it was on the design table. The area above the stage where the background flys are hidden was dropped by twenty feet, making it useless because the would visibly hang down over the stage. The sound-booth and spotlights were placed in the perfectly wrong location. I was very pleased when the project manager of the the Wolfe Center said that they were working with theater department to make it perfect for the students to learn in. If I had a theater as nice as this one to learn in, I probably would have stayed in theater throughout college.