I’ve been trying to convince myself to take another exam. That’s not happenning. I didn’t pay for anything else (besides Site Planning and Design (SPD)) and I’ve already prepped for “Pre-Design”. Even before I got the ARE Review Manual. That said, I’m not in a comfortable position to take Programming, Planning and Practice (PPP). I’ve done the site zoning vignette once and made enough mistakes to know I would fail. I have not reviewed what I read before. In short, I’m not ready at all because I haven’t been studying. I’ll admit it.
So to change my focus I dug through my books to try and find something “different” from what I should have been focusing on. Well I found “Programming for Design, from Theory to Practice” by Edith Cherry (1999). Not different at all, it is one of NCARB’s recommended reference books for PPP!
Why did I have this book? Many years ago, I bought it thinking I would read it! Imagine my delight when I came across the title in the NCARB study guide! Truthfully, I didn’t recognize the title. When I looked up the book on Amazon.com I recognized the cover! I said, “Hey! Another book I don’t have to buy! And now I have a reason to read it, too!”
Well on Monday, I cracked it open. I’m now finished chapter 3. Time will not permit me to finish the rest of the book by Monday’s exam. This doesn’t matter too much, because reading the entire book is overkill. Maybe I’ll sum up the book in a later post, but for now “architectural programming… defines the problem to be solved by design.” (p. 3, Cherry quoting Duerk, Architectural Programming, p. 8 and Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, p. 112)
I’m glad I found this book, because it has perked my interest on this exam topic. I hope to finish the book within one or two weeks, because it is also a reference book for SPD. Thankfully, as of Monday (Sep. 29th), I have regained my focus and I’m studying again. Hurrah! Hurrah!
PPI
Sketchbook Project
It’s a really good book, one of the best around on programming. Edie was one of my professors at UNM-SAAP, so maybe I’m baised. But having spent the first 5 years of my career doing programming and planning, it was a good primer. For the real nuts & bolts basics, try the good old CRSS book: Problem Seeking – an Architectural Programming Primer (Pena).