ART DECO PARTY DECORATIONS

Former American Federation of Musicians and Employers Pension Welfare Fund, now Permanent Mission of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the United Nations

Tudor City, Turtle Bay, East 44th Street, Manhattan

Founded in 1893 by American architects who had studied at the prestigious Parisian Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects had a profound impact on architectural practice in this country by its dedication to fostering the principles established by the Ecole. The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, chartered in 1916 to accommodate the expanding educational programs of the Society, served as the national headquarters for architectural instruction based on the curriculum of the Ecole and influenced several generations of American architects. By 1927, a new building was required to meet the growing needs of the Institute, and the Board of Trustees sponsored a design competition in keeping with the tradition of the Ecole. The winning design by Frederic C. Hirons of the firm of Dennison & Hirons features a striking composition employing Beaux-Arts principles of symmetry, solidity and monumentality, while displaying a modernized classicism that reflects contemporary currents in Art Deco design.

Among the building's outstanding features are its bold block lettering, "Beaux-Arts Institute of Design," surmounting the first story, and exceptional polychrome terra-cotta spandrel plaques, designed by the noted architectural sculptor and model-maker, Rene Chambellan, in collaboration with the architects, and executed by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, one of the largest and most important American manufacturers of architectural terra cotta at the time. Depicting the Parthenon, St. Peter's Church, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, these plaques symbolize the classical heritage and tradition perpetuated by the Institute.

The Founding of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design

During the second half of the nineteenth century, ambitious American architectural students began to attend the Ecole Nationale et Speciale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, for training in the highly esteemed French tradition of classical, academic architecture. Many Americans who had studied in Paris—such as the first American Ecole student, Richard Morris Hunt— became prominent architects, influential in promoting the Beaux-Arts doctrine in this country. As a testament to the profound impact of the Ecole das Beaux-Arts on architectural practice in the United States, the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects was founded in New York in 1893 by a group of Americans, all former students of the Ecole. This professional organization sought to cultivate and perpetuate the French ideals of their discipline, and to offer the opportunity to study the principles of design and composition taught in Paris but not yet formally instituted in American architectural schools.

In order to further encourage young students to study the Beaux-Arts methodology, the Society initiated the prestigious Paris Prize in 1904, an annual competition open to Americans under twenty-seven years of age; the winner received admission to the Ecole without having to pass the standard entrance exam.

In 1916, the Society, while continuing to function as a professional club, founded the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, under a provisional charter of the Regents of the University of New York, to accommodate the expanding educational program of the organization. The Institute first provided instruction only in architecture; additional courses in mural painting and sculpture were later established, followed by interior decoration in 1921. The Institute charged a nominal registration fee and classes were free. Financial support was maintained by membership dues, contributions, advertising in the Society yearbook, and proceeds from the annual Beaux-Arts Ball, an elaborate and highly publicized costume party which was the peak of the social calendar for the architectural set. In 1933, the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects Yearbook could boast that the Institute served an average of 2,500 students annually.

What made the Institute unique in American architectural education was its method of study, modeled after that of the Parisian Ecole. Central to the curriculum was the atelier (or studio) system, in which students were guided through the course of their training in the studio of a practicing architect. The basis of the program was a series of graded architectural competitions, treating different design problems, which became more difficult as one advanced. Students gained a certain number of credits at each level. When the total number of credits was achieved, a Certificate of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design and an associate membership to the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects were awarded. Competitions were juried by practicing architects, and several prizes and awards, in addition to the Paris Prize, were also associated with merit. ^

The Institute established a nation-wide s

This has been my base of operations for nearly a year. Unfortunately, the business I work for is basically shuttered and on 8-13-10 I packed all of this up and put most of it into storage units.

I'll go into more detail here than in the notes, so on with the basics:

Custom built 3.066 GHz Core i7 machine w/ 12 GB ram running CentOS Linux on the left. This is my main workstation which is primarily used to run Maya 2010 and has both a 21.5" and 19" LCD monitors powered by an NVIDIA Quadro FX1800 card. No custom workstation would be complete without a vintage IBM Model M 'clicky' keyboard now would it? Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, I am modeling a Lunar Module from the Apollo program.

In that same vicinity are my 1940s vintage Telechron red Bakelite wall clock that keeps perfectly accurate time and a Art Deco styled lady lamp named Isabel. Not pictured are my custom framed print by Andrew Bell and a 1970s vintage Honeywell computer advertisement featuring a dragon made of capacitors and chips. Also not seen, but just behind the two adjacent LCD monitors are a 7x100W Sony receiver and my turntable. These are hooked up to speakers which I placed in the ceiling grid above my desk.

Just to the right of that tower is a little white NAS box. That is a Synology DS209 with two 1TB Caviar Black drives in a RAID 1 array. This is networked storage available to each machine of the render farm for storing finished images.

Moving right from those we find an 8 port Gigabit ethernet switch for the render farm, and next a 4x KVM switch. The KVM switch connects four of the five towers on the ground to a single mouse, keyboard and 19" LCD monitor. These are the workhorses of my render farm and range from 64bit capable 3 GHz Pentium 4 machines to 3 GHz Athlon64 X2 ones. Each is maxed out with at least 4GB of ram to help handle large scenes.

Next to those is my now 'old' HP ZD8000 laptop. This was the portable workstation I bought in college. I ordered it with a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 and I managed to later stuff 4 GB of ram into the thing. It's running the Wacom Cintiq 20WSX tablet display to the immediate right. I use this machine for any Photoshop work, drawing and painting, as a spare Maya station and as a render farm slave when needed.

Continuing down the line we find my older laptop, a Compaq 1800 with a 1 GHz Pentium III processor and all of 320 MB of ram. This is the render master and assigns scenes to each of the render slaves.

Finally, the 17" LCD monitor on the right is hooked up to any of my three really old machines. I have a Gateway 2000 P5-75 with a 75 MHz Pentium running Windows 95, a GEM machine which has the faster 150 MHz Pentium and runs Windows NT then at last the Micron Millennia Pro2 200 Rev B which I've outfitted with dual 200 MHz Pentium Pro processors and a mind boggling 256 MB of ECC Buffered DIMM RAM so that I can truly get the most out of my Windows 98 experience. These machines are just there for fun and frustration. Ever tried finding Sound Blaster drivers for 15 year old computers? When I do I'll be playing Lemmings, Freddy Pharkas and Warcraft to no end.

In front of those vintage machines sits my record collection.

At the very end we find an IKEA Helmer cabinet to store all of the cables, bits, bobs etc.... and a vintage IBM PC Server 704 being used as a bookshelf and holding my HP scanner. Oh how I love anything put out by Ballistic Publishing.

I put a lot of work into making this setup ideal for the kind of work I do. I had a comfortable layout with ample space to glide from one machine to the other, I had a few toys and decorations to liven things up a bit, every last cable was hidden neatly using under desk trays from IKEA and I was able to work efficiently but still play a bit if need be. As I was dismantling it all I couldn't help thinking "what was the point?"