benvenuti

arrivederci

NYC

After many years of contemplation the time is finally right, making the move to the city with great work ahead. Insanely excited for the next few months! 

recent photo work

A few highlights from my work in Pittsburgh last week, follow the title link for a few more recent photographs. I am currently reworking my personal site so stay tuned for the launch of andrewcbly.com in the next couple weeks!

ARCH photos

I have recently been working with the talented and professional Mike Leonardi of Candidly Yours Photography to expand into the architecture and interior design world. Here are a few examples.

Bellisimo!

Absolutely awe-inspiring work by Alberto Seveso utilizing underwater photos of ink. Fantastic.

sempre...

great work by Studio Muti

New Beginnings

2012. Only two weeks into the New Year and I am feeling extremely anxious and excited for it's potential. The end of 2011 was a mixture of great times with family & friends on top of stress & feelings of living two different lives. The always-fabulous Johanna Armstrong made a trip across the pond and as always it was great to see her because her work and friendship is extremely inspiring. She is doing some great work so head to her portfolio link to check it out and also has one of my favorite tumblrs currently. I also rang in my 29th year (yikes) of existence surrounded by the most important people, family. I am so fortunate to have them. Birthmas celebrations, Grandma's manhattans, stuffed pork chops, new brother, VanMaurik's and friends. Pure Happiness.

I have a lot to accomplish and have tried to start this year as focused as possible. Architect'n, Teaching, Photographing and most importantly trying to graduate by May so that I can catch a one-way flight to Italy. It may have taken me ten years, but I feel like I am finally in the right place on the doorstep of a dream career. For now it is back to this thesis and the mountain of other projects that are sure to drive me crazy by the end of March. I will hopefully be updating more often with the photos I have currently been taking, the title link will take you to the shots around University Circle here in Clevelandtown that I took wasting some time before shooting an installation piece by a friend. Enjoy and cheers to the new year.

Between a Rock and a Really Cool Place

A great post by Pamela Simmons over at Durability + Design about John Carson's beautiful home in the Catskills. I was lucky enough to be invited last summer to check it out and I was able to get a few photos as well which Pam used in her article. Check it out, it's a great read about a true dream house that John and Sharon brought to life.

The Present

Two days from now I will be on my way across the Atlantic: Pittsburgh to Charlotte to Madrid and eventually sometime around noon on Friday I will be arriving in Barcelona. Spending a few days in Spain before heading back to Florence for Dr. Medicus' program and some thesis research. I have a lot of work to get done this summer but there is nowhere else in the world I'd rather spend the next two months than Italy. Goodbye Ohio.

Window Loser

The office I work for decided to hold a competition for a window graphic in our conference room. Since this was the most creative thing they have asked us to do in the 2+ years of my time there I jumped right on the opportunity. I decided to incorporate the logo and play off the circular logo with a more dynamic background and bringing in a blue color to complement the orange. I dropped in a skyline of Cleveland, added our other offices and main design programs. Apparently I didn't have enough circles in my design, because I was not the winner. Oh well, it felt nice to be doing something creative around there for once.

Dear HOK Sport/Populous, thanks for mediocrity!

So after my first trip to the Consol Energy Center last week I have to give it a review. I've been frustrated with the design since I first saw the renderings, and felt like from day one HOK mailed in a design because they had no competition. Even the city at one point was concerned with the generic design HOK was submitting. However, I wanted to wait until I actually went to a game to see if it would somehow change my mind. Don't get me wrong, it is amazing to have a new facility with state-of-the-art everything but architecturally they dropped the ball. You can't go from having the iconic igloo for 40+ years to an extremely generic arena that could be dropped anywhere in the world. Originally when I heard HOK, now Populous, received the commission there was excitement because I know their recent work especially with stadiums/arenas has been spectacular. They also had a unique opportunity with the site just down the hill from the igloo but also adjacent to the historic Epiphany Church which even HOK's Patrick Lempka mentioned: "We thought we had a great opportunity to take advantage of [the church] as sort of an iconic piece of architecture that we could use to actually make the arena even a stronger idea than just a stand alone building." I'd like to hear an explanation of exactly how they took advantage of that building....other than building a stand alone arena that has no tie to anything. Couldn't they have at least tried to match the color of the church with the new masonry? Generic design, generic materials, generic color, and generic curtain wall. Seriously, I'm supposed to be excited about a large glass wall when they have done so much better? When they mentioned incorporating the church into the design I thought it could be extremely successful like their design for the O2 arena in Dublin from 2008, roughly the same time Consol was being designed. And even the interior fails, especially with the roof over the actual ice which looks extremely unfinished. There is almost no sign of creativity anywhere, there are some really nice things they did with graphics but that wasn't anything HOK was involved with. This was a 320+ million dollar project, and I think the main fault was that there was no competition. HOK had a great reputation and were given this commission but failed miserably in delivering on anything creative. Just so people can see what I'm talking about I compiled some images of HOK professional arenas from the last 6 years....tell me which one they cared about the least:

So thank you HOK/Populous, in a city with rich history and iconic architecture you have provided a mediocre building that will not be remembered in another 25-30 years when a new one is needed. The excitement of a new facility will wear off and when the dust settles from the old civic arena we will be left with this beige masterpiece of dullness.

more bondo = more productivity

Bondo moved in last weekend so the house of ABAB is off and running! We have been busy doing some retouching and getting the ABAB name out there. Signed up for a Behance profile, go check it out it's a pretty sweet networking site if you haven't heard of it yet. Also been touching up some old architecture shots from this summer to add to the collection, some of the examples are here. Stay tuned as always, we are becoming one with productivity.

casa ABAB

Bondo is officially moving in this weekend and we will finally get this collaboration rolling! I've been messing around in Sketchup with our logo, going to use it for some promotional pieces and our business cards. Here is a scene that I dropped our logo into just as a tease! Stay tuned...

House of Rock

Back in July I had the awesome opportunity to visit a modern house built in the Catskills of New York. My Dad's old friend just recently had this house finished and it was probably the most amazing house I have ever been through, every detail was handled by John and it is truly a dream house come to life. It is literally built into the hillside and around an enormous rock about the size of a train car. Everything from the railings to the hot tub was handled with such a modern approach it was very easy to photograph....amongst all my drooling ;)

Follow the link in the title to the Picasa album with all the photos.

Dog Days of 2010

Can't believe it's the middle of July already, been pretty busy lately with work, World Cup action, vacation and sweating it out in Akron Ohio. Finally posted some pictures from the beach and the 4th of July...starting to love this Canon Rebel even more and learning everyday. This upcoming weekend I have been extended an awesome invitation from an old high school friend of my Dad's to come check out his summer house which he built around an enormous BOULDER a couple of years ago. I've rented a wide angle lens for the weekend so hopefully I can get some good pics. I will post them when I get back.

BEACH!

A few days before Samm and I are off to meet up with the family in the outerbanks. Couldn't be more excited to have a whole week of beach, ocean, beers, great company, world cup and NO WORK! Supposed to be a really great week down in the Outerbanks and I'm excited about capturing some photos with the new camera, I have a new filter and tricks to try out so keep posted for the results... For now enjoy some of the sketches that I did last year while sitting around in Corolla.

The City

Spent an amazing 3 nights/4 days in New York checking out 7 museums and had a great talk with Diana Al Hadid at her Brooklyn studio. Stayed at Jazz in the Park on 106th and Central Park West and met some new great friends from Kent and also from Denmark and Australia. I've uploaded some of my favorite shots to my Flickr page and have even more over on my Facebook page. Really loved having the digital Rebel along with me, and I'm getting used to using Adobe Lightroom which is absolutely amazing for post work. Enjoy the photos!

Akron [at night]

I took a trip downtown after work the other night to snap some night-time shots of some of the great Akron architecture, especially the art museum and the addition by Coop Himmelb(l)au that glows! As always follow the title link to my flickr stream where I uploaded the rest of the photos. Loving my Canon Rebel!

ACB*

The fabulous Johanna Armstrong has taken my old website, punched it in the face, and created a masterpiece far superior to the actual work it shows.

Take a look and ENJOY!