Moving the display

Today was the day we had to take up our concrete forms from the Critique last week, a group of us came down at about noon today and began moving all the concrete forms, even those not in our own groups, out to the outside area of the wood shop. Tristan lent out his car for our purposes and we were able to get all the forms safely covered and put away til spring semester.

The Workers
Sharon
Tristan
Aubrey
Kristina
Phillip
Hailey
Hannah
And myself

Thanks for your help everyone!!!!

Final Results of Pathways+Edges+Boundaries

A week of casting and many stepping stones later as the sub-group of 'ground plane' in the Gateway group we were ready to set up one and a half of the two paths planned out for the critique after thanksgiving break. In my group I helped pour concrete, mix concrete, build molds for stepping stones with Sharon, make negative space forms to create circles, and blogged about the process on the group blog.
The hardest thing for us was waiting for the molds to try so we could pop them out and make the next batch of stepping stones, also we had a hard time deciding how much pea pebble aggregate to use but we soon found the magic amount and it made our stepping stones strong without the expense of wire mesh.


Here are some pictures of our displays for the entire class part of the project, Pathways.Edges.Boundaries. Each group within the project, Gateway, Oasis, Mirage, Desert, & Living on the edge contributed drawings, models, and process pictures for the display.


For the group presentation, I did a throw-up sheet and a section drawing of one of the stepping stones, also Tristan's pictures and my pictures combined made up the process picture section.

Working with Vellum [House and Chapel]

The last two assignments for Stoel's rotation were the most challenging and admittedly the most fun to do. Starting with an elevation view of a house, we were to measure it at 1/8":1' scale, double that amount and then draw it in 1/4":1' scale. After which we got a chance to do some major poche-ing on the house and in the foreground and background, along with lettering from a paragraph in the book.


The last was of a chapel, and this one was by far the hardest one to draw to scale for me, I had to start over various times because the roof measurements didn't add up and therefore the whole building was wrong. We used the same process in scale with the last assignment and then in the end got a choice between one poche-ing method or another along with more lettering.

Elevation Pans and Sections

Moving on from the exercises to get us back into the swing of drafting, we started plan views of various houses in our Design Drawing book. One house was a sectioned-perspective view and we had to turn it into a plan view in the scale of 1/4":1'.
The next house we did was already in the form of a plan view and only needed to be converted to 1/4":1' scale. The added thing Stoel gave us was that we also had to poche the walls of the house on vellum paper using a marker of some sort. Almost like tracing what we had just done.

The Last Theory hour

This was the last Studio Theory class of the semester and it was based on projects the 5th years were working on for their studio. In groups they had to come up with a do able project to help promote sustainability at UNCG, in the town of Greensboro, and at a national standpoint.

+ For the UNCG standpoint on Sustainability they group focused on finding a way to replace the plastic bags used at the EUC, Outta Here, and Spartan Grill. They came up with the solution of 'green bags' that were affordable for the school to purchase and easier to recycle. By the end of Fall semester or the beginning of Spring semester these bags will be put into use!
+ The next concept was on a national level and was about voting green from the current election. The group gathered information on each candidate in the election and put it all together into a newsletter so that the people would be better be able to understand what green issues the candidates stand for since it is and will be a big issue in the environment.
+ The next group titled their project "Pro CFL" and it focused on the local level on informing residents that compact florescent light bulbs save more energy and are a better recycling material then incandescent bulbs. They worked on this project in the local Farmer's Hardware store with a booth and information flyers to give out to the people who shopped at the store.
+ On the city of Greensboro level a group worked on recycling better in the city. They did a study on if the coloring on the cans made any influence on the amount of recycling. They also revamp the recycling sticker so it was less cluttered to read and was still informative hoping people would be more likely to recycle their cans, bottles, and magazines.
+ The last project was a community newsletter on "Green" issues and also a chance to get the message out. The group also initiated a community garage sale to go along with recycling old stuff to be bought by other people.

Though the number of people decreased in attendance as time went on I am happy to say that I found some of the speakers to be very informative, I was glad to have gone to learn about things like the Proximity Hotel in Greensboro (LEED certified Platinum), Entroprounships, and Global Environmental issues.

Drafting [Orthographic and Plans]

For the restart of Stoel's rotation we once again started with a familiar orthographic drawing exercise in creating 2D work of a front view, a left side view, a right side view, and a top view along with drawing out a 3D version of the figure based on the views.

The next assignment was to practice the drafting layout format, draw 12 north directional arrows in a creative way, and draw three different types of scales in two different ways each.

[Scales Here]

Gateway: Casting Process

Sunday was our first casting day, Sharon, Phillip, David, and I where there and in truth four was a good number for casting concrete, not too few and not too many.


Aggregate: Cat Litter (Tidy Cats brand)
Mortar Mix (1/2 a bag)

As for molds we just did a couple of tests from what Sharon had found at Target and what Stoel had brought for us to get a feel with. One bowl, two square bowls from Walgreens, two Chip n' Dip bowls, a cake top, and other various objects. The pouring went relatively well and we tried three different types of mixes, one with more water added then the other to test which would be stronger. As of today the cement had not yet cured enough to break from the mold, we hope to see the results tomorrow so we can make final adjustments to the molds and get to finishing the project.


Aggregates to Try: Sawdust and/or Perlite
Drawings to work on:
+1 plan/cut view of our casted object for the project.
+ 1 scale drawing of our parking island.
+ 1 scale view of entire lot.
+ Various other drawings.

Mmmmm..... Yum, concrete with a hint of cat litter. ;)

[[Access-Crossroads-Gateway: Scale Model]]

~Currently~
+ Semi-Circle edges: Cast in plastic bowl
+ Ground Plane: Cast in smaller tiles and then put together. (Spacing them and putting pebbles between?)
+ Cylindrical Seating: Cast in cardboard tubes or paint cans.
+Concrete Sphere: Cast with a exercise ball(?) [Alternative: Cast another cylinder with an interesting cut to it]
+ Space between two paths: Green space, oriental grasses from donation.

Class Tuesday November 11 and Today

[One point Perspective Drawing]

[Object in Shadow Drawing]


[Two-Point Perspective Drawing]


[Vanishing Point Going Up]

"Gateway" Group

[Insert Throw-up sheet]

Access-Crossroads-Gateway.
As the group dubbed the ‘Gateway’ we decided that our name needed more then just the noun of a gateway, though through discussion we decided that in a way gateway was something we had to keep. Our advising professor, Stoel, suggested that we think about the word ‘crossroads’ as a add on and as a group we kept gateway and researched other words for entrance, which was basically what our group was. We ended up with the word ‘access’ and dubbed ourselves Access-Crossroads-Gateway to complete the name.



When first looking at the space one of the first things brought up was the worn down areas of dirt within the curb where people had walked the most to get to the Gatewood building or throughout the parking lot, Sharon took it upon herself to become our official ‘people watcher’ and watched the patterns in people to tell us where exactly people where walking throughout the week. We already knew that this would be one of the things we needed to address in out project, a designated pathway for people to use to direct them. Next we thought a lot about seating on our space, the ‘butt receptacle’ was located on our island and we wanted in a way at first to make the smokers more comfortable so they would stay the designated 25ft away from the building. While we did not want to encourage smoking we didn’t want to neglect that part of the population. From these idea we began to form ideas on what all could we could accomplish, what sculptures, seating and pathways would be needed and in what way they would be accomplished, organic or geometric? In brainstorming we started out with a geometric idea based on the connection with the Oasis group’s path

Class Tuesday November 03 and Today

For these next couple classes we put our perspective skills to the test, we had to take photos or come up with photos for class:

+One of an exterior (One or Two point perspective)
+One of an interior (One or Two point perspective)
+One with a vanishing point to the top or to the bottom of the photo
+One with an object in shadow

For me these are fun, but very time consuming because I like to put in alot of detail.






These drawings are due by Tuesday November 11th at 2...

Class on Thursday October 30

For homework from the previous class we had to experiment with two-point perspective again drawing our desk area in perspective and drawing our room in perspective. The room was alittle more difficult for me to draw in perspective and at first I thought I wasn't drawing right with the desk because it looked almost like an areal perspective, I later learned from Nadia that it was just the fact that my perspective points were too close together.


This next class we turned our focus from two-point perspective to one-point perspective, for some reason this perspective was easier for most of the students but I know I had a very hard time with only one point.
Once more we practiced using our desks and the items left on them.



And we drew a non-square-like item in that perspective as well for more practice.