Cellphones and Sticks

The first installments in Suzanne's rotation started Friday and was for homework if we didn't finish...

"Box" for Twelve Twigs Final

Final pictures of my final project of a "box" for twelve twigs, completed after the critique on Friday September 26th. Now onto the next project of Understanding Unity!

Class on Tuesday September 23

Beginning exercise for Tuesday went from drawing objects to people contours, but not only the people you see first in front of you, but also those behind them to practice perspective. It was suggested to draw at least 3 to 4 people but I ended up doing about 8 in my process of using up all the time. I focused on how the people were sitting and positioned.

The work above was homework from the previous class as we started orthographic drawing, still working on perfecting photo-merge since this was a big piece of paper, I'm getting better at it though. :)


To go along with our homework from the night before we worked exercises in the book by seeing only two sides of the views and having to create the last side and the figure itself. Its challenging but fun all at the same time trying the visualize the picture within.

"Box" for Twelve Twigs Process

So despite what I said previously about my cube morphing into a Pyramid in the precedent post it has gone back to being a cube after the positive feedback at interum critique. This was an iteration where I tried making the twigs more uniform rather then just sticking them every which way randomly, I made them kind of into a staircase pattern with the fungi ridden twig in the center of the arrangement. For the top view of my project I decided to play around with light on the twigs by cutting a hole in the top of the cube to give the twigs a sort of spotlight to enhance showcasing them. I agree with my instructors in that the biggest problem with my design in the poor craft, as you can see in the image the corners are rough and the cut-outs and folds are uneven. Also my binding agent (Rubber Cement) is not used purposefully in the project other then to just simply bind. It is not incorporated.


To enhance my project, I worked on several iterations of my shadow box-like form in various colors and exploring a new binding agent called raffia (Which is made of paper too.) It started with a cream color box to enhance the color of the broken part of the twigs and the fungi with a contrasting brown raffia, then I used black paper to make the spotlight pop with cream colored raffia, but in doing this one found the paper to be too weak and it sagged under the weight of the twigs. So instead I used cream colored paper again and colored the inner part of the cube black to play with lights and darks, I also did the same with the last iteration but with a dark green and a light green with dark raffia.

Class on Thursday September 18

For this class we skipped the beginning drawing exercise and went straight into our group with Stoel. We started by going over the drafting homework and reading from Tuesday night.



After this we began to do more drafting exercises and even started Orthographic drawing.


By uploading these images I practices photo-merging that Shawn taught us Friday, as you can see it worked ok but it didn't merge completely, guess there weren't enough points in common to merge with.

Class on Tuesday September 16

Our subjects for our contour drawing exercise, it was raining really hard that day and the big thing now for people to wear are colorful rain boots so they don't get their flip flops soaked. Stoel had everyone who wore them that day take them off and situate them on the table for us to draw.
For the remainder of our time in Design Drawing we started our new routine of rotations, with each instructor we will have three sessions to work on a certain subject. My group "South-Side" got the pleasure of working with Stoel first where we started working with drafting tools and reading in our Design Drawing book. The pictures below are the outcome of working with the different types of lead and lead holders as well as using the architectural rule. We also had to practice using the drafting board with straight-edge.

Critique & Theory Hour

~Critique~

In critique today for Studio the whole section of first years broke up into three groups, north-side, midtown, and south-side so the groups were smaller and you had more of an intimate critique. My biggest problem in my project was basically color, craft, and the lack of binding agent, my group suggested maybe I use black raffia to bind the diagonal sticks together so they are more stable. I’ll have to figure out the color issue though because there was so much controversy on what it could be. I’ll just have to make many models, or at least one by Friday.

Once we all got back together in the critique room we talked about issues that had arisen with people’s projects such as: Size/Scale, Visualization/Pattern/Form, Defining qualities, and most importantly Focus on our project. Size of the sticks can affect the scale of it’s “box” depending on it, visualization and form give the design interest and purpose, Defining qualities do this as well, and focus on one main idea rather then many in a design. You don’t want it to become overly complicated.

We also learned there are three ways to join things together:
+Join them
+Not Join them
+Put them Between

~Theory Hour~

In today’s Theory hour we had a practicing architect named John Linn come in with a presentation on Sustainability and Architecture 2030. Not knowing what to expect I was very surprise when the PowerPoint started and the first slide said, “We are Fish” and had a background of Tropical Fish. He then asked us what we would see if we were fish, going on to show us things fish would normally see to the crazy things humans do that they might see to make a point on our affect on the environment and how it is viewed by others not even of our race even. He did this again but using birds instead of fish later.

Moving from fish, Mr. Linn explained that the Human race is a storm, changing things in its path as it goes along inhabiting the earth. We are an agent of transformation, we constitute destruction and then construction, we are a dynamic event, but yet we truly are not a place or thing. These ideas are also that of the Impact of sustainability as well according to Linn. Sustainability is an Agent of transformation, construction after destruction, a dynamic event in the world, and also not quite a place or a thing even. These similarities just go on to show that the human race can change where the world is going, they can be the storm that can start the impact of sustainability for our world.

Lastly, Architecture 2030 is the process of getting buildings to give off no carbon releases (and reduce Carbon Footprint) and become neutral by the year 2030. Starting now especially at a gradual rate to decline the use so it won’t become such a drastic change for everyone. This is just one of the many programs being formed to help along the storm of humanity and impact society with sustainability.

Homework Week of September 8th

For this I had to divide my newsprint into four sections and draw the four sides of a room, in my case my dorm room. (Due Thursday September 11)


Yet another lettering exercise from Stoel, but instead of him giving us something to use the lettering with, we had to pick a song and do the lyrics. Mine is from Wicked "Defying Gravity". I love that show!
Had to draw our left hand with our right and our right hand with our left. I'm right hand dominate so as you can see my left handed drawing is not quite so good. Not as bad as I thought though. :)

A "box" for 12 Twigs!

I'm now to my second project as an Iarc major and there seems to be a common theme in the materials we are using as our 'clients'. This task is to design a 'box' for twelve twigs, box meaning anything from holder to container to corral to cell or to sanctuary even! The term is very loose and open for interpretation! We started by gathering various twigs around campus and then took these twigs and sketched them out in various poses and also sketched out ideas to which they could be made to have a specific container. One of my first thoughts about the project was of Lincoln Logs that I had played with often at my grandmother's house (Hence my first sketch of them arranged so). But deciding it was very generic I switched gears to a certain twig I had found that had a lone fungus looking growth upon it, when talking with Vanessa I was reminded of the commercial of the guy having to design a house around a faucet. So why not design the "box" around this fungus to show it off? (Like a shadow box?)


Here are some of the first sketch models I did for our first critique on the project last Monday, the cube shaped one is the main one that I'm basing an idea on, the others were still on how I could make Lincoln logs into an idea. (Like making a box to embody them or separating the log layers into tiers)

*A Note: Still having trouble with craft in molding paper, but I am getting better at it I think! :)

Precedents

In class on Friday we talked about precedents and the study of them, precedents can be in the form of a building/structure, a product/artifact, or even an interior/ environment. A precedent itself is something that is an earlier occurrence of something similar.


For my current design of "A box for twelve twigs" I looked up precedents that reminded me of my project, it ended up mostly being a building or structure. One was the Grande Arche de la Fraternité in Paris. A giant cube-like monument to humanity in the business district designed by the architect Johann Otto van Spreckelsen. The overall shape mimics my cube design, though this is on a much larger scale then what I have created for my twigs, and mimics the cut outs in the front. Another structure that mimics my design is the Glass Apple Cube in Manhattan in front of the apple store. Once again it mimics the shape of my design but it also gives me a new take on what I could possibly do to enhance my design, the structure is made of clear glass so it can fully display the apple logo suspended in the cube. I might want to consider a more translucent paper to better show off my unusual fungus on the suspended stick in my original design...

For my newest design, my cube has morphed into a pyramid and so it now seems similar to a whole new bunch of precedents like the Pyramids of Egypt or the Meditation Pyramids. I actually looked at these precedents via Google and started to form my idea of having a pyramid shaped "box" for my twelve twigs. I'm going more along the line of a sanctuary for my twigs (Think ancient egypt and the pyramids.) rather then just a fancy container for them.

Class on Thursday September 11

First execize in the Critique room, draw the logs of dogwood that Stoel brought in. There were three pieces from where I was sitting kind of layered behind each other and when I was done I still had time so I did the front piece that I could see the most of.

[Insert Image here]
For Stoel we drew plans and diagrams of what our graphics could look like or be designed like, we did thumbnails of the layouts and larger pictures with lettering notes as well. Apparently a graphic isn't just about the project, but also about ideas.


In Suzanne's rotation we drew the contor lines of our studio spaces, we were not allowed to use pencil and so we used ink pens to make crisp bold lines and actually commit to drawing without having to erase.In Nadia's rotation we did the opposite of Suzanne's rotation, we had to draw in the style of cross-contor where you don't draw any outlines at all, just lines to form the space in the object. I had never done this before and while it was hard to make the chair look like a chair I enjoy the result and the general style of it. It look way cool! (I numbered by attempts so it shows that I got alittle better with each try.)

Class on Tuesday September 9

I already wrote notes on the drawing itself, but this was basically a negative space drawing of a bicycle upside down as a first exercise for the day.



With Stoel we drew the skylines from the window of our studio, the top most one and then the lower one of the street below and with the next rotation we took all the drawing tools we had in our possession and attempted to draw a straight line across the page to see the result of them. Some were straighter then others...

Leaf Project

Our first real studio project as Interior Architecture majors, design a place for a Leaf. Here are a couple of sketches:

These were my first couple of ideas and concepts when we were given the project, we were told to do Sketch Models and I mis-interprited that request by only doing sketches when a Sketch model is basically a 3D rough model of your ideas. I will remember that in the future.

Here are the first couple models I did starting from the left bulky pentagonal prism shape, to the thinner version of the first, and then to the cylindrical woven structure. My idea for the first two was to mimic the shape of the Ivy leaf and the form was to represent a stable structure going along with strength and stability that symbolizes the Ivy leaf I had picked. Then came the woven form because I wanted something more intricate and less bulky, still shows strength of the Ivy but then lost its shape reference and I didn't know what to do with the curly top pieces but the structure didn't look right with the tendrils cut completely off.

These next couple of models were my next couple of tries at making my idea of stability and the characteristics of the leaf, I stayed with the weaving idea to convey strength but also tried different shapes. Now the only problem seemed to be the scale of the place verses the leaf itself that was for the place. And of course I also needed to think about color too.

Here is the semi-final project with lighter colored paper.
And here is the final product of "a place for a leaf", I chose to use similar colors to embody leaf, dark and light to contrast the colors of the leaf and it's veins, and the tendrils at the bottom because the structure looked odd without them.

Past Week's Assignments

We were assigned to draw five messes by Suzanne, I posted only three because I like these the best out of the five.

From Stoel we were to take quotes from a piece of printer paper and write them out in the lettering style he had been teaching us to use. It was all supposed to fit on one page but mine didn't fit the last quote. I found out today that I actually didn't need to put a letter for each space, but rather just use the horizontal lines as guidelines in this assignment.


And for our last assignment we were to draw our final leaf project.