VOICES::OPUS

V presence O precedent I moments C duality E metric S

Recently in Perception and Communication we have been using other artists’ styles of work as precedents to portray moments within our assigned building.  A precedent is something that has been previously made or design that you use to inspire you, analyze or study.  I think of precedents as design voices from the past that transpose into designs of the future.  A momentis in a nutshell the essence of a space or event. It is the art of capturing important and telling spots within a space.  My building is the Furgeson building.  The most difficult aspect of this assignment has been that Furgeson doesn’t have a strong presence from the outside and it only gets weaker inside.  The presence of a building is impression or feeling it gives off.  Stonehenge has a mysterious and unattainable presence.  Cathedrals have a strong spiritual, enlightening and delicate presence.  The Gatewood Studio Arts building has a clean, sleek and raw presence. 

These are some drawing I did of Furgeson in various styles to illustrate Furgeson's presence and a few specific moments within the building.

There was not that many moments to capture therefore when looking for my inspiration styles I searched for precedents that captured more simplistic spaces so that it would be easy to parallel to my space.

On the other side of the spectrum in History, Theory and Design we have moved out of the Foundations unit of Roman and Egyptian architecture into the Alternatives unit by started with Greek architecture.  This week we have begun to look into churches and chapels.  These magnificent structures have such a strong presence and an abundant amount of moments that it is easy to get lost in their intricate detail.  We took a few minutes during class to draw some images of various cathedrals.  These are a few of my sketches.

These cathedrals, like religious beliefs, evolved over time.  “Roman life focused on temporal comforts and pleasures, as the Roman bath well illustrates.” (Roth 2007)  The Roman baths took the shape of the basilica.  Which also evolved overtime.  This is an illustration of how that evolution took place;

As designers we look for inspiration everywhere.  Precedents are of utmost importance to the future of design.  The concept of ‘Heaven on Earth’ seemed to be a strong inspiration for Gothic Cathedrals.  Roman and Greek architects used Etruscan structures as their precedents. On page 307 Roth explains “Many later innovations in European castle design were inspired in part by what the Crusaders saw of the fortifications around Constantinople and also from what they learned of fortifications built by the Muslims.:  For our Passageway project I found my inspiration from a design printed on a tube of lipstick.  See the commonalities in the two images below.  

In Pompeii moments were frozen in time when Mt. Vesuvius erupted casting the entire city with its lava.  Roth described this event as “voids filled with skeletal bones.”  Our drawings of both the cathedrals as well as our on-campus building is another way of freezing thesemoments to portray these structures presence. 

As we learned in the Foundations unit, Roman architecture had extravagant exterior facades that combined with grandeur scale gave off a strong and powerful presence.  This presence was part of the ‘’bread and circuses’’ concept applied to the governing of Rome.  In essence this was the governments way of entertaining the people by shifting their attention to these structures and giving them what they wanted so that it would take the attention off of the lies that were happening under the surface of governmental power. 

“Hagia Sophia was a stupendous achievement-perilously balanced masses and shells of brickwork laced with stone reinforcement, lifted into the air.” (Roth 290) Hagia Sophia is a shape made from combining its two(duality) precedents; a sphere or dome and a cube.  This shape has a lot of duality because it combines these two shapes and creates a strong presence. “Hagia Sophia was a physical representation of the fusion of empire and church for to the byzantine mind, the cube surmounted by a done was a model of the universe, the earth covered with the dome of heaven.” (Roth 290)

When working on our Pathways, Edges and Boundaries project we studied many precedents as well as the uses and presence the area gave off previous to our design installation as well as what presence we wanted our final product to radiate. 

Precedent have a duality about them because me and someone else may look to the same object as our precedent but may be looking at different aspects in particular for our inspiration. This is something that I will keep in mind considering our upcoming Precedent Analysis project in Design, History and Theory.  It is important to fully understand a building and its design concepts in order to be able to get the most inspiration from that precedent possible. 

Duality can mean, as previously mentioned, different concepts stemming from one thing or one thing can have different purposes.  For example our Pats Project had dual uses because it was one piece of furniture that served about four purposes if not more.  The newly discovered use of concrete in Roman architecture also has a duality aspect to it.  The concrete of Baths was both sturdy and allowed the development of mosaic which in itself was easy to clean and delightful to view. 

Throughout Design History and Theory we have made connections from place to place as we move across the world studying various architectural spaces.  The ties point out the dualityof many things within the west’s and east’s architectural development.

Going back to our passageway projects I found a duality between the design words we were given;

Contrast

Rhythm

Positive and negative space

Gradient

Hierarchy

Symmetry

Balance

We made models to portray one of these words but in doing so found that good design incorporate more than one…more than two often enough.  Some go hand and hand and some design words take precedence over other design words.

A connection that was often brought up during our critique was that of balance and symmetry.  I think of symmetry as something that is perfectly symmetrical in the fact that you can cut a straight line through it and either piece would the identical.  Balance however is different.  I think balance makes something visually appealing, yet sometime so does asymmetrical aspects. I found a lot of balance and symmetry within the plan views of gothic cathedrals as well as within the interior and exterior facade.  The cathedrals use repitition of many elements in a very powerful and beautiful way. Balance does not have to be symmetrical and most of the time takes precedence over symmetry. 

The picture above is balanced because the two trees in the foreground on the left side of the painting is balanced by the rows of trees and the house in the background on the right side of the painting.  This picture is balanced but it is not symmetrical.

This picture is symmetrical-

Stoel said, and for the most part I agree; Symmetry is like boring balance.

When first thinking of the work Metric I thought of the universal measuring system we are all familiar with.  Today during Design History and Theory we were watching a video on the Amiens cathedral and it pointed out how the labrynth was designed to encode heaven within the central space of the cathedral by basing the pattern on the standard measurement of the roman foot plus the use of the golden section. 

This got me thinking about how we use the metric system for all of our design without thinking about it.  For example we used it to make our measurements for a plan view we did of the crit room.  As designers we also design on a grid because human nature attracts you to order.  

[ R E F L E C T ]

  Precedents inspire all design.  Precedents are moments are concepts from the past that act as a voice in shaping current designs.  The intricate process of design creates and is shaped by the moments that as a whole[sum:parts::whole]exude a presence. These designs are often created not only from a designers inspiration but by the designers use of the metric system or a grid system. I think of these as the parts that sum up the whole; which in this case I see as duality.  I think that duality deserves to mentioned more because no matter how you see a design, no matter how the designer sees the design someone will always see it in their own way.  The dual meanings of architecture and art both is what makes it so complex.  This is something I am learning to always keep in mind when developing my own design concepts.