ACTION VERBS

Energize

            The first thing I think of when I think about energize and design are diagonal lines.  Diagonal lines add energy to a composition.  Other lines such as loose, gestural lines also add energy.  A pop of color that enhances your overall design can also add energy to your overall composition. 

Compose

            This week in Perception and Communication we have been working on creating a composite drawing on either Fallingwater or Monticello.  I chose to do Fallingwater because it had a stronger impact on me during our trip.  Unlike our past compositions and projects adhesives were not issues here because in a composite piece all of the drawing, pictures and information and applied directly to the paper.  For the group project we did about buildings around campus my group used a blown up picture of our building, Ferguson, sliced into three parts with the name incorporated into the graphic.  This type of super graphic is a graphic that unifies the composition and portrays the essence of the subject of the composition.   While making our composite drawings we also found fonts that were congruent to our topic.  All of these are parts that make the drawing successful as a whole.  As designers we often habitually layout our compositions.  We use matrix and grids and play with colors, super graphics, fonts and styles and compose these in a way that successfully projects the meaning and subject of our design. 

Shape

            The word shape reminds me a lot of revise because throughout our design process we shape our overall design concept as well as speculating the small details of our design.

Speculate

            Designer are detail people. We point out small flaws, fine-tune the little thing to make something more successful overall. We speculate everything.  Details are what make a design so successful.

Road Trip

Both Monticello and Falling Water’s design concepts stayed true to their roots and strived to define an American style.  Jefferson designed true to his idol, Palladio’s concepts, and intertwined his inspiration from France.  Frank Lloyd Wright stayed true to Falling Waters’ roots; the land; quite literally.  He pulled the outside in and emulated and celebrated the nature surrounding Falling Water using boulders inside, endless glass and of course the tranquil sound of the water rushing below.  Wright materiality stemmed strongly from this inspiration of nature.  The hearth is the boulder continued from outside.  The floor was stone and often polish to emulate the look of wet stone.  He developed his concept of an illusion of the separation of interior and exterior. Wright studied Japanese houses and that style became the roots to part of his concept. He had low ceiling that compressed houseguests for many reasons.  He defined public and private spaces by compression and release.  He also used low ceiling heights to push you out of the house essentially and out into nature.  The many terraces and walls of windows also draw you outside. “Wright was the master of interweaving connected spaces, creating what has been described as fluid or flowing spaces….In these houses there is no isolation of the living and dining room or the library alcove; all are loosely defined as component areas of a larger space.” Roth 59  The great room had the highest ceilings because it was the most public space; a gathering space.  The bedrooms had very low ceilings that expressed the privacy of the space.  The private spaces were also darker making the room seem more compressed.  Even throughout the hallways you were compressed when entering and room and released vertically when exiting into hallways. Roth 58 “Architectural space is a powerful determinant of behavior”  The use of compression and releasing helped define these spaces therefore altering behaviors.

 Monticello was similar and different. When first entering the house you are released and introduced to the space with tall ceilings and materials that were congruent with Jefferson’s design concept.  From the great room you are lead into more compressed and private rooms though they were only separated by one wall.  The concept of compression and release has a lot to do with space.  There are many kinds of space that were depicted on our trip. Wright believed “space was the essence of architecture” Roth 55

     There is physical space which can be though of as the “volume of air bounded by the walls, floor and ceiling of a room.” Roth 55 Along with perspective space which is “the space that can be perceived or seen” Roth 55. For example the glass walls of windows in Falling Water opens to the outside and expands your surroundings.

Conceptual space which can be defined as “the mental map we carry around in our heads the plan stored in our memory” Roth 55.The hidden spaces for storage in Monticello would not necessarily come to mind when you think of Monticello’s conceptual space but it would be an example of behavioral space or, “the space we can actually move through and use.” Roth 55

The materials used were true to Jefferson’s style, inspiration and resources.  Many of the materials were more local at Monticello and Falling Water because of the technology at the time of development as well as the complication of transportation that came along with their location.  Monticello was on a mountaintop, which made it hard to lug materials to the site.  Monticello clears off the top of the mountain and become the focus of this mountaintop, standing out.  Falling Water, although it stands out, emulated it’s surrounding and celebrates the land more than the structure itself because it draws its concept from the surroundings.  This also affected the materials used within the space.  In history we have been discussing the innovation of machine versus handcraft. “Architects also were presented with new building materials, cast and wrought iron as well as glass, in quantities never available  before, thanks to improvements in mass production.” Roth 471 The craft of man versus machine was contriversal and made big changes in the design and production world. “The most important change in industry was the use of machines in place of skilled labor to make other machines. …With the application of simple machine to perform repetitive tasks, mass production of consumer goods began.  The result was a dramatic increase in production and a lowering of production costs, meaning that goods formerly available to the aristocracy became available to the growing middle class and even eventually to the workers themselves.” Roth 471 “…The increased manufacture of consumer good was dependent on the production of less expensive component materials, and of theses, the most important was iron.” Roth 462

 

      

 

Between Silence and Light

Good craft is essential to the success and firmness of a design. Both Falling Water and Monticello had impeccable craft for that time period. The designers paid careful attention to detail. Frank Lloyd Wright tried to complement the land and preserve it as much as he could.  While at Falling Water I noticed that he curved one of his beams to go around an existing tree so that it would not interfere with the existing landscape.  He reiterated this technique with his hearth design.  The hearth was made of a boulder that brought the outside in- literally.  It had cascading layers that sloped into the room. Frank Lloyd Wright was almost compulsive about his clients interfering with his design.  He was known to ‘client-proof’ his homes in many ways. He seldom made compromises with his clients and designed built-in furniture- one reason being so that his clients could not change many things.  There were one hundred and sixty-nine custom Frank Lloyd Wright pieces within Falling Water. Jefferson also included built-ins in Monticello.

Both designers executed their designs carefully and with good craft.  On the other hand the each had their flaws.  Like Jefferson’s idol, Palladio, his design was symmetric in plan view but this produced awkward spaces inside.  One awkward occurrence was the skylight, one of thirteen, that hugged the wall on one side in Jefferson’s bedroom.  There was also overlapping moldings in corners and spaces that just didn’t quite add up.  At Falling Water some of Wright cascading cantilevers soon sagged and supports had to be added. 

 A third of Monticello was reserved for Jefferson himself.  Some argue he was a selfish architect because of this and the fact that Monticello had an immense amount of people living and visiting all the time.  Only a wall divided Jefferson’s private rooms and public rooms.

In Falling Water Wright lowered the walls and created dark hallways to push you both outside and away from private rooms into more public spaces that had higher ceilings and a more open feeling.  This technique distinguished the two spaces well.

Both designers used techniques to tame the landscape in some way.  Jefferson flattened the mountaintop and made Monticello the focal point.  Wright blended in with the natural surroundings by creating an illusion of pulling the outside in and vice versa.  He made his design complement the natural surroundings.

These relations between the structure and he land create a distinct language.  The parts have a cohesive dialog that works well together.  Monticello is off set by the land while Falling Water emulates its surroundings.  There is also a strong language created by the interiors of the spaces.  Monticello is packed-full of artifacts and elaborate touches while Falling Water has a sense or sereneness created by uniting the outdoors and indoors and speaks of a ‘less is more’ language. 

Falling Water exemplifies the aspect of virtual by tying the outside with the inside by means of illusions.  He has boulders and foliage that come inside and are a big part of the interior.  He has open windows and glass everywhere to make it seem as if you were outside.  In many instances these windows could open so much that you were actually outside.

            We also talked about public and private space in History class. “One of the major shifts that occurred in the nineteenth century was the need to design for building functions that had never existed before-large, covered public markets; railroad stations; public and charitable institutions; hospitals; mental asylums; and housing for the workers being drawn to rapidly expanding industrial cities, to mention only a few of the new building tasks.” Roth 471 This is why just recreating precedent designs would no longer fit the modern needs.

            This weeks opus words related strongly to our trip to Monticello and Falling Water as well as to our History readings and lectures.  We explored public and private spaces in the alternative means of design, Jefferson’s Monticello and Falling Water. Falling Water was in a much more private place than Monticello.  Monticello used the land to illuminate its presence while Falling Water camouflaged itself within the land.  Falling water also used the virtual existence of nature in the interior space.

[Re]actions

The first time we had illumination as an opus word I focused on illuminated everyday artifacts and shedding light on things, figuratively speaking.  With our current Third Skin project the prompt word mean something more literal to me now.  Through this semester I have learned how important light is in design.  “Perhaps the most powerful element in our perception of architecture is light.  Louis I. Kahn insisted that there was no true architecture without the natural light.  Our principal receptors for sensing the environment are our eyes, and the light illuminating that environment is crucial for the information we receive.” (Roth 85) 

photos i took depicting the illumination of natural light

In our Third Skin project we were to create a design that expressed a personal narrative and a piece of inspiration from nature that focused on its perception of light.   We were to only use MDF, a linear material, tools and natural light.  I tried many iterations of this project and made copious revisions due to limited shop time and unforeseen problems with actually constructing my design.

During the process stages of my project I applied various textures to my MDF hoping the surface treatment would catch light in an interesting way.  I hoped the interesting way that light hit the textured surface would draw my audience’s attention on another level other than the shadows it cast.  We studied the tactile surfaces found in Baroque architecture in history class.  “Baroque architects were especially cognizant of the phenomenon, and in their churches, they created hidden sources of daylight, focusing the light on specific areas to direct attention.  Painter of the Baroque period, such as Ruben and Rembrandt, did much the same, similarly creating areas of strong illumination to direct creating areas of strong illumination to direct out attention.”(Roth 86)

final product

In Massey, Blakemore and Roth we read about the search for a new style and learned about many movements and revolutions that impacted the path of design. A revolution is a movement that flips the world upside down and changes everything.  Revolutions perpetuate movements within design that reflect the changes in culture.

We have been learning a lot about revival in history. From the Gothic Revival to the Arts and Crafts Revival all of these revivals had a strong impact on design.  We also have been studying the movement of certain designs spreading worldwide.  These designs originate in a foreign land and are either exported or emulated in another country.  The design reflects that of the source of this artifact; like a Japanese motif portraying traditions from Japanese culture, but is revived in a new surrounding.

In Design Graphics and Perception and Communication I thought of movement in a more literal sense. Movement dictates the level of energy in a space and allows it to come alive.  We have been designing and rendering spaces and while making my plan for the space I thought about the space needed to comfortable move around and how it would actually feel to interact with the space. This is crucial because as I read in Roth on page fifty-five, “ Buildings that work well are those whose plans and spatial arrangements can be easily grasped and held by users in their mind’s eye and through which they can move about easily with a kind of inevitability such building can be said to have clear conceptual space.”

left side::colored pencil   right side::prismacolor

I learned to pay carful attention to both texture and light source::highlights,shading and shadows.

I learned to pay attention to details, for example ceiling details; i.e.::color, molding

In studio we worked with solid materials, tactile texture, illusions, and light to design dynamic pieces that reflected interesting shadows, creating visual texture.

Something that I didn’t think would play as big of a part in the final product as it did was rotation.  During critique I noticed that with each project either Stoel or the designer would take it under one of the light sources and rotate it to see the variety of shadows it could cast.  Ching explains how “turning an idea over in our mind enables us to see and study it from different points of view.  In a similar fashion, if we can imagine how an object rotates in space, or how it might appear as we move around it, we can explore its many facets from all sides.” (Ching 283)

 In History we studied the Palace of Versailles in which water, glass, light and mirrors are used to create an illusion of space and grandeur.  The hall of mirrors is a prime example of how reflection can successfully be used within a space.  “Reflections occur on…the mirrored surfaces of glass…the reflecting surface presents an inverted or mirror copy of the object being reflected.” (Ching 257) Ching literates the importance of something’s reflection by explaining that “While tonal values can imply depth on a flat drawing surface, we turn to light to more vividly describe the three –dimensional qualities of forms and spaces in our environment.  Light is the radiant energy that emulates our world and enables us to see three-dimensional forms in space.  We do not actually see light, but rather the effects of light.  The way light falls on and is reflected from a surface created areas of light, shade, and shadow, giving us perceptual clues about its three-dimensional qualities” (Ching 50)

Reflection, in a more symbolic sense, Massey explains how design reflects previous designs, inspiration pieces or cultural and governmental directions such as in the Arts and Crafts Movement when “a conservative style, inspired by French Classical architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in interior decoration was marked by lavish use of carving, gilding, rich marble, and extravagant lighting, well suited to provide an atmosphere of grandeur for large hotels, department stores, opera houses, and the ostentatious houses of the wealthy.” (Massey 31) Many designs in some ways reflect their source of inspiration.  In our studio project many of our product reflected an aspect from nature.  The style of the Arts and Crafts Movement reflected that of Beaux-Arts.  “The Grander type of interior the prevalent style was the Beaux-Arts, so called because of its source was in the teaching of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.” (Massey 31)

 

S   u   m   m   a   r   y

This weeks words played into each of our classes in different ways.  They all had dynamic meanings and made me further explore their meanings.  In studio reflection and rotation were key to how our light source illuminated on our project.  We reflected our source o inspiration in a more abstracted way.  In Design Drafting and Perception and Communication we learned the art of rendering and studied how details like small reflections, shading and shadows can illuminate our interiors to show both depth and our light source and make our space come alive.  While drafting these spaces we put to use the movement that a slight off-center rotation can give to our spaces and how it pulls you in more than a plan or elevation view.  In history we studied how designs reflect inspiration sources, sources of origination, revolutions, and movements through out history.  We learned about a variety of materials and how they were used to illuminate a space.  We made connections between places worldwide and learned about how those design moved or were reflected worldwide in new design and new places. In conclusion I believe this weeks words had strong ties both literally and figuratively speaking.

 

SYNTAX:GRAMMAR

Up until the early years of the twentieth century, one of the major purposes of figural ornament was to be didactic, to tell a story.  By means of such coherently organized storytelling images the building itself became a [story] in stone. (Roth 96)  As we have learned this semester a design process and a writing process or story have strong commonalities.  Both are very expressive mediums.

Architecture is “a richly informative cultural artifact” in that its character tells a story of transitions, revisions as well as, both to and of, an audience. (Roth 5)

Both stories and design are audience driven. Architecture is “the environment we build for ourselves, and which, as we grow in experience and knowledge, we change and adapt to our expanded condition.” (Roth 3)  Design varies according to its audience.  If you were designing a child’s room the color scheme, scale, furniture and material would be different than an office or a nightclub. I read from Roth that Andrew Derbyshire realized that the goal of architecture is “to design a building that [speaks] a language of form intelligible to its users.”  (Roth 569) Design is an international language within itself with its own syntax and linguistics that are forever growing and evolving to accommodate different audiences.  The language of a design has to translate to its audience in a way so that it is clearly communicated.  Numerous revisions create a smooth transition in relaying character to ones audience.

 

The spread above is some of the brainstorming I did for a current project.  I translated the dandelion into abstracted forms and kept revising to translate these concepts into a design.

When studying various designers there are certain characteristics that you can identify with certain designers.  For example Frank Lloyd Wright’s style tends to include a porch, court and hearth, the hearth being the fireplace.  This idea goes past architecture and spreads wider than just one designer’s character.   Character defines an era or style of a space on numerous scales. For example the unique Greek style “the mixing together of aspects of the sophisticated Minoan/Mycenaean cultures with the pragmatism of the Dorian’s.” (Roth 220)

Also throughout the Alternatives unit we have studied new takes on riving classical styles and designs that break the molds of precedent designs.  These revisions shifted architecture and reintroduced classical looks in new ways and downturned old rules taking design to the next level.  Architecture will continue to change due to these revisions.  Revisions translate old style to new style and make up a transitional process that ends in progressive change.

As Vitruvius explains in The Ten Books of Architecture, “Architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their plans, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance.” (Roth 122).  In other words until you, as a designer, actually use your hands and make something you overlook fundamental revisions that evolve ones design concept.  Through my first year I have learned this to be very true.  It is the practice of making numerous iterations and revisions that better a design. These revisions can happen on a larger scale such as a revolution that greatly affects the design world.  For example this image compares the revolution of a chairs character after the American Revolution.

In Perception and Communication we studied artists’ styles and imitated them in our own work picking up on the little details that gave them character.  Whether it was the medium they used, the color or lack of color, the direction or character of line they used or so on.  For example France Belleville of Wagonized does amazing things with crosshatching.  Stephen Gardner of Sketch of the Day uses mostly sepia, wooden and some green tones in his loose yet expressive style while mainly drawing bar settings.  It is in these details that make the overall composition interesting.

Datum lines can be found everywhere and they greatly enhance visuals. “The horizontal line is sensed empathetically as being as rest just as the human body is at rest when horizontal.  In contrast the vertical line is sensed as one of aspiration, reaching, assertiveness. There is a sense of dynamic equilibrium as a result of forces at work in the vertical line.” (Roth 71)  Datum lines use bilateral symmetry to create order and rhythm in something, which ultimately makes it aesthetically pleasing; which satisfies the delight aspect of commodity, firmness and delight.  You can see datum lines in the form of alleys or isles, such as in a church or in the megaron form in which the isle is lined by columns.  The datum lines give a clean and uniform appearance to architecture, presentations, art, and spaces.  In our recent Perception and Communication presentation we used datum lines on our presentation board in order to make our product look more pulled together and professional.  We also use a datum line when hanging things up in the crit room.  In History of Theory and Design we previously learned about cultures that use two intersecting datum lines, via the main roads, as a city-planning grid.  The roads lead to the most important spaces within the city. These intersecting datum lines were also seen in gothic cathedrals.  From the plan views you can clearly see these datum lines, often intersecting in a groin or groin-vault form that connect the nave, transepts and the channel.

 

[Summary]

Human character is a fundamental audience in the development of architectural expression.  The growth, change and development is a crucial part of the design process and is based around a plethora of revisions.  We nit-pick and revise our design concepts and in the end we often simplify them to shape and enhance the finished product.  Winston Churchill once said “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” (Roth 58)  A well-revised, successful design shapes its audience.

Different translations of the chair form

[P] Week Eight O[p]us

The first time I really considered periphery limits was when we began our Pathways, Edges and Boundaries project.

We each had areal boundaries and limited materials.  Our periphery was distinguished by a curb; a literal boundary.  We worked with and within the confinement to better it as part of a whole: the whole being the entire parking lot and walkway area.  This gave us five distinct areas to work with and to tie together.  When the new semester began we added another area which came with a whole new understanding of periphery; a crosswalk area.  This area was not distinguished by a curb or edge but by the natural pathway that students and faculty habitually create. 

This link will take you to many of my process pictures of Pathway, Edges and Boundaries.  The process of a design or a concept is key.

In our recent Portal project we worked within the literal periphery boundaries of the given doorway.  Our design could not protrude anymore than eighteen inches into the hallway and we had to work with our neighboring portal group to establish a fair boundary for the common wall space.

These are two process pictures from my portal project.  You can see the final product here.

    

Earlier in the semester while working with vignettes we had a periphery that was less literal than the edge of the paper; more like the borders and boundaries we work within in our more abstracted designs.  The periphery was an underlying edge in which we faded our drawings into the canvas.

This blog is a way for me to present and capture the process of my work as a developing designer.  It is a blogfolio- an online portfolio.  I also keep a physical portfolio.  My portfolio is composed of models, photographs, drafting, drawing in and out of my sketchbook as well on digital files.  A portfolio showcases your work as a professional much like a resume.

Already, just throughout my first year in the Iarc program my portfolios allow me to look back at my processes and progress as a designer. 

Recently in class we have been discussing the similarities and differences between the design process and the writing process.  Both of these expressive medias stem from an inspiration into a developed and well executed concept that communicate in a clear and effective way. “Clarity [is] the main prize, along with simplicity.” (Zinsser)  We will put these ties into action when we further develop our precedent analysis in history class.

These are two illustrations I did to show a different kind of process.  The first shows you how to do something step-by-step.  The second shows you the process of me drawing a pen and the layers added to each step.  

We are presenting out building presentation boards tomorrow.  We wrapped up the previous week with our portal project PowerPoint presentation.  In our powerpoint presentations we explained how we developed our portal concept. This process was very important because our portal concept was derived from previous projects.  Early in the semester we started out by reading a grim in which we made an artifact for.  From our artifact we developed our wall designed to celebrate our artifact as well as explain the process of building an exterior or interior wooden-frame wall.

We then read another story- a creation story- and on through abstracted vignettes we portrayed our wall, our artifact and our creation story. From this assignment we designed passageways that reflected the journey throughout our stories.  After that we some design words into the mix and from there created three new passageways that reflected three specific design words.  We later picked one passageway to further develop as a scale model.  Our portal project was a combination of each group member’s final passageway along with a historical site. Each of these inspiration pieces weaved into upcoming projects and into our final presentation.  

                                                       

                                                          

The building presentation was also a long process.  We were first assigned a building on UNCG’s campus to draw the floor plan from observations.  We later did diagrams of these and then drew ‘moments’ within the building stemming from other artists’ styles as inspiration.  Of course we refined these drawings and from them produced a thumbnail of a detail of the building.  All of these have important spots on our presentation board

The craft of our work is very important in our portfolio work and with anything we do because it reflects our professionalism.  This week we learned  neat trick from Suzanne about lettering for presentation boards, and for anything really.  Tricks and trades like this are the details that make or break a presentation.  If everything in your presentation looks good and then there is wonky, sloping and sloppy lettering or applications that are falling off and bubbling off the presentation board the bad craft will overpower the good.  Good craft is key to professionalism and successful work.  This is why many times we redo assignments that are put in our portfolio.

These are my three images that appear on the presentation board above for our building assignment.  They are an example of something I redid.

In both drawing and drafting we have studying perspective and put it to use many time on paper.  In history and in studio we have put our studies to use in a more hands-on approach.

“In any rectilinear object, as a cube, each of the three principal sets of parallel lines has its own vanishing point.  Based on these three major sets of lines, there are three types of linear perspective: 1-, 2-, and 3-point perspectives.  What distinguishes each type is simply the spectator’s angle of view relative to the subject.  The subject does not change, just our view of it and how the sets of parallel lines will appear to converge in linear perspective.” (Ching 225)  

I drew the picture below depicts a profile view of two people.