Wax and Wire

How do we make a drawing without paper? Given this short assignment I have embraced it in hopes of releasing my slight frustration with my current design and taking a break in hopes of discovering something new about my design I had not yet seen. We were to recreate one or two of our drawings without using paper. In the case of the wire, the wire becomes the line and begins to hint at the paper-space. While the wax (we could have used plaster or concrete) was to arrive at a drawing in a release...

So the image on the top is a close up of what is going on in the center of the design. I used the wire to frame my entry sequence(s) and the important forms within my building. Before doing this exercise I had thought about mimicking the undulating plates on the inside and bring those out into these entry spaces. On completing this wire "drawing" I feel I am going to do what it was I had planned but in a much more subtle way. The entry spaces have a great feeling of simplicity, then you walk through the door and the whole world changes to detail and compression. Simply done I feel this could be a great expression.

Wax:

So this obviously didn't work...

This, however, did!

One of the things I wanted for my design was to use light in some way to enhance the design. The concept, admittedly was more for the experience out side and having to do with the march of time through the day and into the night, and if my "eggs" were lit up at night the viewer would, then, have a much different experience at night than at noon. After this exercise with the bee's wax I realized light was really something to experience in all the important spaces, inside and out. This exercise has helped me reconceptualize the interior walls as not only circulation and archival space but the element that generates the visceral experience. Now I have to build a section model at a larger scale of the archive walls.

the continuation

The saga continues! this time i have more pictures than words. (and now the sigh of relief!)

the plan as it was...

the plan as it is with;

its diagram. Now for the sections:

where it was...

where it went to...

where it is now...(kind of...ish)
My trouble is this, i have a long corridore which has taken over the building. I need the oblique!

In the beginning...

So the first ideas were to build a tower. a capsule of sorts that would house all the program with circulation winding through it. this has found its way to a new version. This version is that the courtyard I have chosen for my site is the capsule, and all the program fits within it. That gave way to the three theaters "floating" in space with all the support for them sub-terrainian. As Parent pointed out, the ground plain is the datum with "life" above it and "life support" under it.

the tower idea

Objects within the courtyard

Here's where I am now. three theaters seemingly placed in an arbitrary manner but all connected underground. Also, too, these shapes would be rounder more like an egg, great for a theater inside but I was thinking of the way they would touch people. It seems I have fallen into a few of my own definitions of tangible and intangible.



more thought...

I left off last time on my thought with the idea of visual escape. I feel though I need to put a definition to tangible and intangible (and, yes, as complex as it may seem at first I have figured out this spell check thing...). I have defined, for myself, tangible as this; horizontal and vertical lines or planes and their intersections, as well as, nature and all the laws of physics which bind them. Obviously intangible is the antitheses of tangible. An example: say you have a mass 20 feet above your head, the span is, say, 60 feet. What you would expect to find is columns holding it up. A weight supported by something; the laws of physics are satisfied. What if those columns were taken out? Perhaps this mass is cantilevered, we don't know. All we know is that we should be, at the moment, less than an inch thick. We can not readily discern what is holding up the mass. Intangibility, the laws of physics are not readily satisfied.

site collage

This exercise was meant to tease out the subconscious and begin to reflect the site in a way we saw it, not necessarily the way we wanted to see it.

This was made up of multiple pictures of the site itself, cut up and arranged in a manner to express, abstractly, what the site was about. My intention was to capture how the ground is penetrated with buildings, trees and drains. what ended up coming out was an expression of verticality. I began to see this project as my own cubist painting.

studying the map

so I have been analysing the site through the form of a "drawdel" (a model and drawing in one). what interests me the most though is the ground plane thought of as a datum. the ground, to me, has become nothing more than a line in the sand. things pass through the barrier and dwell beneath but all forms collect around it. pipes under; buildings they supply, between or above.

the site

So we have the map, and we must treat it as though it were a painting where all the rules and laws of physics may not apply. I should look at the world as though it were an abstract painting...

as I sat in Landscape Architecture today I couldn't help but realize the topic was very close to the topic I want to focus on; paths, or what moves us.

I was immediately drawn to the "hole in the canvas" at the library where I began to see Harvard or rather the ground-plain of Harvard as more of a porous thing like fabric that everything either sat on or, in the case of the library, below.

I have three objects i want to concentrate on here: the buildings and their inter-play with the ground plain, the ground plain itself and how it has been treated as though it were a fabric, and, finally, the paths. these I feel are rather important; leading us to prominent intersections where we can see certain views or buildings, give us place markers or just change our direction. these paths are the most important for me right now and will be what I will most work on.