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.

a thought...

After watching the movie Inception I am left with the notion of tangability. what we percieve as sensory true may not be. I have the desire to look deeply into the tangable as well as the intangable as we move into designing a building. I suppose one might say I have my own agenda. These ideas are rough, but I would like to at least express them.

If Corbusier thought of right angles as organizing elements and curves as elements that would touch the human body, I feel I can use these ideas in my own quest. Right angles to me are tangable. These are what we use to understand our world. What, then, of curves? curves in a building are the intangable. these "touch" the sense of sight and invoke an emotion...

I feel I might be going to quickly. Rewind, about a year or so. I realize the spaces I have felt compelled to leave between buildings has been an attempt at touching what we call our souls. An example:

Space between buildings stirs an emotion.
The space here is harsh. Cold concrete seems to be abrasive. The space hear could be said to be bourdering on the intangable to the common person, as there is not much here to fix our known world on. However, there are two elements to soften the entire ensamble. The stream down the center leading off to the horizon makes the observer say, "I'm o.k. with this." The need to have a visual escape is ever important here. Also there is a need to be able to touch an element which is not man-made, aka water in this case. It could be wood, or stone, or any other item that lets us see true nature.

Here I must pause; I have other work that requires my attention...

the machines for seeing

These are machines for seeing. Sometimes in order to see something new all you need are new eyes... You can look at the same thing, and yet see something entirely different. Anyway, these "machines" are to make the viewer see the landscape in a different way.

Machine #1:

This is just a simple box, however in trying to see the model through this machine one must adjust the mirrors within to get a glimpse through the other side. As the viewer looks in the machine, however, we get in our own way. staring back at the viewer is the viewer themselves. This reflection is my attempt at trying to show how we have the need to see ourselves in our physical manafestations in an attempt at immortality. unfortunatly this will never work... nothing we build will last forever. we just want to see ourselves while we are alive.

This machine doesn't quite get across what I had hoped as the mirrors are too blurry and the distance between them is too great. One was supposed to be able to see through their own image to the clear image of the model. Instead all you can see is yourself.

Machine #2:

Based in my extra-curricular reading of Buddhism, I have made this machine for viewing nothing. there was not much instruction to this one, just make us see nothing. As said before, all we might need is new eyes so I will leave this discription at that.

the building

So here is the landscape I came up with. This is a building imposed on a landscape which could have been prestine, as it were. As the glasses in the painting are, in a sort, an imposition on the painting I used the shape of them to reflect this in the building. The table has become the water and the different levels of which reflect the different layers in the painting the table seems to be at. This composition is ment to be set at the preverbial edge of the world.

new assignments

We have moved on. Still working on the painting, now we must see a landscape in the midst of the lines. Add to this the use of a Corbu building and you get an interesting dialoge between a cubist artist and a designer who saw the world through the cubist glass. Let me explain; if cubism is about moving around an object to see it in its totallity, Corbusier's use of the ramp fits in with this phylosophy. Instead of a means to an end, going up stairs to get to the top, we find Corbusier wants us to experience the space he has given us as we gradually travel from one plane to the next taking in the space in its intirty.

The building I have chosen to couple with the work I have been doing on the Juan Gris painting is the Corruchette House. http://en.wikiarquitectura.com/index.php?title=Curutchet_House (pretty good, quick reference). This house is on a small foot print but manages to pack a punch when it comes to architecture. Corbu ues the ramp to deliver the full oportunity for viewing this house. Placed on piloti, the house sits above the ground plane and allows nature to grow up and around the structure. These are the two main features I chose to borrow in this exersize. Getting to some work heres some pics:

As you can see in these section drawings I am attempting to break down the ground plane into verious levels to create a more complex fabric to inhance the viewing experience of the person walking around. Ramps are in use as well as the "hovering" blocks are both on piloti, as will become more evident in the model to come. 

Thoughts: 

The idea was presented that maybe the water I have in the landscape might relate more to the actual painting which I am getting all the lines from. This gave me the idea that maybe the table could be some sort of waterfall with the edge of the tabl being where the water spills off into the abyss being the floor in the painting. I would leave this section as a void in the model to emphasize the point. 

Here's the actual painting for reference.

understanding how we see

given the painting Glasses, Newspaper & Bottle of Wine by cubist painter Juan Gris we were told to, in a sense, "understand" the painting. Cut it up, push and pull and ultimately tease out what the painting was about.


the whole idea behind this is to stand up the fronts of the objects on the painting and keep flat the surfaces that were parallel to the table top. i also cut the painting along the strong vertical lines to try to align the table edge to better understand the space.

this was an attempt at further cutting and disecting the painting. i turned the different pieces into various planes. giving them a certain depth i was able to create something that while it looked like the painting head on became very distorted when viewed from an angle.

 this was an attempt at creating layers of color to "flatten" the painting by pushing the lighter colors to the back and bringing the darker colors to the front.

using clear plastic i used layers in this model as well but chose to layer the objects within the space. this is the least successful of the studies as it is the most difficult to read the painting through the modifications.