'roots' exercise

here are my sketches to go along with my experience from the "back to your roots" exercise from last week.

back to your 'roots'

When told the requirements for the "back to your roots" exercise, it was a little unclear why we were going to do so many sketches. I was excited about the chance to do a more free type of drawing but skeptical. However, after working on this exercise, I now see the advantage in doing lots and lots and LOTS of sketches when developing ideas in design. So many times as designers, we have an idea that we think is great and forget to continue developing it. By doing these sketches, something that started as a static object, began to take new forms and turn into something completely different. What started out as a BIC highlighter and the book Vitruvius The Ten Books of Architecture, turned into a passageway of stairs with sculptural elements all around it. The initial sketches of the book were pretty straight forward. It is a book with illustrations in it so there was a lot to pull inspiration from with the forms of columns and the colliseum to draw. The highlighter on the other hand was a little more difficult. I started out drawing it from every angle I possible could and from that some very abstract forms began to emerge. From those abstract images it became easier to develop them into new things and start to see completely different themes in all of them. From the book I had forms that resembled architecture that turned into interesting three-dimensional forms that were whimsical and fun to work with.
The closer I got to the model stage of the exercise the more I started to see design forms in the sketches I had done and was able to come up with ideas of the type of passageway I wanted to create. The end result was a set of stairs - inspired by the accordion-like form that stemmed from the top of a column drawn - with spiral sculptural forms around them complimenting the ascending pathway.

Thoughts on Bachelard's Chapters 2 & 3

Chapter 2: House and Universe

Throughout the chapter, Bachelard makes some interesting references. One being on page 49 when talking about the way that people long for the “poor house” with its simplicity and “bold outlines.” This is something that I have always felt but never really read or seen it brought up anywhere. It is true though, that for some reason the old, poor houses are the more interesting and the old paintings and prints of them strike our imaginations so much more than a newly built house. I believe the reason for this is the fact that the old house stirs up stories in us. Our imagination starts to run wild with thoughts of the people that live/have lived in the house and what their lives are/were like. If it is an old abandoned house with things left behind, we are especially intrigued because we can really start to piece together a story and an image of what the people were like who lived there. It is a comforting environment to be in because there is a certain warmth you can feel in an old house that has been loved already and sheltered people with every day lives similar to ours.

Chapter 3: Drawers, Chests and Wardrobes

When describing a hiding place, Bachelard quotes Milosz, “A wardrobe is filled with the mute tumult of memories.” When thinking about a wardrobe or a drawer – somewhere that you “put” things – I get the visualization of special and important belongings that are usually for your enjoyment. These are memories and belongings that you do not want everyone to see. They are closer to your heart and mind than everything else. If someone else is going to experience these things, then you are allowing yourself to be vulnerable. These memories that we hide in our “wardrobes” may be ones that are painful or they are just so important to us that we don’t want to reveal them. He also talks about the wardrobe not having a lock because locks invite thieves. This is interesting to think about because when a person has a wall or guard up resembling their own wardrobe for their secrets and memories, usually there is no way to see that or tell it is there until you try to get past it. There is not visual way of knowing that there is a blocked territory there - and if there were a way of knowing then people might not ever try to get through the barrier and know the intimacy of another person.

my favorite teacher

My favorite teacher was one of my English teachers in high school, Mrs. Luke. She was very old when I had her as a teacher and had been at that high school for about 40 years. Many peoples' parents had her as a teacher when they were in high school. The reason that I like her was because she was scary! I had her my 10th grade year when I was a "silly cheerleader" and she was mean as hell to me in the beginning of the year and I remember "hating" her, but by a few weeks after that I started to really like her and only respected her more and more throughout the year. She was the type of teacher that could just look at you and make you instantly shut up and listen and she was very smart too. She made us think about grammar and what was coming out of our mouths so as not to sound like a bunch of "hicks" and taught us good writing skills as well. I always looked forward to her class. She passed away the summer after I graduated and I believe in her early 80s and had a huge funeral with a ton of guests. She was an awesome teacher and mentor that I will never forget.

favorite subject in school

When I was in high school I wasn't always the most "studious" student ever. haha! If that's believable... However, I wasn't bad at school. My grandmother has referred to it as "learning through osmosis" before. This is something that I will not ever quite understand, but in high school my favorite subject was math. I always thought I hated it and would complain about sometimes getting a bad grade on a test or something, but it was the subject that I actually would STUDY. It was a subject that I couldn't learn through osmosis - I had to actually learn it... so the more I learned it, the better I got at it. By senior year I was pretty good at math and ended up acing my Triginometry class and loved it!

favorite quote from bachelard chapter 1

In chapter one, Bachelard talks a lot about the house and how each person perceives it and how they remember their own houses and spaces. A quote that sticks out to me is on page 4 in the third paragraph: "For our house is our corner of the world." This means a lot of things to me. It makes me think about the fact that when I go out in public anywhere I always sit in a corner. I don't ever like to have my back to anything and want to be able to see all around me and be able to guard myself. This is the way I feel safe. I take this quote in this similar sense of a feeling of safety - like in your house you are safe from the rest of the world. You feel comfortable and feel like you can sit in your house - or fortress as it feels like - and watch everything go on outside around you - but since you are in your comfortable place people can't get to you as easily.
Not only is our house our safe place, it is what we always assume to be "our right." We have land and it is ours. It is OUR place to go and if we want, we can tell other people to stay out of OUR place and OUR land. This is our place where we can go to be completely alone with our thoughts if we want. We can do or feel or think whatever we want in the safety of our corner and feel like the world can't see us.

cool stuff specified in beta [room 204] project

During the project for room 204, we found some really cool stuff that we specified for our space. Since, our personal renderings may not do some of the things justice I wanted to put some actual images of these products on here...


This table is actually named the Curved Dining Table by Robert Bernstein. This is a very interested hand-drawn table that is 3/16" thick painted steel. It costs $10,000!



This is the Softwall by Molo Design. They make many different types of softwalls, as well as other "soft" objects. They make seating, lighting, walls, even rocks. For the Softwalls, there is a choice of it being paper or textile and they have the really interesting option of clipping things onto the wall.


The Smartboard is a display screen that can be projected on, written on, and interacted with. While having a projection up on the screen you can similtaniously write directly on it and use infrared pens to "write" with the projection.

perspectives of room 204 - beta

In the redesign of room 204, we used panels around the perimeters of the room in front of the windows. These panels can be moved side to side or swiveled to let light in or block it out to provide a place to project. There are two large tables/desks that are hung from the ceiling with cables and anchored to the floor when in use. When they are not needed, however, they can be lifted to the ceiling to provide more floor space. The room can be sectioned off with the Softwall that is seen in the middle of the room. This is a textile fabricated accordion-like wall that can be stored away when folded together or stretched out to create separate spaces.
What use to be the storage closets has now been converted into one smaller storage closet and space created for a small break-out room for group meetings and smaller discussions. Separating this small room from the larger classroom is two panels that slide in front and behind each other creating a sealed off feeling. The panels are not floor to ceiling leaving the hint that there is something behind them and creating for a more open air-flowing feeling.

finished result of group lectern design

What we ended up with as a group was an ergonomic and ADA compliant lectern. The top surface when extended as far up as it will go is at 3'8" - suitable for an average height - and when adjusted down lower it can be as short as 3'0" for accessibility. The front is open to allow a wheelchair to fit comfortably underneath. The top has a lockable storage area for a laptop. In this area there are two flaps that come up to reveal the cords and cables for the computer and projection systems. There is an interactive podium screen mounted to the inside of the storage door for the top. There is lockable storage to the left and right of the person teaching as well.

sketches of lectern ideas

The initial ideas that I had for the lectern were focused mainly on the comfort of the presenter. I tried to think about what it is like to be behind the current lectern and what I would like to see instead. The shape that evolved is of a folding motion. It is a continuous linear shape that creates a top work surface as well as a seat on one end of the lectern for the presenter. There is a freestanding magnetic surface that stands beside it - or can be moved - for hanging presentation boards. There is a sunken computer docking station as well as a sunken area for the projector to go where it would be flush with the top surface.

outcome of alpha and second phase

The first of the images is what came of the alpha charrette of the collage of images. Everyone came up with a different interpretation of their piece of the whole. Some people used charcoal, some watercolors, some attached things to their board which made for a difficult time getting them to stay on the wall :). Doug's was pretty cool with lots of layers of mat board stacked on each other and connected with nuts and bolts and some black paper attached to the piece as an abstract representation of the painting. My solution to the part of the painting I got was to use two different mediums - one representing the old painting and another representing the "new" of our studio and how we use technology. In the background where the old painting was I replicated the painting using black ink painting. In the space where the sign for our studio was I went into photoshop and used magazine style lettering to spell out the writing. It created a collage-like image that was representative of our learning process in iarc as well as the project we had created as a whole studio.
The second image is of the next phase of the charrette. We were told to show an overlay of the gatewood building section and show how it somehow connected to the image underneath. We used the section of the building and then cut out peices of it to reveal the work under it creating an interesting composition. We then used yarn to show sunlight patterns of the site.

First Charrette of the semester

For the beginning of the semester project we were each given a square from the Raphael painting "School of Athens."  With this being a project getting us back into the "groove" of school and redefining our creativity, we were told to use 3 or more different techniques to reproduce our own square.  This would in turn create a mosaic of paintings to recreate the whole.  The square I got was the very bottom left corner that doesn't have much on it in the actual painting.  Patrick put together a sign to go in that place to tell who we were as a studio and what we were doing through this project.  When I first started trying to figure out how to go about producing my square, I thought a lot about trying to cut parts out and make parts that are built outward from the painting.  I wanted to do something with black ink and possibly with acrylic paints.  The one mediums that I used from that list were ink and building out.