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.