Beaty Sculpture Revamp

After getting a second (and third and fourth) opinion I decided to keep building onto my beauty sculpture and fitting on what pieces I could. I'm very happy with the results. If I were to do this again, I think it would be awesome to build onto the back of this sculpture as well, or build downward by mirroring the top. Or maybe both! A good idea was to place the sculpture in front of a mirror or maybe even add lights. Regardless, I think this is a good representation of my idea of beauty, while also conveying my own personal style. I used a 2D grid pattern to create simple shapes, that when put together, create a complex, dynamic form that almost seems to be spilling or growing out of itself. 

This sculpture is also interactive in that it is most interesting when you have seen it from several different angles - no two angles are alike!

Train Station Project II

This was our final concept model for Oriente Station. Pictures courtesy of Robert. 

Andersson-Wise Lecture

I don't know why I always dread going to the lectures. I haven't been to one yet where I haven't been completely fascinated and taken with what's been talked about. Andersson and Wise had some really cool projects to show, but what I really thought was interesting was how they went about "design." While I understand that in the end, good architecture is good architecture, and the philosophy behind it falls to the way side once the building is put up and in use, I also believe that in order to create great structures you need a deeper understanding of the subject than mere functionality and cool lighting.

Some of points they brought up were how the body relates to the structure. The prospect of being inside a structure, shelter, or refuge, and how one can materialize this kind of safe-haven. With that being said, many of their projects included open-air rooms and movable windows and walls that could allow the indoor-outdoor barrier to be broken. It makes me wonder what is it that creates a comfortable and safe enclosure, that doesn't block out the natural elements and surroundings.

Another thing that stuck out to me, but was barely covered, were the inspirations. I've been noticing more and more in demonstrations of architecture, art, writing, etc., the inspirations for projects are always mentioned - even if it's just briefly. For Andersson and Wise, they would quickly flash a slide with some pictures (mostly nature), and then continue to describe the building. I feel that this short display is letting off more than it seems. Andersson and Wise compared their downtown hotel and residences - complete with an ACL recording studio and concert stage - in Austin, TX, to monuments in Arches National Park and Mesa Verde. While these preserved monuments may have nothing to do with the urban and lively side of Austin, this innovative sky scraper was modeled after them. 

These inspirations serve as a starting point, kind of like the beauty slide show we did earlier for studio. Finding these sources forces you to look at the things that evoke the personal need for design and also what you wish to accomplish with design. I think this process is almost irrelevant to the finished product. In this case, the visitors and residences have no need to know why, or even who caused this building to stand. But for designers, this has to be some kind of crucial step everyone is forgetting to mention. Once we have these "inspirations" one also has to decide how to use the elements of these representations to bring new components to design. Something that I've also noticed are inspirations being use literally. If someone is inspired by a tree, their design will reflect the actual tree. 

See the resemblance? Me neither, but I firmly believe it's for the best. My reasoning is the following:

Train Station Project - Oriente Station

In order to find inspiration to design a train station, we're studying some preexisting ones first. My group picked the coolest looking train station, the Oriente Station designed by Santiago Calatrava. This also seems like the hardest train station to model, but I might just be saying that because I haven't studied the rest of the ones on the list.

Claudia and I have mainly been working on the written description of Oriente Station, while Robert and Jorge have mostly worked on designing the model in autocad. Aside from that, I think we've all picked up some books from the library, and have started a running collection of pictures. My favorite pictures so far are the following:

Beauty Sculpture

My beauty sculpture was a flop! If you don't like excuses you're probably not going to want to read this blog entry. The sculpture was due last Monday, and officially assigned either the Wednesday or Friday before it. I spent the weekend working on an autocadded design that I would use the laser cutter to cut out on ply wood. I got all my supplies (and even some I didn't need, like a heat gun), and finally when Monday came around I couldn't turn on my computer to get the file. I later found out it had over heated, burned something out, and ruined the battery (which isn't cool because the new battery was expensive).

I scrambled for an idea and finally ended up using the basic idea behind an old project I did for Rodney Hill's class durning my first semester of freshman year. I spent all of Monday morning and afternoon re-drawing my project, and finally I had it laser cut it.

Only it would have been too easy if my problems had stopped there. The laser cutter malfunctioned and outlined some of my pieces twice, making them the wrong shapes. It also didn't completely cut through the ply wood in some places, while burning through others.

Believe it or not this was the same piece of wood! 

I've assembled what I could of the sculpture, and while it doesn't look horrible, I don't think it's up to par with what I can do. I'm still trying to figure out what might salvage this sculpture without having to buy $30 worth of ply wood again, or completely starting over.

As of right now, this is what I have.

Lesson learned: save everything to a USB drive.

Design Charrette - A Transformation

So, I've been putting off blogging, because I haven't been able to access a camera or scanner, but I think I've put it off too long. I've finally just texted my email some pictures from my phone, and better ones are to come!

This semester's design charrette was pretty interesting. They gave us a manilla folder and told us to make something out of it. We couldn't add anything or take anything away; meaning no tape, glue, drawing, cutting out, etc. The only thing I could come away with from the flyer, that described the project, was the word "transform," and so I based my design off of this word.

An 11x17 "explanation" was the only thing we could turn in with our design.

To elaborate on my flyer, I really wanted to emphasize the process of a transformation. When something is "transformed," it goes from point A - the original state, to point B - the final product of the transformation. I guess this all might sound like I'm pointing out the blatantly obvious, but this was just my thought process. My focus was really what happens in between point A and point B. On top of that, what really interested me, was the how to represent the literal process of a transformation, and how to portray a sense movement and evolution through the manilla folder. 

So above is what I ended up with. After giving my own meaning the word "transformation," I think the first thing that came to mind for the actual construction of my design were these small paper Sesame Street cut-out boxes I used make as a little kid. Without much else to work with, I just went with it. The more I played with the idea, the more the little boxes kind of looked like buildings. I then played with some shapes to make the cut outs look cool. This doesn't have much to do with the meaning behind my design, but I thought they also looked cool placed together in the same way big city buildings are. And that's what design is all about, right? Cool looking things. 

With all of that in mind, I could say that this design is representational of the process of design and even architecture. That the "buildings" show an abstracted transformation of the fabrication side to architecture: point A - the original state, nothingness, bare land, etc.; to point B - a structure, a building, and so on. The perimeter of the folder has been left untouched to emphasize the starting point and the original state of the object, and the boxes have been arranged so that they seem to be creating something entirely different, with no regard to the folder. And so, this is my representation of neither point A nor point B, but whatever it is that is in between. 

I also feel, however, that that was a very wordy interpretation. And I believe, to an extent, that if a viewer cannot understand the meaning of a work without being told what it is, that obviously the work does not represent it's meaning well. I'm not sure that anyone would figure that was the meaning behind my design for this charrette, but, again, this blog is just to show you my thought process.

In the end, regardless of how the meaning was interoperated, the judges liked my design! Even though the critique was a little lengthy, I thought it was a pretty fun charrette, and I got a cool book out of it too.