Inhabit one

What was written on my A3 sheet:

" To help us begin our Inhabit assignment we were given a reading to do; ‘Designing in technical social landscapes’. I found the idea of ‘gaps and collisions’ within the piece very interesting as I saw the Social Bridges as a Gap in people movement. “Gaps are perceived as problematic reminders of imperfect mathematical organisation and a reminder for our lack of ability to bring order to complex environments.” This particular quote from the text influenced my Inhabit intervention a lot as I played with the idea of unbalanced equilibrium and gravity. As wellfocusing on my own ‘Gap’ idea - I was working along side some other people in my group where we were looking at the idea of communicationby bringing people together and breaking down the social divide experienced in the Owen Glenn Building (particularly when concerning the ‘social bridges’ which only post-graduates and staff members can use). "

My A3's:

I connected the word DISTORTION with the ideas of unbalanced equilibrium and 'imperfect mathematical organization' - i.e.: I was distorting the bridges by tilting them and flipping them upside down. I will be bringing the idea of distortion through to my Inhabit 2 project.

Threshold

My thrash.old assignment all started with a scrunched up piece of paper. I decided to scan this piece of paper because it related back to my previous assignment – trashcan. It came up with a very interesting scan that was quite different from the original object. I was inspired by the shapes and forms the scan expressed, so I used it as inspiration for my threshold.

To help me begin designing my threshold, I read the reading that was suggested to us, and I found a quote that I found really interesting – “…this laughter is ambivalent: it is gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking and deriding. It asserts and denies, it buries and revives. Such is the laughter of carnival.” What I immediately thought of when I read that was: deception. Thresholds between the courtyard and studio were already deceiving people (i.e.: the doors along the level 2 studio which are always locked). I wanted to emphasise and build on this deception by tricking people into thinking that they could get through into studio, when really they couldn’t.

Taking influences from my scans, I came up with the idea of having cages which people would be “trapped” in. Trapped in the sense that they would walk through the doors into studio thinking they could get through when really they were just walking into a cage. Think: rubber gloves and an incubator – the people can see what is going on in studio/outside and can interact with the space to an extent, but they aren’t totally free to touch and can’t experience the space fully.

I decided to keep the materials similar to that of the existing building, so red steel and concrete. This was so that people would feel more confident and comfortable – making it easier for me to deceive them. The huamn mnid is so pufowerl it can dcodee tihs txet eevn tguohh eervy sglnie wrod is slepled iocenrtclry. The one cavaet is taht the frist and lsat lertets are pervresed in erevy wrod. The biarn deos not raed eevry snlige lteetr, but wodrs as a wohle. I decided to use this application of deception in my design also – by preserving the two end sections of the wall my threshold is on, and then jumbling up the walls in between (i.e.: with my red cages). As you can’t access the studio through my threshold – the existing entry/exit points in studio currently, would have to be used for getting in and out of studio.

Here are my two A3 pages:

Trash Can

For the trash can assignment, we were asked to design a 'device' which could dispose of and reintroduce design junk. We came to the conclusion as a group that 'design junk' was disregarded ideas/materials/techniques.

During one of my other lectures, I was doodling in my sketch book - where I was screwing up one of the corners of my page and then carefully going over the creases which formed in doing that. I showed it to my tutors, as the end product actually looked pretty cool! The stark constrast between the one crumpled up corner and the rest of the paper which was perfectly flat, was suprisingly very visually appealing. I decided that that doodle would be my design junk, so pretty much my design was based on a doodle I did during a lecture :D don't you love Architecture?

In a sense, the process I went through (i.e. scrunching up the corner of the page) was how I disposed of my design junk. And the way I reintroduced it was by creating the large landscape out of that one small peice of paper. I wanted to make something big so lots of people could experience it but also to reference back to the readings we did.

We were asked to read sections from this book: http://www.scribd.com/doc/4807540/Robert-Pirsig-Lila-An-Inquiry-Into-Morals and then take influences from the literature and use it in our designs. The main thing I took from the readings was that 'Design junk' is just as, or possibly more, important than any other part of the design process - which also added to my reasoning behind using the doodle as my main influence for my design and making my end product at such a large scale.

We were asked to do 2 A3 pages to explain our designs (shown below). I know they are not perfect, so I will probably touch them up before we have our final hand in - but these are what I handed in for the trash can crit. I did one page showing the surface in it's environment (Albert Park) and I did the other page showing how people would interact with the surface, so sitting on it or walking etc.

I made a plaster model to go with these two pages, so that people could get a sense of how the 'real thing' might feel like and all the different angles/surfaces created by the scrunching.

As well as doing a plaster model, I wanted to do a model which showed more detail. However I left it a bit too late and was unable to 3D print my design. I had 3D scanned my crumpled up paper and I was able to get a part of it which I would have been happy to 3D print. This section (shown below) explained how people would sit on the surface (in red) and showed at a larger scale what the uneven surface itself could be like.

Grotesque Poster

At the start of the semester we had to design a 'grotesque poster for the institution'. The 'institution could be anything we wanted it to be but most people, including myself, used the Architecture School as our Institution. So to give you a run down on what I was thinking about when I designed my poster:

As you can see my poster is quite 'dark'. I wanted it to be mysterious so people wouldn't necessarily reconise the space I photographed instantly - hence I chose the chairs in studio, something we all see everyday but they aren't very 'important' as such. I used a skeleton arm to represent the life (or death :p depends which way you look at it) of the average Architecture student.

In my poster I wanted to show how Architecture takes over, and basically becomes your life! And also how you become part of the 'Architecure Family'. So to represent that idea, I placed the skelelton arm in place of the chair leg - showing that the person literally became part of the furniture there.

hmmmmm, and the writing! This was just a little quote that I thought of when we were given the assignment. I was told by older and I guess more experienced people when I first started Architecture earlier this year - that Architecture WILL take over my life whether I like it or not and that all my close friends will be my fellow Architecture buddies. At the time I didn't believe what they were saying of course.. but I am starting to understand now. To be honest though, I wouldn't have it any other way :p