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: