Sketch-up of [Sacred Space]

Plan and 4 Sections of [Sacred Space]

Crit Room #401

Interior and Exterior Walls

Perspective Grid and Plan

Book Assignments - Drafting

Lettering [Stairs and Quiz]

Coming Full Circle

Community:  Community is locality all inhabited by a group of people.  In Patrick’s class we learned about buildings that were built because of their history, technology, locality, and deconstruction.  The atheneum in Indiana is all about ramps, steps, open spaces, traveling around and being seen and seeing.  The atheneum building’s ramps are shaped to the hills of the grass on the landscape making it all about its location.

Stewardship:  Stewardship is someone who manages another property for financial affairs.  It can also mean that it is the person who manages an event or other specialty.  This past week in my communication class, we had to give persuasive speeches on anything we wanted.  This one guy did his speech on sustainability and how it is our job to take care of the world and not let it get destroyed by where rubbish goes, the use of how much water is used, heat, energy, and more.  When you build a structure, it is friendly to the environment if you make it sustainable.  The Proximity hotel in Greensboro, NC is the worlds first all sustainable building. 

 

Authenticity:  When I think of authenticity, I think of originality.  When you are designing a space, you should always put in some of your own personal creativity that makes it special to you.  Being authentic means not corrupting something from the original.  Frank Lloyd Wright is a great example of how he does not destroy the landscape around his buildings, but he makes it part of the design.  

 

Innovation:  Innovation is about introducing new ideas and methods.  For studio we had to design an architectural space for the grad students downstairs on the first floor of the IARC department.  Each of us designed something totally different and was all different because they all had different stories to tell.  Everyone’s concept was different and they all brought new ideas to the world.

[PAIR]ing DOWN

Meditation/Celebration:  Meditation gives you time to contemplate and go into deep thought.  It is a time for reflection and to give you time alone.  When you are meditating, you want to be in a relaxive state of mind.  Your body wants to feel at ease.  Celebration, however, is different because celebration means you are praising, worshiping, performing, and/or engaging in festivities.  Celebration always involves happiness and joy.  Casa Batilo has a sense of meditation and celebration because the curves in the walls are soothing to the mind, yet the colors in the house are celebrative in light.

Light/Shadow:  Light is what illuminates a room.  It is what all colors depend on.  Light is how a room is brightened to create shades of color.  Shadow does the opposite because shadow is what dulls a room or makes casts of darkness from the opposite side of light from an object.  Shadow is how we can tell that the earth moves during the day.  The Johnson house in New Cannan, Connecticut is the house of Philip Johnson.  The house is all windows on all sides of the façade, which allow for light and shadow to come into the room from the natural outdoors surrounding the house.

 

 

 

Transpose/Juxtapose:  Transpose and juxtapose are words I did not know and had to look up.  According to dictionary.com, transpose means, “to change the relative position, order, or sequence, or to transfer or transport.”  Juxtapose means, “to place side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.”  Le Corbusier has his five points of architecture and he follows them in some of his designs for buildings.  In his house, Notre dame du haut, he uses free façade, free plan, pilotis, and ribbon windows.

Literal/Abstract:  Literal means that something means exactly what the word definition says.  It is always true to the fact.  Abstract in design is when you take something literal and turn it into an idea that makes up the concept.  It can be many ideas that make up the concept of the literal thing or object.  The Johnson Wax building is a building for workspaces.  There are lily pads in the workspace.  Literally there are no lily pads, but the columns that go up into the ceiling represent a lily pad in a different abstract form.

Monologue/Dialogue:  Monologue is a composition of a single element or idea when dialogue is a conversation between two people or exchange of ideas.  Falling Water and the Massaro House are both done by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Both of them are single houses that represent monologue, but when both of them are compared they have a lot of dialogue between them.  They have dialogue because they both relate in the way that both structures were built for the landscape around it.

Summary:  A place that is meditative as well as celebrative creates monologue and dialogue.  In order to make a celebration and mediation space, you must abstract the literal message/story you are trying to get across.  In order to abstract ideas you have to use juxtaposition and transposition to make that happen.  Everything has light and shadow effects when there is natural or artificial light.

 

Road Trip

Roots:  Roots are where the seeds were planted and is where the beginnings are strongly planted.  It is where something comes from.  In design, we all have to start the journey of learning somewhere.    Roots in a structure begin with the foundation because without the foundation the structure is not secure.  The Home Insurance Building in Chicago has a “free façade” because the exterior supports the exterior only and the interior is supported by steel frames, not the exterior.

Compression/Release:  This week we have been tossing ideas around about what to do for our window project where we have to make two different light sources out of mdf and paper if we choose.  My doodle drawing of my window shows that the pieces compress at the corners and release on the curves in the middle.  Binding materials can make a strong structure.  For example, Antonio Gaudi’s Casa Bonita is made of a concrete façade and has steel iron and glass tile on top of it for decorative effects, but also to make the structure stronger.  The Brooklyn Bridge is another example of compression.

Congruence:  Congruence is the coming together of two or more elements.  When you converge and attach two elements they have a sense of connectivity and dialog.  Antonio Gaudi was great at converging the idea of humans and his structures.  Guell Park in Barcelona has many curves and organic shapes, just like a body has.  There is much fluidity throughout the park.

Materiality:  Materiality is what makes up a structure.  Stoel says it is important to  become good at researching materials because you will never know all of the materials out there.  This week we had to make three material boards.  I learned a lot about how I should of formatted my boards and matted the pictures to unify the boards in some way.  The title should always respond to the size of the paper.  Most buildings are constructed of metal, glass, and concrete in the 19^th century.  Still today those materials are very popular to construct with.

Concept:  Concept is a popular word that is used in IARC.  It is the main idea or theme throughout a structure.  Tommy Lambeth said, “Concept is a simple organizing idea.”  My building that I chose to research on for Patrick’s class is the Wiessenhof house in Stutgartt, Germany.  The house’s overall concept is linearity because it has so many straight lines and everything is vertical and horizontal.

Summary:  All roots of a building come from materials that are compressed and released to make a structure.  The concept of a building varies between any building, but is the main idea or theme.

Between Silence & Light

Craft:  Craft is something that is an art and requires a special skill.  Clean lines and datum lines require special skill, as it is an art of perfection.  After visiting Falling Water and Monticello, I realized they both are very highly crafted with the woodwork and masonry.  Each place took special craft in how the materials were to be placed in the landscape surrounding the houses.  In the hotel we stayed in over our trip, they had wooden rocking chairs in each room that were made by the Amish.  The chairs are well crafted because they are handcrafted and that requires a special skill that many do not know how to do.  As Roth says, “The architects become deluged with information regarding the accuracy of details.” (Roth, 472)  Details are very important when it comes to good craft.

The craft is in the placement of how Wright put the beams across from the house to the rock.

Public/Private:  When you are designing a house, you don’t want every space you design to be just public, because then you wouldn’t have any place to go and have your own privacy.  You have to balance out the two in a home.  In Monticello, the parlor and foyer were very public places and the bedrooms and study were very private areas in the house.  In Falling Water, Wright made the hallways dark and the rooms light because he felt that the hallways were not important since they are not a place to be sociable in and instead a place to get from one area to another.  Even certain materials that are used in a room can tell what rooms are more private or public because Blakemore says that. “Wood, the least expensive, was the most common material for modest homes and for less important rooms in the houses of the wealthy.”  (Blakemore, 400)  

This is a public area in the family room at Falling Water.

Technique:  Technique is a way of accomplishing a certain task.  It requires a specific skill of procedures to get to the final craft.  It is so amazing how they could of built Falling Water right over the waterfall.  In order to make the house cantilever over the water, it had builders make logs to hold up the structure as they built it so it wouldn’t collapse.  This took great technique in figuring out how to make Falling Water cantilever over the water.  During the 19^th century, “Inlay became a prominent decorative technique of great technical superiority…”  (Blakemore, 382)  Inlay used native woods just like Falling Water used its natural surroundings.

This elliptical arch is very hard to do since the arch is supported by the side structures and it is hard to make it balanced.

Language:  When you think of the word language, you think of a foreign language that is used in communicating with others verbally.  When you talk about architecture having language, it means that the structure speaks words of its own to describe it.  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe once said that, “God is in the details” meaning that perfection in details has its own language and speaks something that is so unique.  Both Monticello and Falling Water worked with the landscapes in a way that celebrated them.  Monticello used clay for bricks and you see lots of clay color in the lot it sits in.  Falling Water used stone in constructing the house, as there were lots of rock and stone in the landscape it surrounded.  

The landscape at Monticello helps celebrates the language of the house itself.

Virtual:  Virtual is an interesting word as I was surprised what it actually meant when I looked it up.  Virtual is the existence of something without actually being there.  We got to have a virtual tour of both Monticello and Falling Water, but most importantly, both houses utilized virtuality through light.  Monticello used skylights that made the light come through and make you feel like virtually the sky is actually there.  Mirrors in the bedrooms made the rooms virtually look bigger because the image reflects back making the space appear to be larger than it actually is.  Falling Water used glass windows that didn’t have any corner support so that when you opened the corner windows, you got a virtual sense of the outside when you were inside.  That made it feel like the outdoors were coming indoors.  Glass was a very expensive material during the times that Falling Water and Monticello were both being built.  “Around the mid-19^th century a number of factors combined to make it feasible to install larger panes of window glass- manufacturing processes, excise duty, and window tax.”  (Blakemore, 397)  It was nice to be able to install bigger pieces of glass because glass was a way to make a room look virtually appealing since you felt part of the outdoors inside.

The skylight in one of the rooms at Monticello makes a virtual appeal in the room by bringing the outdoors in.

Summary:  Craft and Technique have their own language because they make private and public spaces look virtually appealing.  The way a building is put into place and the small details are put into private and public spaces.  Windows and mirrors inside a house create a virtually appealing space by making the outdoors look like they are indoors and at the same time not making it distract from the room but make it celebrated.

[Re]Actions

Rotation:  A rotation means that something is turning around in a circular motion or a change and may repeat itself.  There is the saying that, “History repeats itself.”  In Patrick’s class we learned how a revolution evolves/comes about.  It starts out in the rotation stage, where a change happens.  It then moves into the cycle and reform where change is made from the rotation.  It transitions into the Renaissance and comes out to the revival stage.  America was trying to separate itself from England and had to make a revolution.

Here is a drawing from my notes in Patrick's class about the cycle that a Revolution goes through.

Movement:  Movement creates a sense of path.  For our Pathways, Edges, and Boundaries project, we are going to install pieces of cement into the ground of the parking lot islands.  My group, the Gateway group, is using half spheres to guide the pathways and square blocks to direct the pathway that will be stepped on and used.  The squares create a sense of movement because of how the raised circles are placed onto them.  There is movement in history of how it is constantly changing.  There is change between two chairs that are the same style but built in a different time periods that influenced each of them in their own way.  “The Arts and Crafts Movement had widened the debate about what constituted good design, but had little effect on conventional interior design at the turn of the century, either in America or Europe.”  (Massey, 31)

This is a potential layout of how the stepping stones and half spheres will go into one of the parking lot islands.  It creates movement because the path that people will walk on is how they get from one end to the other and the raised circles on top create a motion that is moving.

Reflection:  This week we made a project about light out of MDF.  We had to make natural light reflect onto our project in some way to illuminate it and create movement.  My project is a great example of how light comes through the curves in my design on each circle plate and reflects light, making shadows.  As you rotate the project the shapes change and create movement.  The Crystal Palace in London is another example of reflecting light.  The conservatory has glass all around it, illuminating everything inside of it and making you feel like you are in paradise and have a “lifting of the spirit” experience.  The “ banks of mirrors on the opposite walls reflect the light throughout the room” in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. (Roth, 419)

This is the 3rd skin project that I made out of MDF and it shows how light comes through the weaves of the circle plates and reflects on the ground in creative shapes.

Illumination:  Illumination is what brightens up something with the source of light.  You can think of illumination as an example of Christmas time when all the houses are lit up with decorative lights in celebration of the birth of Christ.  It gives you the feeling of spiritual enlightenment just like the feeling that the Crystal Palace gives you.  Massey talks about a townhouse that Horta designed for himself saying that “…a skylight illuminates a centrally placed staircase of white Carrara marble which forms the centerpiece of the whole design, winding up through three floors.”  (Massey, 37)

This is a perspective drawing that I did for Suzanne's class and we had to use different media and medium to create a family room, dining, and kitchen area.  The window in the back shines light onto the objects in the room and illuminates the whole entire room.

Source:  The source of light is amazing!  Light adds energy and makes people feel happy.  In an interior space, light illuminates a space and makes color in a room pop out.  It makes everything brighter and glow with confidence.  The Beaux-Arts style was a conservative style and “…in interior decoration was marked by lavish use of carving, gilding, rich marble and extravagant lighting…” (Massey, 31)  The source of lighting was well known and suited for large spaces such as in a hotel or department store. 

This is my favorite section that I rendered from my perspective drawing and it shows how the source of light reacts with the objects in the room.  For example, you can see how the couch is darker on the side that is not facing the window where light is not spotted on, but it is shown on the side that you can sit on.  It creates different hues.

Summary:  This weeks words were all words we have had before, which makes things interesting for this opus.  It was neat to see how different this weeks opus was from the words I used in the past and what I wrote about them.  Illumination comes from the source of light that reflects light and creates movement as light is rotated, just like how the sun rotates and moves to create movement in shadows.

Grammar : Syntax

Audience:  An audience is a group of people who are watching an event.  It could also mean “the act of hearing, or attending to, words or sounds.” (dictionary.com)  When you are going to a play, there is always a big audience to watch the performance.  For some people, their motivation comes from knowing that others will be watching them at some point.  In studio, we make projects that eventually get critiqued by the audience of everyone in the class and teachers.

 This model will be critiqued by my peers and teachers [the audience].

[Re]visions:  Revising is the process of making a new version of the original.   In drafting, we always make our first drawing on bond paper and then the finalized one is on vellum.  We revise the bond drawing to make it fit in the right place on the vellum so that it is in the perfect spot.  The place Vendome is similar to the Place de Vosges because the outside facades are very similar in looks, but the insides are revised completely differently.  (Roth)

My drafting for Stoel this week was first on bond paper and then revised onto vellum.

Character:  Character is something that everything and everyone has.  It is the features and traits that make up character, which makes something or someone so unique.  It is important to capture a client’s character, so that when you are designing for them you can add their own character in the designs you make for them.  Therefore, they will love what you have designed rather than something that does not have any of their taste in it.  The saltworks building has columns in the front that have much character in them because the columns are individual blocks that stack up on top of one another.  Details are what make character so unique.  “Designers searched for ornamental details that were more imaginative, gay, animated, and entertaining…” (Blakemore, 246) 

 My flower I drew has character because of all the detail.

Transition:  Transition is another word for change.  It means that something transforms from one thing to another or from one idea/concept to another.  In studio we form ideas/concepts that eventually change over a short period of time when doing a project.  We go from one idea to the next developing our concept further and deeper.  “The Regence style of chair was a transition from the primarily rectilinear forms of Louis XIV to the curvilinear contours of Louis XV.” (Blakemore, 256)   The statue of David by Michelangelo is different from the statue of David by Bernini in the way that Bernini transitioned from Michelangelo’s still stance of David to an ‘in-motion’ David.

Datum:  Datum can mean many things, but the one that relates to architecture is that datum is an item of information that comes from research or measurement.  Basically it is a single piece of information.  My furniture drawings I did for Suzanne is a piece of datum because they are assumed that they are for a family room because I drew all pieces that you would find in a family room.  A circle in the Renaissance time was used as datum and “…was an especially attractive form for Renaissance designers, symbolizing the perfection of God.”  (Roth, 360) 

This presentation board my group made follows a set of datum because it has much information.

Summary:  This weeks words are all about communication and how that communication is passed and received.  A piece of datum has character that gets revised by people to transition to another idea.  The audience receives the message and responds to it.  Communication involves grammar and syntax when writing or speaking.

Jeff's House Plan and Isometric drawings