Exp 3 stuff.

Hi all,

Some clarification and suggestions:

1) The T-s you have been drawing are an exercise in perspectives, penmanship, and visualising forms and voids in space. They don't need to be translated in any way into your bridge structure.

2) The mashups will ideally reinforce the ideas of power you are expressing in your bridge.

3) Consider the engineering of your bridge. Think about things like supports, balance, counterbalance, mass, etc. If you wish to disregard physical things like mass and gravity, have a good reason for it. Last week I saw many beginnings of bridges that were fairly straightforward slabs, placed across valleys like planks. In order to span a valley, real bridges have highly-engineered systems of suspension or support. Have a look at examples of long bridges and the different ways they are held in place.

4) Many of the abovementioned plank-across-valley bridges relied on a lot of added decoration to provide some distinctiveness. See if you can derive the distinctiveness at least partly from the structure of the bridge itself. Or the function: your bridge can connect more than two places, or it can be discontinuous, or it can curve back on itself. There are a lot of quirky things you can do.

5) DO NOT FORGET YOUR CLIENTS. You have been given a brief to design office spaces for two people. The office spaces need not be the same size and at opposite ends of the bridge. They can be over / under each other, in / on / under the bridge structure, and they can interfere with each other. But they are made for two specific people, so keep them in mind when you design. You wouldn't ignore your clients in your professional lives as architects, so don't do it now. I want reasons for your office designs: Experiment 2 was, on the whole, really lacking in explanation.

6) Don't leave your elevators and table until the last minute. They are important parts of your scheme. The elevators need not move straight up and down. They can form parts of the bridge depending on their position, or they can cause different elements of the bridge to react. Identify the design opportunities of each component of the exercise, and try to design them all in parallel.

Here is the brief:

Choose a specific business from two of the three clients and create an architecture consisting of three spaces. Two of the spaces should be located in a bridge that spans a valley. The valley should be inspired by a landscape from one of the clients country of origin (so while it is custom designed by each student the valley has a strong connection to a real place in the world). The spaces in the bridge are the clients offices (imagine they actually run their business' from there). The third space, on the valley floor, is a place for your clients to meet for a working lunch. Design two elevators to transport your clients to the meeting space and a table around which to meet that reinforces or challenges your particular understanding of "Power".

Here and here and here are a some assignments that did well in Experiment 2. Take a look at how well they are explained.

(from http://wrede-ied.blogspot.com/)

Experiment 2 Feedback

In no particular order....

Chinatsu

Key strength of the scheme:

Nicely detailed landscape, well lit, beautifully composed and captivating images. You have used the hypotheses to inform the design of your assemblage, and have provided images that show it from afar and from eye-height in order to convey the full experience. You have also thought creatively about intersecting solid and void blocks and have produced a submission which is both communicative as a massing model and buildable.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

You could have thought about using detail elements to enhance this scheme further. Please start working towards your final submission earlier so we can discuss it and eliminate misunderstandings.

Fariza

Key strength of the scheme:

The composition of blocks and location of labs are well explained, and the landform is customised to fit the structure. You have identified the key part of this Experiment – the massing model's existence in the landscape - and have made a good attempt at a harmonious solution. Good images and thorough reasoning.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

The scheme's weakness is in the details – the model looks uniformly textured and with the amount of text and thought in your submission, your Electroliquid Aggregation is very simplistic. You could have used detail elements to enhance this scheme.

Tyler

Key strength of the scheme:

A very good selection of images to show different views of your scheme. Good use of textures and improvement in your hand drawings.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

If your ideas are based on 'imbalance' and 'torturous projections' this could have been more dramatically illustrated in an imbalanced and projecting composition.

There is no Electroliquid Aggregation and the meeting place has not received any significant thought.

Josh J

Key strength of the scheme:

Interesting carving of the landscape. Well-executed and intricate axonometrics.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

While you have attempted to make a distinctive landscape, the combination of blocks could have been better fitted to the 'double' island you have created – they sit on the mudbank a little awkwardly. The floating 'meeting place' that you have designed doesn't relate formally to the rest of your scheme.

Both hypotheses you have chosen - the numbers in dreams and equal and opposite reaction – could have been greatly enhanced by detail elements, but you have not taken advantage of this aspect of the project.

Jock

Key strength of the scheme:

The environment and the massing model within it are delicately detailed and resolved. You have embraced the detail elements and have created a robust submission that answers every question in the brief, with the forms of the labs firmly connected to the scientists' hypotheses.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

The scheme is still restrained by realism – it fits the scale and proportions of a conventional house, and the applied textures mimic the scale and appearance of conventional building materials. While this is not necessarily a fault, there was scope to be more inventive with these aspects of the assignment. The meeting place could also have been more adventurous than the logical midpoint of the composition.

Josh Y

Key strength of the scheme:

You have made some attempts to embed the assemblage of blocks in the environment through manipulating the landform and vegetation. Also, most of your views of the model are from eye-height. These things make the scheme more believable as an inhabited structure.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

It would have been useful to have an image from further away, to see the overall composition / intersection of blocks.There is insufficient explanatory text and no Electroliquid Aggregation. Almost none of your model is textured with your custom textures. Your hand drawings need improvement.

Brian

Key strength of the scheme:

Your ideas about languages and connection are good and well explained. You have chosen your images well to show your scheme from all angles, and the way the model surrounds a central meeting space in a garden is a sensitive touch.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

The composition looks like a fairly conventional multi-storey building. You could have thought of ways to use the detail elements to convey multilingualism and communication. The rest of the environment on the island could have been developed further.

Ara

Key strength of the scheme:

The sketch axonometrics are diverse and interesting, and your draft Crysis composition of blocks showed promise.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

The axo in your draft Crysis model would have been a better one to develop than the planar one in your final submission. You could have explored the possibilities of intersecting the blocks in more interesting ways and you have not taken advantage of the 'detail element' component. You have made a good attempt at carving the landscape but this could have been developed much more.

Natalie

Key strength of the scheme:

The textures are excellent. It can be seen from your draft Crysis model that you have tried to experiment with the landscape.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

Because you have upoladed only two of the five final images, you have an incomplete submission in the most important category of this project. There is no Electroliquid Aggregation and no information about how your scheme relates to either white light or dreaming. “Sketch Axonometrics” should not be printouts from SketchUp that you have traced over.

Jennifer

Key strength of the scheme:

The general execution and texturing of the project is good, and you have thought about the location of the meeting place.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

The model is inserted into the landscape without real thought to customising either the landscape of the model to provide an interesting interface. The text is a little confusing and it's difficult to see how the comments relate to the scheme.

Sunhwa

Key strength of the scheme:

Evocative final images and well-composed assemblage of blocks suggesting balance, weight and counter-weight.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

You have not been clear about whose these labs are and the reasons for your design decisions. There is no assigned meeting place and no way for the client at the end of the 'jetty' to get to and from the landform. It is hard to tell if the project fits the hypotheses as there is no Electroliquid Aggregation. You need to spell these things out – it should not be difficult for me to understand what you're trying to achieve.

Uma

Key strength of the scheme:

This is an interesting take on the Experiment brief. The textures work well with the elements. It is unclear how you arrived at the Electroliquid Aggregation from your two hypotheses, but your composition of blocks illustrates it well.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

You have not assigned a lab to each scientist and have used too many blocks (if each red cube is to be counted as one). Consider some variety with lighting.

Patti

Key strength of the scheme:

Good choice of images to show your model in the landscape and well-considered views from the labs. You have made a good attempt to use lights, detail elements, textures and sculpted landform to enhance your project.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

There is insufficient text and no Electroliquid Aggregation to sum up the full idea. The meeting place should have been somewhere in the landscape. The scheme is proportioned like a conventional multi-storey house, so loses the abstractness of a massing model.

Jessica D

Key strength of the scheme:

There are some good arguments for the design of this scheme, and a good mix of distance views and closeups. The presentation of your process work has improved.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

The composition of blocks is very simplistic and there is little manipulation of the landform.

Jessica L

Key strength of the scheme:

You have made an interesting and distinctive environment with good texturing and lighting.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

There has been no attempt to fit the model to the landscape (or vice versa), and no explanation for the location of the labs and why they are appropriate for the clients you have chosen. The hand drawings need improvement.

Jeffrey

Key strength of the scheme:

Your placement of the blocks on the island is highly considered and well composed. You have nicely allocated textures on the model and an interesting feature block that is dark in the daytime and illuminated at night. The landform and the assembly of blocks are complementary and take on equal emphasis in your scheme. You have also addressed circulation on the island.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

It is a real shame that you have not done all parts of this Experiment to the same standard. There is insufficient explanation and no Electroliquid Aggregation. Your textures should have been done with much more care. Be careful about uploading too many images as too much repetition detracts from your submission.

Demetra

Key strength of the scheme:

The images are well selected, showing both how one inhabits the structure, and the logic of the arrangement from a distance. The way the model descends the slope shows communication between it and the landform.

Most significant weakness of the scheme:

Technically your composition isn't interconnected, not even by absent blocks. There is no real explanation of the hypotheses, and for why you have assigned the two labs the way that you did. I hope you can fix the texture tiling problem for Ex.3.

Bridges in motion

These images of the Gateshead Millennium Bridge - by Wilkinson Eyre Architects (from this site) show the bridge in an open and closed position. The website has a photo of the pivot that enables this bridge to turn to let either pedestrians cross, or to let ships pass underneath. There are some videos on YouTube.

Check out also this unfurling bridge.

E2 Thoughts

Guys,

Good luck with your Experiment 2 submissions. I won't see you until after the due date.

Here is the Experiment brief, from Russell's course outline:

Choose a specific hypothesis related to two of the three clients and create an architecture consisting of three spaces. The first two spaces should be at either end of a structure made from 10 interconnected rectangular forms. The third space should be on the landform that articulates a relationship to the rectangular forms. The spaces at either end of the rectangular forms are the clients laboratories (imagine the experiment to test your hypothesis will actually be conducted there). The space on the landform is a place for your clients to meet and exchange ideas. The landform should allow each client to arrive at their meeting in a distinctive and significant way.

Here are some things to consider:

Don't underestimate the landform. It should be clear that you didn't just use the randomly generated landscape that you created when you first opened Crysis. There are a lot of creative things you can do with sculpting the ground, vegetation, time of day etc. to make some great images. Also - this may sound obvious - your clients should be able to walk to the meeting place via some sculptured landscape. If it looks too steep to walk up, or too narrow to walk along, I will open your level and test it.

If you're adding lights, don't overdo it. Making lights really bright will bleach out a lot of detail.

The 'detail elements' should:

• Not be mistaken for additional rectangles. We will be very strict about counting blocks.
• Arise in some way out of the large composition of rectangular prisms. Elements of the large composition can be e.g. shrunk and repeated to form wall cladding. You can choose to develop details like balustrades or stairs, but we are NOT expecting a massing model that looks like a building, or laboratories that are outfitted with equipment.
• Be created at your discretion. We are not counting the number of additions you include, but are judging whether they enhance (or detract from) your scheme.

Please make sure your axos and textures are done with care. Not just drawn with care, but scanned and uploaded with care. They are not the main criteria for marking your work, but definitely count when you are on the borderline between two grades.

I will add more things if I think of any.

Experiment 2 beginnings

Remember that a key consideration for Experiment 2 is how your massing model interfaces with the landform....





Hoover Dam

Hotel in London

Reardon Smith

Greek ampitheatre

National Assembly Building, Dhaka

Louis Kahn

Uitkijktoren

Hugh Ferriss

Your hypotheses about the scientists:

Isaac Newton

Newton made too much of a big deal out of the falling Apple. Gravity has always existed, he only gave it a name.

Newton’s universal law of gravitation won’t let anyone fly without wings.

Newton had established laws that changed the physical principles of this world.

Knowing that light may be broken into 7 colours has made rainbows less magical.

Newton never married because he loved science too much.

Newton changed the scientific world based on his discovery of the Law of Gravity.

Newton's laws of harmonic motion and inertia will help students of Arch1101 2011 draw at least one axonometric.



Sigmund Freud

Freud’s belief that smoking can enhance the capacity to work has probably made many psychiatrists die too young.

The idea that it is possible to cure mental illness by analysing dreams has made people paranoid about dreaming.

Human life should not be considered as the proper material for wild experiments.

Freud’s discovery that negative things can be repressed has made them harder to repress.

Freud’s proved that it is possible to create something significant out of nothing. He became famous for hypotheses that cannot be proved or disproved.

Freud's clear mind and conscience aided in analysing the minds of others.

Life instints didn't tell the whole story of life as it fails quite often.

Every person has an unconscious wish to die as they all know life is short.

Religion was something to overcome in order to develop etheism.

Discussing feelings and thoughts can bring unconscious thoughts to the mind.


Maria Agnesi

An entity can be analysed by looking at the smaller parts that it is comprised of.

That something is too small to physically exist, does not mean that it does not exist.

Agnesi’s knowledge of multiple languages helped connect all the different facets of her life.

Despite her intelligence, her beauty and nobility helped establish herself in a time when it was difficult for female scholars to be taken seriously.

Hi guys,

I've had a quick look and there are some great projects - well done.

Fariza, I can see your blog but it looks somehow corrupted. I can see two of your images off to the side, but that's all. Does it look ok when you look at it? Can you please see if you can work out what the problem is?

Cheers, see you all on Wed when you'll be starting something new. :)

Extra SketchUp Tutorial this Friday!!

From 6-8pm this Friday (tomorrow), tutors Vinh and Jules will hold a SketchUp session in Labs 1 and 2. This is for students who feel they are a little bit behind rather than an advanced tutorial. So if you feel you need a bit of help please go along.

Livraria Porto

This is a cool staircase in a bookstore in Portugal, built in the 1880s.

Getting ready for Exp 1

Hi Guys,

A few thoughts on the submission:

For your animations, pan around your scheme, animate sections, and please also include some footage of the interiors, including both your stairs. Use your animations and still captures to be as informative as possible. Pretend you need to display your project to someone who has never seen it before - you will need to show it off!

Think about how your artists would use the studio spaces and allow them enough room to work. Also think about how their artworks are to be delivered to and displayed in the gallery.

Please don't just divide one of your studios into two levels and call one of them the gallery. The gallery should be its own discrete area. You should have an idea about how the public enters and circulates within it. Your gallery doesn't all need to be under cover. Think about how the artworks may / may not need to be protected from the weather.

Please include some text if you think I may miss something. Don't overdo it; your images and animations should provide almost all of the information. But definitely make it clear which artists and words you have used.

I think that's it.

Quick Note About Experiment 1

This is the brief for this experiment, as it appears on Russell's outline:

Choose a specific work from two of the three artists listed above and create an architecture consisting of three spaces; one below ground, one above ground and one on the ground plane. The spaces above and below ground are the artists studios (imagine they are actually creating the work there). The space on the ground plane is a gallery for selling the work. Create a stair that allows each artist to bring their completed work to the gallery in a distinctive and significant way.

Keep at the front of your mind who the artists are, and the words that have inspired their studios. The best submissions will be the ones that address the specific spatial requirements of the artists making and exhibiting their art, but that also keep the form / use of the studios illustrative in some way of the words that were the stimulus for your early sections.

Think about how the studios and the exhibition space can be distinctive and significant, but also related to oneanoter - points of support, sight lines etc. Think also about how you form the stairs as elements that connect (and separate) these spaces.

Don't be afraid to challenge conventions of how a studio or a staircase are commonly understood. You have unlimited scope for playing with things like scale and gravity. (Unless you make Sketchup crash, which is unlikely.)

General Points

1) Next week's tutorial is the last one before the first experiment is due. Please make sure you have enough work uploaded so that we can have a proper chat about your project. Last week was disappointing because very few of you had two drafts to show me.

2) If you have come straight from school you will be used to the 'bell curve' way of marking, where you had to compete with your classmates to get the best marks. We're not marking to a bell curve now. You can all get very good marks if you all have very good work. This means that it benefits all of you to share your knowledge and help each other.

3) Related to point 2), there are 10 marks allocated to participation. Simply turning up each week won't automatically get you these marks. They will be heavily based on how willing you are to help, and to provide and seek each other's feedback. They will also be based on your participation on the course forum, at both asking and answering questions. I therefore strongly encourage you to be active on this forum.

4) I realise that if you're reading this, it means this point does not apply to you - but - please follow both Russell's blog and mine. This blog is the way we can communicate throughout the week.

5) If anything about what we're doing is unclear (e.g. a few of you had difficulty with some staircase sections) please use the time during the week to do some research (e.g. your final stair sections should be genuine, competent attempts at architectural drawings). Please be critical of your own work. Your final submissions should consist of components that are each the best that you can make them.

6) Remember, I will never mark your notebook, or anything that you do that is not uploaded to your blog. You should keep the drawings that you upload neat, but you need not keep your notebook neat....you can have many goes at getting something right.

7) If you're writing text, please read over it before you publish. If your first language isn't English, don't be shy about asking someone else to read over it. There is a spell check option (the ABC with a tick).

8) You can and should upload things to your blog that are not necessarily part of your submissions if you think they are interesting and relevant in some way. And you should be proud of your blog, it will showcase a semester of hard work.

9) The marking schedule for Experiment 1 is here. Please print a copy and use it to evaluate your project, to see where you may fall short. Please also print a spare copy and bring it to the next studio where you will use it to evaluate another student's work.

Cheers, good luck for next week.

Stair Porn

here.

I'm looking forward to seeing the bespoke new staircases you're inventing for your artists - if you have found any good images or sites of staircases (or interesting things generally) please upload them.

Here's a section of the Etoile Metro Station in Paris, drawn in 1895. The spiral staircase is not in section, unfortunately.

(from: http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/42-15819058.html)

Brodsky and Utkin-spiration

In last week's lecture, Russell showed you some illustrations by Brodsky and Utkin.





This Russian duo produced very detailed and evocative etchings that look a few hundred years old (in fact they're from only about 20-30 years ago). The best collection of images I could find is at this website where you can read a bit of background too if you're interested.

Most of the designs are entirely imaginary but wonderfully communicative, like memorable drawings in really great children's books. You can feel what it's like to teeter at the edge of a deep chasm, to be in a dark grotto, or to be in a castle made of brittle and transparent glass. You can also sense the difference in mood between a lonely structure in a vast expanse, and a structure among a large clutter of similar structures. In almost all cases, Brodsky and Utkin use sections to convey the feel of these imaginary places.

Although these etchings are obviously far more intense than the sections you have been asked to draw, it's worth noting:

• the difference between above-ground spaces and below-ground spaces, and the effect of changing the direction and intensity of light;
• the investigation of strict geometry versus 'randomness';
• that although imaginary, we have a very good idea of the texture and materiality of these spaces, and how thick / solid / fragile / flimsy some elements are. But this doesn't mean that most of this stuff can be built;
• that the sections have information about what is beyond the section cut (i.e., what is in the background, or at the back of the 'room' that we are looking into); and
• that the artists here are also restricted to representing their ideas with black and white lines.

Hello

and welcome to ARCH1101.

I have added links to your blogs, and am now looking at your artwork :) . If you can't see your blog on my list you either didn't give me a link or gave me one that was problematic. Please drop me a comment with your blog address.

The image I was trying to find for you is this one. It is The Wave Residences by Henning Larsen:



I am not saying it's not good architecture, but I'm putting it here as an example of what I'd like you to be careful about doing. Please be wary of taking your section and simply extruding it to make a 3D model of your studio. If you do that, and cap both ends with, say, glass, it MAY be a good studio. It MAY also look like you were being a bit lazy. Consider that, based on your section, you can create many different studios in 3D without taking the easiest possible option, which is simply to extrude.

It was nice to meet you all, good luck with your models for next week.