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.