Stretching Material

I got some timber offcuts from placemakers and found some relatively stretchy material to stretch around them.  I started off by making differently shaped combinations with the planks and then stretching the fabric around and pinning it down:

This was surprisingly hard to do without disrupting the arrangement of the timber, which is definitely something to consider for my design. 

I then decided to light it from within which I think created the most effective images:

I thought about hanging the timber within the fabric to maximize the stretching which actually worked:

The feedback I got from this idea was much more positive than the train tunnel/bridge idea and I need to develop it with my previous concept in mind.

Changing it up a bit

I decided to change my site to the train track bridge that passes over The Strand.  I wanted the rib like structure to incase the tracks, creating a tunnel for the train to go through and beneath the tracks a pedestrian bridge.  I thought this could then be wrapped in fabric to crate interesting light shapes as the train passes through at speed.

Here is my augmented drawing of the bridge:

Upon speaking to the tutors however, they preferred the previous design and site as this one is too reliant on the train and my other design is much more interesting.  Padma had suggested I explore the idea of stretching the fabric completely around different shapes and seeing the effects so I will discuss the results of this in the next post.The feedback I got from this was what 

Addressing the previous design in second life

The brief for this fortnights design is to take our gathering office space and adapt it so it gifts itself in some way.  The brief suggested an “exhibition space” as if our office had been in operation for 15 years and we wanted to exhibit our work for the public.  The idea was to adapt the space so it would display our history in such a way that would make the public passionate about architecture and the work presented. 

Our first task was to take our second life building and in a technique modeled by the artist… augment it on to our site. 

Here are images of my augmented drawings:

With the “marquee” 

Without the “marquee”

Our second task was to look further at our previous building design and do an augmented sketch with possible proposed changes.

Here is my sketch:

I wanted to order the space better and make the rib like structure more apparent.  I’ve done this by creating “levels” of flat floors instead of one floor that attempts to follow the terrain, as was the case in second life.

An Invented Word

My invented word is a combination of   and  and reflects my

The Idea of Gifting

The idea that I presented to my group was the idea of a gift from the past, demonstrated by the website futureme.org which involves sending yourself an email and setting a date for it to arrive in the future.  It’s in some ways a virtual time capsule. 

I was trying to think about this idea in terms of architecture, but really, all architecture is in essence a gift from the past, to remind us of who used to be here and why.  In this way I thought this perhaps made the idea too literal but I still think this is something to consider while developing my design ideas.

Matrix

I left my matrix at home today :(  Tragic times.  So i'll be scanning it for later tonight, apologies Judy and Ian if you're reading this.








Blog Reviews:

Here are the students I reviewed:

Richard:
http://archdesigntwo.blogspot.com/2011/09/christo-and-jeanne-claude.html?showComment=1316413133502#c427146657123053236

Overall

Overall I feel my building was relatively successful.  I made my doors and creating some seats to encourage socialising in the interactive areas. 

The view from above

Within the space, including sculpted chairs

Inside Sarah's space

Looking down through my space

The floor

The floor v2.0

Without the marquee

Creating the floor

More of the floor