exe8

interactive wall in hornbake

speculations

My understanding is that project B is asking to output a composite video of our old movie and a new modeling/animation element which together propose spatial conditions. As the video suggests, Hornbake plaza presents a space of indeterminate volume (the plaza itself is rather flat and open.) Verticality is introduced through the juxtaposition of the footage from the moving elevator. The video is taken from three different perspectives: two bird’s eye view spots (one stationary, one dynamic) and an eye level spot. What ties the video together is the flow of pedestrians which creates a strong diagonal axis from the bus station area, though the plaza, and between Plants and Sciences and BioPsyc. 

Round 1 thoughts: The flat plaza seems to remain uneventful even when it is full of people, who move mostly along one axis and barely interact with the environment. A possible intervention in the site would be to introduce a series of interactive sculptures which would be dispersed throughout the plaza. The sculptures would ideally react to the flow of people (introduce variables such as density of people passing by and direction) and would change form. Perhaps the sculptures could accommodate activities like sitting, laying, or leaning so people could use them as resting spots. 

Round 2: the above proposal still lacks a vertical element: the sculptures by nature would be grounded. Meanwhile Hornbake begs for a vertical intervention to help define the space. So the second proposal would be of a wall alongside campus drive, however, closer to the plaza which would frame the plaza and provide an area to relax, eat, nap, read a book, etc. This structure is derived by abstracting the plaza as a simple flat surface which is sliced where the axis of pedestrians occurs. The resulting shape would be extruded through space depending on the movement of people. The people themselves could be treated as prismatic elements which populate the wall and shift location to mirror the flux through the plaza.

portfolio

movie

Exercise 06

thoughts

A pretty thing made out of chipboard and butterboard, the model from exercise 05 sits pinned to the wall static and unresponsive. The ordering of the decorations within the hexagon is denoted by the repetition of patterns within patterns. The units repeated are circular and centralized in nature which when repeated in the hexagon suggests the potential for exploring rotational movement.

Project A will deal with the investigation of perceptive movement on a static surface. The static nature can be debatable. The elements of patterning from exercise 05 could be repeated after a certain order and thus create a skin. Because the ornamentation featured in exercise 05 is curvilinear and even flowery the model rends itself to be interpreted as an organic form. The skin that project A would propose is to be an organic entity composed from the stitching of a repeated unit borrowed from exercise 05. This skin itself then could begin to shape and fold according to a pattern or order to create space.

A possible investigation is to propose the skin itself as the space. Thinking about the entity of the skin as a living organism with a surface that is responsive to human touch and activity.

Sources:

(Un)folding Form by Kostas Terzidis from Expressive Form, A Conceptual Approach to Computational Design

The Function of Ornament edited by Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubo

pattern

ornament

lines and point (exe04)

convergence

terragni_ak

FormZ Study of Inverse Spaces

clean room

Drawing Precedents

Library Extension in Stockholm

Their whole website is just about beautiful: Stephen Taylor Architects

Henri Matisse:

The Snail, Henri Matisse