The following assignment is an exploration of the negative space that defines the staircase within Carr Haus. It was completed during my freshman fall semester for Spatial Dynamics and served as an exploration of how the staircase interacted with the space around it. A constraint of the project was to complete it with the use of only bamboo skewers. Constructions between the skewers could be made with string, wire, and various other forms of glue. 

While I initially planned to create two sets of staircases with steps but later decieded to create a second staircase further above the ground without steps. Instead, its general shape would suggest the direction of the staircase without explictly defining the true shape. It also suggests the entire form of the staircase while truly defining the center piece. This piece of the staircase was the first part that was constructed and involved the greatest definition out of the selected space I chose to model.

The model came to fruition after various initial sketches of negative space within Carr Haus. I then narrowed it down to specific areas of negative space in the front room and arround the staircase before finally narrowing it down to the three flights of stairs that lead to the second floor. I wanted to also focus on the negative spaces defined by the railings of the staircase but I was unable to complete this as a part of the project; the only reference to this negative space is the bar of white string wrapped around the second flight of stairs. 

The following drawings are some initial tracings and also diagrams of Carr Haus. The first four drawings show my stages of separating out the negative spaces that defined Carr Haus into areas of interest. I started with translating a drawing from a 1972 planning document I found online on a Rhode Island based government database. I then used successive sheets of tracing paper to outline forms in the building and the specific areas which presented naturally interesting sets of negative spaces. Since it was a building, many of the spaces would be connected together and therefore entire rooms and structures had to be considered when choosing the negative space.

The second sets of three drawings show drawings of the exterior of Carr haus and the staircase. The first drawing on the left is a small diagram of how I planned to complete the structure of the entire staircase. It includes some drawings of the staircase itself and other preliminary work in understanding the space that defined the staircase. The second drawings includes studies of the exterior of Carr Haus and the negative space surrounding it. The final drawing begins to map out the negative space that exists surrounding the bracing of the staircase.

a few of the intial studies of shapes I could create with Bamboo skewers. Working with bending bamboo skewers was and differenting joining techniques was a process that required extensive expirementation.

Images of the three separate parts of the staircase; they could be dissasembled and then put back together part by part. The first flight of stairs was very simply assembled. The second flight of stairs involved techniques of weaving bamboo skewers, wire to hold together skewers, and a combination of hot glue and skewers to fit together.

Final images of the completed staircase both in its individual parts and dissassembled. Also included is an image of the interior structure of the third flight of stairs. This is in hopes of showing the various structural techniques used to support the different parts of the model of the staircase.