To facilitate the growth of our ability to create our own design principles, we were tasked with working from an abstract logic through to a piece of architecture.
My final project was to create a house for a dance, specifically The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky. To show the logic of my final design, I created an animation that combined a stop motion illustration of my architecture with video from the ballet that inspired it, along with earlier work that helped facilitate how my design developed.
My quarter scale model finished. The ground was intentionally left uncovered. The dancer would enter from the back, be able to walk onto the cliff at the right (and walk on the farthest back concrete slab) but find these were detours. After walking back into the house, the dancer could enter onto the beach under concrete slabs, exit under the ramp into a space divided by the column (which viewed from the ramp entrance pushes you underneath the second floor) as many times as necessary, and then walk up the ramp onto the second floor to die.
Two sections of the building.
Ground floor plan.
The logic of my final started with our first assignment, which was to create a stop-motion animation using 1000 lines. As I worked through mine I found myself creating a narrative of the circular way our world works. From nature to civilization, and back to nature, and so on. As Joni Mitchell put it, life is a circle game.
From my movie, I had to construct a suspension, so I felt that the intertwining and patterns that emerged from a circular process such as the one my movie demonstrated could be shown through the windings of knots. By putting pieces of rope in tension between the tectonic elements of my table, I was able to then attach knots to those ropes, and create a networks of connections.
Section of the suspension, parallel to the ground.
Section of the suspension perpendicular to the ground.
Eventually the suspension had to be cut so I could use my desk. Although even in this state the knots helped it maintain a lot of structural integrity.
Based on our suspension, we were asked to create another stop motion, and start to think of the suspension in terms of space and structure. I focused on an area of the rope piece, but after a bit I started switching between close ups to try and understand its various areas.
This was one of many sketch models I made based on my second animation (which was based on my suspension that was based on my first animation).
The kind of relationships between space and mass that these models started to grasp would be what I dealt with for the remainder of the semester.
One of my early models, based on the ideas that formed in the sketch models and the relation of the model to ground.
Another view of it. I was toying with the relationship the sun could have with the model, as we could decide its polar orientation.
Going into our final, we were tasked with creating a house for a dance (specifically the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky). To start, we were asked to map a segment of the ballet. I chose the sacrificial dance based on Nijinsky's original choreography.
(Below is a link to the video I looked at, all credit due to the uploader)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4coES_ei4PU
As I mapped the dance I developed a language of mapping that I could understand and follow, based around the colors blue, black, and red, and various symbols. I mapped a plan of the foot movements concurrently with the movements of the dancer's arms and legs.
These maps were then used to inform our houses. First we were asked to use the maps to construct the ground (so our ground was not covered, but instead showed different tectonic phenomena). Then we were asked to build our house with the maps in mind.
My final model in progress. As I worked, I became interested in certain aspects of the dance I mapped.
The dancer (in the story it is a virgin who is to be sacrificed by dancing herself to death) has many moments where she pauses on the edge of the circle, contemplating escape, but has to backtrack because she knows her destiny is set for her.
I used this to create architecture that forked possible paths to take, many of which were dead ends that would require one to backtrack.
At times the dancer spins and dances in a large circle, but always ends back in the middle of the circle the other dancers are walking around. I felt that this circular pattern should revolve around a beach, as water has the power to replenish life and in my mind fits well into the circle game.
As I worked with these elements, I also looked into the power of columns. They possess a unique ability to divide space, and depending on their orientation they can invite one into a space or push one out.
A perspective of the model (this is from the back, when the model was in its early stages). I wanted the dancer to circle through interior spaces and the beach, but was having trouble deciding where the dance should end...
Another early perspective. This one had the dancer move from the cliff into the house and exit to the beach. I would change this so the cliff was accessable, but as an optional detour (just as the dancer would try to leave the circle) that required backtracking to finish goind through the house.
A perspective, with a plan underneath it. This is closer to how the end product would act. The dance would have the option to come onto the cliff, but destiny lied in completing the dance, so they would need to reenter the house to do so. There would be two entrances to the beach, allowing a circular progression, and then a ramp to a second story where the dancer could (according to the story) die.
A quick charcoal drawing from inside the space. It started to ask the important question of how realistic the structure of my house could be. What would be concrete, or steel, or wood, etc.
So when reworking my house, I used grey museum board to represent the concrete, or tectonic elements, and chipboard with wood beam systems to represent roof conditions. In many ways I felt it mimicked the relationship my suspension piece had had to the tectonic elements of my desk. The roof felt stretched between these slabs of concrete.
As mentioned earlier, I used a language of columns to dictate the perception of space within the building. This is the second floor of my model under construction. I also used this column as the basis for expressive structural elements of the model (and based on my mappings) with beams going to the column for support, and (once placed in the model) various other elements.
A view from underneath the second floor, giving an idea of how the beam system works with the ground, the concrete slabs, and the column.
Along with the model I've been working on (which is a quarter scale) we were asked to make a half scale model of an area of the house. This is the entryway of the house, under construction.
The completed half scale model.
The main entrance into the building. The lefthand slab the roof connects to is the one I mentioned was walkable, and the roof itself that connects the concrete masses is walkable (although it doesn't lead anywhere, since it is only a detour).
The completed quarter scale model. The logic of this project grew out of design principles developed over the semester, combining with my ability to map and analyze a programatic source of inspiration to create a coherent piece of architecture.
