coming full circle

Community: Working together is important now as it ever was. This is our world and we all share so making the right decisions affects everyone. Unlike what Forest Gump said, ”Life is like a box of chocolates…” in a way it isn’t we know what we have and we know that we are slowly trashing the place we live. We now need to look back at the past mistakes and forward to the new future.

Stewardship: People need to step up and say what they think and how we can change, and for every change we need someone to lead. Someone had to stand up for a new idea or we would not be in this place today.
Innovation: Now that we have all these buildings and houses we need to change how we use them, and stop making more. In the past it was all about making something new something better, and now that we have it we have to do something with it. We as a whole need to make new the buildings we already have, create new ways to make the old work.

Authenticity: Going back to Stone Hinge almost every object in existence deals with circles and squares, male and female, simple geometry that has evolved and stayed the same.

Looking back on every thing that we have covered in this class and mainly this last week has made me think, “Where is this path taking us? What will design be like when there is no more space to make something new?”

[pair]ing down

meditation/celebration
light/shadow
transpose/juxtapose
literal/abstract
monologue/dialogue

Action Verbs

speculate:
compose:
energize:
shape:
stretch:

Road Trip

Routes:

Congruence:

Concept:

Materiality:

Compression/release:

between silence & light

craft:
public/private:
technique:
language:
virtual:

3rd Skin

This is my final for the 3rd skin project.  I improved the craft as well as added a "lid" to cast a darker shadow and force the light to the inside.  By doing this, the light filtered through the small cutouts is intensified and often causing more than one ray to form.

[Re]Action

Illuminate: Illumination can be an idea or knowledge was illuminated to you or in the literal sense where it deals with light.  Our most recent project was to build something out of MDF board that played with light and shadow.  Some of the students used the negative space to have the light shine through others, as S. Burrowes said, “tried to contain the light source within” their projects.

Rotation: Like the rotation of the moon around the earth, ideas rotate around and through societies.  People often bounce ideas off of each other or find a quality of an object or drawing that they like and change it by scale or proportions.  By seeing the styles in an area architects can take it to their city and reproduce it.

Movement: In the 18^th and 19^th Centuries trade became huge.  People were traveling to America, China, and other exotic places coming in contact with the culture there.  By seeing other parts of the world you see their cultures and different styles that they take from the varying temperatures.

Reflection: A reflection can be looking back on earlier projects or an actual reflection like reflections off a lake or symmetry.  By reflecting back on previous works you can get new ideas or can improve the old ones in a way that you did not see or consider before. 

Source: As the Romans looked to the Greeks as a source, the Americans, at first looked to the British.  Through seeing a style different cultures made it their own style, but still held ties to what the object or style originally came from.  Later the Americans wanted to “get away” from the British in all forms, as in clothing and architecture.  At first the houses in America were almost exact replicas of what was made in England, because that is what they knew about the world.

Revisiting some of the words from before is interesting in that we now have even more knowledge and maybe a different perspective on the words for the week.  We also have something else to say or a different way of conveying what we want said that can be taking to a higher level.  

Grammar: SYNTAX

Grammar: SYNTAX

Audience: In building a space you have to appeal to your audience.  Depending on whom you are presenting to changes in how you convey it.  If you are building a space for children then you would make every thing according to their size, and most likely use many bright colors.

[Re]vision: Revising is to take an object and make it better.  The Romans are a good example of revision, they took what the Greeks had made and used it to make their own style as well as make it better.  Then again when the British Empire started to invade, they did a redo on the Greek style though the Romans.

Character: In architecture the buildings have a language as well as character.  In France the architects created living spaces that resemble a palace with one façade but many interiors that looked the same.  In America the same idea came about, the exteriors were the same, but the interiors were different.

Transition: In presentation boards, the information and pictures need to be read and followed with ease without you being there to explain it to them.  The transition between topics is a major part in how you put together your presentation and how well the information is taken in.

Datum: In any arrangement of pictures or paper that is hanging on the wall, you create a datum line.  It’s the negative space between the objects in question that frame the picture.  The negative space around or between objects, we look for without even thinking about it.  If the space slants or is uneven then the people looking at it will be more likely to notice it.

P Week

Periphery: What you see around you can have affect on what you are doing.  By taking nature and using its forms to create or tell a story is a process that designers have to use in their line of work.  Using the details and making them use their surrounding to create a feeling.

Portfolio: A Portfolio can be a device that holds everything that you have drawn usually on 2D pieces of paper or a flat canvas.  It documents your progress through out your project or in our case a semester.  Keeping up with all that you have done is important because you can look back to reference with another project or an earlier version of the one now.

Process: The design and writing processes use a series of steps to get to a final or finished product.  This begins with an idea, or inspiration that can be created or taken from something else that exists.  You then evolve the idea by putting it down on paper with stories or make sketch models with a design idea.  After the initial idea, you begin to simplify by developing prototypes and pull together the ideas that work for your final product. 

Perspective: Just like everything in life, we all have different perspectives.  The way you look at topics and opinions changes on what you believe to be correct.  Perspectives are views like how we see things.  The most common are one-point and two-point perspectives.  One-point perspective you are looking at the flat side of an object or building, two-point is from the side or corner.

Professional: Making your project look professional is a complicated task.  The craft of what you present says how much time you spent on it and how much you cared for the details.  Professionalism is also in how you present yourself.  You would not go to a presentation dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, you would dress according to whom you are presenting to and what it is you are presenting.

I feel that this weeks words were about presentations.  Your portfolio holds your process of your work. Periphery and perspective are how you can interoperate objects and people around you.  By being professional you show how serious you are about what you are doing for the project or in life.

Portal

Macro: Micro

Composition:
Composition is essential especially in presentations. If you slap something together and make, as S. Cabrera stated, “odd angles on the page or presentation board that will distract from the drawings.” By doing this it makes you look at the negative space instead of what it is that you are presenting, it becomes a distraction.



Porch/Court/Hearth:
The porch-court-hearth system was very important to the Romans, because they liked order. First you have the porch in which you enter the space. The court is a gathering space at first outside in a courtyard then later inside. The most important part of the building or complex, the hearth is where a select few are allowed to enter. If in a home it would be the actual living space of the occupants, but on a grander scale it would be for the elites and the priest, those with power.



Diagram:
Diagrams make “something that come second nature to the majors easier to read” said S. Burrows. Some drawing or documents have symbols that others do not know what it means and need a key to help them figure out the meaning. Most diagrams are pictures that are often color coded to help people better understand what is happening with the picture.



Impression:
When I think of impression I think the artistic style of Impressionism. The Artist can get the feeling or objective across with only a couple of brush strokes. Also with the gothic cathedrals the height and scale of the buildings leaves everlasting impressions on those who gaze upon them. If something impresses you then you will remember it for a long time and it will stick with you. It could be because of the size or style that is different from things you have seen before.



Details:
Though viewing something from a distance is important, seeing the smallest details makes it more personal. Details make the object or place look important and inviting, a place that you would like to visit again just to see the small things. Sometimes if you see something from a distance and it looks smooth looking closer you can see the textures and the small details that are put into something.


All of these words can be used on different scales to make them have different meanings. The cathedrals have great and magnificent exteriors that let light in, but when you see the details carved into to stone they tell stories of the “end” of the world and of hell. Size matters in building especially with the leaders of the ancient world, the larger the better, but if you go too tall or too larger you may find the walls crumbling around you.

Voices

Metric:
How we measure things is by using scale often the human scale. Buildings often use one smaller part to base the rest of the building using different shapes. Understanding Architecture by Roth states, “The other building type favored by the early Christians had a centralized plan, whether round, octagonal, or square” (280). The whole of the church was based off of the center and was the same on all sides.


Picture by Byung Hwa Yoo


Precedent:
Precedent, also know as an inspiration image, helps to better understand the building or style you are trying to study. It is used as a reference to “broaden your style” when drawing (S. Cabrera). It is also helpful when trying to make something new, if you were to have something to work off of. You might like a small detail and want to repeat the same thing at a larger scale and base your whole project on the intricate detail.



Presence:
A place in which a certain feeling is conveyed shows that it has a strong presence contain there. If you are in an elaborate church or cathedral you feel the awe in the vaulted ceilings and the way the specific building is laid out, you know what goes on there.



Moments:
Moments are seconds in time in which something significant happens. Each moment has a purpose whether small or large it is important. It could be anything, where people walk a lot near or in a building, or how to ceiling beams come together. It is something that you see that is different for things or joints that you have seen before.



Duality:
Usually between light and dark or black and white, duality is two sided; you cannot have one without the other. Duality is two things or colors fighting for attention, like the white and black paper the black would look more over powering even if it was the same amount as the white. The black is darker so our eyes are drawn to it, though if very little is used there would be a sense of balance in the project.

Precedent, presence, and moment fit together by looking at the object or building in different view points. It is more of what you can feel and interpret for a given space rather than what is actually there. Duality is what you can see happening the story or dialogue behind the objects or spaces. Metric is actually finding the measurements and truly seeing what is there.

Parts: Whole

Archetype/Prototype/Hybrid:

The temple (Megaron) went through many changes to reach “perfection.” The archetype was the ideal (what was on paper was the ideal, but the reality was much different), Prototypes were the steps to get to the archetype, and hybrids were some of the steps that followed after.  Rome decided to take “the best of Greek architecture” and make it their own.  They would start with a Greek temple and take out the columns that held the roof and replaced it with a solid wall; the columns were now just for decoration.

Source:

In Athens they would build a temple, and by word the design would be passed out into the towns and cities that surrounded Athens.  Often, as it is when “passing the word,” details are lost or changed in the design of the building or temple.  The origin of a design is great, but when it changes whether because of materials or a change of times can bring new ways to the same general design, a broader horizon.

Hierarchy:

In Egyptian culture, hierarchy is important, as is ruling anywhere else.  The most important person has the most decorated and expensive possessions and must be seen.  As stated from History of Interior Design & Furniture “Individual seat forms included the throne, klismos, and stool.” (Blakemore, 41)  The throne would be for the deities (Gods), the klismos would be in the household, and the stool would be used for both deities and in the household.

Order:

Order was very important for the Romans.  They used straight, as they could get, lines for the roads and emphasized the front of the building telling you this is where you enter.  The column orders also played major roles to the Greek and Roman architecture.  “The roles of the orders was significant in defining spaces of the great interior.” (Blakemore, 28)  The Acropolis also shows order, the Parthenon is most important able to be seen from the whole city.

Entourage:

People and their surroundings create an entourage.  We were asked to draw vignettes of people, which then progressed to people in a place.  Making you sketch quickly to get their movements as well as how they interact within the space.  With the thumbnails for the buildings that we were assigned to we need to go to the building to take in the surroundings, to get a feel for what takes place, rather than take a picture.

By using source, hierarchy, and order a building is well made for entourages’ of people, to gather in or be a private home.  Like the Greeks and Romans everyone seeks perfection in what they do and thought we may do it unconsciously we try to see the imperfections in everything whether it is a building or a project board we still try to reach the ideal.

Scale: By showing something in a scale it helps to be able to see in like it really is.  If someone had a drawing of a chair it would look great, but it might be a children’s chair and would be impractical.  Scale can also help measure out the rest of a building, by using one unit to make the rest.

Unity: People working together to make something work or to build something.  The Dorian, Ionian, and Aeloian brought Greece together.  The temple of Amon at Karnak is symmetric presenting a sense of coming together and a path to walk down.  The Pathways, Edges, and Boundaries project has five different groups but they still had to work together by using the commonality of circles and squares.

Section: A section of a house or object shows it being “cut” so you see the inside and what is in the walls.  Sections can also be parts of something like on the Acropolis in Athens.  The whole hill has a porch, court, and hearth, as do the main four buildings.

Boundaries: Boundaries like walls divide something into smaller parts.  They are often physical blocks but can also be something that simply stops people from getting through.  Boundaries can also be limits to what you can do like parameters on a project.  How much material you need or can afford and how much space you have.

Vignettes: A vignette is a smaller more focused part of a whole.  It has objects or people that tell a small part of a story.  It may be a certain part or item in that story that was significant or stood out.  Paintings or sculptures from ancient buildings also tell a story usually of the gods.

Illuminate: Different things can be illuminated in different ways. The pyramids of Giza were once polished and held golden points as beacons across the flat plain desert. To be seen was their main purpose to tell all that the Pharaoh was extremely important. Watercolor or lack of color shows where the light is coming from on the objects that you paint. The white that is left actually shows the object better than coloring in to the lines. In the Greek myth Prometheus and Zeus, Prometheus brought fire to the humans which helped them with warmth and light to see by. “He was the only god to stand up against Zeus, by his own accord, only wanting to help the humans” stated Dr. Murphy a Mythology teacher.




Idiom: Parts of one language corresponding to another, but the meaning is not the same. Though an ocean apart the Ohio Valley burial ground and the Great Wall of China have similar aspects. They both curve with the land, but also make the land showing that humans have been there.


Material: Materials are important in anything in the world. Like how you build things or what you can afford, like in our project of Pat’s Chair. The only thing to work with is a four by eight-foot piece of MDF board, to make something that was able to be used and last. The buildings in Egypt were also relate to this factor, there is very little wood in Egypt so the buildings, temples, and tombs were built from what they had, a stronger sandstone than we have here in the United States. Watercolor, depending on how much water you use helps to show the differences in the materials that you shade in or the texture of the object.



Commodity, Firmness, and Delight: Buildings that we consider ruins were once and some still are a wonder. The pyramids of Giza still stand today thought not as they were, were made to last forever, the entire afterlife of the pharaoh. They were built to keep the soul of the pharaoh safe and to keep people from wondering in and disturbing them. The delight in them is that they stick out from the plain sand that surrounds them and people know what they are when they look at them. Another structure is Stonehenge. Though not knowing exactly what it was used for, it was a place where people once were and how hey lived. Even weather has not completely destroyed the stone circles, thought worn down they still stand. It is a mystery to how the people of the time move such huge stones, as they did not have pulleys only manual labor, which make people want to see it.

All of these working together make an environment for humans to use. The way we use a space is some part of how it is presented and what is there to use in the space. Many things come into play like what material goes the rest of the room and how it appeals to us, and others that come into the space.

Multiview

The Movie A Midsummer Night Dream is multi-view because of all the stories that are within another story. The story with the three couples in their lovers’ spats, how two men love Hermia and if she were to choose Lysander she would have to die. It can show the same scene from different characters’ point of view like when it went from the Titania, the Fairy Queen, to Bottom, to Oberon, to Puck.

Artifact

The flower played an important role in A Midsummer Night Dream because it created chaos and with out the chaos there would not be a story to tell. By using the flower to make people fall in love and Puck getting the wrong man at first it created the middle of the story. How the Gods and the mortals interacted in the play.
http://www.fotothing.com/Swede4/photo/8c6dc26a739d32a9b81e3bc252142099/

Translation

This is my first stuffed animal given to me by my late grandfather. I keep it with me so when I feel sad I can hold it and think of happier times when he was still here. This translates a feeling of longing and so happiness to know that he is not suffering any more and he is happy.
Artifact

Story

A Myth is a story real or not. The Gods and Goddesses were created to understand things that cannot be explained in nature. Most all creatures of myths have a story behind them weather they married someone or they control the seasons, underworld, or heavens. Some stories have people you can relate to like mortals or in some cases demi-gods, thought superhuman.