Week 10 - Interim presentation and reflections

My final panels I think work well visually. I tried to incorporate a few elements that allude to movement and also are indicative of my node's activity.

Feedback from Zuzana indicated that I need to work on my graphic presentation re my sections in order to show more depth and distinguish placement of certain elements. She also suggested that I think about where I want to site my building for Project 3 and the relationship flooding has with it, as I explored advancing and receding in this assignment.

Structurally, the device would have worked better if there was rigid framing in the centre to help distribute load more efficiently.

From other students' work, I think the idea of folding and bio-mimicry are ideas I'd like to explore. Folding in particular as the materiality of my design is well suited to that (although I obviously won't be using cardboard as my whole building, I think elements of folding that are translated into other materials will be interesting to explore).

After working on this small node for so many weeks, I'm really pumped to start on a large scale design, as I feel the last two projects were particularly difficult for me as I'm admittedly terrible at small-scale architecture. I already have some ideas about which architects and buildings I want to look at but I guess that all depends on the brief we get.

Week 9 - An analogue series

To continue the sliding motion I explored in the design of the sliding chair/frame, I wanted to install a track that now runs horizontally in order to frame views available from the breaks between the canvas sails. I feel like this is the natural progression of this particular element, as it now ties in the activity of the node with the surrounding site's views in order to further the drawing experience. 

Although very simple on the face of it, trying to find details of a two-way sliding track was very difficult as the wheeled roller I used obviously can't be utilised to slide sideways. For this reason, I looked at ball-bearing tracks but also couldn't find anything. Perhaps I'm Googling the wrong search terms. In any case, I just made a horizontal slider on my model to show how it could work in lateral movement as well.

My model is constructed from cardboard to reflect the importance of this material in the node. I later added in the printed canvas rolls but forgot to take pictures of it.

It only struck me as I was making the model that I wasn't really happy with my node as it didn't feel very architectural. Although there were interesting elements to my design, I think the fact that there was no definite sense of enclosure, or the juxtaposition of open and closed spaces was the reason for this. As a result, I will definitely need to consider this in my final project.

Week 6 - A room for the transformative body

I found this task a bit challenging in that all my components already encompassed movement - the rolling canvases, sliding seats, and hinged cupboard door. I initially wanted to isolate rolling as the movement for the seating, but then found it really confusing trying to differentiate it from sliding as it already existed in the component. For this reason, I decided to extend the sliding component and incorporate the motion of advancing and withdrawing as I had found from site observations.

I first sketched a few different ways this could be achieved through simple pivoting:

After doing a bit of research on furniture design, I was taken by this simple idea of corrugated cardboard furniture which could expand and retract - exactly what I wanted.




It's clear that this material works best when the corrugation runs vertically, as the depth allows for excellent transfer of loads. 

I did a few sketches to see how it would work, the realised that there needed to be a top plate of sorts for the actual sorts to make it a seat. I used cardboard tubing that's also prevalent in the structure, but this time cut them in half as arches. This would help to distribute loads. They're also aligned so that the lines follow your legs when you sit, making it more comfortable than if they were to go in the other direction. A smaller hinged flap acts as the interim between that and the rest of the cardboard, being the same depth width as the cardboard in compression, to allow for a flush fold of the seat plate over the top.

To really activate the seat as more than just a seat, I then decided to cut a hole in the centre so it could also act as a framing device. This was realised simply by allowing it to slide on a track up the poles to frame a section of the works on the canvas. Below are a few images from my process and the final device itself:

(Ignore the 'continuous')

Week 5 - The cross sections & site observations

To begin with, Howard Smith Wharves is not new to me as this was where my tute group had chosen to site our cinema and public space designs last semester for Design 4. For this reason, I didn't really feel like arbitrary sun paths and traffic diagrams would be particularly useful as it's clear at first instance that there is a defined separation of pedestrian and traffic access to and around the site. Something that I didn't explore last semester though, was the actual river itself. It never occurred to me to document the water's movement. Even though it is such an obvious thing at the site, it's mainly used for views and as a defining edge. Resultantly, I decided to look at how floods affected the site.


Firstly, I produced some sections of the site:

I visited the council website and QldReconstruction.org for an interactive flood map. Due to the relative flatness of the ground plane on site, flooding happens very quickly but due to blockages etc, draining of the site happens very slowly in comparison. I then produced an animated gif to represent this cycle, with the time lapse representative of this.

Although I honestly didn't expect to learn much from this week's site analysis, after having looked at movement on the site by flood waters, it's gotten me very interested in looking at how advancing and receding can work when applied to the next task.

Week 5 - Volatile Bodies: Bodily States

In order to understand the body as a 'volatile entity', Leah, Rudder and I explored binding to better understand how a body's form, scale, and inhabited space changed whilst performing a simple task. In this task, Rudder kept his hands together/bound and picked up his bag and bottle whilst Leah and I filmed in section and plan respectively. The photos can be viewed on Leah's blog so I won't bother reproducing them here. Instead, I traced over the movements, and in each set, tried to mantain the same use of medium to allow for easy recognition of relationships.

Operational speculative section of Rudder picking up his satchel

Using different line weights to accentuate and indicate the progression of the movement made it less confusing to follow the sequence. The use of pen clearly defined the outline and in a way turned the movement static, whilst conversely the gouache lended a feeling of fluidity to the sequence when it was simplified down to just the arm movements. Although we didn't record Rudder performing the tasks unbound, it's safe to say that the range of movements when bound was only slightly exaggerated compared to unbound. 

Operational speculative plan of Rudder picking up a bottle

The change in scale and occupied space was really evident in plan in this sequence. Rudder had to stretch one leg out and bring his entire torso close to the ground, which sees his form diminishing towards the centre of the last 3 images above. Evidently, having your hands bound requires the utilization of your full body in order to perform a simple task, and although somewhat expected, the range of motion he went through in order to just pick up a bottle was still a bit surprising for me.

Operative speculative section of Rudder picking up a bottle

In section, the movement is not as extreme as it could have been if we recorded it from the side and not the front. Regardless, this set still allows for an indication of the kind of space occupied - full range of motion vertically with strong one-sided lateral protrusion.

This documentation I feel is strong in that it clearly defines form and inhabited space, along with changing scale in plan, but is limited in that I haven't really explored coloured media of any kind. I usually do a lot of collage in my design units but I didn't apply it to this exercise as I wasn't sure what images or textures to use (I wanted to avoid just overlaying cut-outs of Rudder as this could easily be done on Photoshop).