Tour

MATRIX

Basic Form

Here's the very basic form of my building. It's still in need of some tweaking, especially with textures, but we'll get there. The second photo is just showing how i used the context with my building. The bridge of a previous building forms what is now a walkway to my Architectural firm - pretty convenient placement, I say!

The Cental Elevator

 The elevator plays quite a crucial role in my building. It forms the centre piece of the firm, which is probably suited considering the feeling of movement in Chirag's piece, and in the twisted additions. This central piece flows between floors 2, 3 and 4. These pictures were raken before my alterations to the building, but in a later post it should be more obvious what this area really looks like.

The top of my building was renovated to be circular, much like, again, this rotating prim. Then very top has a dome. I liked this idea of having this light filter down right through the centre of the building from the top floor. In fact, I liked the idea of being able to see down into areas below (or above) from other floors. I felt it meant  people could maintain some kind of human connection, whilst still feeling as though they had their own privacy, security and seperation. This was a part of my idea that spiralled off from my 'smile' idea last week. When someone smiles at you, it creates this sense of belonging and worth in the reciever, and they probably feel inclined to smile back. A sense of belonging, and of being a part of something, is in some ways just the basic instinct for security. In saying this, I wanted to keep this sense of belonging amd security while still trying to maintain that division and privacy the firm needs.

Additionally, the internal, centred elevator forms a centrepiece, or common point, between all the floors, hopefully creating more of a sense connection between each floor and the inhabitants.

Shapes and Forms

My building has a lot of curves and twists, and there is in fact a reason for this. this was an idea inspired by Chirag's sculpti, which consists of 2 different spherical-like prims that rotate in the opposite direction around a circle of light. Using this idea, i decided to see what would happen if i twisted a prim in 2 opposite directions. Long behold, this shape was created that i quite fancied. With this in mind, i used it to decorate my building. The edges of the stairs, and the structures on the elevator all carry with them a slight to extensive twist.

Friday Night: The Beginnings of my design

I started putting my design up on Friday night - figured i better try and get a head start on things. I found this little block of land right on the boundary of Kaiako, which, although sounds like a peculiar choice of setting, fitted nicely, since in the actual setting the site is pinned between 2 buildings, and exposed to the same two sides.

You'll notice i'm putting in a whole lot of stairs all over the place... probably isn't helping the prim shortage, and it took me a while to me them all. But the purpose, and i suppose main reason for the high number of stairs is verticality. In a restricted area, i wanted to create a large space (get more for my money basically) and build up. Not only will this seperate me from the surroundings of the more urban landscape at higher levels... it will also enable me to enhance the views, and seperate work areas via height to a platform seperate from most other buildings (exceptions would be vector arena and to a degree, the train station).

The walls work with this idea of keeping things vertical and elongated. This was part of my initial design, but i enhanced it further using inspiration drawn from Amrita's sculpti I obtained. It was very vertical, and pointed (i'll flick a picture up sometime soon) and was almost like an inverted wall of my building.

As explained, 'building up' was something I felt quite strongly about, and with Amrita's sculpti, helped informed the shape.

Beginnings of my Building

Ok so a few days ago, I began the construction of my architectural office. It was quite an experience putting it in second-life, 3-D format. In fact, i hadn't quite realized how big it would look amongst the smaller scale projects of other groups. Nevertheless, it has begun, with a few minor additions to the mix, such as the more open, circular style roof. I must say, this is not any where near complete, but just got the memo that once again Kaiako was full! GAH! But luckily i've got the very main parts of my structure in, so I haven't gone into mad panic. Here are just a few pictures of myself building the Architectural Firm I designed for the 'Gathering' project previously:

As far as renovations go, I'm trying to think about this idea of creating happiness, and that inital response to simply smile when entering the architecture.... How I'll achieve this, I'm not yet sure. What I can mention is why i decided to alter the roof to this new, 'open to the sky' structure (bearing in mind it isn't finished and will be a lot less 'open to the sky' than it currently is :) It's a well known fact that natural light enahnces the mood of a building's inhabitants. Considering this, it makes it a feature that I couldn't look past in the design. I was inspired by the object I obtained from Chirag, in which he dealt with this idea of 'giving light'. So there is a connection to this, as well.

My Word

FINALLY came up with a word... it's kind of crazy. But here it is:

'Conicalic'

Basically, i combined the three words i think sum up my design best. That is, 'contemporary', 'classical' (in terms of traditional facade materials, such as brick), and 'organic' (natural features include carved interiors, and partial facade material is rustic, natural wood cladding, quite organic in appearance). 

'Con' - from 'con'temporary

'ical' - from class'ical'

'lic' - from organ'ic'

Making the first sculpti

Here's a picture of my sculpti making efforts! I made a table that i could put inside of my building - and remembering that an aspect of our building had to be captured, i tried to make it look as though it had been carved, just like the walls of my building, which are made of natural, unaltrered wood pieces, overlapped like roof tiles. This meant it'd have the curves we were after as well. I also made sure to capture the spasmodic movements from my stop motion as the camera moves.

Here are some screen shots after uploading:

 

Giving

The new topic for Project four is 'Giving'. We talked about what could be percieved as 'giving' - from giving presents,  to giving the gift of knowledge, or even life (through birth).
What does a building give to us, on an emotional and physical level? It could give us protection and security, or perhaps the somewhat opposing discipline (think court buildings, prisons .etc.)

I thought it's be intersseting to think about sharing and giving emotions. I was thinking about this, and thought about how, when someone smiles at me, I return the smile, and vice versa ..... :) This is a cool article that basically talks about how powerful the smile is, and how uplifting it can be. It's a random act of kindness that absolutely asnyone can exchange with someone else - friends, family, even total strangers.

http://www.motivationandhappiness.com/personal-development/give-a-smile-get-a-smile/

Stopmotion!!

It's taken me ages but I've finally managed to upload my stopmotion video to somewhere it can be viewed. I tried to upload it to my blog but the programme I've been using (Premium Pro) won't convert to media player, or anything else for that matter. So after finally getting it rendered, which it was refusing to do before, it's finally up on youtube! Thanks to everyone for their patience :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8L7Sd-ajSw

My 1:100 Site

This is my site, choosen because of the neighbouring architecture (think Vector Arena and the Train Station), the view such a site would offer, and also the road alongside. As can be seen on my site plan, the designated site overlaps a road. This is intentional. I want a space that has a sense of movement, and is unobtrusive to the roads already present. Something that, like a tunnel, might weave it's way through obstacles, rather than divulge itself upon them.

Gathering Brief - Inspiration for my Design

So it's the day before mid semester crit, and I'm about to get stuck into some serious drawing. But before I do, I thought I'd stop in with some ideas for my design :D We had a quick briefing today to just clarify a few points, which helped me a lot in terms of my propostition.
I've decided on my four colleagues for my Architectural Firm! Introductions?

• First, there's the Engineer. This is the guy who brought that building from the matrix with him... I guess he's going to need his own office, and after googling "what does an engineer need?" (original, I know), a lot of sites said that they need their own work room, to test out theories and gadgets and other ground-breaking, awesome stuff. So i guess my engineer dude is going to need that as well!
• Secondly, there's the Graphic Designer. A person to do all the cool CAD work and who knows a thing or two about all of the architectural software. They will also work closely with the Marketer, because thye put a visual face to a project that can be used in the marketing for the business. She's the one with a thing for doors, and demands this exciting and original threshold. As always, she'll need an office. What else might she need? Apparently a studio is a necessesity, to test out design ideas.
• There's a builder involved in the project, and he demands that there be a map with all the needed services mapped out so that everything is easily accessible to him, in terms of materials and other services. Once again, he'll get an office.... and i guess he's going to need a workshop as well, for all DIY needs.
• Lastly there is the Marketer, responsible for all the advertising and publicising of the firm. They can handle some of the finances for the business as well. They get their own office, with a room for meetings with the other colleagues to discuss business oppurtunites and also organise advertising campaigns.
• Then there's me, I guess. The Architect, designing this whole building where all of this is going to happen! What do I need? Well right now it's definately some inspiration. The tutors told me to have a look at some designs from the Japanese Metabolist era (so 1950s-60s), because when i discussed my design ideas with them they thought I had some similarities to that kind or Architecture! I googled round and did a bit of research. Here's what i found:

Courtesy of Wiki:
"In the late 1950s a small group of young Japanese architects and designers joined forces under the title of "Metabolism". Their visions for cities of the future inhabited by a mass society were characterized by large scale, flexible, and expandable structures that evoked the processes of organic growth. In their view, the traditional laws of fixed form and function were obsolete. Metabolism arose in post-World War II Japan, and so much of the work produced by the movement is primarily concerned with housing issues.
The group's work is often called technocratic and their designs are described as avant-garde with a rhetorical character. The work of the Metabolists has often been compared to the unbuilt designs of Archigram"

Need some pictures to get a better idea!






These are pretty inspirational designs, and surprisingly I hadn't ever seen them before, nor heard of the term 'Japanese Metabolists'. But it's definately given me some inspiration.... so I guess I can go start my drawings now!

What is this 'Startup Business' you speak of?

So yesterday we obtained this sheet, and it said that we need to imagine we are setting up our first 'startup business'. Hm. Initially I thought, oh right, starting up a business, righto. Then I payed more attention to that word 'startup'. Hm. Yea. I wasn't quite sure what it all meant! So I googled around as you do, and managed to work out (at least I hope!) what a 'startup business' is.
Courtesy of the ever-increasing intellect of wikipedia.org :D
"A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets."
All fair and well, right? Wrong. I am so uninformed on all things business. Need. More. Clarification.
"Startup companies can come in all forms, but the phrase "startup company" is often associated with high growth, technology oriented companies"
"A critical task in setting up a business is to conduct research in order to validate, assess and develop the ideas or business concepts in addition to opportunities to establish further and deeper understanding on the ideas or business concepts as well as their commercial potential."
And THEN they mention the internet, and it finally clicked. All this talk of technology and here I am using something started by one of these startup businesses. Well. I'm off to start thinking up some 'gathering' ideas!

Peer Reviews, Week 6

Ok, so time for the next set of peer crits! This week i reviewed Taylor Chan & Glen Yuan's work. For some reason i had Taylor down twice to review, so I just went and reviewed another person - I had a look at Tessa's work simply because it took my fancy and I'd struck up a conversation with her. Group four had done stop motion this week, and I really enjoyed this work! It was nice learning about how to go about doing it and the appropriate programmes to use.

TAYLOR'S CRIT

First i started with Taylor. Taylor had created this set of work which was bigger than most, because he had too many ideas! He had designed this building which can best be described by his own words: "A building that doesn't seperate interior from exterior". I thought that was a pretty great idea, and once he mentioned that I thought, wow, he's right... it really doesn't! He had drawn inspiration from this idea of the double helix, and the way the two strands intertwine. I could see that same movement in his building. And his stop motion really impressed me too because he had synced this music with it that fitted just perfectly. It made it a whole lot more dynamic. Really nice project, and clearly a lot of effort had gone into it.

GLEN'S CRIT

I then took a look at Glen Yuan's work. His use of colour and overall drawing technique struck me instantly. His work was vibrantly presented and attractive, and his idea was pretty awesome too! He had this idea of a building specialising in environmental conservation. Inside, plants would grow, utilising a site around the railroad tracks that was currently unused.

 He took the inspiration for the shape, and eventual overall purpose, from a leaf, and the structure offered by the stem and veins. It was cool to see how far he had come, because he had started off with this idea of sushi and other food (sustenance), but through his processes had finally come to rest on this fairly different idea. Overall, great project!

MORE PICTURES!!

I took almost 100 photots of my laser cut model, and today i thought, why not put them up? I realise my tutors have already checked out my blog, but I felt like my obsessive photography could do with some publicising. So here a whole heap of photos of my model!