WORK SHOP THREE - DRAWING

Drawing was the final workshop I attended, initially I had planned to undertake the Architecture in Motion workshop to finish the semester. After the lecture about Drawing a few weeks ago I concluded that it was a workshop that would be instantly useful in design and other subjects and therefore could not be missed.



After completing the workshop I definitely feel I am better equipped to both understand architectural drawings and produce my own for presentations and quick sketching.



The various concepts and methods of drawing that we were introduced to I found especially interesting. The differences between the presentation images of MVRDV or Koolhaus and more traditional architects such as Wright highlighted to me the freedom we have in communicating our ideas. While I have learned about the broad range of methods and materials we can utilize I have also enhanced my understanding of the overall quality and care in presentation that is required regardless of the method used.

In my final project I decided to concentrate on the spatial relationships within the Botta house, inparticular the way spaces are organised around the large open outdoor terrace. I wanted to produce a series of 3ds that included section cutaways that would reveal this in a way that was easier to understand than in a simple 2d section. I located a simple massing model of the building on the interweb and after a series of format conversions got it into SketchUp. I then corrected some proportion issues in the model and added internal divisions and the two main windows. I then spent some time deciding which angels and section cuts to use before exporting them as vector drawings. These I then cleaned up and simplified, then sized appropriatly before carefully tracing them off the screen. Once I had extracted the 4 3ds off the screen I had to refine inconsistencies add people, and also add some light colour for the background that would link the images and also make windows easier to read.

WORK SHOP TWO - FLUID THOUGHTS TO ACTIONS

The name of this workshop is what initially attracted me to it, I was interested in how one could illustrate the feel or experience of a complex form or space though drawing.


We began the workshop on a chilly day out at the opera house. Using charcoal for the first time since high school was at points extremely frustrating. However as the day went on I began to get more enjoyment out of the exercise and understand the building better. We would move postions every now and then and therefore needed to try to successfully integrate this motion into our drawings. This I found especially frustrating.




Over the 4 weeks that this workshop ran we undertook a range of exorcises, mainly working with charcoal. We did a couple of group drawings, where we connected our own drawings together to form a whole. However this was the most frustrating of all the exorcised for me. I found it hard to understand the purposed behind the almost arbitrary way that we joined imaged together. The final compositions we created were entirely new images, some I thought were quite spectacular, however most had very little relation to the original 'thoughts' and were instead totally abstract artworks that perhaps could suggest architectural space, but a unintentional space generated from the act of combining images. I found this exorcise could be useful to brainstorm ideas and produce a concept, but I did not learn new ways to communicate a fluid thought I might be having.


Overall I had a mixed response to this workshop. I thoroughly enjoyed the development of our charcoal drawing skills through these exorcises and the useful tips and advice that we were given that will enhance our future drawing skills. The main thing about the workshop that I did not like was that I thought the exorcises (excluding the Opera House) were primarily aimed at advancing our skills in general and I did not learn specifically how best to apply these in architectural communication.

WORK SHOP ONE - MATERIAL MODELING

Material Modeling was the first workshop that I attended. It coincided well with the balsa model that was required for design this semester. Prior to this workshop I had very little experience with model making. I thought the initial exorcises were fantastic as it showed the degree of precision that is required to achieve the clean aesthetic of professional models. I was amazed by the 1:1 models of objects we produced and their success in imitating the form and identity of those objects very simply.



For the main task we had to essentially remodel our bedrooms. I had a hard time deciding what I would do as my bedroom was slightly problematic to model. My room is entirely underneath a cliff or large rock and has no visible external walls aside from the front windows/door. The large rock actually makes up the wall of my bathroom.




For the model I decided I would celebrate this section of visible rock by revealing it entirely and moving the bathroom. I also extended my room outward and sidewards from the rock to lesson the cave like nature of the space.




Overall I found this workshop to be, along with Drawing, invaluable. I constantly use techniques and methods that I was taught in the workshop, and the skills I began to develop have evolved and improved.