Exp 3 - Dos and Donts on Presentation

In the real world as well as university, a successful architectural product is half a design skill and half a well executed sales pitch. One can completely ruin a flawless design by presenting poor collateral. On the other hand, one can also make a banal architecture sell just through curatorial decision making, misdirection, and pure showmanship (well.....to a client at least. Architects are still marking your work)!

here are a list of do's and dont's for you to consider when you are presenting your work:

Do: Exploit the power of the "hero shot", and - if composing - thread together a hierarchy of hero and detail shots.

Dont: Show your design from a word document or a powerpoint layout. 

Do: Practice judicious selection of images - from birds eye view to human scale walkthrough, and from external to internal - to bring together an appreciation of your building in a multitude of scales and environments.

Dont: Repeat your images

Do: Guide the viewer along in understanding how your whole building fits together. Using videos may aid this too, even thou its not mandatory.

Dont: Try to conceal the fact that you are missing elevators (i'll jump into your cryengine files). Videos tend to be good at showing how elevators work too, although videos are not mandatory.

Do: Leave people in awe of your environment.

Dont: Submit low grade, pixelated images, or building that glows awkwardly in daylight, or untextured landscape onto your submission.

Do: If making videos, get them to the point. For example, show the interactive components and the walkthrough.

If you really have to make a long one, make it entertaining.

Dont: Put your viewers to sleep.

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell

As we have discussed in class, George Orwell's essay:

"The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing."

So, for your mashup - make sense of it. And apply Orwells five rules of writing a literature:

"

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

"

Heres the link: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79p/index.html

Bridge vs Bridging

" ...design a school that forms a bridge spanning a valley..."

A way to address this is to think of the bridge (a structure to span a physical obstacle) and the act of bridging in architecture (to connect, to link together and complete as a whole). Consider the structural significace of the bridge(noun), the relationships, hierarchies created from bridging(verb), and the merging of engineering, space, and aesthetics. Take this thinking to work out how these two strategies can come together to create an interesting architecture.


Bridge(noun)

Norman Foster - Millemium Bridge

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Norman Foster - Millau Viaduct

can a distancing from the ground inform an attitude to power?

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Putrajaya Bridge

can the expression of forces going through your structure express an attitude to power?

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Bridging(verb)

BIG Architects - Sowwah Island Bridge

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BIG Architects - Slussen Masterplan

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United Architects - New World Trade Center Proposal

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Steven Holl - Linked Hybrid

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MVRDV - Eurpoean Patent Office

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Kenzo Tange - Fuji Television Headquarters

And below is just a bridge.........so be a bit more thoughtful than this

Steven Holl - LM Project

Exp 3 Re-Cap

So people, As you can see Lynette has set the bar for the landscape component of this experiment so far, so lets all aim for that!

Also, half of you were falling behind on Tuesday, so i want you all to catch up on the work including learning how to move a rectangle up and down. Also now start on a draft massing model of your scheme (think about our last exercise, but instead of using 10 rectangles we are using the room list!).

Shaowen's group is a good example: http://arch1101-2013sw.blogspot.com.au/

Theories - Class pool

1) Form Follows Function
2) Form and Function are One
3) Touch the earth lightly
4) Less is more
5) Less is a bore
6) Ornament and crime
7) House is a machine for living
8) Mass and Void
9) More is more
10) Mess is more
11) Defensible space
12) The Stair is a room.

And from our civil engineers:

12) Whole is greater than the sum of its parts
13) Sum of all the forces = 0

Some from yours truly:

14) The duck and the decorated shed
15) The monumentally informal
16) Phenomenal Transparency

More 1 + 1 = 3

Some interesting 1+1=3 quotes from prominent people found in an old book of mine. Click to view original size.

The title of the book is 'The Art of Looking Sideways' by Alan Fletcher. Its either 600 pages of inspiring read and visuals on design, or a very useful doorstopper or brick depending on what your attention span is like.

Rule #1 with a room list - Space Planning

Rule #1, Diagram your spaces. Consider functional types. Slow down. In diagrams, think about how spaces will relate to each other, their co-location, their relative sizing.

http://www.paragon-architecture.com/architects/?page_id=278

Seattle Public Library, Diagram

Seattle Public Library, Diagrammatic Section

Rex on how he broke all the rules. 

Multi-functional Pavilions, Aleksander Wadas

Use the Embed Code

You should all be tech savvy. For your final experiment, could you learn to embed things when you can rather than throw a link into your blogs. Use the presentational medium of the blogs to your advantage!

For example, rather than:

Link to Sketchup model :

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=1e79808a015c1c06b770072c5ae65ae2&result=4

Why not:

Four more clicks "Share > get the embed code > 3d > copy/paste" wouldve made your submissions much more appealing.

Some Okay Ones

BEFORE WE START:

The links below have at least a design where concepts, landform, massing, textures and details are all coming together. 

Yen Dao

Steven Ke - Good Siting

Rebekah Araullo

Jacquelin Lindeman

Tai Danh Lien 

Evan Li

Jennifer Su

Sabrina Akter

Remember what ive talked about today regarding the difference between a DN and a HD in exp1. One brings all this together (concepts/site/architecture/detail) convincingly in one way, the other pulls it off in varying levels of complexity and resolution (rather than complication). 

"To be exemplar, the architecture student must learn to juggle" - my electroliquid aggregation.

Some Catchy 1+1=3's from the past.

These examples begin to incorporate the client and the brief. Notice how some of these start to mix the chosen architectural concepts (ie linear vs radial movement, fragmented spaces vs centralised spaces) into a story. More importantly, these also start to look at two sides of a story. Think two monuments to two architects with two very distinct ways of defining itself architecturally.


 
"In order to have original thoughts, students of architecture need to test their ideas, reiterate, go backwards and forwards, and be one with the environment around them. A narrow minded designer will imitate, go with the crowd, think in a linear fashion, and would only move forwards in a horizontal manner, but at the end they are invisible to the public."

When contemporary ideas are fragmented and dispersed upon concepts of the past the result is a meeting place for tomorrow's inspiration.

"Being strong and optimistic will lead to a gloomy and cold life."

"The Psychoanalysis observes

The studying professor often perform self inflected pain" 

 "If the rich and the poor work together, they can all become successful despite their difference in class, wealth and social wellbeing."

"A stubborn and anti-social person need not be two different people. More, one person following two different paths, of wealth and purity, to reach the same destination."

"Academics bounded by the rigidity of facts, wealth and social status must have a medium that is liberating; where reflection, meditation and creativity can stimulate new ideas."

And avoid long winded, overtly descriptive concept statements such as this below, yes yes... i probably havent been a good example, but - if you get a firm concept happening you'll be better than me at this afterwards!



"Architects and Civil Engineers both deal with the everyday built environment, yet both contribute differently to different aspects to create a complete structure. Without engineers, architectural ideas remain as just ideas. Without architects, a design may lack some creative flair. Visualisation Artists enable others to gain a better understanding of the structure."

Geometries, Architecture, and Landforms

From now on, the architecture would be lost if the landform is designed independently from it. Both your massing development/resolution and the sculpting of your landscape should occur concurrently, with both considerations completing each other in its beauty and in the synthesis of concept. Pay attention to the sketches (Concepts) and the built images of the following slideshows.


01 - Lima Houses, Eduardo Souto de Moura



02 - Mario Botta, Chapel of Santa Maria Degli Angeli



03 - Tadao Ando, Rokko Housing: Pay attention the process of sculpting the landscape that follows the placing of the masses



04 - Tadao Ando, Chikatsu Museum




05 - Tadao Ando, Naoshima Museum


06 - Jun Aoki, Aomori Museum of Art: Idea of space as that between the landscape and the mass, rather than the massing.  07 - Tadao Ando, Open Air Gallery in Kitayama, Kyoto: Some thoughts on massing structure, and architecture.

Experiment 02 - Consider a Variety of Scales

Not simply the same thickness from your sketch. Think about the threshold, the moment when you are about to exit one scale and enter another.

Dont go over 10 rectangular masses, but above is an example of how different scales can come together in suggesting movement, light/heavy, and densities (or absence of) in an architectural composition. 

Some Thoughts on Week01 Exercise for EXP 2

Let the following advice guide your approach to translating concepts into 3 dimensional relationships:

1) Distill your concepts into digestible parts, or rewrite a more condensed version of a concept on our list: Some of the sentences today are quite long winded and yes, ive taken the greens and reds out so as to avoid confusion. The key is to be selective in reinterpreting these concepts into forms - there will be another task where you'll go deeper into these. For now, as an example, if you are looking at a loaded sentence such as:

 "The geometric and angular exist in contrast to the monochromatic and monolithic, this disorientation revealed by precis openings and skewed paths of light," 

you might want to focus on how geometric and tilted rectangles can come together to create light openings, or you might want to look at how - thru texture - you might be able to isolate a continuous shape or surface from a combination of disjointed rectangles. If you are rewriting a concept on the list, i will still reserve the right to review it!

2) Dont double up!: For example, "The geometric and angular exist in contrast to the momochromatic and monolothic, this disorientation revealed by precis openings and skewed paths of light," is very similar to "Architectural originality and futurism can be achieved by breaking rectilinear and euclidean rules of geometry, creating a creative adventure between function and experience." Refer to point 1 above:- a smart student will start to break these two apart and recombine them into new sentences if he/she sees the value in sketching both of these concepts. 

3) Refer back to the architecture and architect that the concepts are drawn from: Retrace the steps. Re-identify how that concept have been interpreted. Go back from the general (the sentence) to the specific (the architectural precedent). As the saying goes, take a step back in order to leap forward!

4) DO THE CRYENGINE TASK: A part of self-teaching on new software is to iron out the issues and familiarise yourself with it, early on. Do what you have to do to get your model into cryengine (ie come use the labs in uni late at night) and remember to keep a blog record of what went wrong as well as what went right. Last minute consequences are too familiar and unforgiving. See below:

Concepts

Daniel Libeskind:

- A harsh collision of axes and linearity emerges into a network of disoriented movement through the internal space.

- The geometric and angular exist in contrast to the momochromatic and monolothic, this disorientation revealed by precis openings and skewed paths of light.

- Architectural originality and futurism can be achieved by breaking rectilinear and euclidean rules of geometry, creating a creative adventure between function and experience.

- A process of interlocking connects two different forms, yet the resulting spaces are unpredictable, and the experience can be chaotic.

-  A bold composition that is absent of discernible sides can engage with the landscape and provide moments of viewing the architecture in different ways. 

- An iconic and unprecedented architecture should be shared with the rest of the public realm, to act as a catalyst and converge sorrunding public spaces. 

Hans Scharoun:

- A collision of textures and geometry results in a layered effect that create distinction between spatial foreground and background.  

- Kinks in layers and the breaking of repetition breaks open the solid, and liberates the spaces.

- The interplay between curved and straight surfaces creates an unsettling experience of movement and chaos that tapers, accelerates, and decelerates. 

- The play between mass and void harnesses a harmonious relationship between internal and external spaces. 

- Individual, unique entities can be arranged to work harmoniously to contribute to a whole.

- Simplification of the exterior leads to an appreciation of the interior and the program structure.

Daniel Libeskind

Daniel Libeskind (1946-)

Notable Works: 

Denver Art Museum (2006), 

Jewish Museum, Berlin (1998), 

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Denver Art Museum, Colorado (2006)

Youtube Video

Diagram, Concept Model

Exterior, Night

Exterior, Day

Exterior, Entry

Exterior, Facade Surface Detail

Interior, Atrium

Interior

Interior

Plan, Ground

Plan, First Floor

Plan, Second Floor

Plan, Third Floor

Section

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Jewish Museum, Berlin (1998)

Youtube Video - Must Watch!

Exterior, Birds Eye View

Exterior, Ground View

Exterior, Facade Detail

Interior

Interior

Interior

Interior

Interior

Plan, Lower Level

Plan, Upper Level