All the Arts Under One Roof

This is the last assigned project of my undergraduate program. The task was to re-work a previous project from one of our earlier studio courses with the purpose of build on upon it (rather than fixing or improving it). I chose a simple drawing exercise I did in my drawing class; an orthogonal projection of a building (Sage Art Center).

Orthogonal projections are interesting to me because they don’t represent the object as in a perspective, but rather describe it, and in a way, abstract it or reconfigure our understanding of it. The idea of showing architecture in a way different from how we commonly perceive it fascinates me.

I decided to accurately draw the ceiling plan of Sage Art Center, which is essentially an open plan building consisting of 25 columns, and

My goal was to further abstract something that is already abstract and unnoticed–a building/architecture. I like to graphically interpret architecture in an effort to show viewers unseen or unthought-kiof aspects/possibilities of a building they regularly use and perhaps (probably) barely notice.

At the same time, I like geometry and patterns, and architecture is all about that. Sage is a perfect square with multiple geometries embedded in the form of column grids, mechanical chases, light fixtures, etc. Perhaps people can look at the ceiling and its elements (for the first time) as things other than random utilitarian interventions, and find some order and even beauty in what at first seems like an undefined structural chaos.

Week Plan: A Möbius Strip?

I recently submit the piece below to an undergraduate art show her in my school. Last year my work was one of the elected pieces for the exhibition but this year I was not lucky enough. Nonetheless, I consider this piece to be quite a step forward in my research involving the graphic representation of space.

What if a psychologist, instead of asking you to write your week’s activities in a log, presumably to “optimize” you’re time management, asked you instead to write down, or rather, draft, the spaces you occupy during that week? How about “space optimization”? What’s the space in between? What’s the space within? Without?

With this proposition in mind, I set out to draft the spaces I occupied during a whole business week of my life, using only measuring tape and standard architectural software to create a “floor plan” of each day, Monday through Friday. To reduce my scope from global to doable, I eliminated the spaces where I spent less than 5 min. engaged in an activity. With this rule, hallways, roads, and parking lots were eliminated to create a fairly tight plan which was arranged according to the geographical position of each room or place in relation to the others.

My room and dorm bathroom happen to occupy the northernmost point of my plan. Usually, the library lies to the south while the food (dining halls) lie towards the East and center. Computer lab? West.

Once these plans are joined, they form a kind of Mobius strip, quite illustrative of the daily life of many. A spatial matrix from which there is no escape. The repetition is obvious and almost impossible to escape.

What kinds of spatial patterns exist in each week, for each person? Where do we actually exist?

How do the “powers of architecture,” affect us without our knowledge? What does a wall, or a window, or a column does to our daily life? How can we change the spatial discourse on a personal, citizen level? What would we see, and understand, by looking at our “week plan”?

There is much knowledge to be found in the realm of spaces, if only we look. And measure.

Sage: A Bad Render is a Hundred Thousand Words

Ahh, the world of rendering! Here are some of my first trials from a year ago or so. Today, they seem quite poetic and kind of make me think about the building in ways I previously didn’t.  Another reason not to trash your artistic failures!

Sage: Architectural Image as Pattern

Buildings are the most visible objects in our environment. Images of buildings are perceived differently then, than other smaller objects, including people. When we look at a postcard of a building, we notice its scale, and in one way or another, picture ourselves in that environment.

How can the image of a building lose its reading as architecture and become something else, something smaller perhaps?

My answer so far is to turn it into a pattern that both isolates its place in the real world, and turns it into an abstract image.

My subject matter is once again Sage Art Center, a building that stands by itself in a particularly desolate part of the campus.

The results are some very interesting visual products.

Sage: Line Drawings

One of my first forays into “artistic” architectural line drawings.

My subject? Sage Art Center (arguably the most plain art building in America).