WEEK ONE
JULY 05 / 2010 – JULY 09 / 2010
skills building
Students will analyze a common, vernacular object of human fabrication. Working principally with traditional hand drawing and drafting methods, students will learn how to be communicative with architectural representation. Ultimately, the goal is by learning how to represent the object, students will understand its essence, a reciprocal process of investigation that will ultimately give life to the students drafting explorations.
To begin this exercise, look and touch. Understand and interpret the object. Consider its context, form, and purpose. How is it used? How can it be used better? How could you explain the object to someone who has never been exposed to it?
Develop a way to represent both the object itself and also the ways in which the object is used. A challenge is to be analytical and not just descriptive. Use lines to understand the geometrical relationships that define the object. Consider the drawing as a composition of several investigations of the object. Some drawings should consider the entire object while others should zoom in to refer to specific details of the object. The grouping of these representations will ultimately give life to the students drafting explorations.
assignment two :: PATTERN
Students will then explore this in the Digital Studio session by importing their work into 3D modeling software and furthering their explorations of the spatial qualities of their investigations.
assignment three :: ASSEMBLAGE
Through this assignment, students will explore model-making techniques by modulating certain objects that the instructors provide. Through the hands-on interaction with these objects, students will begin to discover how the objects can connect and weave together creating a spatial model that is responsive to the characteristics of the object. By crafting as assemblage students will learn how to show hierarchy, order, and rhythm in a built form at the same time as understanding tectonics and detail.
Each student will be provided with a specific object to carry out the assignment. Upon receiving the object, the students will be asked to experiment with different ways that the objects can connect and weave together to create a spatial assembly. Overall, we are asking each student to figure out their assembly both through physical modeling and also drawings that explore the plan and section of their assembly.
Similar to the earlier OBJECT excercise, students should begin by analyzing the individual characteristics of the assigned object. Then the students consider the process of aggregation and see what happens when the individual figure becomes the field or the assemblage. While each student’s assembly is intended to be made of the same repetitive object, students can selectively incorporate additional modeling materials to provide a sense of scale or context to the project.
