PROJECT LINK

The purpose of this week is to investigate the obligations and possibilities of context to design. By studying various ways to read a site, and understand a place students will be of what it means to appropriately respond to a condition.

 

In this drawing exercise, students will conceptually draw the line mapping their personal experience as they travel from their home to the GSD. The drawing should be a layered reading of the place that calls out landmarks and locations along the path that the student deems significant.  

To begin this exercise, students should understand all the different factors that define the line.  Listen to sounds, touch surfaces, collect found objects along the path.  Select a few significant moments along your line and develop a means to signify these moments in the drawing.  The line will be a drawing that is an abstract representation of your walk.  While abstract, the line is a scale representation, as such, a certain number of steps along the path should correspond to a precise length in the drawing.

The project will be a layered composition, combining freehand drawing, drafting as well as literal collage and allow a student to capture a conceptual understanding of mapmaking.  This tool will allow them to continue on to expose ideas of representation and form while still observing and understanding process.

 

In order to spawn a little more creativity on the topic, feel free to look through some of the following artist's works to garner new ideas for mapping.  Nina Katchadourian  uses the idea of cartography and the material of standard maps to represent new ideas for geographic regions.  Guillermo Kuitcha uses the ideas of abstraction to capture new ideas for understanding the feel of mapping as a recording.  Mark Bradford creates abstract mappings through the use of found objects and paint in a mix of both high and low end art.  His work has been shown in many places and is a part of the ICA show currently on exhibit.

 

Students will design a small parasitic pavilion that is rooted in their understanding of place and reliant on their concept exposed from mapping. Students will select the specific site and programmatic use for the room in the city. The design will be fueled by the site analysis done in response to lessons learned as a part of the mapping exercise. The project will give students the opportunity to investigate spatial relationships of architecture and how an abstract idea can be reinforced into a spatial experience. Forcing them to answer questions such as, how does a project meet the sky? The ground? How is it experienced? How is it moved through?