PROJECT BRIEF - P1 (STUDIO II)

Leeds Beckett University BA(Hons) Architecture

2017–2018

Timetable Briefing: Tuesday, September 26, 10am Drawing Workshop: Tuesday, September 26, 10:30am Photography Workshop: Friday, September 29,10:00am + Tuesday, October 03, 2pm Drawing Workshop: Tuesday, October 03, 10am Research & Reading: Friday, October 06, 10am Collage/Photoshop Workshop: Tuesday, October 10, 2pm Making Workshop: Tuesday, October 17, 10am Crit: Friday, October 20, 10am Study trip: tbc Final Crit: Friday, November 03, 10am

DC1

P1 Object’s Life Expansion Tutors Mohamad Hafeda Anna Pepe Ann Stewart

54 Studies for Chair Transformations, Allan Wexler, 2007

PROJECT AIMS

LEARNING OUTCOME

To explore a range of thinking, drawing and making methods by which the architect can begin to understand, interpret, represent and produce space in all its complexities.

– Developing critical and investigative skills.

– Investigating a diverse range of representation techniques.

– Communicating qualities of architectural space through representation.

– Engaging with key ideas relating to form and material qualities.

– Exploring human scale in relation to space.

BRIEF Architecture is always about working within an existing set of conditions that architects need to take apart, understand how they work and rework their relationships, in order to propose something new, giving them a second life. Our personal curiosity and interpretations fuel our imagination to invent, design and add to existing spaces. This process of enquiry and invention requires a range of drawing and making techniques and methods that are fundamental thinking tools to the design process. However the relationship between these representations is not straightforward or linear but complex and obscured. Drawing and making influence our ideas as they emerge. There is a space of imagination, interpretation, discrepancy and production between what we see and/or think and how we express these or represent them in material processes.

During this project you will explore a wide variety of drawing and making techniques and methods, as well as the relationship between these representation processes.

Some of these will be introduced in order to enhance your own visual and perception skills, others to break down preconceptions about space, representation and design processes.

You are asked to obtain an abandoned (not in use) everyday object. You will employ a series of investigative and experimental architectural processes to survey the object and to speculate on the possibilities of its reuse and after-life.

You will work in pairs at the start of the project. You need to provide the object from a charity shop or a recycling centre or you can use any abandoned object that you can find.

The object should comply with the following requirements: - Has moving parts or mechanical - Complex in its functioning - Easily disassembled / broken into parts - At a scale suitable to the studio and project (not too large to not fit in the lift, nor too small so that it lacks enough details to inform an interesting project).

- It cannot be a mobile phone, remote control, electronic game, jewelry, keychain, key, cutlery, ceramics and decorative items.

Note: Bring an inspiring and exciting object that you are curious about and want to work on.

STAGES Stage 1: Draw – 2 Weeks 1.1 Survey your chosen object in detail. Observing, recording, analysing and communicating details are an essential part of an architect’s design process, we must look closely to what is there and beyond the visible. Work in groups of two to survey the object’s original form through 1 - sketching it on your sketchbook, 2- adding measurements and notes, and 3- taking photographs. Then individually translate your measured notes into a finished drawing in an orthographic projection, showing plans and elevations.

Drawings must be detailed, accurate, to scale, and drawn with suitable and varied line weights to show materiality and depth with control of line weights and line quality. Work on white A2 sheets. Use one of the conventional architec-

tural scales (suitable to the size of your object): 1:1, 1:2, 1:5, 1:10 and 1:20.

You need to analyse the object into different architectural components; Form: points (dots, pins, perforation), lines (columns, beams, frames), surfaces/planes (slabs, walls), and volumes (cubes, sphere, irregular) Structure: through which the different architectural elements are fixed together, such as slotted, integrated, interlocked, suspended, woven.

Material quality: elastic, rubbery, shiny, reflective, sticky, rusty, transparent, melting, permeable, etc.

Performance/activity: movement (rotating, sliding, mobile), function (marking, punching, perforating), and mechanics.

On Friday 29 September: Research how architects draw to inform your drawing method. Present to the studio a drawing from the architect, assigned to you, and that inspired you most. Use the library to conduct your research and bring the book or a printed scan of the drawing with you to the studio. You cannot use the Internet for this research. Visit the Leslie Silver Library, second floor, sections 720.-- , for architectural references.

1.2 Cut the object in half or simply open it or dismantle it.

Each one of you should take one half to explore. Draw a key section and an exploded axonometric of the object.

Choosing ‘where to cut a section’ and the arrangement of the axonometric components are important to serve a particular purpose or show an idea, they expose the internal system of the object including the vertical and horizontal relationships across spaces. In this respect a technical drawing is subjective and can develop an interest or help answer a question or curiosity. The drawings need to show the specific spatial arrangement and spatial characteristics of the object that you discovered. Refer to the list below to guide your investigation and clearly state what you are exploring in drawing; you can add your own terms/nouns to the list.

Spatial arrangement: Regular vs. irregular, ordered vs. disordered, dense vs. sparse, angular vs. orthogonal, smooth vs. sharp, sequential vs. interrupted, centralized vs. dispersed.

Spatial characteristics: Light vs. heavy, dynamic vs. static, introverted vs. extroverted, crammed vs. spacious, isolated vs. integrated, inward vs. outward.

1.3 Throughout the drawing process you should be photographing the object to explore and reveal its qualities.

Use photography to document the object inside out, but also to investigate material qualities that are not necessarily expressed in the orthographic drawings. Explore how these different processes challenge your knowledge of the object.

Visit the photography studio on the 3rd floor.

On Friday 6 October: You need to read the assigned text and be ready to discuss it. You will be asked a question to answer.

Stage 2: Experiment – 1 Week 2.1 Conduct an experiment using the B&W photocopy machine to explore further the spatial/material quality that you highlighted of the half-object. Identify clearly the quality; pick one or two from the lists above or add your own. By the end of the exercise your experiment should be focused and present a full investigation. Present 20 different photocopies, giving them (as the body of your experiment) a clear title.

2.2 Construct an A2 collage image using the 20 photocopies. Collage is a tool to speculate on and propose new constructions by bringing elements from different contexts, media and scales to the space of the drawing. The collage should construct a spatial arrangement and a series of spaces with specific spatial qualities instigated from the experiment and the processes you undertook so far. Refer to the list provided above to inform your actions and to name the spatial arrangement and characteristics that you are expressing. Through this process the object is transformed into something new and is further detached from its actual physicality.

To construct the collage employ: photocopying, cutting, pasting, overlaying, multiplying and changing scale. You are advised to use copies of parts of the orthographic drawings in this collage and to layer your drawing. Title the collage inline with its intention.

Stage 3: Make – 1.5 Week 3.1 You have spent time observing, recording and experimenting with the object’s form, spatial qualities and arrangement in 2-dimensional processes of drawing, photography, photocopy and collage. You need to expand the life of the object through exploring the spatial possibilities generated out of these processes in a 3 dimensional investigation (model making) using white cardboard (and parts of the half-object’s components if needed). This stage is not about replicating the object in cardboard, for the object has already transformed. It is more about learning from the object and studying particular aspects, and speculating on generating 3-dimensional forms and spaces.

Techniques or actions: Bending, stacking, twisting, wrapping, corrugating, curving, folding, pleating, perforating, packing, extruding, subtracting, rotating, replicating, exploding, shredding, shearing, intersecting, interlocking, lofting.

Stage 4: Scale – 1.5 Week Your previous model had no scale. You explored making techniques and the possibilities to generate form and spatial arrangements and qualities at different shifting scales.

At this stage you will study how the agent of scale asks you to look and think differently at what you have, and requires new considerations and making decisions. You need to give your model a scale of 1:50 in relation to your body and the activity of: working. Produce a new model and set of drawings investigating the alterations and the new spaces required to cater for the activity and human scale.

Follow the steps below: 4.1 Photograph your body in the ‘working’ activity by which you will inhabit the model. Produce a drawing of a sequence/series that shows the different body positions and dimensions of that activity in space. Create a ruler or scale bar for the measures. Rework the scale of the photograph/ print to fit the scale of 1:20. Refer to Eadweard Muybridge, modular system of Le Corbusier, Da Vinci Man/Vitruvian Man and Neufert Standard.

4.2 Make a final inhabited model at a scale of 1:50 and a dimension of 50cm x 25cm x 25cm.

4.3 Draw a section of the model inhabited by your body activity and movement. You need to employ all the representation skills and media you explored so far - from orthographic drawing, photography, photocopying, layering and collage to unpack and narrate the specific qualities of the new expanded space. Your drawing should be textured, layered with information and complex in composition, at a scale of 1:50 and a dimension of 50cm x 25cm or 25cm x 25cm.

SUBMISSION

Follow the steps below:

Minimum output

- Identify the particular spatial arrangement and characteristics from the collage and the whole process that you would like to explore further. Refer to the list provided above.

- Research of an architect’s drawing method.

- Give attention to the positive and negative spaces of the collage/drawings/object, have a strategy on how you will express them in model making. The positive being the solid, volumes and foreground and the negative being the void, in-between space and background. You can use the collage shades from black to white to decide on and differentiate between positive and negative.

- Use two of the making techniques/actions below or ones that you have highlighted throughout your process to build your models.

Note: don’t allow the cardboard materiality/thickness limit your investigation; if you build a plane, don’t let the thickness of the cardboard dictate the plane’s thickness.

- Finished orthographic projections: 2 Plans, 4 Elevations, 1 Section, 1 Axonometric on A2 sheets and to scale.

- Photographic exploration on A2.

- 20 photocopies experiemnt.

- A2 Collage - The expanded object model.

- Inhabited model scale 1:50.

- Section drawing of the inhabited model 1:50.

- Documentation of design process including experiments and drawings.

TO RESEARCH Architects List Pick accrording to your surname (first letter) Diller Scofidio (A) Rem Koolhaas (B) Bernard Tschumi (C) Lina Bo Bardi (E, F) Atelier Bow-Wow Archigram (D) Haus-Rucker-Co (G) Cedric Price (H) Brodsky and Utkin (I) Sant’elia (J) Ben Nicholson (K) Super Studio (L) Enric Miralles (M) Morphosis (N) Friedrich Kiesler (O) Paul Marvin Rudolph (Q) Alison Smithson (R) Zaha Hadid (S) Lebbeus Woods (P) Sou Fujimoto (T) Neil Spiller (V) Peter Eisenman (W) Herzog de Meuron (X) David Adjaye (Y) Tadao Ando (Z) Peter Zumthor (U) READINGS Robin Evans. ‘Translations from Drawing to Building’. In Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays.

London: AA Documents, 1997.