4 minute read
WEEK 4: NARRATIVES
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On mute, narrate to explain why/how the (architectural) space has a strong relationship to the event unfolding in the scene.
The space sets the scene for a government meeting, the contrast in light and shadow and the king looking down on the opposition’s magistrate. It first shows the amount of resources and grand but excessively busy lifestyle of the protagonist king, via the sophisticated hybrid of Baroque, Renaissance and old Gothic architecture. The rooms reflect a downlight to the stairs, casting attention onto the antagonist. Contradictory to the position of the stairs, the antagonist has the ‘upper’ hand, and the architecture along with the composition of the scene, foreshadows the lowhanded deal the magistrate will offer in the war treaty.
The classical elements also imply the concealment of civilised matters and the dread of impending social issues. The room is used in scenes for menace, debate, major fights, ruins-- a lot of the fiction , conflict and recollection is told in this specific room model.
It has a strong relationship to the events because viewers get to see it undergo tremendous changes, from ‘riches to ruin’, following its owner’s downfall and death. Even in the second half, viewers can still feel a sense of dreaded intimacy and loss/grief as we see the architecture itself crumble to ash and rubble during major conflict, and each round of conflict escalates the ‘injuries’ to the building to a new level.
Viewers get shown many perspectives of the building and its interiors throughout the movie so that gives a lot of time to build collective visual memory, and to grow familiar with it, hence the ruining of the building draws a lot of negative impact (and potentially sorrow) for the viewer when we witness its gradual misfortune.
Design a workspace inspired by this narrative.
The ‘death’ and sorrow part is downplayed because I’m not keen on encouraging working in a neurotic state. It was far easier to come up with iterations focusing on the aftermath of the narrative, towards normalcy- rest and recuperation from compassion fatigue. This space is cramped, suited for one occupant so as to be very private and closed-off; the space is uninviting to others who want to disturb the process of self-healing. Having some remaining emotional fatigue and due to family upbringing, I noticed this directly influenced my design.
In this case, my family runs on the basis of “any problems, handle it yourself”, “your mess, you fix”, so absolute privacy with space for silent lifeforms (such as plants or pets that are trained to be quiet) succeed in this built environment. The second iteration is closely related to my current room workspace but in actuality, I do wish it had less window, more solid walls. This is because I generally do well with darker, artificial environments and to some extent, provides me a ‘holiday’ to live in my own head, which is where ideas come from.
In a previous task, I said it was beneficial for me to be in a environment related to the design brief. I lied. It is beneficial for fulfilling the brief to the best capacity I can offer, but on a personaldesign level, it did not help motivations toward finding my own consistencies in design thinking. Since I failed that task, from this I will try to improve on subtly ‘altering’ or adding to a brief that will hopefully make things seem less automated.
R E F L E C T I O N
Evaluating the narrative types and its graphs, aren’t real life events closest to a ‘comedy’? Although it’s hardly ever ‘funny’, there is always the ups and downs in the graph of life, but a return to ‘normalcy’ or ‘getting used to a (new) way of life’ attitude. This refers to a building narrative that was drafted in the previous week, and to design this I disassociated from the events, looking down on it with a 3rd-party viewpoint.
This was easier to recall, process the information of events that happened with no emotional attachment. Unfortunately this was the trait I was trying not to go back into, because I’m trying to get rid of this auto-piloting state I have towards architecture-based design (anything architecture-related in general) as it hinders my design innovation although it increases productivity and efficiency greatly. It is a give-take situation.
This task did prompt me to recall past projects and I realized the one major thing in common with all of them is scheming them around a narrative of misfortune, or basing it on the premise the client is ‘unlucky (therefore they come to me to fix their problems’. It also has always been more personally entertaining to design for a dystopia, not a utopian circumstance.
Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps instead of forcing my design traits to change to its complete opposite, I could adjust it a bit to be more versatile, but also incline myself towards misfortune-based projects?
What worked well and fast, which was a relief- when I was stuck how to sequence the narrative, arranging multiple icons into a frame helped make thoughts more coherent and sequences more logical. Simple imagery helped overcome mental blocks, so this should be a beneficial logical practice to incorporate to future studios, finding concepts etc.
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