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FORM & FUNCTION Project 1 1
Fall 2018 Maggie Chuang In Situ
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In Situ: Translating Experiences This project is a response to a trip to Grace United Methodist Church, located on Skinker and Waterman in St. Louis, Missouri. The objects appear like stained glass windows and—as the user interacts and turns the tabs of the layers—slowly reveal statements about the emptiness and lacking community found within the church. I aim to engage my users with questions about the expectations people have about what a church is, including its architecture and its community.
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Research What did you turn to for reference, inspiration, and understanding for your project? How did it influence— directly or indirectly—what you made?
Discovery What was your process for generating possible ideas for the project? How wide and deep did you explore before coming to a final idea? Did your discovery process generate outcomes that were successful?
Refinement How did you refine your work? How did you make decisions as you refined your idea? What criteria did you use for evaluation? Did you find your final refined idea to be the final iteration of your idea?
Criticism What criticism did you receive from your peers and faculty about your project? Did you agree or disagree with it? What did you learn from criticism? 5
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Research
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What did you turn to for reference, inspiration, and understanding for your project? How did it influence—directly or indirectly— what you made? Unsurprisingly, Grace United Methodist Church (GUMC) provided almost all of the avenues of inspiration for this particular project. My research involved lots of on-site observations, which led to documentation about my experience of the building as well as finding some written material to examine. I had been to this church once before—on a Palm Sunday—which ended up providing a lot of insight as well. I explored the site from several different angles, which led to a combined influence on the goal of the final project. After preliminary research at GUMC, I explored other resources and materials to find art-driven interpretations of churches in the past. I looked at book titled Encountering the Spiritual in Contemporary Art (by Leesa K. Fanning), which enlightened me on how fine artists approach the representation of spiritual/religious material in art. I also investigated the history of church architecture and looked for what parts of the building were most appreciated and considered.
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Visual exploration of Grace United Methodist Church. I found myself inspired by the intricacy of the sanctuary area, especially in the windows. Although churches are largely defined by the presence of stained glass, these windows stuck out as a stunning surprise after coming in from the routine views of Skinker Boulevard.
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Color palette that I pulled from the stained-glass windows at the church, which later informed the color direction of the project
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Discovery
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What was your process for generating possible ideas for the project? How wide and deep did you explore before coming to a final idea? Did your discovery process generate outcomes that were successful? Since this was the first project of the year, I wanted to start on a strong note and make an effort to push my concept further in the early stages. I started with a word map to describe my observations in the church, and began to compare them to what GUMC’s historical references were saying. I found that GUMC fulfilled a lot of expectations of what a current church is—beautiful architecture, rich history, friendly community, but less beloved than it has been in the past. The lack of people and engagement in this place took some time to see, but once I realized it, my perception of the place was much deeper. My goal for this project was to give users that same layered experience, where normal expectations of a church gave way to unexpected truths and speculation. I tested several forms, including a book, package, and pinwheel, before landing on my final direction—a volvelle, or circular layered-paper object. Through lots of color experiements, copy writing, and prototypes, I was able to end this stage with a mockup that began to relate my final concept.
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My early drafts focused a lot around finding the best abstraction of a stained glass window. I found that, for my purposes in the project, the 9th option (bottom circle on this page) conveyed the complexity of the window without being obtusely realistic.
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More Pro Medium
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789!?.,
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ALL ARE WELCOME A LOVING COMMUNITY A FADING COMMUNITY WHO IS HERE? AN EMPTY SPACE ONCE LOVED A CHURCH IS MORE THAN A BUILDING COMMUNITY AT THE HEART
Copy writing was also a major portion of this process— although the phrases were small, I needed them to be impactful and introspective so that there was a strong payoff once they were discovered.
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Refinement
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How did you refine your work? How did you make decisions as you refined your idea? What criteria did you use for evaluation? Did you find your final refined idea to be the final iteration of your idea? The work I did in the discovery phase led to lots of productive feedback from my peers, and showed me three major areas that required improvement. A major issue was the functionality of the volvelle; if the layers didn’t easily turn or interact with each other, it became very difficult to engage with my project at all. My solution for this was to test dozens of fixes until I could get the pieces to function smoothly. An important change was lasercutting the top layer out of a thick board to sandwich the thinner layers underneath. Another critique was the appearance of the colored “glass” layer; my original solution was very abstract, and didn’t immediately read as stained glass. During this stage, I focused on creating a pattern that was still abstract, but conveyed a feeling of refraction and shadows as well. Finally, at this point my three volvelles existed without any explanation, and need to be contextualized so that someone unfamiliar with the project could interact with it. I tested several types of packages, and eventually landed on a simpler box that would introduce the main concept before revealing the interaction.
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At this stage, I added a slight gradient mesh to the designs to create a sense of light refracting over the windows. It softened up the design enough to give a deeper sense than vector shapes.
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To accomodate for the laser cutter, the design of the window frame was tweaked to have simpler and larger shapes. 19
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Toward the end of the project, I began to consider how this interaction should be contextualized. In other words: if someone randomly came across my project, without any introduction or awareness, would they be able to understand what was going on? I chose to create a slip case, so that the act of revealing the contents would parallel the act of rotating the objects and revealing the layers. The box was designed to hint at the patterns inside without revealing the form.
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Stained-Glass Reflections:
Looking into what makes a church
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What criticism did you receive from your peers and faculty about your project? Did you agree or disagree with it? What did you learn from criticism? The critiques at the end of the process were mainly positive; there were still minor issues with the functionality with the volvelles, which are certainly fixable with more time and possibly new materials. A more prominent critique was toward the outer sleeve; since the box inside was so sturdy/formidable, the sleeve felt almost flimsy in comparison. The recommendation was to make the sleeve out of something equally substantial, which I completely agree with—since it’s the first impression of my project, it should appear just as thoroughly considered. My impression from the critiques was that, despite some execution issues, the concept came along strongly, and offered a lot of space for progressing and evolving my idea. Adding some focus on the front end paid off in relating my concept, and it’s something I will continue to do in my later work.
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