15 minute read
Chandler, Abigail
Something, I recently learned about myself is my gift of kindness. No matter the circumstance, the personality, the situation, always be kind, considerate, and friendly, because you have no idea the impact it could have on others. My passion is what drives me to reach my goals which reflect the things I desire in life. These goals are built upon how I imagine my life to be. That creative mindset is what motivates my actions. The skills and lessons and knowledge I’ve gained through the process has made me more independent and has helped me gain recognition and respect for what I’ve accomplished. Something I admire in others is their ability to be a leader, and to live fearlessly. It’s something I wish I had the courage to do, and is something I want to continue to work on.
Design influences learning in so many ways through the qualities of the learning environment and the factors that support the students and how this influences the behavioral factors. Environmental qualities include the layout of the learning space, the accessibility, and how the different spaces connect. The personal factors include the students well-being, their feeling of belonging, and self-efficacy which can be shown through the students identity, demographics, and perception. (Park, 2022). An educational environment has to be designed to promote engagement. This means designing a space that takes into consideration the workspace set up and the accessibility to other students, essential spaces, and other amenities. By promoting engagement in learning environments, it will help students work more efficiently while being able to collaborate and socialize with other students. Where would you prefer to study based on the type of task? My ideal study spot is a place with minimal distractions, access to essential resources, utensils, and other students, and also a good amount of natural light. With this in mind, I prefer to study at my studio desk most of the time, especially when I’m working on studio assignments, but I also enjoy studying in coffee shops. How does the design of these spaces influence how I learn? The layout of studio is designed in a way that allows students to have ownership of their own desk space and storage while also having other students in close proximity to be able to collaborate and socialize with them, and also provides accessibility to other essential spaces and resources such as printers, the materials lab, and the laser cutting lab. The layout of a coffee shop is designed in a way that gives people different table sizes and spaces for you to study depending on if you came by yourself or with a group of people. The coffee shop does not provide access to all the different resources and utensils that my studio desk provides, so I would maybe go there to study something that doesn’t need a lot of utensils to complete. Each place makes you feel productive and helps you to focus on your work. I think being able to work in studio whenever you need to whether that’s during class or outside of class helps you feel as if you belong in the program because there is always someone else in studio for you to ask questions to and talk to that helps you feel more comfortable and like you’re not alone. Whereas working in a coffee shop, you do have limited resources, there may be more distractions, and the background noise could affect your ability to focus, but at the same time could be rewarding because of the coffee or treat you buy yourself for going and using that time to study. These factors influence learning and promote student achievement by encouraging engagement within the learning environment through different elements created by the learning environment and the personal factors and how they interact. This encourages students to be able to work more efficiently and gives them the ability to collaborate and socialize with other students.
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J. Park. (2022). Lecture 14: Education. Retrieved from class notes References
Eye Catching Items in Transportation
A transportation building can be described as a transitional space where people go to travel from one place to another. This can mean an airport, bus station, train station, etc. People normally only stay in these spaces for a short period of time, normally waiting for their transportation service. These buildings function as a gateway to another town, city, state, or country where people tend to follow a general circulation path to find that gateway, also known as a terminal in airports. But how can we as designers take these environmental factors and behavioral tendencies and transform these transportation buildings into something that combines the functionality of the space with something aesthetically pleasing? When people use transportation buildings, their first priority is to find the correct gate that will get them to their destination, and then they wait for their way of transport to arrive before they board and arrive at another transportation building in their desired location where they then leave. This experience consists of searching and waiting. This is where the idea of implementing eye-catching objects comes into play. This serves as a distraction for the people waiting countless minutes or hours for their transportation that they may see as wasted time. It can be as simple as pop-up shops, restaurants, bars, lounges, or even a sculptural structure. This allows people to use their time efficiently while they are waiting and possibly have some fun while doing it.
Bus stations and train stations are a great example of how we can implement eye-catching design features that grab people’s attention while they wait for their ride. The Denver Union Station in Colorado uses this strategy. The big eye-catching item is the unique steel structure that incorporates fabric pavilions and is designed to express the way it spans across 180 feet of railway tracks. Not only does this structure grab one’s attention, it’s used to identify the station. (SOM, 2014). This structure is used above the railway tracks with several stops along this 180 foot track for people to board and unload. Because this structure is big and eye-catching, it allows easy wayfinding for people to know where to board and where to get off. Inside the Denver Union Station you will find many different pop-up food shops and lounging areas for people to take part in while they wait for the train to arrive. Airports are another great example of how we can implement eye-catching design features that grab people’s attention while they wait for their flight. The Dallas Fort Worth airport uses this strategy. Unlike the Denver Union Station, the Dallas Fort Worth airport doesn’t just use one big eye-catching item in their design, but multiple different smaller ones because the airport is much larger in scale than the train station. The Dallas Fort Worth airport utilizes different works of arts incorporated throughout the circulation of the airport to serve as visually appealing features as well as wayfinding techniques. These works of art are implemented through wall hangings, floor patterns, and ceiling designs in order to showcase how the geometry of the site led to how different spaces were allocated and developed. (Design Build Network, 2005). These eye-catching items allow for easy, fun wayfinding of their terminals along with pop-up shops, restaurants, and other lounging areas while they wait to board their flight. It is important to have design elements in transportation spaces that catch people’s attention because it gives identity to the building and specific spaces as well as provides wayfinding throughout the space, and allows enjoyable distractions while people wait to board their transportation service. Transportation buildings can be more than a transitional space, you can make people’s short time in these spaces worth while by implementing interesting eye-catching design features that makes their time spent there more enjoyable.
References Denver union station. (2022, April 08). Retrieved May 13, 2022, from https://www.som.com/projects/denver-union-station-hub-transit-oriented-develop ment/#:~:text=The%20focal%20point%20of%20the,the%20old%20and%20the% 20new. More from this author See All cmsadmin Taking the Long View, More from this author See All, Cmsadmin Taking the Long View cmsadmin Runaway Inflation, Cmsadmin Taking the Long View, Cmsadmin, View, T., . . . Size, K. (2005, March 31). Terminal D, Dallas / fort worth airport. Retrieved May 13, 2022, from https://www.designbuild-network.com/projects/ibd-fortworth/
Designing Above and Beyond | Meaning, Aspiration, and Purpose Personal Statement
The built environment is products and processes of human creation, such as interiors, structures, landscapes, cities, regions, and the earth that is manifested in physical objects and places. It’s everything humanly made, arranged, and maintained in order to fulfill human purposes in hopes to connect the overall environment with results that affect the conditions of the environment. Because the built environment is created to make our lives safer, more comfortable, productive, and enjoyable, we modify the natural environment to fit those needs and those manifested needs, otherwise known as wants. But in order to do this, you have to think beyond just the needs and wants of the client. You have to think about what those needs and wants imply, what they hope to do, and what they are meant to do. There is so much more to design than what meets the eyes, you have to take into account human factors that alter the built environment. When you think about the needs and wants of your clients, what do those things mean? Most importantly think about how one exists in the environment you are designing and what that implies for how they will support and maintain themselves. What do they need in order to feel safe, comfortable, and productive and further, what does that provide them with? The first twolevels of human needs analyzes how the basic necessities of air, water, food, shelter, economics, and technology are manifested in the built environment to create subsistence, giving them an environment they can exist in, the same way reproduction is established in order to create kinship and marriage giving them the means of existing. The meaning of adding value beyond implementing the needs and wants of clients is to fulfill human purpose, to provide them with their needs, wants, and values. What do those needs and wants hope to achieve? This goes beyond just existing, you have to think about what those things are trying to accomplish, how they connect us to the environment, what they provide us. What does a shelter provide besides the simple necessities of air, water, and food? It provides security and protection. It allows you to use those needs and wants to create a space where you feel safe. It creates a community that provides services promoting your safety, like medical services, police and fire protection, the law and government, and personal weaponry. The aspiration of adding value beyond implementing the needs and wants of clients is to connect them to the overall environment, to create a place they feel safe, to create a community.
What are those needs and wants meant to do? How do they affect the environment and those in the environment? You can design a space that fulfills human purpose by providing them with their simple needs, wants, and values. You can design a space that connects them to the environment by providing security through the means of community. But how do you design a space that affects the condition of the environment? The purpose of adding value beyond implementing the needs and wants of clients is to design a space where they feel they belong through art, philosophy, religion, myths, and magic. It gives them the freedom and responsibility to be themselves, it gives them the education to help them learn about who they are and who they are meant to be. When the client’s needs, wants, and values are met, the connection it creates to the environment allows them to change the conditions of that environment into something good and enjoyable. By analyzing and implementing the different ways humans manifest the built environment allows you to design a space that takes into consideration the meaning, aspiration, and purpose of looking beyond the needs and wants of the client.
References Park, J. (2022). Lecture 01: What is the Built Environment? Retrieved from class notes.
There’s many different characteristics that represent the typical approaches to enhancing invisible value in governmental and religious spaces. These characteristics can be described as heights, lighting, invaluable mediums, and authenticity. Designers use these characteristics in order to create attachments to these places by developing different symbolic meanings related to these intangible characteristics. Government buildings consist of city halls, court houses, embassies, and fire stations. Religious buildings consist of temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues. The roles of heights and lighting in governmental and religious buildings are very important characteristics that help represent power within these places. The different ranges of heights whether it’s ceiling heights, floor heights, or heights of different objects play a big role in how they determine hierarchy and power. For example, in courthouses there’s differing levels of heights for the different types of seating in a courtroom. The judge sits on the tallest level of seating to showcase their power over the room in order to be respected and show authority over their decision. The witness sits on the second tallest seat next to the judge, not for the power aspect, but instead to put them on the spot in front of the whole courtroom while they are being questioned by the representative agencies. The jury sits in the stands to the side in a stadium seating set up to be able to observe the room and listen to what each side has to say. This stair stepped height difference gives them a certain hierarchy over the room knowing the decision is in the hands of the jury. And everyone else all on the same lower level to show they have no true power in the room. Religious buildings serve as places for worship and shelter, so the role of heights and lighting represents a different kind of approach. In these kinds of buildings, the height differences come about through the ceiling design, different levels of floor heights, and the heights of symbolic objects. The ceiling is normally higher over holy areas such as altars to represent the power and presence of a being greater than humans. One common object that most religious buildings have is a cross, and this cross is normally placed high on the wall with spotlights showcasing this symbolic object in order to represent the importance of the value that that object holds. Lighting is used in these buildings to either showcase important meanings and values, shown as a presence of a being higher than humans, or to resemble the powerful feeling that something greater is here. Authenticity in government and religious buildings is another characteristic that is important to show how valuable and essential these buildings are. Authenticity can be shown through traditional ways of doing something and how it resembles the underlying concept. By creating government and religious buildings that are authentic represents reliability, dependability, and trust within the buildings, within the people who use these buildings, and within the community. This also allows the people and the community to believe in the traditions and the concepts that are being represented. These characteristics express authority in government and religious spaces by creating attachments, meanings, and value within these buildings through the different characteristics of varying height differences, lighting, and authenticity. These characteristics represent how these approaches and strategies can create powerful instances that help express that respect and authority.
System thinking focuses on how different parts of the system work together to create the whole, exploring the relationships, whereas complexity focuses on the behaviors of the whole system and the different components that are created from those interactions, the overarching picture. I think both are equally important as they both define how a designer integrates human factors into their design. I think they work together to create a likeness between people, objects, and spaces. System thinking is a holistic approach that focuses on how the different parts of the system interrelate and how they work together over time within the framework of the system as a whole. It allows you to look at the components in terms of relationships in a way to explore and develop effective solutions that affect the larger context that makes up the whole. Ergonomics demonstrates this idea of system thinking by analyzing the interactions between humans and other elements in order to optimize human well-being and overall performance. Ergonomics studies the performance of people and their efficiency in the built environment. It relates to interior design through creating a human centered approach that minimizes the risk of injuries and illnesses and improves one’s quality of life and performance by focusing on the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of how the human body moves in a space. For example, if you analyze how humans interact with surrounding elements in their environment, such as furniture, and how that affects the built environment. The furniture gives them support and comfort allowing them to perform effectively in the built environment. Human comfort can be created through the quality of one’s primary environment. Complexity uses the behaviors of the whole system to characterize how the different components interact in order to analyze the different relationships created from the parts of the system. Anthropometrics demonstrates this idea of complexity by analyzing the measurements of the size, proportions, and range of motion of the human body while at rest and while performing different activities. This allows you to characterize the different motions of the human body while at rest and while performing an activity to then analyze how it will interact with surrounding objects in the environment. Anthropometrics describes the human factors that involve the right fit between objects and spaces and the needs of people using those objects and spaces. It characterizes the interaction of human factors. System thinking and complexity work together in order to analyze and develop a relationship between the characteristics of the components and the interactions between different elements of an environment. System thinking uses the information developed by complexity or the whole, but goes further to analyze how the elements interact and how that relationship affects the surrounding environment. The same way ergonomics uses the information developed by anthropometrics in order to study how humans interact with objects and how it affects the built environment. You cannot analyze the different parts of a system and how they interact without the information developed from characterizing the system as whole. The two approaches rely on each other and work together in order to get results and find a solution. The whole is equal to the sum of its parts. System thinking and complexity are equally important and work together in how they define the way a designer integrates the interaction of human comfort and human factors into their design. This interaction creates a likeness between people, objects, and spaces.
References Park, J. (2022). Lecture 02: Human Factors, Ergonomics, and Environmental Psychology. Retrieved from class notes.
