In-Progress Learning Portfolio
ORIOL ROYO OBREGĂ“N Arch 20. Architectural Graphics I Jerry W. Lum City College of San Francisco
A.
Dog House I. California Barn Inspired Pg. 4
B.
Dog House I. Contemporary Modern Inspired Pg. 6
C.
Cubes in Space Pg. 8
D.
Rapid Visualization Pg. 10
E.
Interior Spatial Studies Pg. 12
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Table of Contents
F. 
Walls and Rapid Visualization Studies P. 16
G.
Intersect and Follow-me Studies. P. 17
H.
Intersect and Follow-me Studies. The Greek town P. 18
I.
Piazza del Campidoglio – Michelangelo Tribute P. 20
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My first dog house has been inspired by a Northern California barn located in the town of Geyserville. During my trips to Mendocino County I always found this building fascinating. In order to design the barn I used a basic dog house structure to which I incorporated two side additions with a lower roof. FRONT VIEW
Because of the bigger size of a barn, the dog house evolved to a dog park located in a atrium with plenty of room to play. I incorporated four cupolas to the roof to give a greater architectural interest to the structure but also for passive ventilation purposes. The barn is facing south to take advantage of the natural light but during the warm season that will create an overheating problem. By closing the south windows and opening both the north window and dormer windows, a natural breeze that cools down the structure can be created.
SIDE VIEW
The front door of the structure consists in two sliding doors.
Geyserville Barn
BACK VIEW
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A. Dog House 1 REFLECTIONS • Strengths: a. Size and proportions of the barn are pleasant and based on reality. b. The use of a color palette that accomplish the goal of creating a barn inspired on an existing structure. c. Use of “entourage” proportion.
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PERSPECTIVE
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• Weaknesses: a. Amount of time required to built the model by not using the SketchUp tools to their full potential. b. The use of textures for the landscaping, the roof and the concrete atrium could be improved. VIGNETTE
• Opportunities:
VIGNETTE
a. Better use of tools such as the “move” tool and groups or components that allow to reduce the amount of time and effort used to built the model. b. Better use of shadows to create interesting and appealing environments.
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• Threats: a. Getting caught in small details in early stages of the design.
PERSPECTIVE
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For the second dog house I decided to explore a complete different design style but always trying to design a realistic and proportionate space. Before starting with the design I brainstormed potential adjectives that an imaginary client could provide during a first meeting. FRONT VIEW
The adjectives used for the design were minimalistic, industrial, innovative and eco-friendly.
modern,
The proposed design incorporates a xeriscape for water friendly and low-maintenance yard.
a
The material palette -concrete, metal and wood- adds an industrial but cozy feeling to the dog house.
BACK VIEW
The materials, straight lines of the design and the floating deck provide a modern look to the dog house while the butterfly roof with exposed beans that extend to create a pergola provide an innovative design. The house faces south to take advantage of the sun light, the long overhangs let the direct sun light to go inside the structure during winter while they avoid it during summer. The north high windows along with the operable bottom part of the southern windows create a natural breeze to cool and ventilate the space.
SIDE VIEW
The north windows also allow indirect light to flow inside the dog house and they create a frame of an intimate view of the sky.
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B. Dog House I1 REFLECTIONS • Strengths: a. Achievement of the materialization of the “client” requirements b. Realistic design and interesting design. c. Improved use of tools and groups • Weaknesses:
NORTH VIEW
a. The amount of time required to built the model is still big. b. There are some non realistic features such as the suspended stair and the distance/ proportion of the beams that need to be improved. • Opportunities: a. Learn how to better incorporate and modify elements from the 3D warehouse.
SOUTH-EAST VIEW
b. Learn how to modify colors, textures and styles to create more unique and appealing designs. • Threats: a. Getting too comfortable with familiar tools and operating strategies and not exploring better strategies that could save time and improve the quality of the final product.
NORTH_WEST VIEW
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For the cubes in arrays exercise I decided to create an atypical cube with three symmetrical openings in the top front corner (refer to x-ray image). T h e t h re e o p e n i n g s c re a t e a m o re interesting structure which will allow me to experiment with shadows and they way they are projected into the ground and in the same cube. BASIC CUBE
X-RAY CUBE
I also choose elegant colors for the cube, dark grey for the exterior, orange-gold for the wall cuts and light grey for the interior. For this exercise I used a lot the groups. By grouping the cube and the rows of cubes, I was able to in a time efficient manner create some captivating combinations. The first combination that I created mimics a pyramid. The pyramid has an 11 by 11 base that gradually becomes smaller towards the top. Each row of the pyramid is a different group therefore I experimented with creating groups of groups.
PYRAMID
I found fascinating the shadow is casted in the ground because of the shape of it and because you can appreciate the openings of the top cubes.
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C. Cubes in Space For the second combination, a cube made of my basic cubes and that replicates its shape and that preserves its proportion. . Again, the way the shadow are casted in the grounds is very interesting.
CUBE OF CUBES
Using groups made this exercise very easy but not using components made more difficult for me to experiment with color combinations.
REFLECTIONS • Strengths: a. Use of groups. b. Interesting color palette • Weaknesses: a. I didn’t explore the components option.
VIEW FROM THE INTERIOR
• Opportunities: a. Better use of groups and use of components. b. Experiment with more color combinations. • Threats: a. Getting too comfortable with a color palette and forget to experiment and enjoy with new options.
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The rapid visualization exercises were completely unknown for me before Arch 20. They are being a little bit challenging but very interesting. They are also helping me to understand better how views, proportions and perspectives work and their importance to make my designs more understandable to the public. The combination of hand drawing and SketchUp is being very inspiring, while SketchUp is a great tool to speed up the process, the hand drawing part is being priceless in order to understand it.
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D. Rapid Visualization REFLECTIONS • Strengths: a. Even if being something unknown I am practicing a lot. b. I
a m p re t t y c o m f o r ta b l e drawing straight lines.
• Weaknesses: a. Circles and curves very challenging.
are
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b. I need to use reference lines for every figure • Opportunities: a. Learn more about perspectives. b. Start understanding better the proportions will reduce my need of using reference lines. . • Threats: a. N o t p ra ct i c i n g e n o u g h a n d relying too much in computerized tools.
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HAND SKETCHES, IDEAS & INSPIRATIONS
For the Interior Spatial Studies exercise I experimented with several different types o f s h a p e s i n o rd e r t o understand the effect that they can have in the exact same room. Before I started working with SketchUp, I hand draw and explored several different patterns. In order to get some inspiration and ideas, I look online for images of Arabic and Hispanic patterns. I also experimented with circular patterns, even if design wise they are circles are not my favorite figure. Besides using different shapes I also play with their scale and their color. I realized that in general, parallel shapes –in relation with the depth of the room- make the s pa c e f e e l l o n g e r w h i l e narrower while perpendicular lines make the space feel smaller (see Image 1 and 2 as a clear example).
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E. Interior Spatial Studies When comparing the same shape, smaller sizes make the space feel busier than bigger sizes (see figures 7 and 8).
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The color of the material has also a huge impact in the room, while for some purposes bright colors can be interesting, they can take over the space and reduce the importance of other objects. Some of my patterns that I created clear dramatic shapes such as the image 9 and 14 and even 3D representations such as figures 21, 22 and 23.
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For this exercise I experimented with several other patterns that didn’t make the cut since they were too plain or too unappealing.
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E. Interior Spatial Studies REFLECTIONS • Strengths: a. Fo r t h i s e x e rc i s e I u s e d components for the first time, which was very useful to replicate the building structure. That facilitate my work when creating the patterns since I didn’t have any obstruction. b. I
used the move/copy very efficiently.
c. I
experimented with colors that I never used before.
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tool
• Weaknesses: a. I didn’t experiment with other wall colors or with other window shapes. b. I could have play more with scales and colors instead as I did with geometries. • Opportunities: a. Learn how to better express, w i t h t h e a p p ro p r i a t e language, the feelings that my design can evoke.
• Threats: a. I completely forgot about the amount of time that I using for this exercise, which was pleasant and somehow is g re a t b u t I n e e d t o b e realistic with my timing and always keep in mind deadlines.
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F. Walls and Rapid Visualization Studies
In order to practice m y h a n d d ra f t s , I looked online for “people in architectural sketches� and I start a page in my dot pad with sketches. This exercise was very entertaining but more challenging than I though.
The sketch on the top left was drawn during the class lesson, The other three sketches include the in-class exercise in which we were challenged to draw 25 walls in 10 min. The top right sketch includes the strategy that I followed to meet the challenge. To meet the challenge I calculated how many many similar walls can I create by just changing their thickness and height.
People Sketches
I also wanted to do the same with trees but I got caught with a landscape image and I end up sketching a small patio. My drafting skills need more practice but t h i s wa s a g o o d starting. Note that I use the knowledge gain with the cubes exercises to draw the patio. Landscape Perspective Sketch
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G. Follow-Me Studies The Sketchup Follow-Me tool is a little bit more challenging than the previous tools that we learned. This tools involves a greater knowledge of sketchup and requires a t h o ro u g h preparation of the model. These two images represent the in-class exercise that we performed in order to learn and gain confidence with this tool. The in-class exercise was a very good practice to learn about the power of this tool.,
I still need to incorporate the follow-me tool in what I named my Sketchup Language or Sketchup Thinking. I am realizing that in order to be a master with Sketchup I have to think like Sketchup. Class after class and week after week, I am becoming more fluent in this language and it is very rewarding.
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FRONT VIEW
FRONT VIEW
The Intersect & Follow-Me Studies had been very challenging. Creating handrails and guardrails required a lot of attention and it force me to use almost all the previous tools learned during the previous weeks. Intersecting geometries and then their faces definitely facilitates a lot the task of creating doors and windows with uncommon shapes. I am sure there are still several other applications for this tools to discover. For the weekly exercise I decided to create a small (very small) Greek town. I got the inspiration for this design from my summer trip in which I was island hoping in Greece. With more time and after improving my groups and components skills I could create a bigger and nicer town. For this week project I got two bonus points. The first one is the Soften tool, which hides the selected edges and creates a merged surface from them. The second bonus point is the Texture Position tool which allows to modify the characteristics of a texture selected for a surface.
CLOSE-UP
CLOSE-UP
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H. Interior Spatial Studies REFLECTIONS • Strengths: a. I felt very comfortable using a big arrange of the tools that we learned in previous weeks. b. Creating handrails was challenging but after almost breaking my computer several I was able to do it. • Weaknesses: a. The amount of time required to create the railings with the Follow Me tool.
FRONT PERSPECTIVE
b. I didn’t experiment with more cupolas or different types of railings. • Opportunities: a. There is a lot of room for me to learn and improve the way I use the follow me tool. • Threats: a. With this tool I need to practices more since I am still not a 100% confidents about how to use it. For future exercises I should force my self to use it. BACK PERSPECTIVE
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The Piazza del Campidoglio exercise was very entertaining but challenging. It required a lot of attention and even if the different steps were clearly explained there were some tricky steps that required to pay a lot of attention. I wanted to slightly personalized my Piazza by adding a second type of bricks that had a darker tone. Using two types of bricks created the feeling of being in a spiral. The images above show the steps that I followed to create my Piazza
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I. Piazza del Campidoglio – Michelangelo Tribute
REFLECTIONS • Strengths: a. I felt very comfortable following the instructions provided by the instructor. b. Every new exercise I feel more and more comfortable using a big array of tools.. • Weaknesses: a. I didn’t read all the instructions at the beginning. Because of that step back several times. b. I am not creating scenes as I should, just exporting the images. c. Opportunities: a. This exercise showed me that .even if a pattern or structure seems very complicated it can be solved and replicated by breaking it down in different steps. • Threats: a. It
is important to pay attention to the details, the instructions and to understand since the beginning what is the expected outcome of a project. I didn’t do it for this exercise I should be more careful.
NOTE:
I downloaded the buildings surrounding my piazza Warehouse, I only had to properly place it and resize it.
from
the
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