Saturday, August 30, 2008

Notes #2: Geometry & Replication

If growth is exponential, the relationship between Nx and Nx+1 acts through multiplication of a base or quantum.

*NB: In this case the base is Nx itself. Its growth is solely introspective.

*NB: In this example the relationship is determined by an external source, the base ◊◊.

Introspective growth is easier to grasp than growth determined by an external source. However, the former is harder to grasp if the element has some internal flaw.

If growth concatenates, then a fluid motion occurs between each individual element.

A relationship between the elements in my designs can be derived from these analyses, and the connections between the groups of elements can be expressed within the homogenous idea of growth throughout the building.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Equus - Fourth Design

The fourth design re-interprets the first design idea of hierarchical access. This was an attempt to get a defining flow through the units and the access. This model is defined in two ways. First in the curve of the card and second in the folds of the units. The units are made up from a triangle card piece each of the same shape and then folded back into its position. This technique gave the units a growth in size which is probably more inline to the original form study of the wheat stalk structure. Its interesting to notice that the units effect the form of the curve, and the lamination of the card gets thicker toward the higher point, making the curve less pronounced.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Equus - Third Design

The third design started from ideas for creating the entrance staircase from the second design in a card model. The lamination of thin paper with a glue with high water content would give the desired effect, but again the entrance would look out of place to the slope of the land. The thought then was to allow the laminated paper to re-form the slope of the land, building up to a crescendo at the entrance. The problem then was the counterpoint to something rather pseudo-organic. A tall white cutting wall was added as an element to be "swallowed" by the land at the lowest point and "freed" at the highest point, which then forms the tower. These elements are dichotomous, one element attempts to re-form the earth, and the other attempts to separate it.

Again as in the previous design the tower was a problem for me. At the entrance the restrictive elements of the pseudo-organic wall are released, and then the cutting wall is left to its own devises, without slope or anything else to remotely counterpoint its existence, However, the tower has a great relationship to the cutting wall, as it forms a reduction in context for the observer, or rather, a tension between the free view and the selected view. The cutting wall is the tower's apparatus for the observation of the occupant, akin to the microscope. The tower is separated from the wall, but bares relationship to it in height and proportion. Once the citizen reaches the observation platform, his view is reduced, the walls are white and the shape is a simple cube. One wall is left glazed, where there is a view down a long square prism, to unit 7 of the residence. The view is ghosted by a square halo of light from the separation between the tower and the cutting wall.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Equus - Second Design

The second design runs off similar logic to that of Van Doesburg, turning the right angle relationships by 45°. I noticed that in my earlier design the 45° relationship between the entrance and the elements was a primary feature of expression. They seem to contradict each other in their nature and also in their formal design, the square being so restrictive and the diamond running like a sprawl across the plaza site. This design simply rotates the diamond shaped elements a further 45°, and then explores form in this aspect.

One of the first problems encountered was a purely logical one. The stairs would not work in two directions as they did in the first design. They've been modified in two distinct ways to compensate for the slope of the plaza. The first simply takes a western turn at the end of each flight, and the other an eastern turn. The stairs proportions/sequences are also now expressed through the wall supporting it. This is an idea I had for the entrance staircase but has been translated to the other staircases in the design. The small cracks in between each wall element express the stairs density and rhythm, similar to the phospho-lipid bi-layer surrounding a cell. The staircases have now become thresholds between the classes of elemental units, and I've chosen a different design for the entrance staircase, which I will talk about later.

The relationship between the classes of elements and the stairs also change. They can be rotated a further 90° to the orientation of the house and still maintain their square relationship with the other classes of elements.

The second issue addressed in this design was the defining factor the units had on the 'wheat stalk corridor'. A more open plan relationship happens here, the vagueness of these elemental units boundaries is increased with the reduction in the defining walls. What now defines the corridor is the supporting elements for the diamond roofs that soar over each elemental unit.

The 45° turn in the relationship between diamond and square seemed to me to remove some of the expressive quality of the sprawl of units down the plaza. A new expression was found in the growth of the slope up to these square units, a change in topography caused by this symbolic structure. Growth is expressed as a golden section exponential increase in the size of similar faux box elements.

The entrance staircase also has a different design. The entrance is more of a gash first between these two large rock-like structures, later forming a cleft as you descend. Its depth is enhanced to the occupant by large deep cuts in the facade of these rocks. The tower, off the centre of the entrance, gives the citizen a unique vantage point which looks directly down at the final unit. This tower seemed like an apt symbol for the father, though it is pretty glib in its sexual connotation, and not nearly as romantic as i'd hoped.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Notes #1: Form Studies

Here's a few form studies. They are variations of a simple hierarchical theme of access based on the way a wheat stalk or a similar plant grows its kernels. At the instance of a fork, one branch becomes a kernel whilst the other leads to a similar fork and the branches are rotated. This kind of hierarchical structure mimimises the distance between the main route and the elements, and reduces the appearance of classes — or, rather, arrays of groups and sub-groups — of elements.

In these studies the journey or narrative between origin and destination is important. The first study identifies the staircase entrance/threshold as a cleft carved between two large rocks leading to the corridor. The slope of the walls surrounding the stairs attempt to heighten the experience of capture and/or release, depending upon your origin and destination. The shape was born out of the clients absence of any biological parents, and a notion of two romanticized figures to take their place. It is a somewhat cruel return to reality, to a benign representation of a romanticized mother.

From the staircase leads the wheat stalk corridor, which is defined by the location of the rooms or elements surrounding it. The location of the elements that Hejduk prescribes as being essential are not yet defined in this study, but it is a concern of mine what the journey will be like through the corridor and what elements first appear and last appear to the client. It is intended that upon entering a progression be made through these elements toward some greater definition of the absent parents.

In the second form study the emphasis on progression has been enhanced. The elements have been broken down into a class structure of 7-4-1. The entrance staircase's fibonacci series of steps (5-8-13) has then been countered with two other staircases seperating the elements. The first staircase has 19 flights and its progression is run off a similar series of fibonacci numbers (1-2-3-5-8). The second staircase has 17 flights and its progression runs off a more mathematical prime number series (2-3-5-7). This emphasis on numbers is again to do with a connection to nature, or rather a parody of it. The use of these sequences to make up a random pair of primary numbers of flights is intended to show the versatility of any series of numbers to form something greater than just the sum of its parts, though Gestaltism hasn't been at all explored in this form study. The use of the number sequences to define complex objects in a more simple form merely only confirms the versatility of those numbers, and not anything greater.

The new staircase's now add dead space between the elements which is a concern of mine, which I'll attempt to rectify in further models

Sunday, August 10, 2008

The Geneticist

From Riga, Vladivostok, Lake Baikal — 'He is in love with twins. He is having an affair with both of them, with Paul and with Ruth. They are amused by his overexcitement about the double helix and by his perversity regarding the electrifying of bulls.

'One evening he decided to take a short-cut to Ruth's house through the pine woods located on the east hill. As he came out of the woods he was confronted with an image that he cannot forget. Paul was riding the white bull, bent over and whispering in the ear of the animal. Ruth had wrapped her arms and legs around Paul, her black hair intertwined with purple grapes that stained her skin and that of the white bull. Her breasts were pressed hard and close to the back of Paul. Both were naked.'

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Client - Duncan Irvine

How Two Homely Parents May Have A Beautiful Child and How Two Handsome Parents May Have A Homely ChildDuncan Irvine, born in 1972, in Stirling, Scotland, to a College Lecturer and Irish mother. As a child Duncan was raised in Canada by his Godparents, Marcel and Charlotte Gyon, with his paternal sister Elspeth, and Etienne, daughter of Marcel and Charlotte . As a young man he adopted the family name as a publishing pseudonym, and wrote several articles regarding freedom of information and its effect on scientific research whilst studying at the University of Toronto. He graduated in 1993, and, with the help of Etienne, who had recently benefited from an inheritance, migrated to the U.S.

In '94 he joined the National Centre for Human Genome Research, run under Francis Collins, to which Duncan was responsible for sequence analysis'. His responsibilities later in the decade evolved into the worldwide publication of the Human Genome, the patenting of genes, and the tenuous relationship between the now-named National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and Celera Genomics — a private company conducting a parallel project.

In 2001 he left the project and, on a Canadian Research Grant, moved back to Ontario. He began research studying the effects of inherited genetic traits similar to the HapMap project.

His obsession with heredity forms from a belief that genetic traits determine significant social and behavioral characteristics. This belief deeply concerns him, as there are notable behavioral characteristics between him and his now late Godparents. The whereabouts of his biological parents is unknown, and he can only assume that his biological parents resemble closely Marcel and Charlotte.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Client background

Duncan Irvine, born in 1972, in Stirling, Scotland, to a College Lecturer and Irish mother. As a child Duncan was raised in Canada by his Godparents, Marcel and Charlotte Gyon, with his paternal sister Elspeth, and Etienne, daughter of Marcel and Charlotte . As a young man he adopted the family name as a publishing pseudonym, and wrote several articles of a scientific nature regarding freedom of information and its consequences on scientific research. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1993, after which he joined in the Human Genome Project under Francis Collins...