A3 presentations

"The threshold between courtyard and studio is a distortion of vision, which obstructs our perception.

Courtyard is rationalised. Studio is liberation... with boundaries.

The distortion of vision in our threshold shows the distorted social space"

For our group, threshold is the distortion of vision, which obstructs our perception of the world and what we know of it.

Studio is carnival, a place where we can let our ideas free, but this freedom is an illusion, because there is hiearchy in the studio, whether it be the hiearchy of the year levels or the power the lecturers and tutors have on the students.
We wanted to show this illusion through the distortion of the building through using textures from the architecture building and stretching the texture to change the nature and materiality of the building.

final collaborative threshold design

When the avatar is far away, the sculpted hemispheres are small, but when the avatar moves closer and approaches the threshold, the sculptred hemispheres expand in various sizes. Some expansions are large enough to "swallow" the avatar.


The threshold has many obstacles that obstruct the view of the avatar. We used the architecture building textured because we wanted to distort the nature and materality of the architecture building's surface with our curvy sculpties (me and crayfishyfishyfishy).

I used a blue colour for my texture, and then photoshoped it to that it was a layer over the red building tiles. i then put this texture onto my curved form, so that it showed how my sculptie objects distort the nature of the building's surface and our perception of the building.

Collaborating with neighbours

I started to seriously collaborate with my neighbours to create a more linked and coherent threshold design. My group members are Shkattii Wahwah, crayfishyfishyfishy Manx, and Melody snowfield.
Our group definition for threshold is a distorted vision, which gives you an obstructed perception of your surroundings. So our design of a threshold will be focused on distorting the avatar's vision and space as the avatar enters our threshold.

I kept my hemisphere shape from my dome. I like how the curves of the shape distorts proportions of reality as the avatar looks through it.

texture

final

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Reflexive Expansion script

The above two images shows my design when the avatar is far away from it. As my avatar approaches the threshold design, the hemispheres will expand and shrink, creating a movement that gives a sense of it 'breathing'. The below two images shows my design when the avatar is near it, the texture is 20% transparent so that the alpha channel malfunction will occur causing the overlapped layers to change the order of the layers. So it will create an illusion of changing space and depth and perspective as my avatar rotates around it and inside it.

What I define Threshold as.

For this project, we are to design a threshold between the Architecture studio and the Courtyard.
For me, the struggle to think like a real architect is the threshold that a lot of the students in first year architecture have to overcome. We first year students come from the 'normal world' of thought, and we are forced to make a transition from that world into the new (to first years) 'architect world' of thought.
Studio helps us to develop our ideas and designs. It is the birthplace of our careers as architects and designers. I see the studio as the place where we can interact with architect minds (our lecturers and tutors)
The courtyard is the linkage between studio and the outside world. We're in this place between the architect world and the outside world. So i want to put my threshold in the courtyard because i think the courtyard represents the place that we are mentally at. Stuck between 2 worlds.

Development

I started to develop my design more. I wanted to replace the L shaped surfaces with these hollow hemispheres. i think these hollow hemishperes will emphasize the expanding and shrinking movement of my design more. I'm using a reflexive script that allows my structure to change size when my avatar moves near it. i wanted my hemispheres to expand and shrink when my avatar reaches it, because i want this sense of breathing in my design. Architecture building is the birthplace of our careers as archtects and designers, so i want to celebrate this through this movement of breathing that represents life.
Through the images above, you can see the development i went through to construct my dome shape. This last image is when i am scripting my hemispheres with the reflextive size script.

Developing my design.

The framing of our main entrance doors in the architecture building are coloured red. The doors of the architecture building can be seen as obstacles and linkages between 2 spaces. For my threshold i wanted to construct a more complicated and harder obstacle, so i used red poles to frame the obstacle, which relates back to the orginal red framing of the doors.

started building my threshold on the site

I have developed my design from the first experimental design i had before we constructed the architecture building.
I placed my threshold in the courtyard.
I have changed my many rectangular surfaces into many L shaped flat surfaces. In my design I am interested in making a surface through many objects. because most objects such as tables, have many surfaces that make the object, but i want to play with the idea of having many objects create a surface.

Beginning to construct the architecture building.

Before we started our threshold designs, we needed to start constructing the architecture building so that we had a model of our setting. the construction of the architecture building took about two days, and all of group 1 contributed to this project. Each of us contributed a part for the building.



For my part of the architecture building, i decided to collaborate with melody, we mapped the light that came through the windows of the student center. we recorded the length that the light through the window stretched as time went pass, we made 3 recordings of this (11am, 1pm, 3pm). We thought that mapping the area would be a more interesting way to represent the space rather than realistically constructing it. Our end result can be seen in the 3 images above, the light is represented by 3d layers of rectangles. I wanted to layer the light intensity of the room. So the higher the section, the more exposed it was to light throughout the day.

Experimenting

From last semester, during the virtual media tutorials when we were making our offices, i found that there was a problem with my office when i used alpha channels or when i made my textures transparent. the layers would overlap and change the order of layers while i rotated my view of my office. This accident and malfunction of the digital was quite interesting, as the space and depth of the structure would change. It was an illusion that contradicted our understanding of logical spaces.
So for my threshold design, i wanted to continue to experiment with this character of second life. I started with a horizontal surface, then moved it into a vertical surface to experiment with the effective-ness of the overlapping. While i was walking my avatar along the vertical wall, i realised that the overlapping of surfaces only worked when i rotated my avatar's view, so then i aimed to created a dome with many rectangular surfaces, because a dome shape worked best, because it allowed the avatar to rotate its view to experience the alpha channel overlapping surface malfunction.

This is my first experiment, i think i will change the shape of the rectangle into something else.

Experimenting with form on 3dsMax

When we first started this project, we had to familiarise ourselves with 3dsMax, because in our project we had to make a sculptie that was a part of our design.

These images above are snapshots of my experimenting with 3dsMax. I started to form a sharp surface that look like facets if u view it from a 2d like view. I was playing on the ideas of using facets from my first project. From my result, i will conclude that i quite like how surfaces overlap, which triggered me to remember

Presentation work (2 A3 pieces for each project)

Project 1: Trash Can

Final Design - How my journals have influenced my design

I have finished my office design. My office is mainly constructed from wood because I was inspired from an article from the “international journal of environment and sustainable development”. It informed me about the advantages of using wood to our environment and living. Architects generally recognise the advantages of using wood, but utilisation of wood in housing is still low. In the article, it said that Germany was aiming to increase wood productions in houses by 20% by 2014, I think this is a step in the right direction to our future.

Preserving the green life in our land is very important if we want to keep our planet healthy. When a building is built, the land is usually stripped of its natural green life in order to make room for the new man-made structure. In my design, I aimed to achieve an environmentally beneficial building by having green grass and plants on my roof. When you build on land, you are “taking away” the green, and by including green life on your roof, you are “giving back” the green to the land.


Most people are aware of our environmental situation, we are slowly moving into our next ice age as global warming continues to affect us. People want to save the planet, but little action is taken as we continue to pollute our planet. In the “Australian property journal” there was an article that made me become aware that pollution also effects architecture. When toxic waste is not properly disposed of, it can result in the land nearby to became hazardous and unable to redevelop the land to build on. From this article, I continued to think about pollution on our land. If most of our planet’s land becomes polluted and unable to redevelop. Then imagine our world with buildings above the land or water. A new space away from the pollution. This is what I tried to achieve in my design. My office is built above the lake, barely supported with poles and walls (which shows the instability of our environment if we don’t look after it). The pathways connected to my office are above the water, and the surface is covered with grass.
[To the left the pathway into my office, my neighbour has added a ramp because her design idea is about connections and linkage.]

My office has three rooms, these three rooms have different wall heights, and these rooms “overlap” with each other. The office does not have solid walls covering all sides. There are sides with no walls, which interact with the outside.

Social spaces can be physical and virtual. In my office I have lounging spaces with chairs, this is my physical social space. I then have a computer table where you can read my blog, this is my virtual social space.


When my visitors go up the elevator to Floor one, they will see a moving slide that displays photos that I have been inspired from to create my office design.
When my visitors walk though the door into the next room, they will find a wall of moving words. The words are the titles of my journals,and when you click on them, you will be navigated to the blogging of my journals.