drafting 2nd semester

Unit Summary: EXPLORATIONS[my design autobiography]

Pyramids: because of its simple but advanced design/style

Wassily: sleek modern look

Walt Disney Concert Hall: original design

Mercedes McLaren Roadster:

Neuschwanstein Castle Germany: Childhood interest= castles

Oasis Of The Seas[Royal Carribean]: new origional idea

Atlantis: favorite/most well designed vacation spot

Greece:

Venice: defys nature
Biltmore House:

Coming Full Circle[final opus]

Final opus: Because of the fact that this is my final opus of the year I have decided to take this assignment and reflect over the whole semester instead of just over the past week.

Coming full circle:

Community: In relation to community in design and in my experience over the past semester in learning about design I have found that community is a very important aspect in design. We have learned about community in my studio class when we were working on group assignments such as our pathways, edges, and boundaries, assignment. Also community has played a huge role just in the studio as a whole. When working in a studio type of classroom and workspace you have to have community you have to be respectful of others and their property the advantage of this is that there are people to help you that you can bounce ideas off of and that you can get to help you. In my drawing and studio class I have found the same thing to be true especially with the group project in my art class. The idea of community has taken a huge role in my learning this past semester and I would not have been as successful had it not been for the help of others by learning different techniques and ideas and so forth. Community in relation to my history and theory of design class can be talked about more in the sense of the community of architects and how architects build off of each other to move away from the past but also in design the idea of communities have in their own specific style. Roth talked about the architectural community here “Architecture, in contrast to all the other durable arts, requires the services and contributions of many hundreds of participants in large buildings.” (Roth 12) The photograph below is of our community of first year interior architecture students.
Stewardship: Stewardship is a good word in relation to this past semester. The word stewardship means how you handle what you have been given. When we are given an assignment in the design world we have to treat it like we are designing for ourselves you can’t approach design with the idea of oh I’m just going to throw something together and be done with it you have to get into your clients shoes and design from their perspective. “Certain blind termites build soaring arches of mud, starting at two distinct springing points, pushing their sections upward until they meet the air. (Roth 3) this quote speaks to innovation to me because if blind termites can find way to build a working living environment then we can to.

Innovation: The term innovation is something that relates to design when well. Being innovative is what design is all about. Design is about finding new ways to make something. An example of this would be in my studio class this last project that we did was to make a graduate lounge by only using built in furniture. We had to find innovative ways to make this lounge by designing all of it out of our own custom built ins. Roth defines architecture very simply and innovation is architecture “Architecture is the science and art of building.” (Roth 7)

Authenticity: Authenticity is a word that in a way goes back to the idea of community. When working in a group or in a studio as is the case for us, it is important for people to be authentic. When designing you can’t steal designs from other people you have to come up with your own design and your own ideas. Over this semester we have talked about authenticity especially about citing our sources. Roth gave us a good idea of what architecture is and as long as we stick to that Idea we should remain authentic “Architecture is understood to be the whole of the human built environment, including buildings, urban spaces, and landscapes.” (Roth 5)

Here are some pictures from the end of the semester projects.

Unit Summary: EXPLORATIONS

The final unit that we studied in my history and theory of design class was titled explorations. This unit moved us into the 20th century. In this unit we started out taking about post impressionism and how it moved us into expressionism and futurism. We also talked about art nouveau and about how it branched out over Europe and even to Australia. While talking about Art Nouveau we talked about hotels in design which is really the first time that we have talked about hotels in the since of being in relation to good design. One of the biggest themes that we talked about in this unit would be modernism. We started out talking about modernism with the question what is modern. We answered this by saying that modern can be defined in two different ways. The first way that we said modern can be defined is in the form of technology or the newest inventions and the most advanced technology. The second way that we defined modern was in the form of modern design this would be defined by sleek and simple looks. In talking about modernism we talked about the Guggenheim museum in New York and also a lot of other famous buildings that are still impacting architecture today such as the Sydney opera house. We talked about how design was being spread through television one specific thing we talked about was the staircase from the Brady Bunch. Modernism was a huge topic of this unit but we moved past modernism also we talked about post modernism and we began to talk about sustainable design. Sustainable design is the actual design movement that we are in right now we are living in it and participating in the direction that it moves next. When talking about this movement we talked about some specific buildings that have just recently been built such as the bird’s nest which was built last year for the Olympics. One building that stood out to mw that we talked about was the Walt Disney Concert Hall. This stood out to me because I am doing my precedent analysis on the building in class we talked about how the titanium that it was made out of caused some problems because it reflected so much and about how Gehry the designer tends to be very consistent with his designs in that a lot of them look just alike. Finally we finished of the year by talking about the direction that design is going we have been talking all semester about where it came from but we spent the last class talking about where it is going. In review of the unit explorations it was about how design today is really moving away from what it has been in the past and really exploring ideas and trying to figure out how much we can push the limits to see what design can become.