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    The Hidden Room

    By bryan boyer
    Sep 21, '04 1:22 AM EST

    Classes are officially underway after the first meeting of studio today. The incoming class is about 60 students split among six studios. My critic is fellow RISD-grad Marco Steinberg, rumored to be Fan Of Hand Drafting. This is probably a good-- if potentially frustrating-- skill building exercise for me since I'm fairly pathetic when drawing by hand.

    The first assignment asks us find a way of concealing a room inside a predetermined space. We are to use techniques of camouflage, obsfucation, type-manipulation, etc to find a way to implant this room such that it is "hidden." I like this Hidden Room problem because it must be approached by contorting the limitations into a solution. This seems to me the essence of design so it's a good starting exercise to get back into the mindset of architectural problem solving.

    diagram of hidden room problem

    Proportions must stay roughly the same but we can affect changes in section and the specific form of the spaces. A space with an area the same as the small gray box must be inserted into the larger set of spaces in a way that it remains "concealed."

    This post brought to you by the phrase "a priori," apparently a GSD favorite



     
    • 4 Comments

    • MADianito

      hahahaha, lol, yeah seems every group of people (read as: schools and grads) has their favourite phrases, or at least that's my "a priori" observation of ur tonight's blog B

      bests

      Sep 21, 04 1:32 am  · 
       · 
      liberty bell

      Ha!
      In my experience it was "becomes":

      The gate becomes a transition.
      The wall becomes a linking device.
      The plan becomes a pathway leading you to a solution.
      ad nauseum.

      Sep 21, 04 4:38 pm  · 
       · 
      the righteous fist

      eagle claw rotring beats fan of hand drafting anyday

      Sep 21, 04 7:36 pm  · 
       · 
      kissy_face

      last year there was a whole lot of use of the word
      "phenomenologically" What the hell?...

      Sep 22, 04 4:51 pm  · 
       · 

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