Monday of what is going to be one of the rougher weeks of the semester. In studio, we are working on our final project and the mid-term reviews for the project are on Wednesday and Friday. We are to design an Audi Automobile building which includes a showroom, a marque history and exhibition, and a design centre.

Just a little background on our semester thus far before I get into a couple details about the assignment:

The semester was broken into 4 main projects. The first project was a study of Space/Form Morphology and their relationships and dialogue with each other. This project was broken into three parts. We first picked an object (any object. Mine was a video cassette), then analyzed it and did analytical drawings which explored the spatial and formal qualities of the object. We then derived some sort of spatial/formal concept from our studies and reiterated it in our "object" or "container." The "contained" could have either been any object or a conceptual idea. I really enjoyed digging into this project and had a lot of fun designing my container. It turned out to be one of my better projects since I started school.

The second project was themed Episodic Architecture wherein we were to explore the experiential and qualitative properties of architectural program in addition to its functional and quantitative properties. It was about creating experiences and programmatic narratives. We were given the choice between two courtyards in the Architecture and Fine Arts school that we could design our "intervention" in. I also enjoyed this project very much. There were some drastic changes to my design (and our studio section as our original professor had to leave for the semester and we went through 3 subs before Ali Jeevanjee came to be our professor), but it was still very fun.

Our third project, titled Urban Morphology, dove into the exploration of the role of architecture as a part of the whole fabric of a city. We looked at larger urban issues relative to a single architectural piece. We were split into groups and we were given precedents to analyze through diagrams.


So that was a quick overview of our semester thus far. We also took a trip to San Francisco for a weekend to look at some architecture up there. Our final project is basically supposed to be a culmination of all of these ideas.

Writing this took a bit longer than I expected. Plus I have a bunch of work still to do. I'll dive more into our current project a little more in my next post. Also, this post isn't typical to what you'll mostly see from me. I just wanted to give a brief introduction to my semester. Expect shorter posts (with pictures and more frequently) about....anything really.

Until next time,
Good luck!
Jake