Archinect - Collections & Curations

Sans Serif Chronicles at Cal Poly Pomona

2020-02-23T08:26:29-05:00

Spencer Thornton
Bird's Eye/ Worm's Eye Split Oblique Drawing
Instructor: Kirill Volchinskiy

This past semester, students explored digital tools in the intermediate digital design class at CPP. Serif fonts weren’t included as part of the donor geometry provided to the students. The use of the letter U, however, was required. Clean curves became the basis of this class.

Eric Bishara and Doan Nguyen
Typographic Compositions
Instructor: Richard Molina

Initial compositions from Kirill Volchinskiy's section at CPP ARC studio

Students began by studying the curvatures and intricacies of the deceptively simple sans serif fonts to establish flat figure-ground compositions. Some used the negative space to formulate color. Others explored pattern, value, and tone through their study of intersected curves derived from the letters. Another group simply piled the letters into an accidental composition and studied the residue, while some used rigorous systems to lay out the composition. Pedagogica...

Toys Take Over Second Year Studio

2019-03-07T01:45:22-05:00

It’s the first day of class in the Interim Design Center at Cal Poly Pomona, where the only requirement for second year students is to bring in toys- lots of them. Desks were overthrown with Iron Man figurines, various Transformers, and other Hasbro collectibles...cars and robots, Chinese porcelain dolls and bobble heads. One student brought in an iPad and said, “Define toy”. (He was later asked to try again). As toys filled up studio, the instructors presented in Pecha Kucha style, introducing students to the concept of packing. Professor Alex Pang asked, “What are you packing?”, showing a clip from the Simpsons of clowns squeezing into a car, while Lecturer Jena Meeks described the difference between pack, pile, and stack. Images of the Vitruvian Man and the Golden Ratio helped describe to truly understand an object, it must be broken down to its proportions and pieces.

Students began with a derivation exercise, documenting the shapes and forms of their toys, causing them to thoro...

"The Heresy of Function" Topic Studio

2015-12-31T17:58:00-05:00

This quarter, Cal Poly Pomona was pleased to host Frank Clementi and his topic studio “The Heresy of Function”. The studio proposes to apply function to famous monuments, since they exist without any pragmatic purpose. Monuments exist not to provide utility, but to symbolize our memories and beliefs. Projects aim to challenge the modernist fundamental of “form follows function” by identifying the cultural significance of monuments, and addressing a proper program. As Frank says, students shall combine the “mechanical and the metaphysical" to reprogram these iconic structures, using the techniques of: "retrofit, agglomerate, mime, graft, occupy, shear, blend, meta-morph, repeat, ghost, hot-rod, re-skin, eviscerate, stitch, and drape".

"The Taj Mahal et. al" by Saba Salekfard

Built in 1648 by Shah Jahan, the Taj Mahal stands as the monument for true and enduring love. The mausoleum was built as a symbol of the Shah’s eternal love for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, proceeding her death. What m...