Hello Archinect,
Ten days to go in studio this semester. I had a breakthrough yesterday, finally realizing how to phrase my guiding concept, and how I can use it to shape my process. While I'm a bit nervous because it's so late in the game--basically the last week of a five week project--I also figure that life isn't perfect (and studio almost never is), and it's better late than never. I'm excited about what I can do with my project in this last stretch.
I'm starting over in terms of how I'm aggregating units and thinking about form, but sticking very closely to the concept that I have been groping towards over the past month:
Thanks for reading!
Lian
This blog was most active from 2009-2013. Writing about my experiences and life at Harvard GSD started out as a way for me to process my experiences as an M.Arch.I student, and evolved into a record of the intellectual and cultural life of the Cambridge architecture (and to a lesser extent, design/technology) community, through live-blogs. These days, I work as a data storyteller (and blogger at Littldata.com) in San Francisco, and still post here once in a while.
7 Comments
Sounds really interesting!
Maybe one way your façade could be “read” is through the textural touch similarly to Braille, telling a story.
If you’re looking into that type of thing then I recommend reading, if you have not already …
The Eyes Of The Skin –Architecture and the senses by Juhani Pallasmaa, prefaced by Steven Holl.
Good luck with your project,
I'm nearing the end of my year over in the UK, but it can’t come soon enough! Ha.
SMS
you should read the Artless Word.
good luck
Isn't that the argument many Modernists try to make? Aspects of the built environment indicate a meta-level understanding beyond the image of the facade. I think it'd be interesting to see how you make people read the facade.
Hey everyone! Thanks for the ideas and encouragement. I really like the idea of Braille, although it's a large facade (the building spans a city block), so you'd need a BIG finger. :)
@AAbelS: You're right. Maybe I should describe my aim more in terms of how the facade might make the building legible to an extent without simply making the interior (or structure, etc.) visible. In that sense, it's similar but not exactly the same as a modernist project of transparency.
@SMS: good luck to you too!
That's a bit of an oxymoron...a facade of braille code, seen only by the people who don't understand it, understood only by the people who can't see it....ha.
or does the facade represent what you don't see... (i.e. the black censorship bar - OMA's Nexus housing)
I didn’t literally mean Braille code; now that would be silly, yet potentially world renowned! Haha.
I was just giving an example of how another sense other than sight could be utilised to read/interpret a facade instead of viewed as an image.
To read something is an act for increasing knowledge, which all of the senses can convey.
SMS
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