Sunset Over Day Two
Beautiful sunset over day 2 of the architecture workshop. Tried to capture it in a watercolor – almost there but missing some of the golden richness of the image. Happy summer solstice!
If walls could dream… they’d dream of golden fields after a long day of architecture.
Back At It
I’m back at Cal Poly as an RA for the Summer Architecture Career Workshop! I attended the workshop when I was in high school (you can read about my experience here) and now I’m back as an RA. I’m excited to get to work with all of the students and see the workshop from the RA side.
The first assignment of the workshop is to draw a towel. On the left is my towel from three years ago – very timid and minimalistic – and on the right is a towel I sketched last night with the workshoppers – much more ambitious, almost looks more like a Gehry building than a towel.
If walls could dream… they’d dream of returning to where it all began.
Wall Show
Here’s my wall on display. I wanted to share some of my peers’ work too. I was amazed by the range of materiality, form, and ideas that everyone came up with from the same prompt. While there were a few that broke the site and ramp/stair slope guidelines we were given, overall they all turned out really well.
The Wall
The final project of freshman year: a wall. While it was a bit anticlimactic, this was still an interesting project. The idea was to question what a wall really is. Is it about separation? Is it more than just some 2×4’s covered in drywall? Is it more about verticality or horizontality? I’ve been dreaming about walls for years now, this should be an easy project right?
We were also given a site for our wall, an “exterior” side, a stem wall, and then an “interior side” one foot higher. We had to have stairs and a ramp of a certain slope on both sides, so I started by laying those out at a small scale to determine where the opening in my wall had to be.
I constructed a base for my final model out of mdf as I worked on the design of my wall.
The main concept for my wall was a door that swings down to be the ramp on either side of the wall. There’s a video at the end of this post with the final door in action. After I had worked out my door and my ramp/stairs, I got to work on the surrounding wall.
Inspired by Peter Zumthor’s Swiss Sound Pavilion, I decided to make my wall out of vertically stacked strips of basswood with a small spacing in between them. To make the door/ramp work functionally, I designed a pulley system that could be operated from either side of the wall which in turn dictated the openings I had to make in the wall.
Wall in-progress. Pro tip: use double stick tape to lay out your beams perfectly and then glue the vertical support onto them all at once instead of trying to line up each one individually.
Here is the finished wall. You can see the custom base, ramp and stairs, horizontal wood siding, sheet metal ramp/door pivot mechanism, and the openings for the pulleys and ropes.
Here is the door/ramp going from ramp on one side to door to ramp on the other side.
Plan and section of the wall.
Siding pattern detail
Pulley detail
Metal threshold detail
If walls could dream… they’d dream about walls of course!
Middelboe House by Jorn Utzon
For a nice change of pace after Design Village, our next project this quarter was a research project about a house. I was assigned the Middelboe House by Jorn Utzon. Having dreamt about researching something famous like the Fisher House or the Robie House, I was a little disappointed at first by this obscure Nordic home.
However, as I researched this house I started to fall in love with it. Utzon is best known for being the architect of the Sydney Opera House (below left) and has done some remarkable work throughout his career. In this house, he really experimented with materiality and structure in a modernist grid. The columns and large glass walls are reminiscent of Mies’ Farnsworth House (below right).
Our assignment was to diagram every aspect of the house – structure, program, circulation, etc. – in order to understand it and then we presented our research to our class.
I started by looking at the program (the arrangement of the different living spaces) of the house. The diagram above simply labels each room in the house. The first floor plan is on the center left and the second floor plan is on the center right and the four elevations are arranged around them. (You can click on the diagram to see it larger and zoom in.)
This diagram color codes the outdoor, living, bedroom, and bathroom zones in the house.
And then this one gives a 3D view of the three main zones of the house: outdoor, sleeping, and living, and how they fit into each other like a puzzle.
Next, I analyzed the structure of the house. Utzon highlighted structure in his design, color coding it himself. The black elements are concrete beams and the red is the secondary wooden structure. The house was inspired by Asian construction techniques and relies on gravity instead of nails and screws to hold the house up.
This section diagram shows that black and red structure that Utzon displayed so proudly in his house.
This diagram builds on the black and red structure to categorize all of the walls in the house.
This next set of diagrams illustrates the house’s relationship to its site. It is located next to a canal in Denmark which provides a beautiful view but also a privacy concern. Utzon addressed this concern by moving the bedrooms to the back of the house, away from the river to give them privacy. He also sited the house in between the two large trees on the property for shade and added privacy.
The circulation through the house is all focused through the central stairwell and then up into the living spaces. This was my favorite diagram to make and I’m really proud of the way it turned out.
Finally, I made a collage diagram of what it would be like to be inside my house (see Mies’ collages for inspiration). I used the Rhino model I had made to get the linework for the interior perspective and then added the landscape through the windows. I chose to leave the interior white to focus on the view and the shapes that the structure makes with the windows – even though they are all rectangular openings, the perspective and the added beams create dynamic trapezoids.
All in all, this project was a good change of pace and a good way to connect the dots between a very abstract yet personal experience of a dwelling with Design Village and the more conventional yet still architecturally advanced ideas of what a house is to famous architects.
If walls could dream… they’d dream of being in a famous architect’s masterpiece.
Design Village 2016
Design Village 2016 was a success! You can read about my project inTENTse here. I wanted to share some of my classmates’ work as well. Everyone had such different and interesting solutions to the same design problem: How do you build a structure for five people that is light enough to carry into the canyon but sturdy enough to support you through the night?
This project was right next to mine and it was lovingly called the hamster ball. The group rolled it up the hill and made a circular bed out of saran wrap in the center. To everyone’s surprise, it held up beautifully through the night.
Another rolling project, this one had hammocks in the center. You can see the permanent architectural structures in Poly Canyon in the background of this image.
There were so many different solutions, with materials from balloons to bamboo, but each embodied the certain things that team of students had, to borrow Cal Poly’s motto, “learned by doing.”
This event happens every year at Cal Poly’s open house weekend and I’d encourage everyone to go and check out the projects.
If walls could dream… they’d dream of being the walls of Poly Canyon on Design Village weekend.
Design Village 2016: inTENTse
“You have three weeks to design and construct a structure for you and four other people to sleep in for a night outside.”
That’s what our professors told us at the start of winter quarter. It was time for the biggest project of our freshman year architecture studio: Design Village.
I saw Design Village last year at Cal Poly’s Open House but this year I got to participate in it.
Design Village is an annual event put on by the College of Architecture and Environmental Design during Open House in which teams of students sleep in projects they designed and constructed in Poly Canyon. The event has two parts, the official competition which is open to any group of college or community college students and the first year architecture studio project which is required for every first year Architecture and Architectural Engineering major.
I worked with four other girls and we started by analyzing the site. We looked at the slope of the hill and the direction of the sun and wind.
Using study models and drawings, we developed a design that would use steel beams to support hammocks. Once we finalized our design, we modeled the structure in a computer drafting software called Rhino, prepared construction documents for our professors to review, and got started on construction.
Our main projects were to drill holes in the steel beams to bolt them together and to weld the axles for the wheels on. We drilled a lot of holes so that the structure could be adjusted to the slope more accurately. We set up pieces of it a few times to be sure it would work and support our weight.
Finally, it was the morning of install day. We transported our project into Poly Canyon. Four of us wheeled the steel beams and one of us carried a backpack with the other tools and supplies we needed. When we got to the canyon, we set up our project and although we had a few challenges along the way, we got it up fairly quickly and were able to enjoy the day.
We spent the night in our structure and it held up perfectly. It was a memorable experience and definitely a highlight of our first year studio experience. In a few years when we’re all architects and engineers, we’ll look back on this project as our first real taste of designing and building a space to dwell in and remember that bittersweet feeling as the sun rose and you realized that your project stood up all night but that the project was over. All that was left was to lug it back down the hill.
This project was a once in a lifetime opportunity and definitely a dream come true.
The biggest lesson I learned: I learned more of what I don’t know. I had no idea how to figure out what type of steel would support all five of us in this configuration and if it was going to fall down in the middle of the night or not, but with the help of my teammates and our professors, our project worked out. I’m learning how to identify what I don’t know and who to ask to find those answers.
One thing I wish I did differently: I wish I had stuck around in the afternoon to talk to more people about my project. We all kind of abandoned it after set-up to shower and eat lunch before returning in the evening, but I wish I would’ve stayed there a little longer to talk to people who came by to see the projects.
My best advice for future design villagers: Trust your design instincts. Pick a team you’ll get along with. Finish your project. The most disappointing thing is to put all this work in and then not get to live in your project. Focus on the big structure first so you’ll have something to sleep in and worry about the details later because this is a really fast project. Don’t just copy another project you’ve seen somewhere else, but be sure it’ll work at some level. Oh, and rent a GoPro if you don’t already have one. They’re tons of fun. We made a time lapse of our project set-up and it was super cool.
If walls could dream… they’d dream of spending a night in Poly Canyon.
Drawing Haus
Drawing Haus was the last project of Winter quarter. It was all about creating a space where you could relax, think, and draw.
I made the model out of layers of cardboard.
The corrugation allows light into the interior of the model and casts interesting shadows.
If walls could dream… they’d dream of having a personalized space to draw.
paraSITE 2016
My finished paraSITE project:
Viewports to mountain peaks:
Joints:
Check back soon for more about my process and to see the other projects!
Sheet Metal Tetrahedron
Also inspired by the primitive shapes, we made a sheet metal model of a shape that had been sliced to create voids and compartments within the shape. I picked the tetrahedron and sliced it twice to create an L-shaped piece.
Drawings showing the assembly, surfaces, and volumes of the shape.
Finished sheet metal model.
All connected with spot welds.
If walls could dream… they’d dream of metallic geometry.