The intention of publishing the feedback below is so that all students can benefit by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of a range of projects. Please take the time to review other student's work with these comments in mind. If you have any questions or would like any further clarification don’t hesitate to ask me during the studio session.
Albert
Key strength of the scheme:
The development of the prismatic formation is engaging and shows interesting varieties even though the final project has more than 9 rectangular forms.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
The landform hasn’t been developed and it is neither integrated with nor compensated by the built form. The captured images lack a sense of the overall composition of the Crysis Wars environment.
Andrew
Key strength of the scheme:
The composition of your prism is scaled and balanced between the horizontal + vertical planes. The texture application is playful and intentional.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
The built form sits on top of the landform without any articulation of their possible spatial relationship. It is not clearly shown in your captured images exactly how the sloped landform leads to the meeting place?
Aneta
Key strength of the scheme:
The final project, although a late submission, has demonstrated your capacity in constructing the prismatic built form and creating a responsive landform.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Incomplete submission and the poorly organized blog reflect your lack of engagement in the process of developing your Exp 3. The axonometric sketches lack rigorous imagination and the quality of the uploaded images could be better.
Blake
Key strength of the scheme:
Deliberativeness in the relationship between 3 quotes + built form of the labs + landform. The application of texture is expressive and subtle and adds presence to the project while dramatizing the surrounding landscape. Well done.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Rather than a weakness in your scheme, you can further experiment the lighting effect when the built form is seen from the landscape.
Charlie
Key strength of the scheme:
The built form is balanced, in scale and well composed. Each upright volume is well considered and connected. Although the prism sits right on top of the landform, there is a sense of continuity between the two.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Your sketches are below the average and since you’ve made a late submission, it is difficult to tell how you have followed through the weekly task and developed your final scheme.
Dominic
Key strength of the scheme:
The captured images show landform and built form not only in their formal compositions and spatial effects but their inner relationships. They are generally effective in representing your design ideas. The lighting adds to the quality of the space.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Although your prismatic formation is highly theatrical and expresses contrast between verticality and planar surfaces, it has more than 9 forms. Otherwise, good progress.
Howard
Key strength of the scheme:
The engagement with the development of design ideas. The captured images show your built form from different angles and under different lights and they are quite advanced. The 36 texture cubes are ingenious and one of the kind. Well done.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Regardless the very large formation of the prism, your landform is under-developed and doesn’t relate to your built form in any sense. This is a great lost! Please consider landform as something conceptual and can be constructed and designed to best respond to your built form.
Jason
Key strength of the scheme:
Engaged process with steadfast design development. The captured images show your ideas, the formal composition, the siting of the built form, and the way artefact brings forth a sense of place by shaping and becoming part of the landscape. Texture sketches and their application are well crafted. Great progress since Exp-1.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Only as a gentle suggestion to you: please do experiment the light and treat it as something that can be “formed” as matter. For Exp-3, look into the abstract nature of the landform. Keep up the good work.
Jeremy
Key strength of the scheme:
Meticulous production in prismatic formation and composition. Skilful texture sketches and their applications are effective. The lighting effect is often dramatic and most of the captured images demonstrate a sense of spatial understanding.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
The prism is just too large and the landform is incompatible with the enormous presence of the built form. Please treat landform as part of the spatial component in Exp-3. Otherwise, well done.
Kate
Key strength of the scheme:
The prismatic formation is dynamic and do express some sense of ascending force and drive. The landform is envisioned in a complimentary fashion that effectively upstages the top heavy prism.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
The meeting place and the ramp should sit on the landform. The application of textures lacks deliberation and rigor. Hawking’s lab could be further modified to reduce the balkiness of the forked "heads".
Kevin
Key strength of the scheme:
Your skills, rigor and spatial imagination are greatly appreciated. The prism possesses dynamic formal composition, theatrical contrast between open and semi-open volumes. The experiment in lighting has accentuated the en-closeness of interior. Highly skilful in sketches.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
A prism larger than 9 forms. The landform is incompatible with the enormous built form. Your formal composition needs more conscientious control and a sense of deliberation. Please explore a set of built forms as something possesses “objecthood”. Spend more thoughts on the relations between landform and built form in your Exp-3.
Kirra
Key strength of the scheme:
The landform serves as the stage for your prism consisting of two sets of formulated built forms. Together, they allude to a sense of naturalistic harmony. The lighting in your captured images is beautifully done and adds to the spatial quality.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
The lower lab sits on the land too “heavily” and could relate to the “site” more effectively. The ramp, although dramatic in its positioning, is too "thin" and could be developed further in details. You have showed progress. Please experiment further in landform/built form dynamics through movement (elevator) in your Exp-3.
Kristin
Key strength of the scheme:
Each lab is well composed and expresses different prismatic formation: vertical/open and planar/folding. The 2 built forms sit in different landforms and their relationship with the landscape are well articulated.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Not enough experiment in lighting application. The scale of the landform is almost too small for your built forms. Please try to test different relations between the two in your Exp-3. Otherwise, good progress
Luen
Key strength of the scheme:
Imagination, skills, formal composition, rigorous engagement with each exercise, discipline in final embellishment of built form, and a sense of beauty in the artefact. The theatrical effects achieved by applying lighting, textures, and visual framing in your captured images are rich. Together, they allude to a kind of surreal relations between figure and ground. There are many possibilities one can explore in them. Your Crysis Wars environment is well oriented and the scale “real”.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
This is a suggestion instead of your weakness: please try to imagine “out of the box” while still insisting upon your sense of beauty, composition. For your Exp-3, do experiment “movement” in your animated environmen: corporeal, optical and tactile. Keep up the good work.
Marcuse
Key strength of the scheme:
Well communicated blog and your sketches have shown good progress. The landform has been imaginatively envisioned following your design development. Appreciate your thoughts in lighting application. The interior of the lab has been richly rendered.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
The architectural imagination lacks a sense of abstraction and your built forms are overtly figurative. Regardless your progress in line works, your 36 textures haven’t demonstrated the “visual progress” from dark to light. Your mark could be higher. Please stay tune with your Exp-3 and look at more benchmark projects. Ask me for examples.
Michael
Key strength of the scheme:
The prism has a balanced formation with 3 spaces all connected via ramps, low stepping retaining wall and podiums. It sits in the landform and possesses the spatial quality of a “megaform”. The captured images are well composed and enhenced by the effective lighting.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
The built form, although compatible to the scale of the landform, can be further developed so as to tighten its formal composition. The images are compelling but the experience of your Crysis Wars environment is less nuanced. Your mark could be higher if your built form has been more dynamically composed and related to landform. Otherwise, good progress.
Qian
Key strength of the scheme:
The combined prismatic formations are well drawn and show certain level of sophistication.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Incomplete submission. Your spatial development and solution for the 2 lab spaces are at the very preliminary state. The landform has no articulated relationship with the singular open built form. Please do show up in class on a regular basis and do your weekly task.
Ray
Key strength of the scheme:
Playfulness in prismatic formation. The landform is just the way your quotations allude to: differences between biological and universal principles.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
The final built form exceeds 9 blocks as stipulated in the Brief. The captured images are too dark and haven’t shown any variety in lighting effect. Please improve the line quality and hatching details in your sketches. Your upload lack rigor and please do more work for your Exp-3.
Sarah
Key strength of the scheme:
The 36 textures are meticulously drawn even though they don’t show the progression from light to dark. Some texture applications are effective.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Incomplete submission with a prismatic formation larger than 9 blocks. There is no visible relation between the landform and the built form. Misspelling throughout your blog. Not enough text or captions to communicate your design ideas and process of development. Lack engagement in every sense.
Steven
Key strength of the scheme:
Dramatic siting that has reinforced the formation of your prism. The captured images intensify your spatial effect and the dominating power of the artefact over landform. Well-textured upright object has been composed dramatically with minimal components.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
The light to dark progression in your 36 textures hasn’t been effectively rendered. This submission, in general, lacks rigorous engagement. Please pick up the steam in your Exp-3.
Yuki
Key strength of the scheme:
Good sense of texture and some of the applications are effective adding quality to your built form.
Most significant weakness of the scheme:
Not enough engagement with your study. You haven’t done enough work and suffered from inconsistent outputs for our weekly task. Regardless your capacity in prismatic formation, your final built form lacks definition and bears no solution for 2 labs, connecting ramp on the landform and a meeting space as stated in the Brief. The artefact should have relations with the landform and not as a floating object.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
EXP 3 - THE BRIDGE
Proun 1A: Bridge 1, by El (Eliezer Markovich) Lissitzky, 1919.
The Russian Constructivists in Perspective:
What is a Bridge?
Bauen. Wohnen. Denken (Darmstadt in 1951), Martin Heidegger (1889-19760):
" To be sure, the bridge is a thing of its own kind; for it gathers the fourfold in such a way that it allows a site for it. But only something that is itself a location can make space for a site. The location is not already there before the bridge is. Before the bridge stands, there are of course many spots along the stream that can be occupied by something. One of them proves to be a location, and does so because of the bridge. Thus the bridge does not first come to a location to stand in it; rather, a location comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge. The bridge is a thing; it gathers the fourfold, but in such a way that it allows a site for the fourfold. By this site are determined the localities and ways by which a space is provided for."
Brücke und Tür. (1909), Georg Simmel (1858-1918).
You can read this article from Theory, Culture, & Society, Vol. 11(1994): 5-10.
" The people who first built a path between two places performed one of the greatest human achievements. No matter how often they might have gone back and forth between the two and thus connected path into the surface of the earth that the places were objectively connected. The will to connection had become a shaping of things, still being dependent on its frequency or rarity. Path-building, one could say, is a specifically human achievement; the animal too continuously overcomes a separaion and often in the cleverest and most ingenious ways, but its beginning and end remain unconnected, it does not accomplish the miracle of the road: freezing movement into a solid structure that commences from it and in which it terminateates."
Conclusion*
1. From the spatial aspect
a) a bridge allows a 360º view over the landscape; it draws the landscape into a circle on the horizontal plane;
b) it adds the vertical dimension to the landscape and breaks it into the upper and lower parts;
c) it can be observed as a bodily experienced part of the landscape – from afar, the vision prevails, but when the observer is moving on the bridge or under it, other senses participate in the aesthetic perception.
2. From the temporal aspect the bridge is not only an abstract and static spatial temporal image, but it is also dynamic and constantly changing in accordance with the geographical and climatic conditions of the given season. The movement and position of a body in space form an essential part in the emergence and transformation of the dynamic images of the bridge and the landscape – the bridge as a place is the part of the road that preconditions movement. The bridge is not merely a thing (Heidegger), nor a picture (Simmel), but an event (Heidegger).
3. From the metaphysical aspect the bridge is the symbol of man's being between the sky and the earth. The bridge is like the Tree of the World – its roots in the earth, its branches in the sky. Man's path is laid in the middle zone, between the sky and the earth, not simply on the earth. His separateness from the earth emphasises the perception of the threefold division of the world and makes it observable. Winter adds the experience of the horizonless landscape and allows the divine experience of infinity.
* See: "A Winter Landscape with a Bridge", by Kaia Lehari, 2000.
Bridge City, Lausanne, 1988 (project), by Bernard Tschumi
Interface Flon Railway and Metro Station, Lausanne, 1994-2001, by Bernard Tschumi
Back to the Russian Constructivists and Zaha Hadid
Malevich’s Tektonik 1977, London - United Kingdom
For the graduation project at the Architectural Association, Zaha Hadid explored the ‘mutation’ factor for the programme requirements of a hotel on the Hungerford Bridge over the Thames. The horizontal ‘tektonik’ conforms to and makes use of the apparantly random composition of Suprematist forms to meet the demands of the programme and the site.
The bridge links the nineteenth century side of the river with the South Bank, which is dominated by the Brutalist forms of a 1950’s arts complex. The fourteen levels of the building systematically adhere to the tektonik, turning all conceivable constraints into new possibilities for space.
The project has particular resonance with Hadid’s later projects. First, in the Great Utopia show at the Guggenheim, she was able to realize some of these tektoniks in concrete form, and second in the Habitable Bridge project, which considered the possibilities of a mixed-use development over the Thames.
- Zaha Hadid Architects press release
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)