the story

last week I was posed with the question, what is the story of my building? I felt lost and frustrated, because I did not know my story. the story was there, I just had to figure it out. The story dictates everything else. How my presentation is pieced together, what images, models, perspective I include. I began thinking of my story as penetration, how the location of my building fits into the site, how the the building penetrates the grid, and the relationship of how light enters my building. That did not seem right and then i thought perhaps "shifting" was my story, this explains the two main linear volumes of my building and how they insert themselves between the library and humanities building. Although my building does speak of shifting that is not my story. thinking back to my original design and my previous project i began to think of links that would tell the story of my building. these links dealt with continuity either spatially or in regard to materiality. how do these links connect back to the story of my addition. the addition is a translation or reinterpretation of the grid. the grid is the path of which my the form is generated from and the experience of moving through my building is dictated.

layered drawing

I found this image and thought it was an interesting and inspirational for the final presentation.

final presentation of drawings without paper

final tectonic drawing
final stereotomic drawing

For the sterotomic drawing, dealing with the plaster was challenging and though experimenting with the first two attempts I was able to produce a final third model that was more representative of the drawing I had chosen. Below is the model of which I used to cast.



The review was very informative and helpful in reading the drawings as models and forms that can be generative to our designs. Both the tectonic and stereotomic drawing address issues I was having difficult resolving in my design. Specifically the sterotomic drawing, it allowed me to represent the addative and subtraction elements that exist within my design.

Dibujos sin Papel

For the next part of our project, we are continuing development by investigating different ways of representation. This is done by "drawing without paper," taking the parameters of our two dimensional drawing that we have already created of our projects and represent them as three dimensional objects.

We have to create 2 drawings, one dealing with tectonic and one with stereotomic.

At the first attempt of the tectonic drawing, I choose a section drawing to represent, using wire to produce the forms as well as part of the edge of the paper.
















For my second attempt, I represented a axon drawing. With reference to Gego, I tried to use more solid wire to represent the ground line.


After these two attempts, I realized I needed to improve my wire bending skills to create more pristine bends as well as create more depth within my drawing. In a third attempt, incorporating elements from the two previous try's, a third was produce. Attempting to have it still read as a two dimensional image but as you move around the drawing the depth of the drawing is apparent.

stereotomic drawing

For the stereotomic drawing, the materiality consists of heavier pieces such as wood, plaster, wax, or cement. I choose to represent a plan drawing using casting gesture using plaster.

Below is the mold that I used for the first attempt

The results...






Second attempt...

model developmet

After the mid review, some of the suggestions was to keep exploring the form in model and incorporating my mapping project specifically the expressiveness of the form back into my project. Below are picture of that development.


1st model











Below are picture of the area underneath the ground plane
















2nd model

midterm review

This past week we have been developing our projects conceptually and deciding where the significant program will be located. In regard to program the diagram on the lower right, visually explains how I am separating the reading room space and book stacks.













Below is the current model I am exploring with site relationships with the existing library and humanities building.














Another issue I have dealt with this week is the level change which exist in my site of around 12 feet and how the library will address the drop in grade. At first I was thinking of lifting it up of pilotis as to not disrupt the ground circulation that occurs in front of the humanities building, but after exploring it, I decided that took away from the program space and movement of spaces that are created on the interior.

The midterm review on Friday I thought was extremely helpful and informative, giving a lot of feedback on how how to push to project further and keep experimenting. Some suggestions that I was given which I will be exploring are:

- exploring the concept of light and shadow and that light is just as important as shadow and how integrating that idea can read as another layer to my building
- push relationship between the shadow of the actually library, perhaps how shadows may move across my building
- move away from the pancake stacks on the bottom of my building and how the concept of light and shadow can be just as expressive on top and bottom
- included bold drawings of shadow as well as charcoal drawing of section
- experiment more in model

MIT project

I found a few project done at MIT which reminded me of our mapping project. the image is a link to the site.