Space: The Opportunity To Do A Terrible Accent

As seen in earlier posts for my IAR 201 we've been working on examining ourselves in space and how we move throughout a space and what we can figure out about ourselves in space. We've done this in a three part process I guess you'd say. The first part being a mechanical sort of way of figuring out our body, the second conveying information about ourselves in a digital format and the last portion was to collect all our data and sort of combine everything to create a refined presentation. 

Wyly Theatre: The Next Step

So far throughout Visual Communications I we've been focusing on a building or structure of our choosing. And as seen in my previous post I have selected a building that is part of the Dallas Arts District which is the Wyly Theatre. We had to diagram this building in the original assignment but the second part of this was to diagram it even more and also to create 3D representations of these diagrams.

Egyptian Compass

This is now the first project focusing on the foundations unit in which we covered Egypt, Greece and Rome. We had to choose one form and one scale for the project but encompass all four aspects being; nature, symbol, people and material. I chose a 2D image as my form and my scale was an artifact. The artifact being hieroglyphs themselves...

Cartography

Throughout the span of the semester for IAR 222 we are creating four different projects I guess you could call them. And each one deals with a particular unit we're dealing with in the class. The first one being a map was one in which we were assigned locations and had to incorporate four different aspects. The aspects were people, material, nature and symbol. And these aspects have to be present in all four projects. And all of these projects have different forms within them... being 2D, 3D, word and a paragraph. This first project had to incorporate all four forms. 

Egypt, Greece and Rome Summary

The other day in class history we were asked to compare these three societies; them being Egypt, Greece and Rome. And within these three civilizations we were asked to state an artifact, space, building and a place for all three. 

Within the Egyptian world I said that the hieroglyphics were the artifacts of their time because they were stories that were/are embedded with every piece of Egyptian culture. The Egyptians were about symmetry in many ways and also about repetition. Such is the example in Hypostyle Hall where you've got a common factor being these massive columns that repeat throughout the entire space. 

Next we've got the Grecian culture and I believe their artifacts are the stories about their mythology and their gods/goddesses that we know about very vividly even today. One building I love in the area of Athens is the temple of Athena Nike and how it's so small but yet still very much intact. 

In the Roman culture which we are just now dwelling into I think they are about horizontals and spanning across the face of the earth rather than building off of it with vertical elements. Also this is where the dome gets introduced or at least closer to a nearly perfected one. I believe the Pantheon is where you can see the dome and it's beauty at work. It's coffered coverings in the dome that lead to the gorgeous, open oculus. 

Reading Comprehension #2

[1] Hersey describes a grammar for Greek architectural elements based on the idea of sacrifice. SPECULATE about the validity of his argument based on what you know about Greek design and the evidence (both visual and written) he provides. (5 points)

I honestly feel like I can believe what Hersey is saying about sacrifice in the Grecian times. He gives the example that talks about Oenomaus’s house in which the king’s daughter (Pelops) wanted to marry Hippodamia, but the king was fearful of a story that claimed he would be killed by his son-in-law. So Oenomaus killed thirteen of Hippodamia’s suiters and affixed their heads to the wooden columns of his palace. Such is the case with the Erectheion in which Patrick is said to be enslaved women that are pointing their way towards the main attraction... the Parthenon. He also said that this is where the men generally made announcements from, a building that was built with the female embedded within it (literally). And lastly Hersey talks about the columns and how those represent people starting at the very base which represents their feet and it goes through many other things but the most important is the capital which is said to represent the head of a person. 

[2] Meant in jest, Macaulay shapes a world of the future in which the main character claims meanings for archeological evidence uncovered at the Motel of the Mysteries. EXTRACT what you believe to be the lesson of mis-interpreting evidence and link that lesson to the real world phenomenon of the internet. In other words, EXPLAIN how you might avoid such a blunder as mis-reading evidence when you use the web as your major information source. (5 points)

I believe a mistake such as identifying evidence falsely can be avoided by your entire background on life. What you’ve experienced and what’d you’ve learned in my mind shapes what you know and how you label things. And when using the inter-web to get information about a particular object or whatever it may be make sure that it’s like an accredited website or something or you can find the same information on multiple sites and not just one site that doesn’t look too “professional” as you could call it. Even in my daily life I’m constantly Googling terms, places and objects to find out about them and just get a well rounded feeling to different things and broaden what I know overall. And books are a beautiful source to gather information about, it’s got something for anyone in any time frame your looking for. You can find anything you need to, you just have to know where to start looking at. 

[3] The funerary temple design of Queen Hatshepsut speaks a very different design language than the pyramidal forms for other pharaohs. From your readings and the ideas addressed in class, RECOUNT possible reasons why Queen Hatshepsut used this building form. (5 points)

I think the reason these two structures speak completely different languages is because the pyramids appear in my mind to be a sign from men showing off their power and just what they can accomplish; leaving their mark on the earth. And the burial place for the queen is surprisingly much more welcoming, in my mind. I think it appears the queens temple is built into the land, which means having to consider a lot more. Considerations could be anything from scale to location to form to anything really. I guess even in todays societies some women would say that they themselves are much more considerate than the opposite sex. But the pyramids to me are beautiful but less inviting for sure; if I saw them I think the only thing I would feel like I could do is look at them. The temple on the other hand I feel like I could ascend myself up the stairs and walk through the physical structure therefore providing a much more personal experience than the pyramids could. 

[4] Although some evidence suggests links between the Egyptian and Greek civilizations, and some building forms and details provide support for that linkage, the two societies produced design responses in great contrast to one another. Select a building type (house, tomb, or temple) from each culture and ELUCIDATE similarities and differences in the two forms over time. Provide an annotated illustration for each selected type. (5 points)

The form I’m going to compare/contrast is the temple form embedded in both the Egyptian and Grecian culture. First I would say that both share many things in common such as in the temple form they both share many horizontal and vertical elements. Columns are something in both cultures that are just beginning to appear, although I would say the Grecian period is where your seeing a more refined column structure. In scale your also seeing a similar take, both are grand in scale... usually. Both cultures places are usually meant to honor something or something; in the Grecian world it was usually built for a god/goddess and in Egypt it was usually meant for the dead or a particular person as well. Now to contrast the ways in which these two cultures are different; the Egyptians embedded rich stories within nearly all their structures and Grecians didn’t really tell a story that was literally put into the stone. The Grecians used their land in a good way, building with the landscape and using what they had. Egypt it was slightly different for most cases especially with the pyramids in which your seeing a mark left on the earth in a big way. 

Hatshepsuts Temple

Temple of Hera

[5] Harwood shows examples of Egyptian furniture on pp. 60-61. HYPOTHESIZE about the lightweight nature of Egyptian furniture when compared to tomb architecture, as at the Pyramids of Giza, which many characterize as massive and heavy. (5 points)

In some ways the furniture of the Egyptians was similar to there buildings forms, they both used a lot of vertical elements. In the building form, that element would create its columns and in the furniture form it creates the four legs needed to sit down properly in a chair. Hierarchy also played a vital role in everything we know about the Egyptian society so the higher the chair was built, generally the higher a person’s role was. The chairs were generally built in the same form but it was how these chairs were embellished for the classes that separated them. I believe the daintiness of these chairs were to prepare them for the afterlife because they believed that what they had buried with them in their tombs traveled alongside with them to the afterlife and possibly they though these pieces of furniture did the exact same thing. 

[6] Based on a careful reading of the visual evidence in these two images, DRAW OUT an explanation of design and gender roles as you see both depicted. As this language of urns represents essentially one of the main ways we know about Grecian culture, COMMENT on the validity of such a practice of reading evidence. (5 points)

Women’s role in the Greek society were what we would expect I’d say... they were to clean, cook and take care of the children unless the household owned a slave in which the he or she would take control of those daily duties. And I feel like both of these urns sort of show the same thing about the Grecian society early on. The woman were inferior to the men, they were looked down on in those early times and they were to obey and do as the man said. And I feel like both of these urns depict all of these things quite clearly by showing in both of them women leaning to hand the men sitting down something. 

INTRODUCING: The Lights

So today in studio we wrapped up our second part of our extrapolating the human body project. The first part of this project was to understand our body in a space through a series of drawings and such and the second part was much more abstract in expression and had to be conveyed in the digital format. This was my final product after many, many hours in iMovie (sorry about crummy YouTube quality). 

Diagramming The Wyly Theatre

Our second assignment for Visual Communication was to choose a building and find precedent images and to create a series of diagrams based around that structure and to alter the drawings digitally and to them compose them in Illustrator or some software similar. Here was my finished board of the Wyly Theatre composed using Adobe Illustrator. 

Early Portfolio Work

So this first assignment we had for Travis was to give him an idea for our previous work and this is what I came up with.

POINT: THEORIES

One of the first few days of our history class Patrick mentioned the powers of three and things that come in three’s; such as three french hens, three little pigs, three feet in a yard, three ring circus, three laws of motion and just as he suggested the list can continue on forever. But this list in my mind has one set that surpasses them all and that would be what Vitruvius wrote in De Architectura somewhere around 25 BC and what Sir Henry Wotton then translated and published in The Elements Of Architecture in 1624. "Well building hath three conditions: firmness, commodity, and delight,” I think even at this time when Vitruvius proclaimed this that he was onto something that would prove true until this day. Our overall building process here in the 21st century is so technology driven and so complex but the overall fundamentals within the structure are just as embedded as they were when Vitruvius and Wotton were around. A building now days is used for many, many things but it still has intact firmness, commodity, and delight (sometimes). Let’s break down these three parts though, what do all of them mean? Firmness, the first one meaning does the structure/building support itself; it’s overall physical boundaries one could say. The next one being commodity, how does it accommodate the user, how do the people interact with this and does the building function like it should. Lastly you’ve got delight, which would be the one where people would definitely disagree. How does it make the people feel, does it provide an experience that’s a good one and I guess is it delightful? That’s my interpretation of these terms, and I like to think that all architecture I cherish has these three components. And I like to think that all good architects, considerate architects consider these things and try to provide the structure that encompasses these things. But perhaps my favorite part of the quote is before firmness, commodity and delight are said. Wotton says, “the end is to build well.” I’m not sure why that is but I really like that and overall that’s really what a designer is trying to accomplish. Something that is well built, something that is useful, something that supports all the operations that will go on in this particular place whether its function changes as years pass. One piece that comes to my mind that would apply to firmness, commodity and delight would be the Barcelona Chair designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich in 1929. 

[image]

In my opinion the stainless steel frame and leather that embody this piece of furniture have made this one the most famous pieces of furniture around even till this day. I don’t think even a building has to incorporate commodity, firmness and delight I think any sort of operative art can incorporate those things. I think furniture, structural, product, interior and even fashion design all can have those three vital parts attached to them: commodity, firmness and delight. 

Ain't That The Truth

This article at Gizmodo made me remember the days where we only wanted one thing as a child, and now days as we're older and more technology driven we want everything we see that just looks "cool". 

you can see the full set of images here

Off To A Good Start