Architecture 101 Final Portfolio and ReflectionsBy Kelly Doyle

A New Scope

The final project was unlike anything I'd attempted before. In scale, possibilities are endless, thanks to LocTite and Gorilla glue, but when architecture gets big it opens all new worlds of complexity and ingenuity.

My journey into design during the first half of our semester yielded great accomplishment and for the second half, I found myself not with great accomplishment but instead with great new knowledge.

This portfolio is a collection of the new things I've learned about the difference between what looks good on paper and what builds well in full scale.

SketchUp rendering of a preliminary model

The Student Trap Picking the site was unusually easy for our team; everybody seemed to be drawn to the same 25'x25' area around the eastern most sandbox in Batmale's northern courtyard.

We noticed that many of the building's occupants are attracted to this area as well. Some of them come here to talk, have lunch, smoke, or simply take a quick break from working inside so much.

Our team had an immediate desire to start exploring the possibilities for making a space that uses it's surroundings to maximize a fun and refreshing experience for our occupants.

Basia, Hassna and myself, discussing our first impressions of the site.

The Journey Back To Discovery

We'd thought about what used to excite us most about recess. Of course no one thinks of how enjoyable this time is as an adult, naturally they think of going outside around lunchtime in elementary school and playing on the playground.

And so we asked ourselves, how can we make that experience feel just as fun and unique as they used to when we were all kids?

Revealing the Invisible

The sunlight on our site (whenever it wasn't foggy of course) was brilliant. It's welcoming rays couldn't be ignored because they provide such relief from Batmale's less welcoming fluorescent lighting. Light became our first objective.

We each stood in different positions around the site to observe where shadows were cast throughout the day.

SketchUp models of the many wall units or 'tiles' that manipulate local light.

Upstairs Downstairs

Light alone wasn't enough to elaborate on the childish enjoyment of going outside to play. To help enhance the feeling that our users were small, we wanted to elevate them above our site's focal point. Above them, a gently lowering ceiling to encourage them to crouch down and feel small like a child again. Elevating and compressing our users to evoke a childish experience was our next experiment.

Drawing a Line in the Sand

We now had to interesting ways to support a childhood experience but we still needed a main point of interaction that drove the point home.

Early concepts included an array of hanging glass pendants to drag in the sand as user spun the wheel from which they hung.

Kody's brilliant idea of re-engineering an etch-a-sketch caught everyone's attention. Using the sand as a medium for our users to retrace memories of playing as children fit our design intentions too perfectly.

Small Scale Simplicity

Scale construction started after we'd found our three main construction objectives. The full site model (shown top) suggested using a much larger area than we first planned for.

After seeing the site all together, we split each part of it up and worked on improving them between team meetings.

I'd taken interest in exploring the possibilities of using light to enhance our experience. My attention was drawn to the curved outer wall. It's purpose was to help the stage compress our users down into a crouching or huddled position, but I wanted to give it new tasks.

Above: Full site model with curved wall in the center.

Right: Early sketches of possible surfaces to cover the curved wall.

Finding the Right Language

I'd tried applying much of the geometric explorations I'd made earlier in the semester. The idea was to help continue the theme of childhood by using simple figures we could have identified at a young age such as squares, rectangles, and triangles. These figures soon became a recurring theme throughout the project.

Above: An iteration inspired by Malevich.

Left: a small scale model of a tile covered with fabric.

Right: An array of tiles arranged to form a wall.

Rendering Light

The tiles were to interact with light. When I arranged them in an array, I noticed they were somewhat permeable. Light could get through some spots but not all. Furthermore, by changing the material used to cover the tiles, new possibilities for interaction with local light unfolded.

Using colored cellophane for the tiles' exteriors yielded beautiful bands of color in the intermittent sunlight. These colors, blended with the simple shapes that repeat throughout the tile array seemed to contribute to a fun, youthful composition.

Jump From Paper

Before tackling a full scale build, we still wanted to be sure what we were making was going to interact with the sunlight in just the ways we wanted. I opened up SketchUp and got to work.

Manipulating light became a much more achievable goal with modeling. Rather than having to guess where shadows would fall, the program allowed us to accurately predict where the shadows would be and at what times.

The Wooden Ring My tile wall ideas went over well with everyone in the group. With some engineering critique from Kody, they were ready to be built. We'd set out for materials, hoping to be as thrifty as possible. Pallets were an unusual choice for meeting our wood needs. They required being broken down, in our case, into hundreds and hundreds of little pieces before they could be transformed into the elaborate tile wall I had in mind.

Constructive: Inside and Out

Having so much cutting, sawing, gluing, ect. to do had it's pros and cons. The time needed to break down the materials was costly, but we'd kept ourselves from breaking the bank. Personally, my favorite part of this process was the fact that when we started cutting pallets, only one member of our group knew how to use all of the tools on our build site. By the time we finished, though, not only had everyone used each tool at least once but we also used these tools safely AND had begun developing a proficiency with them! In a way, having to do so much cutting made better craftsmen out of all of us.

Hitting a Wall We'd arranged to build two of these walls, both with wide bases starting at the southern side of the planterbox and arching up to reach a point on the northern concrete wall. One wall, the larger of the two, would extend over the smaller one and sit on a pair of casters. The casters would allow movement over the inner wall so that the light penetrating both walls would change. We then thought it'd be interesting to give the user the chance to perform that movement at their discretion to enhance the creative element of our experience.

The Wall Strikes Back

When construction time came around, the first wall did it's job with the sunlight but its structural integrity became questionable. The continuous sea breezes on our site gave it movement we appreciated but hadn't entirely planned for. The problem we were beginning to have was that our precious tiles were becoming too heavy for the light PVC frames to hold.

With a helpful tensoning suggestion from our professor, we'd attempted to strengthen the outer wall with steel cable. We'd tried and tried again, using many different methods for reinforcing the wall and on the last attempt, the wall had fallen, nearly causing injury.

Where's North From Here? Each of these walls took about a

week of assembly line cutting, gluing, screwing, and fitting. Once the outer wall had fallen, we'd come to the unfortunate conclusion that our original design intentions for this wall could not be fully realized. The purpose for these two walls was to interact with the sunlight, offer mechanical interaction for the user and to make the space seem more playful. We'd wanted a space that seemed fun and eye-catching, more so than the rest of the concrete courtyard it's set in. We couldn't just get rid of the outer wall despite our engineering failures. Our best alternative was to find a new anchor point for the triangular wall's apex.

This sacrificed the ability to move the wall, and thus much of the light interaction was compromised. The arch does stand up now, and it even provides slight separation between the raised platform where users draw in the sand and the lower social space next to it.

Conflicts and Resolutions

Our ambitions for this project were high. It was difficult to accomplish what we did and yet there was still so much more that we wish we could have done to complete this experience. Much of our efforts went into processing the materials into usable form. Rather than working towards fuller completion of our site, I think we got a little hung up on the jumping the hurdles the tile walls threw at us. As a result, the journey's strength had been compromised. It wasn't a lesson we'd been hoping to learn for our final project, but one that certainly was learned.

The First, Long Journey My first semester in design studio may not had ended as I'd hoped or planned but that never meant it didn't end well. The this semester's exploration into design was much more fruitful than my first attempt. Though having to overcome some resistance toward the iterative process, I eventually used the design techniques I learned in 101 to my advantage. The final project was a good test of these skill and the flexibility with which I was able to use them. At first, it was easy to be upset that our team hadn't gotten as far as we'd liked. However, when presentation day came around, it took all of five minutes for me to regain the same smile I had when I entered this class. For a time, I had taken for granted all I had learned and made in this class so far. I didn't take a moment to appreciate all the interesting new things I had learned not only about how to use tools or gather materials but how to take a design idea and express it in the very best and quickest ways my team and I knew how. It was quite an accomplishment, but one I felt I needed the Jurors' eyes and words to see.