These are just a few of the many notes and drawings that I have made while brainstorming in the last 48 hours of how to create a graduate student space in the IARC building.
Recently every college student in the nation has been asked to pick classes for their next consecutive school year. I have chosen classes and hours and did much research and asked a lot of questions before I chose my courses. The same kind of speculating is done in my design work. What is forward thinking? How will this idea create a sense of place, purpose and functionality for what it is to be used for? Will people enjoy it and understand it as a necessity? I have to speculate various things when designing, just as every good designer should. There have to be questions flowing as well as answers. The design should speak for itself and allow for the speculating to diminish some. The intentions and theories that were dreamed up in the best case scenario should come to life. This same idea of speculation and testing out theories was occurring much before my time, back in the Bauhaus. The school was moved to Dessau and Massey writes, "The move to Dessau signalled a mature phase of experimental design at the Bauhaus. Most successful of the prototypes now produced by he Bauhaus workshops were the lamp designers by students..." This school was becoming iconic and monumental in design. The students were doing enormous amounts of speculating, especially between design periods where they needed to discover what was next. Massey says more on pg. 75, "The best-known Bauhaus products are the chairs, now regarded as icons of the Modern Movement." Massey wants us to see that students of the time were impacting design movements and that their work was that of the desirable! It must have been so exciting to be a student and to see your work become a style and a necessity. The speculating of whether or not you designed the right thing and that by sticking your neck out, you were not being so silly as to think it might become famous. To see your design create movement and excitement would be monumental. Have you speculated how you might stick your neck out there and that it might be a good thing?
compose--to write, to create, to formulate
This was a picture I took of the compositions from various schools at the Highpoint DATS Conference
I think of design as a work of art, a composition, a portfolio of projects and creativity compiled into one. Therefore, I am able to extract ideas from my flood of dreams and formulate them individually into designs and creations. Composing is my passion and I compose writing, art work, and designs and enjoy playing the compositions of great composers. Currently I am working to formulate a ten image board that works as an entire composition. The images flow together and really explain the entire building as a whole. I am creating a board of the IAC Building for my final History of Design course. This board will allow me to draw and use mediums that I have practiced with and make a mass creation.
Although I enjoy works of writers, composers and designers, there are also those that I disagree with or dislike/don't favor over others. Massey discusses this same idea of having likes and dislikes in the 'A & D community'. There were and still are some designers and architects that went against the grain and went as far as writing essays and books about what they agree with and disagree with, in design. On pg. 63 she writes, "The first designer categorically to reject the need for ornament in interior design was the Austrian architect Adolf Loos. Loos's three years spent in America was from 1893 to 1896 may explain his total aversion to the florid excesses of Art Nouveau and the 'precious' interiors of the Wiener Werstatte. During his time in America he became familiar with the work of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, and he missed the formative years of Art Nouveau in Europe." This is stating how in fact, Adolf Loos was able to see how America operated in the field of design and how conformed it had become to these styles. Adolf was totally against them and found them hideous. He refused to conform to such ideals and Massey goes on, "argued that the urge to decorate surfaces was primative, andinstanced a link between tattoos and modern criminals and the case of graffitti on lavatory walls as evidence. While such polemic was obviously not to be taken to seriously, Loos did succeed in challenging the belief of the Art Nouveau designers that all surfaces should be decorated that went on to create the Modern Movement." He compares the designs of the time to bathroom graffiti as evidence and is blattenly disappointed in where design had gone. These quotes reflect disdain and frustration in the design world through Loos's eyes. His ideas allow us to see how in fact not everyone was on board with where certain design movements were heading at the height of its popularity.
energize--to fuel, to be re-filled with momentum, charging
When creating an MDF model that celebrated light and shadow, I also wanted to create energy and momentum.
When I look back on the 98% that I have completed of my first year of interior architecture courses, I see energy well spent. I have poured in so much of my time and energy and have learned so so so much from every course that I have be apart of. I have learned that my designs should have a momentum, an energy, a fuel to them to allow people to feel good about the design and to see the good in the designs that I create. We all seek energy and want to be filled outside of religion, every day needs and so forth. We need power to run the machine that we are as human beings. I want people to walk into a space that I create and to feel energized and re-fueled when they encounter it. I want people to want to dwell in the spaces I design and to want the things that I design because it makes them feel good about themselves and the world around them. I want energy in my work now and the designers that I see that have embraced this ideology, I really do have a sense of understanding and trust that the product was created with heart and dedicated energy when I see it in totality.
shape--to form, to create, a circle, a square, a polygon.
This is a giant cardboard model that I took a photo of at the DATS conference. It's shape was very distinct and filled the entire space.
I have been shaping ideas and shaping dreams from my imagination and life to create since I was little. My life passions are within creative fields. I love writing, reading, music, dance, photography, designs and architecture of sorts, clothing, shoes, art, travel. All of these require a sense of imagination, exploration, creativity and fascination. To begin any of these fields one must have these types of words in their vocabulary and seek refuge in these creative places. To shape creativity means to choose an idea or thought or a few ideas or thoughts and to refine them into something special. As my professors say in my courses, "Make every design something you would give to a loved one." When Art Nouveau and the Art Deco styles came into play at the 1910 Bruxelles Expoition Universelle in Paris, there was a collamity of creative ideas floating around to see. Massey pg. 91, "The plan for an international exhibition concerned solely with design began to take shape." This proves that as people began to own up to their creativity and to allow design to become a profession and a passion, design began to gain popularity, not just in the US but all over the world.
stretch--to grow, to expand, to elaborate, to touch your toes, to go beyond the norm
This is a photo I took of Falling Water's exterior and this home is full of Frank Lloyd Wright's imagination and the stretching of his mind.
In my current studio project I am creating a room that allows for people to stretch both their minds and their bodies. I am designing a room for graduates in the IARC building. In this room I want to allow people to get out of their minds for a moment and relax. To stretch their limbs and allow their minds to stretch out and to expand into the meditative, restful and prayerful mind, or just to simply kick back and enjoy a great cup of Joe. Stretching the human body and mind is extremely important as it grows older. Without stretching the human body, the body becomes stiff and becomes unaligned. The human mind needs to stretch and grow and learn something new each and every day. Just as the saying goes, "Learn something new every day". If you don't learn something new throughout your days and stick to a routine or simple, repetitive life, you could develop Alzheimer's or other such mind deficiencies. We were created to grow, love and to stretch ourselves daily.
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