February 2012 Archives
the smallest stair in the world is found in the molecular structure of Silicon:
whose surface (measured in nanometers above) is articulated through stepped or ridged geometry.
At the other end of the spectrum, Obayashi's space elevator will be one of the largest structures extending beyond the earth into the Universe:
This colossal structure uses carbon nanotubes to construct the cable that transports the elevator from earth to 36,000 kilometres into the sky.
An interesting loop from nano to nano - no matter what extreme you engage with.
I had a good tute with Javier today where I presented my entire storyboard, the new periscope 2 in 1 model and the details etc. He was excited about the scales Im engaging with and we decided that while the stair chapter is all about structure and enclosure, the mirror chapter is more about reflections and effects so the drawings should focus on that.
Ive updated my storyboard to include the upper and lower limits of the scalar stair and infinite mirror and the spectrum of materiality as well as a final chapter for the thick drawing of the urban interior:
Page 1:
Page 2:
the stair chapter is halfway done but the mirror chapter needs a lot of work. (click to enlarge)
Here is the updated Table of Contents:
CONTENTS
1. STAIRS & MIRRORS: NESTED PLANES OF PERCEPTION
1.1. Project Statement - Unravelling Architectural Stories
The spaces we experience throughout our lifetime tell a spatial story within our minds. These spaces are nested together to be linked in interesting ways to create a continuous narrative; collapsing real spaces together, we move through planes of composite spaces to penetrate deeper and deeper into the story.
1.2. Technical Design Statement - From Room to Universe
The space of the story can be understood as an intrinsically nested space. By studying the principles of nesting at the scale of the object, room, building and image we gain a complete understanding of how a story can link various scales and collapse them within a single space - the space of the room. The stair is the ultimate scalar fragment, its simple geometry working no matter the axis or scale at which it is perceived. The mirror is the threshold between imagination and reality. Together the two construct a fictional universe.
2. NESTING
2.1. Principles of Nesting
What it means for entities to exist within one another and how they naturally occur - learning from examples in nature and physics. Gaining an understanding of how nesting operates so it can be extrapolated to various scales varying from objects, to rooms, to cities, to illusions.
2.2. Objects, Surfaces & Spaces
Concentric aggregation at the smallest scale - architectural components, everyday objects and embedded scalar elements to create various functional and scalar effects.
• Fractal Geometry
Coliseum, Rome Italy
The design of ancient Roman stadia was ergonomic in how it embedded the dimensions for access staircases within the dimension for tiered seating. The largest example is the Coliseum, one of the greatest works of Roman architecture and engineering.
• Embedded Perspective
Studiolo di Gubbio, Italy
The private study of the Duke of Urbino in the Renaissance palace at Gubbio uses the wall paneling technique of intarsia to nest perspective into a flattened surface - a study in materiality and illusions of depth.
2.3. Rooms, Corridors & Vistas
The sequence of spaces that are formally aligned to one another creates the enfilade. In a linear configuration the spaces would create a corridor framing what lies at the terminal end but in the concentric configuration of a labyrinth or layered space, the spaces become nested volumes.
• Sequential Progression
The Aventine Keyhole, Rome Italy
Atop Aventine Hill in Rome, sits the headquarters of the Knights Templar of Malta. On the piazza, at the gate, through the keyhole, there is a nested view through the hedges framing the Vatican City, focusing on the dome of St. Peter's.
• Layering Spaces
Sir John Soane House & Museum, London UK
Sir John Soane's Museum is a museum of architecture, and was formerly the house of the eponymous neo-classical architect. The curation of his collection has created many layers within the home which peel away as you move from the interior to the exterior.
2.4. Houses, Cities & Time
Nesting at the scale of the building - how a building can convey not only its own identity but also visible traces of its antecedents. The layering of information, materiality and time.
• Houses within Houses
Set Design, The House That Made Me (2010)
The careful reconstruction of the childhood homes of 4 celebrities from written, spoken and photographic accounts within existing houses required temporary installations and large-scale constructions. TV set designer, Patrick Bill explains how one house and one time period was nested within another.
• The City within itself
Set Design, Synecdoche New York (2008)
The reconstruction of the city of New York within a warehouse as part of the movie's plot - a mise-en-abyme story arc as well as stage set design looks at the nesting of space and narrative.
2.5. Images, Reflection & Illusions
The concentric ordering of fictions - a formal technique in which an image contains a smaller copy of itself is known as a mise-en-abyme and can be ordered to create an infinite progression through narrative-space.
• Periscopic Illusions
La Torre (2007)
Taking the classic periscope and scaling it to the size of a building, La Torre or the tower uses activity at one level to generate illusions at the top and base levels of the tower.
• Inhabiting the Image
Bâtiment (2004)
Through the use of a large angled mirror system, a building is suddenly inhabited by scores of people in strange positions - the reflected horizontal image is able to be inhabited.
3. THE SCALAR STAIR
The stair forms the spatial language of the project; becoming at once a circulatory route, an enclosure and a threshold. It works at a variety of scales from the most minute to the colossal. Through testing various geometries and materialities, a detail is designed to work at every scale while we test the limits at which such a stair-like space can exist.
3.1. Geometry
• The Axes of Nesting
• Degrees of Wall Penetration
• Overall and Local Stability
3.2. Materiality
• 3 Scales of Detail
• Nested Details
• Scalar Formwork
• Spectrum of Materiality
3.3. Scalar Limits
• Upper Limit: Stairway to Heaven
Niesen Staircase, Switzerland
Obayashi Space Elevator
• Lower Limit: Nanostair
Silicon, Si (2,3,3)
Nanotechnology
4. THE INFINITE MIRROR
The mirror extends the space of the project from reality into illusion. Through angled planes and reflections, it allows us to see what reality obscures. It thickens and thins its planar nature, alternating between natural and man-made forms as its geometry and materiality are tested. It is detailed to work at every scale of the project whether it is the microscopic or the macroscopic.
4.1. Geometry
• Nesting Images
• Periscopic Systems
• Stability and Supprt of Large Mirrored Planes
• Framing the Window
4.2. Materiality
• Types of Mirror
• Mirror Manufacture
• 3 Scales of Detail
• Nested Details
• Spectrum of Materiality
4.3. Scalar Limits
• Upper Limit: Space Mirror
Strategic Defense and Global Warming Prevention Mirrors
Telescopic Mirrors
• Lower Limit: Micro Mirror
Atomic Mirror
Nanotechnology
5. THE URBAN INTERIOR
Through storytelling, the vastness of the urban environment can be scaled down into manageable and familiar spaces. The exterior nature of the city, is retold as though it was within a room, an ever-expanding interior made of stairs and mirrors which reveal new spaces and experiences as we zoom out.
5.1. The Metropolis of Mind
5.2. The Reset Thresholds
After giving up on fixing my stupid computer/ internet issues, I decided to try to get one of my precedents redrawn. These are drawings taken from the sketch book of the set designer I interviewed for the Channel 4 TV show - The House That Made Me and talk about how a room is nested within a room.
The next spread goes into further detail looking at how, through the use of scaffolding, we can layer the old space within the existing space. I also include a brief excerpt from my interview to talk about the constraints of working within a nested space and the view cone through which the design is constructed.
(click to enlarge)
I am working on updates of stair details and hopefully a rough outline update of my thick drawing for tomorrow.
New, dare I say WIP, title for my TS: Stairs & Mirrors: Nested Perceptual Planes
Different precedents that look at the way in which layered spaces are drawn/ communicated:
Tower of Babel:The fictional city/ building
Metropolis:The aggregated city
Hugh Ferriss sketches Layered building forms
Palace of the Soviets: Nested volumes as an iconic emblem
Coliseum: Sectional nesting of private spaces within a public spaces
Empire State Building: Layered space manifested internally and externally
Stepwell, Abhaneri: Nested fragments to form public infrastructure
Im working on remodelling the under the table view to incorporate the mirror window and the city under the stairs so that I can accurately locate them within the larger context of the fictional metropolis. From there, I will begin to construct the 2d drawing around this view.
Based on my new argument of the plane that runs through my entire project, here are all my TS precedents as seen through the nesting of planes to create layered or collapsed spaces:
"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures." Ralph Waldo Emerson
JONAH FREEMAN, 1983, 2006 DIGITAL C-PRINT
Architectural fiction enables the construction of imaginary worlds that draw inspiration from the real spaces we encounter yet allow us to break from reality through the scale, sequence or way in which we choose to inhabit them. What if the city is suddenly scaled down to fit inside a house? What if the public urban realm suddenly became enclosed within the private seclusion of an interior - a strange inversion that would allow us to navigate through the complexity of the city as though it is familiar, everyday and domestic. Storytelling allows us to understand spaces in new ways. Not constrained by reality, the story imbues spaces with new meaning - scale is arbitrary, sequenced randomly. The story woven around objects within the urban interior define the scale at which they can be inhabited.
VORTOGRAPH, SIMON GARDINER
Just a beginning - will develop the idea of architectural fiction as a way to link the past to speculations about the future, which could tie in my Re-con. Also, the idea of the city scaled to the house - inverting the brief to capture the universe within the room.
Patrick Bill, the set designer that I visited this week suggested this as a helpful reference for my project in terms of nesting buildings inside one another.
Semi-detached by Michael Landy
Exhibition, Tate Britain 2004
For his piece Semi-Detached the artist Michael Landy re-created a copy of the house where his father lives. He copied it in every detail, right down to the bits of flaking paint. This work of art acts like a portrait: a portrait of his father as a house.
Here is a video about its construction within the space of the museum:
I casted my stair models yesterday - was quite a fun if stressful experience and at least through documenting it, I've gained a spread on casting!
Here are some images of the moulds of the three options: (thinking about the negative and positive spaces)
Here is an image of Option 3 of complete wall penetration with the mould of the stairs (with metal runners to be cast inside.)
These were my models this morning post-casting and a day of solidifying but prior to being removed from the mould and left in the unit space to dry out (hopefully by tomorrow - fingers crossed!)
I also went to the studio of set designer, Patrick Bill to consult with him on his nesting of spaces in the Channel 4 TV programme, The House That Made Me. He was incredibly helpful and talked me through several locations they scouted, sketches they made, props they sourced and memories they deconstructed. He works in a great space too!
Here is a terribly quick photosynth I tried to do when no one was watching - its just one room of many thats supposed to be a storage space for a costume designer but has been appropriated as a stage set of a child's bedroom:
Room within a Room!
Im going to cast a few options of my mechanical stair wall. I have a lasercut slot tomorrow to cut the moulds for casting so here are the three options that Im looking at:
The first is similar to the model I built over the weekend but with only the wall for support and with the mini stairs cast into the wall. The second allows the mini stair to operate on both sides of the wall while the third allows both stairs to shift from one side to the other to test how many things can move while the model still functions and the wall still supports the stair.
In each iteration, the nested stair penetrates through the wall further into the adjacent space beyond.
I will work on the lasercut files for tomorrow for the stair model and cast wall elements and will hopefully detail the stair at the three scales
Figuring out the scale of my stair model has driven me a little crazy since everything is at an arbitrary or surreal scale. Anyway - i finally settled on 1:5 for the large stair since that is perceived as a real stair in a building. Alternatively the scale could be 1:100 if the same stair was perceived as the top of a building. Or, the model could be at 1:15 if the smaller stair was meant to be perceived as a real stair.... confusing.
Anyway, this is an axo of the first mechanical wall test:
and all the model pieces that I will start to assemble now:
I have to make two more test models of the other stair options afterwards and then will start working on details.
I found this video of Leandro Erlich's Carousel model - its a bit too literal for what I want to introduce into my project but I like the idea of a spinning stage - in which different memories come to the foreground... (ref: quote from Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye)
Also, in my version the different spaces stored would be separated by thickened walls that are serve as the backstage area of "the convulsive theatre of the domestic" - The Surreal Landmark.
Had a great TS tutorial with John Noel again that built upon discoveries made in yesterday's tutorial with David Illingworth.
David had suggested looking at the design of teleprompters on the news which use glass instead of mirror to reflect information. This is a quick sketch I did of how it works where the image visible depends on the position of the light source:
Today, John was pleased with the development of my other nested fragments but wanted to talk through the basement to get past its "poisoned chalice" status by thinking of what it was originally intended to be. I thought it would be a great opportunity to insert this teleprompter mechanism since it operates on the system of light vs. dark that is inherent in the basement and then to play with the inverse of what the mirror window fragment is looking at.
If the mirror window creates illusions of the city within the room, the basement could begin to create illusions of the room within a subterranean city so that the two memories could begin to work together - approaching the same idea from two different ends of the spectrum by inverting their scale.
We were both happy with how this idea related to the overall aims of the project so he said to redraw the basement with this in mind (getting rid of the problematic tube tunnels). I will work on that as part of Alex's thick drawing reconfiguration for next week.
