Renaissance Fine Woodworking, Inc fieldtrip

The fieldtrip today to the cabinetry, furniture, and contracting shop taught me a lot about how to work with contractors to effectively create a functioning design. They talked mainly about the relationship between designer and builder and focused on the need for clear decision making and how that makes it easier to come up with an end product that both client, designer, and builder are happy with. It was very interesting to see how they worked and touring their workspace because it gave a further insight to what happens between paper and final design which I believe is necessary if you want to create a great design. Personal relationships was something that they really enjoyed making and thought was essential to a commercial business. They said that not only should the creative process of construction and design be business oriented but establishing personal relationships was imperative to keeping a business like theirs above the water and also made things much more enjoyable! Overall I would say that this visit was helpful in my design education because it showed me another side to the industry and one that I look forward to entering and making my own!

Concept Development: B. Modules to Pattern

In this second review of concept development, I narrowed down my choices of partis to use as modules in a pattern. To create a pattern I rotated, flipped, and altered them until they were placed in an aesthetically pleasing and interesting fashion. The patterns I chose to put on here were ones that I found most interesting and fitting towards my concept of movement and togetherness. The next step was to apply color, something I found didn’t work well with my design. Because the photo was in black and white, I wanted to stick with this. I tried color but all combinations I thought were overwhelming and took away from the classic beauty of black and white. I thought it also was a good way to bring the past into the future, black and white is usually something representative of an old design, yet its beauty and appreciation still exists today.

Module 1 Patterns 

Module 2 Patterns

Concept Development: A. Abstractions to Modules

For this design my inspiration was an old photo that I encountered upon entering the Pufferbelly Depot in Pullman, WA. I instantly knew that this photo would be in inspiration because of the connection I felt to the students in the photo taken so long ago. They were there, together, for an education at Washington State, just as I am today with my peers. The similarities were there but I also loved the apparent time separation. They were dressed in formal attire, I in my usual jeans and t-shirt. From this I took not only the implied movement of the train as well as movement of time (past to present) but also the togetherness that they had as a group of students all there for education. After analyzing the photo and taking from it all of the words and implied lines that I could, I put them on paper with my own interpretation. In the modules I focused on movement and togetherness. Some lines are fluid, some join together, and others seem to recede into the distance, another implication of movement. Being early on in the concept development I simply tried to put these words into abstract drawings.

Photo Inspiration

some favorite parti sketches

Vision Impairment Exercise

My sketch of what the CUB looked like when I was visually impaired

When doing the vision impairment workshop it was really interesting to experience the word of the blind. It was scary almost to move around the CUB not knowing what exactly was around me like I usually do.

The floor was too bright from the glare of the florescent lights, there was no contrast between the floor and walls, or anything else really. Columns blended in to the walls, people blurred together, and machines and other things used on a daily basis became great obstacles that I have to maneuver through and around. I think a lot more could have been done in the design to make our world more accessible to people with visual impairment, after all most people have failing eyesight at some point in their lives.

With out everyone being able to interact in the built environment we lose a sense of diversity and people with vision impairments become irregular, or strange. If everyone with a disability was able to function properly in our built environment, imagine the possibilities of our world... There would be so much less discrimination due to peoples physical abilities. This was really helpful and I feel it will help me create a place more suitable for a visually impaired person in my depot design.

Skamania Reflection

In need of a space that the teens of Skamania Washington could use as a recreational escape from their daily lives and mingle with other teens in a productive atmosphere, I along with a group of people worked on a design that transformed a horse barn into this type of space. This involved taking pictures of the barn and talking to the students about the type of space they wanted to have. The catch was that it had to still function as a barn for a week once a year, meaning all furniture and flooring had to be modular or able to be washed down with a hose, the walls able to handle horse inhabitants yet it still, of course, had to be visually pleasing.

I really enjoyed this because for the first time I was able to work with a real client, visit the space, and deliver something to students who were equally excited about the design! I loved being able to put my knowledge into helping out another group, it was really rewarding and a great learning experience!

WSU Art Museum and Artist Studio field trips

Last week I visited the WSU art museum and a local artist’s studio in order to gain a better understanding of the necessary physical and emotional aspects in the creation of a gallery and studio space for the depot design I have already started.

In the museum, the curator spoke of his experiences and things that worked well when designing a gallery space. He enforced the need to draw the visitors in the direction where the artwork could be presented as a story by using walls and strategic placement of the artwork to best depict what it was the artist wanted the viewer to feel. One way that the curator did this was with a huge sculpture of the Dukes of Hazard ’69 Charger crashing into Ted Kacynski’s Montana cabin. He placed it at an oblique angle which gave the viewer the choice to experience the piece in a number of ways, turning either in front or around back of the car, and then moving from there to other pieces in the museum. He emphasized the need for movable walls that allowed for a continuously changing space that gave many options for the layout of artwork. The lay of the museum was just as thought about as the artwork themselves.

The studio visit was my favorite and extremely helpful in the future design of the studio space I will be working on. Storage could not have been more important in her studio, and she really focused on that being something she loved about her studio, but wished she had more of. She gave a lot of helpful ideas when dealing with storage problems, such as capitalizing on vertical space as well as floor space. Closed and open storage as well was something that she liked about her studio, a place for the messy stuff that was out of site and didn’t visually clutter the space was important. Modular furniture, lots of natural light, outward opening doors, and task space separation were also things that she focused on in her space. This visit was extremely helpful and I can’t wait to put all that I've learned into my own design!