Achieving that "Playfullness"

During the last crit, I was suggested to look at some of the work of Lee Bontecou, artist born in Providence, Rhode Island, and whose art work is very similar to what we have been doing so far. Her work evokes that "playfullness" that has been talked about previously and that my work is starting to have but needs to be worked a little more. here are some examples of her work, the one all the way in the top right is my intent of playfullness.

Wrapping It All Up

The next step, and since there is not much time left, is putting it all together. Now that I have a floor for my scheme, the next step is to experiment with the different qualities of the roof. From what it was discussed in the last crit, I have to experiment in order to achieve a playfullness, that my scheme is starting to have. Some of my previous schemes have that begining of playfullness that I need so I will try to combine some of the qualities of those schemes and see how it turns out. I will keep you updated on my results!

below is the newest version of my floor.

Assignment 5: Final Review

For my final schemes of assignment 5, I decided to keep on working on the two previously mentioned drawing and fixing what was not working from past experiments. For the first drawing, the one that I used wire in, I decided to make all of it, or most of it, out of one piece of wire in order to keep that legibility create that depth that was suggested previously, making it look like a drawing if it is seen frontally but having a 3 dimentional depth if it is seen from any other angle.

For my second drawing, the one made with plaster, i decided to extrude every shape orthogonally as suggested before, and also try to mix the plaster accurately this time.

the final drawings for these two schemes where satisfactory, the plaster drawing had some little issues but the experiement was succesful in what I tried to show which was the relationship of each element, and the relationship of their depths. With the wire, I think the improvement was enourmus, since my drawing had a frame now, and it was not "dirty" any more, but instead it evoked a sense of continuity that it did not evoke before.

The crit was very helpful in making us realize what artistic aproach to take with our schemes, how to treat artistically what we have been creating so far, and what not to do in order to loose that qualities that we want to show and have managed to create so far.

In the architectural aspect, the crit was very beneficial too, because it helped me realize, that one of the components that I have been trying to find, the floor for my entire library, was already figured out the moment I casted my plaster model, creating that relationship that I was looking for between the angles and the orthogonal.

Dibujos Sin Papel Cont'd

For the second drawing, I decided to use plaster to cast what would be the roof plan of my scheme, which ends up being also a habitable space of my library. In my first intent of a cast, i deciced to use the shape of the mural and give every element found in it an angle, such as in the previous assignments, but this time instead of being an angled plane it would end up being an angled solid. The results were not very good, mainly because the cast broke since it was not mixed properly. The idea behind this cast was not bad but Professor Carranza suggested me to take another approach at the casting, whcih would be use the same drawing but give every shape, a orthogonal depth, in order to explore a realition between the level of every figure in this mural. Below are some of the pictures of my first intent with plaster.

Assignment 5: Dibujos Sin Papel

For Assignment 5, we were to create Dibujos Sin Papel, or drawings that would have that flat quality of drawings but at the same time have that depth that can only be seen in a drawing without paper. We had to come up with two different drawings, based on one or two drawings of our project. The first drawing was supposed to be made of wire or any light material that had that frame-like quality. The second drawing was supposed to be made out of something like plaster, concrete, wax or some material that would have that solid quality, and in which we could cast our drawing into. The two views that I wanted to express in this assignment were the top view of my project which shows the connection between my project and the mural, and also a sectional view of my project which shows that contrast between the angles and the orthogonal shapes in my project.

My first intents with wire and wood looked too much like the model of a model rather than the model of a drawing, except for one of those which had a drawing like quality but needed some development.

After developing that certain drawing a little more, it looked a little more like a drawing without paper except that frame-like quality of the edge of the paper and also a depth in both directions was still needed.

The use of many small pieces of wire made my drawing look very dirty and non legible. Also, the little depth it had has not very noticeable and looked very forces because of the use of many small pieces of wire, wich suggested that the drawing began as something flat and gathered some depth rather than begining as a drawing with depth.

Ideas After Mid Review

Working further with the idea of the "spill" i decided to literally spill the interiors of my previous scheme by creating one continous floor plate, in the shape of the mural, similar to the experiments I did before, making it not only the roof of my scheme but also a habitable space in which people can relax and read. This concept would also have floor plates underneath, similar to the ones in the scheme presented in the mid review, just for space purposes.

After working some more with that scheme, the idea of reducing those floor plates into one, was analyzed, in order to spread the scheme into one floor plate, with many level changes, that would empasize in the contrast between the dynamic angles found in the roof of the scheme and the more orthogonal shapes found in the floor of the scheme. The old concept can be seen in the left and the new concept can be seen on the right.

Mid Review

In the mid review, the idea of interpreting identity as different more than identical was suggested which means getting rid of the facade, in order to let the interior flow, as well as experimenting with the interior for it not to seem so rigid, or as the crits said, let the interior spill. A very interesting idea of creating an expandable model was suggested in order to create the same scheme, but with less rigidness and less order in the way the floor planes are organized. The next step is to expreiment with all of this ideas, in order to achive the desired result in my concept.

Developing Further...

I decided to interpret te word identity in two different ways, the first being identity as "identical" and the other one being identity as "tradition".

For identity as identical, my idea was to imitate the outer shape of the main library, in order for it to go along with the language and the harmony already existent on the main campus, but also to look as something identical, that follows and does not overcome the main library in importance.

For identity as tradidion, I decided to base myself on the previous assignments that we made for this project, especially assignment 2, interpreting what is inside the murals of the main library, and on assignment 3, maping the campus.
As you may recall, for assignment 2, I interpreted the mural as an abstract painting to which I gave depth in order to create spaces that its use would be interpreted by the people themselves, with the addition of dynamic elements that would connect all of this program together.

For assignment 3, I decided to analyze how the green spaces in the end are just one green space, but that i s being interrupted by solid elements troughout campus, which lead me to represent the green spaces in a more dynamic way, with the use of key regulating lines.

For this part of the assignment I deciced to combine all of the ideas mentioned before in order to create program, inside the identical box that was previously mentioned.

As for the mural, in order to abstract it more, I decided to consider it as a shadow of the first mural, which would abstract the elements even more. I also looked for certain compositional lines found in the mural that would help me find the dynamic elements I was looking for. Finally, these dynamic elements would become the floore plates, and would end up being interrupted by the solid elements, extruded from the mural, in order to achieve a similar concept used in all of the previous projects, but with a deeper meaning.

The first experiment with the combination of all of the previously mentioned ideas looked like this:

I revised this idea a little more, added some more floor plates, scaled the concept some more, and ended up with the concept scheme shown in the mid review.

As for the program, all of the irregular floor plates would go in the solid on top of the base, and will form the reading rooms, which the reader can interpret as they wish. The program inside the base has regular floor plates, but with irregular voids, following the same concept, and will hold all of the book stacks.

Library as Identity

When I started thinking about what is the library as an identity, many things came to my mind, one of them being confusion. The word identity means many things, such as tradition, uniquenes, being oneself and many other things. At the same time, identity comes from the latin word identitas, which comes from the word ident or idem. This shows us that identity also means same or equal. For the final part of this project, I decided to base my scheme out of this two concepts of identity. Basically, create an addition to the old library that can be read as "the same" but at the same time that its unique because it relates to the tradition of where it is located. In order to achieve this, I plan to use a rectangular prism as a shape, in order to look the same as the main library but also so it fits in the modernist campus of the UNAM, and therefore be part of that tradition of the UNAM. At the same time, the interior of my scheme will be made out of traditional elements of the facade, as well as compositional lines found in the mural, that will be extruded in order to create spaces. Floor planes will be created by the extrusion of the compositional lines, and these will be interrupted by the extrusion of the mural elements, which will be the programatic pieces of more importance. This way, the interior not only will resemble the tradion of the murals but also the techtonic qualities of the area, an area of very dry and volcanic qualities.

Final Review

These are the final productions for the 2 maps, following the same concept mentioned before, and also for the third map, which follows the concept of the last assignment, which was to give depth to the site, as if it was a cubist painting, in order to create spaces.