Photo Documentation

Today we have our "midreview" for the semester.  I'm not particularly concerned about it aside from the fact that I'm guessing that the feedback I will receive will essentially be "good, keep going, think about where the program will fit into the building" which will not really be helpful.  It will, however, help push me to being a full blown architect soon, I suppose.  With my models and drawings where I feel they need to be, I decided to take some pictures this morning of the knitting projects I have been working on and the models I built at home the last couple nights.  Here come pictures!

This is the knitting project I was working on at the end of winter break - it's a fun wavy scarf!

This is a close up shot of the cowl I finished right before our trip to the northern part of Finland.

It's supposed to be able to be worn as a hood, but I think either mine is too short or my head is too long.  I struggle greatly to not have my hair poof up when I try to wear it this way.

These are the wristers I just finished.  I bought Icelandic wool at the largest knitting shop in Helsinki based on a Norwegian pattern I found on ravelry.  The mixture of having 3/5 nordic countries involved made me happy.  This is before I felted the wristers.

Here they are quite a bit smaller - post felting.  Typically I do this in the washing machine but because I am not certain how well the washing machines would work here, I felted them by hand.  Thankfully, Sally was very encouraging because it was a surprisingly extensive process.

This is the first model that Pentti (one of my studio professors) seemed to think have promise.  I am developing an America Center for Helsinki.  In thinking about American culture I decided to start the design with  an outdoor "theater" for picnics, lounging, occasional performances, and film screenings. 

In architecture school, reviewers always ask us to "turn the building on it's side.  Mine surprisingly looks akin to the Leiviska church we saw a couple weekends ago.  The fact that it's more engaging this way probably means something, but I'm not quite sure what that is yet.

After working on the previous model in plan and section drawings for about a day I built this next iteration where the library and gallery spaces are underground with a light well around the perimeter.

It looks like a building which is both quite exciting to me and seems a little early in the process for me to be there.  The real challenge is trying to work sectionally and this iteration is still very plan oriented, in my opinion.

This was my preliminary diagram working through the variety of programs in our design project, their size and public vs. privateness of the space.

These are my diagrammatic plans and a section of the model above.

In order to get away from my propensity to be completely orthogonal I played around with making a stick model.  It didn't help with the sectional quality yet, sadly, but has more unique volumes and either will be a good different starting point or got it out of my system!

Midreview in 4 hours and then I have visitors in Helsinki and spring break starts!!!