Communications Reflection

Communications Reflection

Architectural Communications has definitely benefited me in many ways, mostly because of the vast amount of skills that we learn and encounter throughout the three workshops that we participate in. I appreciated greatly the fact that we were given the opportunity and flexibility of being able to choose from different workshops the ones that we wanted to participate in. I guess this allowed us to not only be fixed in learning a single way of comunications but three different approaches. I was fortunate enought to have picked the three that I wanted to do, they were:

1. Material Modelling

2. Architectural Drawings

3. Fluid Thoughts to Actions

By doing these three workshops, I have definitely learned vast amounts of new things that are related to each topic. In particular, I found very interesting how communicating through 3D models can give viewers that extra bit of understanding of spatiallity of a building and what the final product of the design would really look like compared to flat 2D drawings. I essentially payed extra attention as to the number of different ways that 2D architectural drawings can be done to portray different takes on a building, and that the use of charcoal as a drawing median can produce very difinitive tones of black and white and the fluidity of the outcomes.

I do believe that this course is very beneficial not only for first year architectural students, but it helps to build better skills in communicating for effective architectually or for sole presentation purposes.

Fluid Thoughts To Action

WORKSHOP THREE
FLUID THOUGHTS TO ACTION
with Anton and Chrissie


In this workshop, we challenged ourselves to draw objects with more fluidity to create a sence spatiality, but also at the same time, keeping important detail and linework, all this done using mostly of charcoal.

The first exercise we did was to draw the Sydney Opera House.

The above two drawings were actually my first ever attempts at using charcoal. I was quick amazed by the softness of charcoal, and the ability to smudge as well as to erase . In this very first lesson, not only did I learn to use charcoal, I also attempted to protrude another view of the Opera House on top of an existing drawins. This done by more drawing, as well as the erasing and taking back of exisiting charcoal work.

The second task was similar to the Opera House task. Drawing, changing views, and adding onto it.

This next task, was at first, very unfamiliar and unusual. I had drawn a landscape at first, but had not managed to focus on a small part of the landscape and then enlarge it to cover a mass of the page. I did however, re-did the drawing with more focus, and had managed (to what i think) fulfilled the requirements of that task.

This drawing was my interpretation of an architectural space as described by a fellow architect student. The discription in general, pointed out a room with no windows, a large table taking over most of the space, with modern chairs and a 19th Centery Chandelier with beads hanging over it.

The following are selected drawings of the 42 that I did in my sketch book of different interior and exterior spaces, during daytime and night time.

Compared to the other workshops, I actually found 'Fluid thoughts to actions' the most amusing, interesting and enjoyable workshop. I had never used charcoal before this workshop, and I had never know that charcoal can actually produce such a wide variety of presentations. Although I tend to do drawings with not much line work but with more shading and rendering, I was amazed at the amount of precision that charcoal can do, by other students. I have indeed learned alot from this workshop and I would acknowledge that although charcoal is not a popular medium for conventional architecture, it is the way that we applied ourselves in drawing with a whole new perspective (such as with drawing with fluidity) that would allows us to broaden our abilities in drawing for future presentations.

Architectural Drawing

WORKSHOP TWO
ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING
with Ken and Felicity


In this workshop, our final piece of assessment was to give a presentation in the form of architectural drawings on one of the two houses available. I chose the Rose Seidler house, the house is located in the north side of Sydney and is famous for being the first modern house in Australia.

We started of by drawing a 1:1 scale of a coffee mug, we were to draw the plan, section and elavation of the mug.



We then moved on to drawing perspectives, below is a two point perspective of the Rose Siedler house.

After a series of other exercises; such as learning to draw shadows accurately and the technicality of drawing actual plans, sections, elavations and perspective, our next task was the final assessment.

In order for me to better understand the formation of the house, I decided to actually visit the house itself.

Below are pictures that I took of the Rose Siedler house.

Front View

Internal view (lounge)

With a better picture of the house in mind, I created the following drawings for my house.

3D perspective (House section only)

3D Perspective (Interval view: Fire Place)
3D Perspective (Internal View: Lounge)

3D Perspective ( Outdoor Patio)

Plan

Section and Elavations

In terms of the way I presented my perspective, I took the importance of the lines and grids of the Seidler house windows as my main layout. As for the other drawings, the plan, section and elavation, I kept the linework fine and precise, and the overall layout to be simple keeping in mind that I wanted the drawings to be the dominant figure. Particularly in this workshop, I have learnt that linework is the most important feature in architectural drawings. I rather challenged at first by the precision required for rescailing the planes that we were given, into something larger, and to out tasks purpose, with more relavant features. I also found the shadow exercise rather amusing as I have never viewed and drawn shadow like the way we were taught in the workshop. Overall, I would consider this workhop very important because being able to draw well architecturally is an important way of communicating to others, your design of an architectural space.

Material Modelling

WORKSHOP ONE:
MATERIAL MODELING
with MIMI TONG & KRIS BIRD

For rotation one of this workshop, the major assessment piece was to construct a scaled model of a familiar existing space and then transforming it radically using one or more different methods.

I decided to pick my living room. My living room is in the north face of the house (pictured below)

As you can see, the living room has two small long rectangular shaped windows that barely lets any sunlight through. The problem with this is that in winter, the living room get extremely cold because of the lack of heat and light that is allowed to come through.

In an attempt to solve this issue, I built a 1:50 model out of grey box board to better understand and to be able the analyse the space of the object more definitively.

Front View

Back view

Top View

Side View

After constructing the model, I began to play around with it and see what transformations could be posible. I started off be selectively removing walls and part of walls, but then to be able to capture maximimum sunlight into the space, I decided to remove the front and front-side walls of the space completely.

I then chose a method shown by a presentation given by the tutors, Mimi and Kris, to use linear wrapping as my dominant method of transformation. I experimented with a few types of different materials to use, such as different thicknesses of cardboard and foam board and have finally decided on balsa.

I took the technique and started to experiment with my model. (Pictured below)

I had thought that the use of plain and typical linear wrapping to be a bit boring, so I decided to keep the linear format as the roof, but more randomly and spatially placed balsa as the wall frames. In between the balsa posts will then be placed with clear acetate to represent the use of glass in real life. However, for the purpose of this model in emphasising the light transperancy theme, the acetate will be representative only and not placed inside the model.

The final product is as shown below

New Front View

New Side View

New Top View

To make things into more realistic perspective, below shows how the new transformation would impact on the house.

To better present and to communicate our model, we also had to creat a photo montage. I kept my theme of light and linear wrapping as the main design and layout for my montage.

Material Modelling was very interesting to me in the sense that I did not realise how striking and effective a 3D model can be, as compared to an image, in terms of communicating a space. I realised that a model really gives the viewer a sense of spatiality and more of an understanding of that space. The creation of a model also helped and aided my design process as it allowed me to be more creative. It was definitely easier for me to have made my final creation as a model compared to actually drawing it. I have found this workshop very useful, and I do believe that it has changed my way of understanding the importance of models in the world of architecture.