How is your day? How was dinner? How was the beach? How was the coffee this morning? How was the walk this morning? How many steps were from the door to here? You woke up. You smiled a lot today. Your alarm went off. You look great in blue. You took a nap. You fell asleep on a book. You had a bad dream. Your coffee was bitter this morning You went to the beach and had a fish taco. Yesterday It was sunny. A leaf dropped upon you The shower water was too hot. Lunch was too salty. Who did you see in your dreams? Cloud was high. Sky was blue. She was singing. He was sleeping on the lawn.
The physical engagement with the environment through human senses and body does not only have impacts on immediate experiences. Architecture has long been given the role of archiving civic,religious knowledge and educating the public. Therefore the long-lasting consequence of the physical engagement with architecture is unfolded through remembering places, actions, and interactions. At the scale of individual being, people won’t always be able to experience a place, an architecture with a “godeye view.” On the contrary, our understanding of a building is formed by stitching fragments of memories that are temporary, specific to certain location and time. Therefore the final form of architecture becomes a cognitive narrative scripted by our minds in a sequence of clues. These clues are external stimulus for us to create unique stories in our mind and remember, which encompasses all our senses. Arguably the most powerful clues are those visual ones.
Was, Were, Where is a small-scale furniture is designed to predict the past of users. Its primary function is a collective phone stance, but more importantly it responds to the weight of phones with a prediction about your past when a phone is placed on certain parts of the furniture, whose parts consist of an acrylic topographical base, 3D prints, pressure sensors and springs that are underneath 3D prints, and LED lights. Texts are carved out and 3D printed onto surfaces of different parts that contain LED string lights inside. However, viewers are not able to read the texts under normal light, because the texts will be covered with one-way film, which allows texts to emerge when LED is lit up. The contents was structured to be affirmative and specific, in order to lead viewers to a specific moment of time at a specific place. For example, use “your coffee was bitter this morning” instead of “did you drink coffee today.”
Nevertheless, the predictions are not meant to be true and reflect reality. They are invitations to explore the mental capability of humans to construct narratives when the Clues are not necessarily true. Users’ varying reactions to the predictions verify their conscious engagement with the objects in a mental process of wondering and questioning.
The formal language is loose and intuitive, not meant to follow any grid or functional rigidity at the initial stage of design. The design started with sketching out compositions and then popped into Rhino to dissimulate from a mere extrusion of a 2D composition. The upper half pushed and pulled with the “ground,” in order to take full advantage of the 3D printed curvilinear surfaces and harmonises with the up and down of different parts. The clean edges of 3D prints were blurred by texturizing with acrylic paint stars. Inspired by pipe head paint artists, I use a similar technique to create a texture that is both volumetric and colorful. The resultant overwhelming spikes become intriguing visual clues to draw people to touch and interact.
The project has two major components: a physical model as a “screen” and digital projections of texts from Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. The physical model is further divided into two parts: motherboard and plug-ins. The motherboard has a series of modular teeth onto which audience can fit the plug-ins. The motherboard and plug-ins are different in colors so that the projected texts will disappear on the motherboard but re-emerge when plug-ins are in position.
Now You Can See Me investigates in two primary questions:
1) how can a parallel physicality and virtuality change the experience of user;
2) how does the consequence of actions become a formal participation in public space.
The projection includes texts from 1Q84 that describes sexual scenes from a first-pective perspective. The project argues that: first, a parallel physicality and virtuality can affect the impression of an object and its relation to adjacent object in space. Areas where texts are projected receive more attention than others that are not. Second, through the action of revealing and reading, users experience a conscious realization of the consequences of their actions in the public space. The consequences are texts revealed to different degrees.
The device is a physical form of cencorship. Users are invited to interact with it in a spontaneous way. Unaware of what is hidden, users contribute to the meaning of the objects by revealing different texts.
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Winter Quarter
I began with a analog conceptual model that employed basswoods and bristol paper that spoke for a scheme resembling billboard. The condition of the site, which is skinny and long, informed the usage of linear vulumnes. The opaque paper enclosed the model and revealed certain spaces, which became graphics on the exterior facade. The basswood sticks were placed to represent three potential architectural elements: circulation, structure, and creating negative space for prgrams. Sometimes wooden sticks intersected with the
paper and created various tectonic relationships: hiding, protruding, intersecting, revealing, etc. These were as spaces that maybe become occupiable.
The opaqueness of the paper raised the question of porocity. How porous this project is? Both visually and spatially. Maybe the opaque thin paper could be reiterated in a way to be occupiable. Maybe the quality of a surface can become either more vulumetric, or somehow it can aid to enhance spatial experiences by receiving projections.
Spring Quarter
The model was developed with an interst in a more fractured and porous form that incorporated planes ro intersect, fold, and overlap. Individual living units were represented in the model. The intersection of planes created spaces inbetween screens, which defined the new boundary of a private territory. The public space became more susceptible to media contents that are not regulated. The model also helped to discover how circulation interact with different positions of screens to help further develop ways to incorporate programs.
Winter Quater
The iteration explored another formal language which focuses heavily on mass [ivemess]. Architecture as object/sculptural pieces posses sensorial qualities [light, shadow, spatiality, scale, adjacency, etc] in the negotiation of voids, solids, and compositions. The exercise is the first dive into the digital to hunderstand the scale of the project.
Winter Quarter
With this iterational exercise, I am exploring a way to populate over the site with certain modules that could be generated from overlaying 2d patterns. The technique to derive three dimensionality got inspired by projections of patterns on the top of each other to generate figures/geometries that have correlations with the original 2d patterns. This technique also achieved a result of dissimulating original geometries which became less recognizable and distinguishable from others.
The chosen 2d patterns are mostly repetative on x and y axis, with various densities and sizes. However, the projected shadows became the background of one layer and foregraound of the other. Maybe linking surfaces via diaganal projection lines, there could be potentials of affecting the volummetric readings of masses and a misreading of 2d imensional surfaces
After concentraing on creating an in a section of the road, parts are pulled apart (inspirations coming from the exploded drawing in previous page) to populate over the site, as it was the very initial intent that the pattern study would inform a way and certain types of grometries to occupy the site. Modules were color coded and the drawing is taken directly from Rhino as a process drawing to try to subdivide the clusters of geometries smaller pieces to accomodate different programs.
