Thursday, April 23, 2009

Tree Idea

Before talking to Patrick, Jackie and I, thought we were on the right track with this cool tree formed playful product. This tree structure allowed users of the space, especially children, to create their own journey through the space. When talking to Patrick, he told us our ideas weren't connecting with each other. Later on, we would discover that his opinion would turn our project in a whole new one, that we believe is so much more! Even though at the time, we took his opinion to heart and got down on the design....I feel like that one talk, made our design what it is today.





The Tree is a structure that matures to the shape you want it too. The limbs would act as a shade for the art courtyard. The purple line on the ground is a representation of a datum line, which is poured concrete. The objects on the datum line are music interactive walls and textile interactive walls. In the back of the courtyard are the interactive walls for the art students. These interactive walls we decided to keep in our final design, with a few changes to the system.


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This is a view of tree system with out the datum lines. The awning above of the courtyard was our original idea about covering the courtyard area. However, we decided not to keep this idea and keep the courtyard area open for natural daylight to get in.



Again, this is the tree system. The product on the left is a textile product, which would allow for people to braid the fabrics or allow the wind to blow the fabric around. The green object on the right is a grass seat. The curved lines on the ceiling is the aqueduct, which leads to a water wheel in the back of the courtyard.

Sound idea/process

Jackie and I talked about how we could incorporate sound into our design. After thinking about the railroads we decided we could distribute sound off the building, create a railroad like structure and allow the user to experience a creative journey. In order to do this we started to look at sound distribution:



The blue represents sound echoing through the space! Even though we decided not to go with this design, it helped us in our process on how sound moved through the art courtyard space.





The green represents the sound moving through the whole courtyard area. We researched sound distribution and how it was displayed on charts. We then put the charted sound distribution in the courtyard.
For our final design, we chose to take footprint of the building and play with the shapes that already exists.

Railroad idea/process

Jackie and I talked about how we could incorporate railroads into our design, since railroads are associated to Guilford County. We began this process by looking at a structure that would lead you throughout the art courtyard space.





We originally got this idea from Jax Harmons thesis project! She had this really cool swirly object that represented a railroad track or circulation pathway. We were going to use it for circulation but coorespond it to the importance of the railroad systems today! We chose not to use this system for the final project.

Musical Instruments

Even though these designed products by Jackie and I didn't make it to the final product.....we still believe that these products would sell in the real world market.

The drum set was created for students to engage in sound and touch, while also learning about rhythm and the art of music.





This is for the textile section. These are random fabrics placed on a pole, so that users of the space could watch them blow in the wind, braid them, use it as a may pole, or simply experience the different tactile surfaces.


This product is for the Higher education area, where students would be able to go and research different colleges. This product was created so that the high school college center would look familiar to the middle school students.


This "cafeteria" lunch table was created to intrigue students to come outdoors and eat. Research shows that allowing students to go outside and enjoy fresh air, would allow for better concentration in the classroom and would also increase grade.

Datum Line Process

This is how we, Jackie and I, experimented with the Datum Line process before finally reaching our final product:



This picture shows how the interactive walls were connected to the datum lines at the intersections of each datum line.

This picture shows how the interactive walls would look if all the panels were pulled out. The interactive walls are on tracking systems that would allow for students to slide into place. The walls also allow for students to open up the space by pushing them all towards the datum lines.

This picture shows the curved datum lines, which represent sound distribution off off the footprint of the building. It also shows the straight datum lines, which are extended off from the original footprint of the building. These straight lines are the foundation of the ceiling structure.

The circled part, shows one the importance of the intersection points of the datum lines. Where you see the circles is where something exciting happens/an acitivity arises.

A close up of the intersection.



Circulation Process

This is how we, Jackie and I, experimented with the Circulation process before finally reaching our final product:
This is how we started laying out the different areas. We knew we wanted activities that included the importances of Greensboro, NC--art, music, textile, sculpture, and theatrical arts. We started out by looking at where datum lines crossed the art courtyard space. The picture to the right just shows the activities that are going on in the different spaces.
This is the process of each product the we created, as well as where we thought it should go in the courtyard.
The picture on the left, shows how we begin to layout our curved datum lines and the different areas/activities that went in them. The picture to the right shows how the tree systems branch would create a shading device on the datum lines. We talked about different vines such as honey suckles to give out different aromas to engage students in sound.
These next few images are playing with circulation, where different activities should take place, if the art patio should be designated to one area or if it should be the whole courtyard and also continuing to look at the sound distribution.
Circlation/looking at activities Where should the art patio go?
Sound Distribution Circuation pathways
Both of these pictures represent circulation, activities, sound distribution and looking at the art patio (Art).

Monday, April 13, 2009

Discussion with Patrick (Wed. April 8, 2009)


(image of what we were going to do--tree and datum lines)


After talking to Patrick--I realized that Jackie and I were trying to use two different elements to approach the space, instead of one. Therefore, we had tons of ideas flowing through our heads, but didn't really know how to put them together. We had been struggling with the project for a while, mostly because Jackie and I had so many ideas and good one most of the time, that we didn't know how to put all of the ideas together to make one element. Patrick gave us this idea about using the datum lines that we already had to make special moments happen at the intersections of the lines and build off of them to design the space.

Jackie and I took this new idea of the special moment and created moments where the intersections would be made into columns that held every thing together. We also made the space between each column a special moment too, but more interactive. We achieved this by creating these interactive walls with different activities for the art students to learn on.


(image of datum lines with concrete poured datum lines on ground with synthetic grass surrounding it. These datum lines represent rhythm.)



(image of top view of datum lines across ceiling plane). The curved datum lines came from the footprint of the building. The curved part of the footprint (left side of building) is where the band room is.








(image of our new interactive walls with different learning stations for the art students. These interactive walls rotates, compacts, and also locks in place for easy mobility and productive working space.)