Sketching con wood.

In case you don't understand Spanglish, the title means "Sketching with wood".

What is Sketch-With-Wood?

A perfect clusterfook of wood planks and beams, arranged semi-neatly in an open site at the back end of studio (brought to you by the same class that assigned the blocks of material, the sculptural base, and the 6' drawing).

What do you do with these planks and beams? Put them together, of course, using these.

The idea is to use the materials presented to your group (as well as any you'd like to buy on your own) to create an innovative, site-adapted structure, in about a week. That time frame includes planning, buying any additional materials, and the actual construction process. Some of the previous groups' structures included a ferris wheel, a swinging pirate ship (that really worked), and a fort suspended from existing I-beams. We decided to be the first to build (what we hoped would be) a working machine, based off of this idea:

You might want to mute the music.

A concept model was built, which worked similarly (it's about a minute long, the model sort of broke as it moved):

Here's a ridiculously abridged version of the process, which took place over the course of three nights, and one very early morning.

Here's a quick demonstration of the crank system, sans super-heavy legs.

And finally, the finished product.

In short, it didn't work. But our TA was impressed by the attempt; I mean, it did move a little. Haha all in all, a pretty cool project. I went to bed at 6 A.M. two nights in a row because of it, but I've napped away the pain.

Three stories of fun!

Yeah, that was stupid.

So hey, here's a new studio project (by "new" I mean last week). In three weeks, we were tasked with designing a functional, aesthetically appealing three-story apartment building for visiting professors, again in downtown State College. The program included a cafe, an art gallery, a public lecture space, a public library, a private library, a private seminar area, at least 8 private individual suites for the "professors", private and public roof terrace/solarium, and some sort of method of circulation from floor to floor (two means of egress). Also, hypothetical ADA approval was recommended.

It was HARD.

Haha, not really.

But yeah, really.

site plan:

front elevation:

rear elevation:

floor plan set:

suite plan detail:

transverse section, through cafe and libraries:

transverse section, through circulation tower:

transverse section, through shared suite courtyard into gallery:

axo section:

detail of light flow through courtyards:

detail of light flow through circ. tower:

from edge of old main lawn:

from college ave. sidewalk:

entrance atrium:

cafe space:

gallery:

public library:

private roof terrace:

rear, from calder way:

night rendering, college ave:

Admittedly, the design was pretty simplistic. However, this was nearly air-tight logistically, so that's a decent accomplishment. The next project is slightly smaller scale, a little further down College Ave, and has been designated as a "Cafe/Bookstore". Sweet deal.

Also, my group just finished our Sketch-With-Wood project for Materials. What does any of that mean? I'll post pictures later.