Roof Plan: Shading Structure & Materials

The arms of the Roof System/Shading Structure serve to create shade for visitors below.  The heat of the summer can often be offset by sitting under a tree.  When we visit this site, the trees provide a perfect place of refuge.  Below these bent forms overhead, one can wonder in and out of its protection.  At the end of each form is a 5'-0" lookout space.  In conjunction with my earlier movement mapping, each lookout is located where a particular view is location.  The north (upper) lookout views the bobbing log in the Escatawpa River.  The next arm views the shallow dunes, the next the horizon above the trees. These views can be seen on earlier blog posts.

Spinning Wall

In this study, I have taken a closer look at the wall within Movement #3.  Movement #3 (posted in July) was a space that contained a perforated wall and ramp. By moving up and down the ramp, the rays of light that penetrated the wall created a spinning effect. For the wall,  I selected several ballet poses where feet touched the ground in different manners.  I sketched over several poses trying to understand the foot's relationship to the ground.  As I sketched, I began to understand the forces as geometric patterns, that is - rectangles and squares.  The rectangles sat solid on the ground - very stable.  The squares took on the point of the foot, still stable but in a more direct manner.  For several weeks I left this study not sure where it could lead.  Then, I came across an article in Architect magazine called "Hair, Spikes, Cattail, and Turkeyfoot."  Drawn to the inclusion of grasses into the materials, I quickly made an association back to my earlier study and understood how the forms I had created earlier could become something meaningful and representational.  I sketched out several patterns of how the study of the foot/ground relationship would work.  At the wall's base, the pattern would be wider.  The metal template would be long and capable of housing two large bundles of grasses.  The next tier (corresponding with the dancer rising up off the ground position) would be less wide and long and capable of housing two smaller, higher stacked bundles of grasses.  The upper wall would be a narrow template with a single bundle of grass representational of the dancer rising up "en pointe."  As the designer, Wei-Han Vivian Lee had done, these templates would be keyed together like a puzzle.

Interpretation of Movement

Transparency

With movement comes shifting spaces, such occurs when the wind blows the leaves revealing small pockets of blue sky.  Translating this idea into a study on transparency, I took the sky spaces and created a composition.  These openings would become planting areas within my retaining wall enabling the natural habitat to move through the form. These openings would also become window-like units that would allow visitors to see and move through the rear form and landscape to the front.

Nellie's Feet

In designing the tide pool, one of the features of the natural tide pools are the recessed areas which contain water.  These are a variety of shapes.  I thought it would be interesting to use footprints as the shapes and explore the positive and negative spaces of a composition that was already done - Nellie's Feet.

Design Development: Moving Space

I watched Anna Pavlova several times last week and asked myself - how can I translate movement into architecture?  Is it the hands, feet, space, sweeping material? Drawing a blank,  I began looking at how I draw.  When I begin a picture, it is the outcome of something that stirs me emotionally; for instance, after reading the Tennyson's Lady of Shallot, I was inspired to draw the last stanza where she floats down stream to Camelot.  In regards to drawing, I first see an entire composition on the blank page.  After recounting past experience, I realized I had already created the composition - it was my first attempt - those undulating angles, bends like joints in an arm, reaching, drawing back, exploring.  What I accounted for as windows to views along the Escatawpa River was in actuality  - movement.    I began considering how to build upon the form what I had created earlier.

In regards to my site plan, though I really liked my latest site plan, compositionally balanced and accounting for almost everything in my original program -  movement spaces, tide pools, etc.  I realized it moved away from the natural setting.  It was more like a resort with pools, spa, tanning deck!  This was not my original intent.  Building upon my original form and taking parts of my latest site plan, I began creating a landscape that swirled around itself which was also the point in which, I would sit in my chair on the beach and watch my family run around me.  It seems like it is all coming together!