Example Projects
Example- 1
Remember to include a variety of angles.
Remember to show details.
Remember to show location photos of where your design would be placed.
Remember to eliminate any distracting background elements.
Notice how the background distracts from the poster.
Remember to be consistent with typing your labels.
Detail sketches will bring your idea to life.
Remember to use color, and ink your line work for a more finished look.
Make sure your illustrations, and model work are consistent with what you state in your proposal.
Example-2
Presentation
Embellish your proposal, and include at least three facts that will strengthen your credibility as a speaker. As an example, your facts could establish why your subject matter deserves attention.
Plan to speak for at least two minutes.
Only relevant information will count towards your speaking time.
Your presentation is to be planned and rehearsed.
Do not read from a script, or the projection screen- make eye contact with the audience.
Use your blog entry as a visual to display while you are talking so the audience can see your design.
Proposal
What is your concept?
Why is it important?
What does it look like?
Where would it go?
Example proposal
Maya Ying Lin's Design Submission to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Competition
Walking through this park-like area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth - a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward, and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into the grassy site contained by the walls of the memorial we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial's walls. These names, seemingly infinite in number, convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying those individuals into a whole. For this memorial is meant not as a monument to the individual but rather, as a memorial to the men and women who died during this war, as a whole.
The memorial is composed not as an unchanging monument, but as a moving composition, to be understood as we move into and out of it; the passage itself is gradual, the descent to the origin slow, but it is at the origin that the meaning of the memorial is to be fully understood. At the intersection of these walls, on the right side, at the wall's top, is carved the date of the first death. It is followed by the names of those who have died in the war, in chronological order. These names continue on this wall, appearing to recede into the earth at the wall's end. The names resume on the left wall, as the wall emerges from the earth, continuing back to the origin, where the date of the last death is carved, at the bottom of this wall. Thus the war's beginning and end meet; the war is "complete," coming full circle, yet broken by the earth that bounds the angle's open side, and contained within the earth itself. As we turn to leave, we see these walls stretching into the distance, directing us to the
Brought to a sharp awareness of such a loss, it is up to each individual to resolve or come to terms with this loss. For death, is in the end a personal and private matter, and the area contained with this memorial is a quiet place, meant for personal reflection and private reckoning. The black granite walls, each two hundred feet long, and ten feet below ground at their lowest point (gradually ascending toward ground level) effectively act as a sound barrier, yet are of such a height and length so as not to appear threatening or enclosing. The actual area is wide and shallow, allowing for a sense of privacy, and the sunlight from the memorial's southern exposure along with the grassy park surrounding and within its walls, contribute to the serenity of the area. Thus this memorial is for those who have died, and for us to remember them.
The memorial's origin is located approximately at the center of the site; its legs each extending two hundred feet towards the
Stop- below is old.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The architecture project is a personal investigation into what is meant by community. Where do we come from? What do we connect with? What shape do we wish to mold the world in which we live?
Guidelines Spring 2012
There are a total of four reflections, four perspective
illustrations, and one model for this project.
___ Part
A- Describe
what you are memorializing, and why it is important.
___ Part
B- Display
a photograph of your 3-D model.
___ Part
C- Describe
how your design complements the concept you are memorializing.
___ Part
D- Give
specific details about your design like its size, materials made of, how
it will
relate to the environment, and information about your detail
illustration.
___ Part
E- Display
four perspective drawings that are inked and colored.
1.
front view
2.
side view
3.
bird’s eye view
4.
detail
___ Part
F-
Explain what the term community means to you, and descibe
how your
memorial design
fits into your community.
Rubric
A-
all
parts are posted in the architecture section of your blog. Reflections are well thought out sentences
that fully address the prompt.
Illustrations use perspective, inked, and are colored. The
3-D model resembles the illustrations of your design. The design complements the concept memorialized.
B-
reflections
could use elaboration use
of perspective could be more evident in the illustrations
elements
are posted somewhere other than the architecture section of your blog.
C-
missing
one of the perspective drawings
missing
one of the writing prompts
the
illustrations seem unfinished (characterized by using pencil only, or unnecessary stray marks)
3-D
model seems incomplete (not representative of the concept illustrations)
the
design submitted does not seem to speak to the concept.
D-
missing
the 3-D model
missing
more than one of the perspective illustrations
missing
more than one of the reflections.
E-
nothing
__________________________________________________________________________
Stop Here
Notes to self:
Reflection possibilities-
What does community mean to you?
Explain why your memorial is significant.
____ Title- select the largest font size the blogger compose tab
will give you.
____ Memorial Proposal. Remember to include context information
regarding what your memorial is about, why the memorial is
significant, and what it will look like.
Location-
____ the location will be stated in address form.
____ there will also be four site visit photographs. Show the area
from a variety of perspectives so that the viewer can get a feel
for the space.
Perspective illustrations- place memorial on site. Illustrations are to be done by hand.
____ birds eye view
____ looking at memorial from the perspective of someone standing in
front at a distance
____ a perspective of your choosing
3-D model- design a model based on your concept illustrations
____ photograph of model as a whole
____ photograph birds eye view
____ photograph an important detail
The Research
____ The Research- include the questions and answers to Designing a
public Memorial handout.
Perspective exercises
____ Page 27 with key points
____ Page 32
____ Page 33
____ Page 35
____ Page 76
Designing a Public Memorial- handout
here is an interesting survey
Social life- architecture and society
(excerpt)
Does Architecture Matter?
De Botton’s book is a good introduction to architectural aesthetics and the central concern of the book is the question “What is architectural beauty?” De Botton traces the history of the debate over that question in simple, concise terms. After closing the last page the reader is left with a new vocabulary with which to analyze the spaces he or she enters, and a strengthened conviction that not only does architecture matter, it matters a great deal.
De Botton comes to his thesis early on: Architecture has the power—and therefore the responsibility—to help make us the people we want to be. It can raise us up. It can push us down. It can shape our experience of life for the better or worse. He writes:
...“Of almost any building, we can ask not only that it do a certain thing, but also that it look a certain way, that it contribute to given moods of religiosity or scholarship, rusticity or modernity, commerce or domesticity. We may require it to generate a feeling of reassurance or excitement, of harmony or containment. We may hope that it will connect us to the past or stand as a symbol of the future, and we would complain, no less than we would about a malfunctioning bathroom, if this second aesthetic, expressive level of function were left unattended. … We want our buildings to shelter us and also to speak to us – to speak to us of whatever we find important and need to be reminded of.”“Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better or worse, different people in different places—and on the conviction that it is architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.”...
