PEER REVIEWS.

So this thursday was peer reviews! and it was my job to crit Louie V Tong, Louis Ratana, and Lauren Collins

Louie V Tong, was looking at the idea of knowing where our food comes from, he mapped out all of the export/import routes and figured out just how many countries were involved in making one of our simple O'rorke halls meals! it was alarming! His solution was to make a community garden/stall where you could buy cooked food or look at/educate yourself on just where your food came from as it was grown. I really enjoyed this project, i thought it was well developed and the final product was superb! Well done Louie!

Louis Ratana, took a slightly different approach to the augmented reality drawings, he thought the hand done drawings to be too easy and so thought he would challenge himself and try to use the computer software to augment his reality. The images he came up with had an interesting take and seemed to contain more hidden meaning than a lot of the other images i saw, well done Louis. His 1:1 and 1:5 models had a very interesting quality and texture however i would prompt you louis to look more at scale next time to make sure the object is the size that you wanted instead of making the object and then figuring how big it would be in real life. all in all I enjoyed your work! Ka Pai.

Lauren Collins, was retrofitting a park lamp to become a speaker hub where you plugged your ipod in and then it fed out to several speakers aranged around the central pillar. I like this idea but I think it could be difficult making this in real life with the right constraints to make it work in society, with theft and noise pollution and peoples different tastes in music but great concept! Good work Lauren!

the design process!!

ok so here are the pages from my design book that i took photos of to help when you mark my work to show how i did quite a bit of work not only on second life and on my blog but also in my sketchbook!

so as you can see this was my final design concept before i entered second life,  and as you can see from the image below it has been developed quite a lot just from using second life as a design tool.

i hope you enjoyed this project!

DONE..!!!......hopefully... :P

so now i've taken away a lot of the extra walls and have just left the 2 window frames to excentuate the nature.

 here is the scripting or interactive element playing its part. "snug" "shade please" to bring the 2 elements closer to you, and "but i love the sun" and "let me out" to move them away to make it easier to sit down. the roof is to stop rain and sun, the table moves closer to remove the awkward getting in getting out picnic table situation.

as you can see here the grass and the clump of trees are framed by these hollowed prims.

i chose to stick to straight white prims and sculpties as a texture because it looks clean. and we all know that if we are going to eat our meal we want to eat it somewhere clean!

another try!!

so i think im happy with what i've done. after struggling away on second life for a while trying out different positions, different ideas and such here are some screenies i took, i placed it on the side of chirag's building so it has a location.

so as you can see i was looking at the idea of capturing the nature pockets amongst the noise of the city, i did not create these patches of trees or the greenery i simply framed it and hence presented it.
one thing i'm not entirely happy with with this building though is the "messyness" of the exterior i think my next step is to tidy it up a bit.

finally made it on!!!!

so today i made my way into studio to finally get back on second life! below are some images of what i have been up to!

so this was a few hours in archmaxthingy!!!! so my idea was to make some kindof park bench thing.
here is my frst attempt

so as you can see it was quite rigid a square whih i like but apparantly we where supposed to include a sculptie... and scripting... hahahha... hence came a head hitting desk and a bit longer before i made mak 2!

so as you can see i've used the sculptie i made and the proble is that on second life because of the interface you could't actually site on it!!! oh no!!! this was a huge huge hassle and so what i did was incorperate the flat boxlike surfaces and the smoothe flowing sculptie aswell as some scripting!

so now because of the flat sitting surface you can actually sit down also the interactive element to help out with an isse i came over because the avatar could not sit because the table was too close to the seat so you could not actually sit... now when you say "snug" the table somes closer, when you say "let me out" it extends, when you type "shade please" the roof lowers when you type "but i love the sun" it lifts.
now what i need to think about is context, where in the site i position my architecture. i think an idea could be to place my object several times all over the site around buildings an also somehow control the view.

second life is still not working on my laptop!

as you can see by the title second life is still not working on my machine however this is ok because i can just do the design on my pad then get the idea finalised then i can just spend a night at studio or hopefully judy can fix it then i can do it all at home, scripting and all!

tuesday!!!

ok, so now from talking to judy i've changed... developed my idea further and instead of doing a place of spiritual sustenance i have decided to deal with the issue of a place to eat, because in auckland city there are a lot of small shops that do takeaway meals however where do people eat them? on the go? in their cars? why not in my pod! my eating pod thing, even though the tutors are continually saying DON'T MAKE A POD DONT MAKE IT IN A PARK! i think i'm justified! haha! ok so im going to design a series of private yet open eating pods with constricted views or open views of the park, a private place to eat your takeaways that means you dont spill it all over your tie. i might also make some pods that would accommodate for more than one person. possibly 2 singles a double and then a pod for four. anyway! back to the drawing board to sketch up some ideas, hopefully i have my building sorted so i can get on second life and get it made tomorrow. maybe i could make a pod that can connect to others and by scripting set the motion so depending on what number you say then singular pods come together and react to form areas that accommodate for the right number of people.

weeeeeeekeeeend

so! this weekend was very busy with things that it probibly wasn't supposed to be busy with but, everyone needs a break to sustain ourselves and i pride myself for keeping my sunday as a day off for relaxation and going to church (witch i thoroughly enjoyed) i also managed to catch up on some sleep i had previously lost due to late nights of working! so my current thoughts after talking to judy on thursday and then pondering over the weekend is i am doing a comparison between minimal spaces, the contrast between a prison cell and a similar yet emotionally completely different small room. i have been inspired to make something lending on the idea of the japaneese tea rooms, a room with one purpose, a room with one function, drinking tea, however it is also about rehabilitaion and sustenance and revitalisation. you go to the tea room to recover, to refresh to SUSTAIN! so, i am using this concept but instead of a tea room i am thinking of making a prayer room specifically for the christian faith, prayer rooms should theoretically be redundent because according to this faith we should pray about everything and in all things trust in the lord, this means constant prayer which then lends to the idea that we should not confine prayer to a specific room. thinking of this though why do we have cafe's where people meet to talk, if we talk everywhere why do we then need to go to a special place to talk. well using this same comparison i believe that having a specific special room just for prayer it could help to povide a quiet place for a different kind of prayer aybe longer or more meditative. so. get to it then!!! haha, below are some images of Tea houses in japan

as we can see from these images, sorry about the positioning, blogger is retarded... but the tea rooms seem extremely minimal on the inside having very square and geometric. also seem to have a large connection with the outside, the walls seem light, semi transluscent, its as much about the land scaping as it is about the interior.

to capture this nature in second life could be difficult. i might instead of acutally crating this lnscape use it as a shell texture so it appears to be the view but actually isn't. now i think i will work on the floor plan / function of my room. lets get amongst it.

here are some photos from something i made to go with this idea,

my 3d sculptie!! thursday

so this was the blobby outer i was thinking of having, something like this however SL 10x10x10 max size limit is quite... limiting.. so i want to either work on NZVWG or somehow break up this 1 object into a lot of little objects.

thursday! week 4!

oh yea in studio today! had some more developements to my ideas about mental sustenance, i have decided that the most important factor for mental sustenance is communication. From his idea of communication i have decided to split communication into three main catergories. Communication with others (facebook, twitter, gmail, blogspot, youtube vlogging) communication with God (daily devotionals, prayer guides, worship music, useful encouraging bible verses) and communication with self (serenity, peace, calmness, blue skies, running rivers, slow minimalistic music.) I was thinking of showing these three types of communication or should i say presenting these three types by allowing each to transform the room into a different state, meaning that depending on what the subject types when entering the architecture depends on what of the three themes this building takes. I will try to capture this by probably making a large bloblike strcture simiar to a dome which you enter and then the different panel will be hiden inside the walls, when you say the word, (facebook or others etc.) the correct panels will come forward maing the room smaller sharper edged and also filled with information and ways to sustain yourself socially.

this is an original sketch of my first concept, the final design i imagine will have a lot more panels, somethin similar to my previous work i did with campbell and vas.

i dont want to make another squid but i do like this concept of lots of little sides creating a good complex shape that somehow takes some of the disgusting second life look out of the architecture.

Wednesday week 4!

talking about the readings, how they talk about the uses of a building and their potential uses, we might design a building as a bedroom but it could be used for limitless other things!
some interesting words he uses,
Topography is the landscape, the natural and artificial physical objects or things in a given space.
Subjective vs subject, subjective is and opinion, subject is a person or thing being observed, subjective is in looking out subject is out looking in.
Object is the building, Subject is the people coming in and out interacting with the object. we are the subjects.
Hermeneutics is to think of and to make of, the layering up of translation trying to think of and understand, going from modelling to sketching to computer generated, translating to get more understanding of your idea.
where do ideas come from? opinion? the opinion that we can do better, improve on what is there.
there is no one right answer the design question, there is only questioning constantly improving and re-visiting.

"the milieu within which performance in architecture unfolds may be called topography, indicating neither the built nor the unbuilt world, but both."

this miss-matched thing will fit that slightly better than that miss-matched thing. no righ answer only a better or worse.

ten (or more) things that architecture is (to me)
-uncertainty
-limitless
-ambiguous yet defined
-defined by experienced
-imperfect
-unpredictable
-seeking the better, never finding the best
-ever changing, alive
-harmony between the aesthetic and the technical functionality.
-subjective
-design
-developement
-modelled on what is already there
-abstraction of nature
-distilled nature
-design for comfort
-design for ease
-design for improvement

something that comes out of you and not the exact right answer, taking a romantic approach, socrates.

group 10 things, Architecture is...
...alive, has character and changes
...personal, we all interperet diffirently
...about change, "evolution"
...has an element of visual manipulation
...draws on sensory information
...is reflective of our culture
...architects need to be aware of their own intentionality
...human intervention
...relational

SUSTENANCE!!
mental sustenance, emotional sustenance, spiritual sustenance,
what sustains e mentally spiritually emotionally,
-reading the bible (daily)
-praying (daily)
-call from caitlin (daily)
-"hi's" from people (daily)
-social situations (daily)
-gym (5x a week)
-church on sunday (weekly)
-mealtime converstion (daily)
-music
-internet
-facebook
-communication

still has to deal with the dirty end of it, toilet, sewage, shower, plumbing. do you close it away, hide it, incorporate it somehow, "but it's disgusting" why is it so disgusting, could't something that every single person does atleast once a day be designed to be normal, natural, nice??

preparation. sustenance, we sustain to prepare for our day so we are ready to do what we want.

contact with others but having everyone around all the time constant contact with everyone would be too much, need privacy from some people yet others it wouldbe fine, layers of friendship, layers of trust, how much of someone you can handle before they get too much, different barriers you have to get past, barriers of trust.
city as a machine, eat sleep eat excrete sleep machine like, sustenance can become very automatic, boring, something you just do because you have to instead of something you want to, lose the magic of food, of tlaking to someone when you just do it because you know you need to, ENJOY THE SUSTAINING!!!  dont just go through the motions. perception. perspective
. you enjoy doing something if you think its your idea, if someone tells you to you dont want to. when its your idea you will.

Week 4-5 Sustenance.

Today I turned up to the lecture where Judy started describing our next design theme for the next 2 week project working on second life. Sustenance, this could be food, water, shelter, toiletries, spiritual sustenance, emotional sustenance. She told us to take a log of a 24 our period of our lives to see everything we do to sustain ourselves to give us an idea of the large amount of things we actually have to do to sustain us.

Then we watched an intersting TED talk about the history of food in the life of civilisation and how cities where developed with food in mind, then how instead of utopia we should have sistopia which is place based on food and sustenance.

I still don't fully understand what exactly I am upposed to design but this is usually the case for the first couple of days as i have to slowly struggle to depict and decipher the meaning of these projects trying realise what infact there is to do.

We were given a reading though which i plan on reding tonight and hopefully that will give me some interesting ideas.