centipede pavilion components

Centipede Pavilion Prototype III

Exhibition This Thursday in Riverwest

Growing Plastic

Its quit a painful process. you wouldn't believe the amount of water need for these plants to grow. :D

Prototype 1
The project was inspired by Aloe Vera plants, I became interested in the patterns created by aloe and then explored the possibilities of patterns in plastic tubing and ended up here.

Prototype 2 and 3 soon to come,
and also a stop motion video!

Individual Work: Jefferson's take

Architecture as embodying theme, in Thursday's New York Times, no less! I wish there was more architectural criticism of Poplar Forest, but it is a general-interest article.

"Its elegance is as stunning as its impracticalities, its form creating less a place for living than one for contemplation (which is why so many of the home’s owners, over the years, were compelled to make modifications). Restored to original form, the house reflects an ideal, lightly compromised. It seems an echo of Monticello’s larger, more polished expression of that ideal."

"Jefferson's Blind Spots and Ideals; in Brick and Mortar"

on meaning...

"I used to think of meaning as something that one had recourse to - a touchstone or base. Now it seems to me that unless an act or an occupation is suffused with meaning, constantly and indivisibly meaningful, it is meaningless. It is not possible to work at meaningless work, and then go home or to church or to a museum and experience meaning, as one would recharge a battery. The model would be the life of the primitive hunter or farmer, whose work was never divided from ceremony."

Wendell Berry
"Notes from an Absence and a Return"

This is the current state of things. The concept driving the model is the idea of the world as a framework for exploration. The images show the progression from ground level to birds eye to overview, revealing and concealing the different elements to be explored and engaged. Also, it looks like a spaceship.

Paul

                                                                                I am searching for meaning with my own project - and struggling a bit.  A thread of meaning has been flowing through my early projects this semester, but distilling it has been tricky.  I started with the choatic, but very purposeful, way that connections form in the brain; then moved to a sectional reinterpretation of that idea in order to explore its layering and spatial implications.  

As I move into serious development for project_03,  I keep coming back to this idea that space is also found within, not just around, built elements (much like the internal structure of the biological precedents we have found).  This idea is important to me because many of the most influential buildings I have inhabited in my life were those where I could climb on walls, see to the floor below, or view into another space through a "mistake" in the construction.  These spaces create a rich experience, and instill memory of the experience - a wall that can be walked on or sat in, a floor that offers a view, a ceiling that reaches down and invites you to go up and dwell.  

These images are examples of such places.  In Berlin, a memorial to the nazi book-burning offers a view below the street into the world of the "purity" the nazi party was attempting to achieve - an empty library, a place devoid of people, books, and therefore meaning.  

In Manitowoc, a view up the silo of my grandparents' old dairy farm reveals a view of imagination and exploration.  I could always imagine myself traversing the "corridor" that led to the top.  

Now that I've rambled on long enough, I ask for anyone's response.  What way(s) can you summarize my disparate thoughts on this subject?  Is there a larger, yet more concise, principle driving this project?

Architecture as:

built exploration playground?

facilitator of memory?

tectonics of imagination? 

I will post pics of my project shortly.

 

Blogs

I can't figure out how to add websites to the side list, but here are a couple Ryan O'Connor sent my way:

http://www.designalyze.com/

http://freeformfever.blogspot.com/

Paul

Cuprite

Here's my source of inspiration so far. It's cuprite, very similar to the image nick uploaded at the macro scale, and shown here at the micro scale. I'd like to incorporate the dynamic/chaotic/formal qualities of its crystalline structure into my final enclosure system, not quite sure how yet. I think it would work well as a screen/aperture/filter/etc., and would represent my overall idea well. Still working on some connection/component ideas, as well as scripting. I'll upload some images as soon as I get some models/ideas worth exploring.

-kfox