Mirror of Design. Proffesor Paul Emmons - Assignment: Folding Corners



18" x 24" FRONT

BACK

E K P H R A S I S

FOLDING CORNERS

INTERCITY BUS TERMINAL AND HOSTAL, Washington DC

Drum Studio Project Spring 2011

One of the challenges I faced while designing a bus station located in downtown DC was to bridge the relationship between the building and the surrounding urban space, especially in how to bring about a sense of privacy and uniqueness to the different components.

Hence, the purpose of my project was to showcase the debatable assumption that the sum of the parts make up the whole. Each “part”—or scene—merge corner by corner to eventually form the “whole” drawing, but each part—and the convergence with other parts through the corners—has a story of its own. Take for example perceptibility of corners. A takeaway from class is that corners, when appreciated externally, can spur uncertainty and mystery, and a sense of incoming change. Inversely, when appreciated internally, corners can spur a sense of intimacy and confidentiality. Also, a corner can be perceived an ending-point and a starting-point, much like a bus terminal.

As shown in the video, I deconstructed the bus terminal drawing into 10 scenes. Some scenes were pictures I took from a Studio class final review model, and some other scenes were renders of an earlier 3D computer drawing. I worked on each scene separately. The process started by defragmenting each scene, and evolved by cutting pieces off and gluing pieces in, by changing each scene’s texture and depth, and by adding transparencies and collaging images.

The white foam board is a representation of an impermeable and structurally strong façade. The textured layer—without the shiny skin—represents a tangible, real-life façade as is seen and felt at the pedestrian level. Sections of the scenes are collaged cut-offs of pictures from my photography class. One picture was a warm-lighted picture of my husband walking from the bathroom to the bedroom with the morning sun shining in the floor and through his legs. I used fragments of this picture to embody the warmness and humanity that flow inside, outside and throughout the building’s walls or its “skin”. The other picture was of a bright blue sky. I used it to represent and bring-about a sense of freshness about the building’s “skin”. I insert it where I thought the building needed to breath or connectivity to the exterior at an indirect level. The yellow transparency represents the window or opening from the outside looking into the building’s skin, much like how human eyes represent the window into a person’s soul. The more solid and traslucid material was used where interior spaces required privacy but would gain from the elements of the exterior world coming in. This material permits light to come in and be affected by movement–such as rain, wind, airplanes, a subject walking by, the city lights, etc. On the other hand, the city can participate by perceiving the activity from inside the building, thus provoking a feeling of unity and security.

As I played around with each scene’s planes in the 2d drawings, I became aware of their unique character. Each plane has a personality of its own, but would lack completeness and congruency without the other planes. Through corners, these planes and it’s fragments become a whole. These 10 scenes—and its planes, corners and fragments—narrate a story about the existence of the bus station. Then on, the bus station and the surrounding buildings form together a bigger story… and so on.