scratch & sniff monitor

it is important to make sure that our architectural spaces evoke human senses.

why?

architecture must FEEL comfortable in order to convince people to come back.
architecture must push people to EXPERIENCE stimulating spaces that makes them want to experience MORE.

This is graphic

Thesis process

I am organizing my important words so that I can develop a thesis statement by the end of the day.
I am most confident with these set of words than my previous sets, and I have realized that I am more interested with the process of emotive architectural experiences between the
Architect : User : Observer
What does that mean? I am not sure yet. I do feel closer to a solid idea though.

Next steps :
Thesis statement (1-3-9)
Collage with textural overlay
Analysis of Haptic Architecture and relationship between sensory vs. emotive and how they can be quantified through spaces.

Pastry Vignettes, Step 2

now it's time for words (thesis proposal) and possibly incorporating haptic architecture.

Pastry vignettes, step 1

I am trying to be more regular on posting, even if I am not completely done with what I am doing, just because I think the process is going to be very important to me when I'm done.
Tomorrow, I plan to add layer #2 to these vignettes, which will be a collage overlay. This is why the sketches are simple for now, because I intend to "fill" with more layers and ideas.



I am also beginning to create ideas/words for my parameters and also methodology. I believe these should be important for all emotive architecture, but I hope to push these further with my thesis:

CONTROL
MOVEMENT
CONNECTION
BALANCE
EMOTION
EDGE
TEMPERATURE
SMELL
SOUND
LIGHT
PRIVACY
SOCIAL
RELATIONSHIP TO NATURE

A white guy, a Mexican, and an Iranian walk into a pastry shop...

Many of the comments from the past blog entry asked about the pastry-cemetery connection.
I will explain more in the coming week, but for now I wanted to study pastry shops themselves, so that I could understand it fully before trying to add to the mental hypothetical program of the cemetary/pastry shop.
I visited 3 nearby pastry shops, all of different traditional origins. The intent was to map the walk-up experience, as well as the interior, which was very interesting in itself.
Below are images of each shop, as well was sketches related to each shop.
Biased or not, I felt (and my partners felt) that the Persian shop was the most successful at visually taking advantage of the colorfulness of the pastries. Because it is a shotgun plan, it was also easy to visualize this shop as a part of a emotive experience. Although there were no climaxes or sad spots, I observed people walk through the store making faces or clapping with certain pastries that they noticed.

One of my desires of the emotive experience from the last blog entry was to " have a choice of what part of the cemetary to visit based on how they feel or how they want to feel". This parallels with the individual pastries. A person can pick what they decide to eat after visually given every choice. This works with Architecture, as well. When you walk through a house, you are given choices of what room to enter by visually seeing what is around.

Going through these shops made me understand the human scale vs. the pastries, and create correlations between the shops and unrelated spaces. I was also able to begin developing a vocabulary (parameters) for a pastry shop.

Parameters will be where my next entry takes me, as well as my idea of the pastry shop experience. (plan to post tomorrow)

Let's pretend that...

My sketch problem (one of them) for this week was to design a pastry shop as a way to consider how designing one of these would differ from a cemetary design. In Middle Eastern cultures, the cemetary and the pastry shop go hand in hand. I am taking the idea of connecting the cemetary and the pastry shop together so that:
1. a visitor will have a choice of what part of the cemetary to visit based on how they feel or how they want to feel.
2. the above ground park section will be for public use, not limited to the cemetary attendants.
3. the pastry shop will be Middle Eastern style, which will create interest from others who have no knowledge of these cultures.

I plan to visit a couple pastry shops near my house (rough, i know) in order to get some ideas on what is important for the creator/consumer in these shops. i will post my findings and floor plans tonight.

I realize that I am jumping into programming quickly, but it is more a way to study the Architectural connection with creating an emotive experience for a visitor, rather than finalizing a floorplan. The site location is not important, nor are details such as what kind of kitchen equipment are used in the back. What is more important is considering each user of this site, and finding a way to architecturally improve their experiences.

Aalto Iterations

I took the ideas that I developed with Aalto's Sanatorium and made some collage/iterations.

01-patient bedroom/balcony - relationship to sun, view, separation from medical staff

02-reading room - social, relaxing, regularity of life


03-kitchen - senses, timeless, recollection

While collaging these spaces, I also realized that the different rooms all would have doors to physically separate from the rest of the building. As important as the connection becomes, it is also just as important for the choice to diassociate. In the case of Aalto's Sanatorium, long term patients need non-medical spaces in order to have moments of normalcy.
The complicated part is to understand how to connect disassociated spaces with the rest of the building.
Connecting the unconnected? I'm back into heterotopia mode. oops.

(images also updated to voicethread in case the advisors would rather comment on there)

Aalto's Sanatorium - timeline/parallels

I will upload this image onto VT so that you guys can mark on it if you'd like.

Connections in Aalto's Sanatorium

I am looking farther into Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium, and why this building has become a piece to study for my Thesis. Architecturally speaking, authors have spoken at length about the important furniture, finishes, and details that were designed by Aalto for this project, and it should be learned from and studied. However, my draw to the Sanatorium is the fact that even though the building serves as a long-term health care facility, it holds many connections to the real world (it's hard to avoid speaking about heterotopia as I'm explaining these connections).

Before I began thinking about a typical tuberculosis patient's day in the Sanatorium, the term "connection" only had one definition for me. I felt connections would happen in between rooms, mostly in the corridor, and they all were physical connections. As I studied the daily routine, I noticed that these connections were not the important ones. It is important to design a space where a person, however disconnected with the world, can have emotional connections with their surroundings.

On my sketch below, I show a timeline/section of a Patient A (noted with red) going through his day, and the emotional connections he has in each space that is created at the Sanatorium.
I ALMOST posted the floorplan of the building so that these locations could be seen in plan, but felt that these ideas of emotional connections would be too grounded and specific if I went that route. The important piece of information for my thesis involves how people are emotionally connected to spaces, and how spaces can create emotion.

How does this space make you feel? Precedent 1 - Healing/Paimio Sanitorium by Alvar Aalto

I am drawn to the idea that Architects have the power to adjust the mood, and in turn health, of a person who experiences a controlled space. It is already known that certain colors can make people hungry (example : yellow, McDonald's). Smells can bring forth memories from the past (baked cookies, home). This can also work in Hospital environments.
In 1929, Alvar Aalto designed Paimio Sanatorium for the Tuberculosis Outbreak in Finland. Each detail of the building is created with the intention of healing the patients, and creating a sense of community. Since doctors prescribed sunshine as a treatment for the illness, Aalto made sure to situate the patient rooms to face southward. The many common rooms (group settings) were placed near the treatment rooms so that patients had ample time to create connections with each other. Aalto did not use technology as the basis of his design, but as a piece of a dialogue that the human has with his surroundings. Emphasis is made on the connections between the different wings, both by color and spatial changes. He designed each piece of furniture and detailing with great care, including a splashless, quiet sink which was placed on each side of the patient rooms. This building is successful in many ways, which is apparent in the fact that it is still used today.

WHY IS THIS INTERESTING? A buzzword in Healthcare design these days is "healing", but I believe it is overused. Building according to code doesn't create a "healing" environment. The Paimio Sanitorium could be written on a Doctor's prescription because the building itself becomes a part of the patient's treatment. It becomes more than a space where the doctor can do their work, but the building becomes a doctor in itself.

Destination : Unknown

In taking a few steps back, I am trying to really understand what makes emotive spaces, and why I think some sticks and bricks can actually become emotional catalysts for a social group.

I began by doing a massing study with some different spaces/shapes, and began to picture myself in these spaces. Each space is interesting in itself, but how do you know if it is an interesting space without moving through un-interesting spaces along the way?
In an urban landscape (Dallas, for example), often times, buildings are placed in a block, without much consideration of the surroundings. Once the boundary lines of a site are drawn, the landscape outside of these lines disappears.

What if you had a multi-block site, where there were multiple paths that could be experienced, in between buildings? The goal would be to have different architects design their own buildings, but to always bear in mind how these buildings would be affecting/connecting to the others?
I considered middle eastern bazaars, but these are still separated, even though they are connected under one roof. This would need to be an more of an experience:
You go to the coffee shop building,
grab a coffee, (decide if you want to get a sandwich or a pastry)
follow a pathway into the pastry shop,
grab a puff pastry, (decide if you want to sit or keep walking)
walk to the outdoor seating space and meet your friend, (decide if you want to hit the bank or check out a book)
walk down the stairs into a library,
etc

Almost like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books that we used to read as kids.

What type of spaces could use this type of experiential organization?
This happens all the time in a Facilities Business Plan at the scale of a building. Does this happen at a urban scale?


These are a couple things I am contemplating. I hope to do an "Exquisite Corpse" study, where I provide a realistic block, create a space, and pass the site to different architect friends and see what they can add with the one rule that each building must connect in some way.

Defining Thesis Words

Here's my first pass at the thesis words. It's not what I want, but I am moving.

Thesis as a Music Video

I am having trouble trying to visualize heterotopia without thinking of a cemetary (life & death). I don't think I want to be limited to the idea of cemetaries, but I am hoping I can make correlations between all of my ideas (through film, video, photography, paintings), and eventually, maybe in a few months, revisit the idea of if I can successfully show this through a specific architecture, or if I should keep moving in generalities and hope this idea will work through several types of buildings.
I came across this music video, and it seems to describe heterotopia in a 3 minute box. It is a mental reach, but this song/video works in layers in my head.
There is the light/dark, life/death, materials, feelings. Towards the buildup of the video, there is the idea of illusion vs. reality with the bucket of paint/person standing.

Musically, this song feels like circulation through a space -
it begins with a methodical quick stroll
then slowly anxiety is introduced with the high pitched strings
the walk is slowed down to a gut wrenching pause into a space full of tight spaces and dark corners
and the end climaxes with natural light slowly entering the space, and finding the exit door.
I'm wondering if maybe I should find a space that makes me feel like this and video tape it, and then study the "moments" where my emotions change.




Radiohead - Street Spirit (Fade Out)

SOTUA Word Cloud

In an attempt to refuel the brain juices (gross) I found this word cloud for the State of the Union Address. The more the words were said, the bigger the words.
This is a successful way to show the important words that were said, which becomes a great visual summary of a super long speech.


(image via http://www.wordle.net/gallery?username=NPR) which incidentally opened the word cloud for everyone, and got some funny ones (mostly with SALMON) as the focus point.

Why Do I Hate the Airport So Much?

While sitting at the DFW airport for 5 hours, I contemplated what I could do to improve the
"waiting" experience. I realized the most frustrating part was the continued sitting posture that all the chairs required you to adhere to. I noticed everyone using the seats in all sorts of manners (could be a sketch problem in itself), but never the way the chair was intended. Give the people more choices! We're paying enough for a four hour ride to deserve it!

CURIOUS, EXCITING, and PASSIONATE [architecture]

Architecture that is CURIOUS - Humans vs. Architecture
I have always been interested in understanding how buildings shape people, and also how people shape buildings. Can we create a building that creates calm? Can we create a building that creates confusion, anxiety? See below, the Alzheimer's Center by Frank Gehry. If your grandparent was an Alzheimer's patient, is this a place you would want them to go? For me, Architecture is less designing to make a statement, and more designing to improve society. Is this acceptable?

(photo via besthomesdesign.com)

Architecture that is EXCITING - Construction Administration
The most exciting part of architecture for me is Construction Administration. As the submittals and RFIs come to my desk at work, I know that my decisions on what manufacturer of roof shingles, or what handrail finish is being used is being built hundreds of miles away. As Peter Zumthor stated in Thinking Architecture, "The real core of all Architectural work lies in the act of Construction ."(11) Verbal and Constructional interactions between the Architect and the Consultants helps direct a building to become a collage of everyones' thoughts combined into one. Again, this becomes everyone's vision, not just the Architects. I suppose the AIA would look down on me for feeling this way about Architecture.

Architecture that is PASSIONATE - Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid is the Architect that I would most like to understand. She creates Architecture that looks like it is sprinting when it is anchored to the ground. Below is the Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Center. This building is not just an amoebas structure with drainage problems. It is a building whose interior forms a direct interplay with the exterior. In addition to the dramatic form itself, the building also answers the need for an intersection of pedestrian paths in the cultural district of where this is located. Hadid does not turned a blind eye to her surroundings, and for this, i feel she is a responsible Architect that evokes passion in her buildings.
(image via yankodesign.com)

Supermodel

It has proven to be a difficult exercise for me trying to model "horizontal and vertical movement" and "green roof" without being too literal. It made for a great brain workout though.


Here, I tried putting all my matchbook models together to form 1 combined model. I think if I could do this again, I might push the models together, rather than making them separate entities.

Zoom In, Crop, Zoom In Some More

This is further study on the idea of movement.
The first vignette is the process of moving up a set of monumental stairs to the roof (reward at the end of the stiars.
The second drawing was a sketch to study movement through a building (putting the pencil down, visualizing moving through a building, adding possible horizontal & vertical concept movements.
The third drawing is entertaining the concept of green walls (from Teagan's suggestion). What if...the trees continued from the ground to the walls to the roof, back down the walls, back to the ground.
This is thinking past what we know as a vegetative roof, and trying to look at it differently, without losing the intention of a vegetative roof (anarchy with rules).