2x4 System Assignment

This is usually how I start my projects. It is basically a big mess of everything I think the project could be; everything I want to incorporate or just questions to investigate. Since all our projects are so open ended, laying down some ground rules for yourself provides a great leaping point so to speak from which to develop. It is something I personally have really come to rely on during the process. In this case I was really striving to make a system with no ambiguous parts; every piece was to play an integral role in controlling tensile forces. The idea of tension and potential energy was very intriguing to me such that it was my main goal for the project. The materials and scale however dictated otherwise. As far as my original idea and plan goes, I wound up deviating very very far from it, but satisfied it's requirements in a very peculiar way I hadn't thought of. This will be explained lower on the page.

These are examples of the many concept sketches I did over the last two weeks, this is the real meat and potatoes of design to me; it's where ideas are in their truest forms. It also can be the most difficult step, therefore any ground gained here is worth it's weight in gold. Many of these were inspired by buildings by Santiago Calatrava and Foster and Partners architecture firms. Their work is just amazing to me and provided great insight and ideas. The darkened sketch in the bottom of these three pages was what I eventually built, surprisingly with very few alterations to it's design in it's own right. This was after trying other ideas to no success. While on paper it didn't embody what I was striving for, it did however become a vehicle for something new all together.

Originally I was trying to make something that was totally balanced in it's forces by interaction of even the smallest pieces; what I wound up making was something that was balanced in a visual way. It wasn't until I had finished the project and stepped back that I saw how much equality of visual weight there was in it. The twisted pieces give volume to the standing series of triangles. The triangles on their side spread horizontally and the spires extend vertically. While there is nothing symmetrical about the piece, it has great balance of visually weighted parts... this would not be the case had some of the parts been omitted. This in itself was a great success and learning point for me. Also I realized that it made use of the rule of threes which we were discussing in Patrick's class, what a coincidence.

Apparently everyone thought this would make quite a church because of the spire. This fact made me like it a little less actually. The vertical height was intended to imitate a skyscraper, maybe it just wasn't tall enough for that. I love this shot though, it really distorts the distance.This is another cool one that plays with perspective.
I can hear Tommy's voice now: "I wonder what it would look like on it's side?" Incidentally I had never considered this; my project was designed to be viewed from any angle while sitting upright. I will say it looks ten times cooler though at a peculiar angle, I only wish I had envisioned something like this.