Assignment 2
Map(in) Igualada

These are my first attempts at drawing without paper using plaster casting. As far as things go, it was semi-successful in determining the properties of plaster and what is too thin to remove from the cast easily. I only used simplified ideas for the initial designs. My next attempts will use slightly shallower lines in order to keep it more like a drawing and less like a model.

I really like the tactile qualities of the plaster. I had forgotten how cold it was, and how clean it can be cast, while I would appreciate some transparency in my design, I appreciate the feel of plaster over that of wax.

Assignment 2
Map(in) Igualada

These were my first attempts at drawing without paper using wire. The first example was too much like a model, and the second was too flat. 

My third attempt was successful at creating a plan of the stairs that I was happy with. Using a wire frame and thinner wire to represent walls, I created a composition that had a floating element to it. I liked the floating part, however the frame was not straight by any stretch of the imagination, and the thin wires did not hold their shape well. 

Next I tried using thicker wire for the walls. It was more successful and the frame I built was more square and linear. It still lacked something and it was suggested to make the wall lines more detailed as well, to provide more context, or to increase the scale to provide more detail. I plan on trying variations of those ideas.

Assignment 2
Map(in) Igualada


The second half of the project is "Dibujos sin Papel" or "Drawings without Paper" 


We have been reacting to the characteristics and systems of mapping as well as to understanding, through these, Pinós and Miralles' Cemetery at Igualada. We have been expressing the site and its representations by mediating them through our cultural understanding; as conditions that are recognized and structured through/as language and through/as representation. The maps and investigations are beginning to develop organizing strategies of how the the Cemetery's forms and spaces are not only read and understood but also how they are qualitatively charged. 
The next part of our investigation continues some of the representational strategies and their links with the development of the maps. It also consists, most importantly, of thinking these representations within the parameters of two-dimensionality but, in this case, as three-dimensional objecs; in other words, as drawings without paper. The attempt is not to create... "drawdels" but something that expands the possible tasks within drawings.


For this assignment, you should create two of these drawings according to the following parameters: 


          - tectonic: consisting materially of thin pieces of wire, wood, string, etc.; joints and material 
            changes should be expressed and explored; coverings (fabric, vellum, etc.) can be used; etc.
          - sterotomic: consisting materially of heavier pieces of material (wood, plaster, wax, plastiline, 
            cement, etc.) formed through single gestures (i.e. casting), through accretion (additive 
            accumulation of similar or different materials), and/or through carving




Working with wire, these were my first exercises in handling the material:

Assignment 2
Map(in) Igualada


After a few more iterations, we had a pinup to discuss how we were progressing and how to finalize the design. I was directed to draw axonometric drawings that would show similar information but executed in a different way to complement the drawing models ["drawdels"]. Also to include the plan study that made its way to the upper right hand corner of one of the sheets. 

My plan is to focus on the ones on the left hand side and try to do another iteration of them in axon, but I have to figure out what scale to do them at to get a good composition on the larger bristol sheet. 

Assignment 2
Map(in) Igualada


...more attempts:

Assignment 2
Map(in) Igualada


Architectural, urban, and landscape systems can be understood at multiple levels and through multiple valences. Primarily, the task of mapping them should give us a sense of how these systems operate, how they manipulate our movement, how they construct imaginaries of fullness and totality despite being fragmented. In moving through a building, city, or terrain, our direction is overdetermined by preexisting structures of meaning and space; by the visual, visceral, and haptic clues that guide our procession through it; by the need to reach particular destinations in efficient yet safe ways... Moving through these spaces implies moving through multiple thresholds. It implies a continuous inhabitation of liminality - of spaces undefined, in between, and constantly in flux. Because of this, thresholds are simultaneously ambiguously precise and precisely ambiguous... three dimensional, constantly transforming yet continuous organisms which, in addition, are further transformed by our (dis)placement within them ...through plans, maps, photographs, diagrams, etc., we are confronted with the necessity of translating these to correspond to our understanding of real time, space, and experience. 


From the first (this) documentation, you should develop 3 maps of the zones analyzed. These drawings should be pencil on Bristol or equivalent paper (22x30 or similar) and should express the representational intensity, inventiveness, collage strategies, and continuities of the previous investigations. Keep in mind the relationships between text and drawings. And, remember that these maps should be descriptive, productive, and will be the basis for later design strategies and solutions. 


As to the form of the maps, one of the maps should be (following Deleuze and Guattari)
          a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable,  
          reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight. 


The second should be chosen from the following list:
         perspective mapping
         sectional mapping
         axonometric (exploded, worms eye, parallel) mapping
         axonometric surface(s) unfolding mapping
        (or some combination of these)




The project is essentially to map out a threshold/transitional moment of some sort that occurs in the Igualada Cemetery. By using a semi-three dimensional map as well as drawn mappings of three dimensional nature, we're meant to explore unknown areas of the site, and reveal them. Have to stress the fact that it is mapping and not expressions of what might be there, it is to show what is actually there. I had to be steered onto that track as I hadn't gathered it from the initial explanation. 

Initial studies:

Assignment 1
Empty Space I: Books, Paper, Scissors

Continuing with the breath motif, I did sketches of what a breath might look like, using smoke and water as inspiration. 

Following a suggestion of my professor, I looked at a study of water done by Leonardo Da Vinci

Initially I used it as a template to practice with, then did an arbitrarily designed abstraction of my own, and finally decided to attempt to combine them somehow in the final draft.

Using a printout of the study, I made small vignettes over portions of it in order to capture an interesting design to work with.

Another practice round on a similarly sized book led me to believe it would be good to run with this idea.

So finally, after hours of xeroxing, cutting, taping, and then eventually carving, the final product was finished.

Assignment 1.5
Sketch Problem


During studio we were given "A Throw Of The Dice" by Mallarmé, given time to read it over a few times, and then instructed to re-arrange it in a meaningful way to us. [original form can be seen here]


Reading through the poem twice, I decided that what I got from it the most was less the meaning of the poem as an entirety but more the rhythm and cadence, and typographic arrangement that enabled one to read it a certain way. So I began cutting up the poem and re-assembling it in the same order but in a separate progression. While not the most radical idea, I just wanted to see for myself whether I could restructure it to a point where I read it in a new way, to give another iteration of a similar idea, but breaking away slightly from the horizontality of the typeset. It also took on a form of it's own outside of a book, vaguely reminding me of a mechanical room, with everything working together (both separately and all simultaneously). The part of the poem where it restated ABOLISH was where I ended this study.