School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), University of British Columbia
In Class: Analyzing the textures and shapes of the site on a micro-scale, observing plans, sections and axos.
At Home: Applying the same idea of analyzing the micro-scale, this time with different fabrics in my closet, roughly sticking to the scale of my hand. Very informed by ideas from assignment 5.
IN CLASS
For the in-class exercise, I was enjoying sitting in the sun and noticing how one side of my body was much warmer than the other. I also noticed the flow of people walking by. I tried to depict the bench materiality.
In the following sketches, I looked at the material of the benches, and how the form of the bench on the opposite side allowed people to conversate more easily. Inside, I listened to the nearby sounds and counted my steps between spots.
AT HOME
For this exercise at home, I decided to try out my new ipad and learn how to use Morpholio. Pictured is a floorplan of my kitchen. I tried to depict materiality in the floorplan through the drawing, but also included photos of materials in my home. I hand-wrote the notes because I felt it was more condusive to understanding how the different materials made me feel.
I noticed this bench was quite uncomfortable for me as the seat is quite high off the ground and I’m only 163cm tall. I had to climb onto it.
The seat itself is made of wood, which could maybe be removed to make the bench a more comfortable height, though this isn’t ideal as the concrete beneath is cold, and still just a little too high up.
In thinking about why this might be the case, there’s two things that I would like to point out.
The pegs at each end of this bench are anti-skate infrastructure, and so are the bars on these other benches. This is a form of hostile architecture, which aims to prevent people from skateboarding in public areas by putting in these “skate stoppers” that stop skaters from being able to slide on certain surfaces.
The extra height on that first bench is probably for the same reason. Because of it’s location, it would be a very good ledge to use in a line with the staircase. However, because of the extra height, most people probably wouldn’t be able to get enough speed to jump that high within the small run up between the end of the stairs and the bench. If the bench was at a comfortable sitting height it would work a lot better.
From the texture of this ledge, (waxy and damaged on one side) I can tell that people have been skating here anyway. I’m surprised they didn’t make the effort to put skate stoppers here, it’s a pretty obvious potential skate spot to me.
Second, this globe is a very neat tactile learning tool, but i think it could be improved. When the sun is out, the outer layers are warmer than the inner layers. In reality the core is the warmest part of the earth. I was thinking it would be more effective if each layer was a different metal with differing heat capacities, with the innermost layer being the most heat conductive, and the outermost layer being the least conductive.
In-class exercise
At-home (road trip) exercise
This week I was on a road trip and spent some time analyzing a few material textures inside my car. The first was a fabric material on the seat, which I hadn’t really noticed before. It felt different touching with my whole hand versus tracing the stitches with one finger.
The second material was the hard/smooth leather covering the dash. At first glance the material doesn’t have much of a texture but close up it becomes more evident.
There were many mountain views throughout the road trip. Here I tried to depict the different textures created by the mountains, trees, snow, and sky.
Trying to analyze the changing views while thinking about light, texture and detail became visually over-stimulating after some time.
While in Robson Square, a few different things stood out to me in regards to materiality. The first was the lack of permeable ground material, with the two outlined areas in the collage being of the few examples of permeable/semi-permeable areas. While some of the users/activities within Robson bring colour and vibrancy into the space, the space itself lacks built-in colour as it is primarily composed of concrete and asphalt materials. It also seems to be inaccessible or perhaps not fully inclusive to all users as many benches did not have adequate backing and would not be comfortable for any prolonged periods of sitting. Similarly, there were a great number of stairs on the site, preventing full accessibility to all.
Assignment 6:
At the ElementsLab office in CIRS!
In class:
For my first drawing I tried to draw the texture of a water damaged wood column, gradually approaching and sketching in steps at different scales. I then walked up and down three small steps using a handrail with my eyes closed and analyzed what my hands feet felt.
In my second drawing I did rubbings of all the textures surrounding where I was sitting. This includes concrete, wood, stone tile, grass, and metal.
For my third drawing I walked around and felt the heat of surfaces around me, which ultimately was a map of where the sun was hitting. Some warm spots where the sun didn’t hit however were around the curves of a large metal sphere across from me, and the heat of my own body.
For my fourth drawing I was within a study room on the ground floor of Orchard Commons. I tried to draw a plan view to test how I could represent the textures of the seat cushions of the room, as well as the tables.
For my fifth drawing I sat on the fake grass field behind the Nest. I tried to represent how it felt to sit on the spot without directly drawing what was actually there. I chose to compare where I was sitting to sitting on an overturned refrigerator, and the grass felt like the abrasive side of a cheap sponge.