Cube

The infamous 10B Studio Cube Project. This was a nice break following the prior project (below), which was from hell. We began with a photo collage of "found space". For example, the assumed volume underneath a freeway overpass, or the alley way between two structures. We were to identify several implied geometric masses within the found space collage, model them digitally, manipulate them digitally, then subtract them from a given cubic volume. Once the pieces were differenced, we contoured both the positive and the negative massing, had them laser cut from 1/8" MDF, and built them on a series or four dowels. It sounds more complicated than it really was.


Photo collage
My "found space" lies beneath the Colorado Bridge in Pasadena. This is an area that I like to hike, and that offers a variety of promising spacial conditions, so I killed two birds with one stone, so to speak.

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Found spaces, modeled and manipulated in Rhino 4.0
Rendered in Maxwell


Further manipulation and cube relationship


Early contoured studies of positive and negative massing
Modeled in Rhino
Rendered in Maxwell





Physical Model
Laser cut 1/8" MDF sanded and assembled on 1/8" bass wood dowels.

Positive massing



Negative massing

Spacial Relationships and Circulation

Towards the beginning of the semester we spent a large amount of time discussing the relationships of different spacial configurations. For example, adjacent spaces or the poché, interlocking spaces, overlapping spaces, and spaces within spaces. I know. Architects love their words, and space is among the top five. I never thought it possible to hear it as much as I've heard it. We also looked at the circulation of the inhabitant and the visitor, primarily the latter, and how it reacts to space. Put simply, we talked a lot about public and private situations. We did several studies with different precedents of our choosing, then settled on one to develop diagrams and physical models. I landed on the Cape Schanck House by Jackson Clements Burrows. It's a really fun house, and worked well with this project.

A diagram series
Combined Spaces


Test renders (1)Spaces (2)Exploded




Physical Model
The walnut represents private or adjacent space and ground planes, and is fixed. The acrylic represents public interlocking space. The bass wood represents public circulation. The model was built in such a way that it can be disassembled only in the direction of the circulation, or the path of travel. In other words, where a person would enter the first space would be where the first piece of bass would be removed, thus unlocking the first acrylic piece, and so on and so forth. This one was a brain scrambler.