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May 22, 2006

How I Spent My Day

I spent my day today detailing the structure for this ceiling:

Which was a lot harder than it looks; it took me six hours to get it right. (The sun pattern is for midday at the winter solstice. Pretty, huh?) Amazing how something as simple as a ceiling like that can take so long to draw out and explain. Also, please note that this ceiling has some bodaciously large beams going across it, because the room is fifty feet wide. So there was a bit of engineering work to do to calculate how big the beams needed to be and if it was possible to make them the way I wanted that took half my studio time on Friday.

Technorati Tags: design, design software, engineering, model building, school

I've been grinding away on the 3d model of my museum all month, and it is finally turning into a real place, with wall thickness and circulation and all that. I feel more prepared this quarter than I have in any other studio, mainly because I am not panicking about a physical model. I do love working digitally; I feel like I can work on things longer.

One of the things that really brought this design together for me was turning the site plan into an abstract expressionist composition about sliding planes of movement, thinking about the intersection of technology, nature, and the build environment. I know that sounds all high-design of me, but it clarified the plan and use of the building in my head, and made it possible for me to move beyond a Spanish-style courtyard building, which was exactly not what I wanted to design (since we have enough of those in Southern California, thanks).

I've got three more large ceilings to detail; the one I worked on all day has the stripes on it in the plan, and is the shorter space in the overview. Now that I've done one, I think the others will go faster, because part of the problem was figuring out a fast way to make the arches come out right.

Now back to work.

Posted by ayse on 05/22/06 at 7:57 PM