Abstract
After a long day of work a man seeks a sense of relief to release all the stress and fatigue away. He enters the space and depending if he is in the state to converse and laugh with others there is a space for him but if he feels so drained that he cannot be in the presence of another. There is also a space for him to unwind and reflect on the days happenings. There is always a space for everyone, no matter what state they are in.
Here I had used the door handles on the entrance door that I had designed in past posts. Also for the toilet door.
Also the atmospheric shots leading to the sensory room and looking out from the room too.
The intervention I am hoping to design is a space where people can socialize but also have a separate space that is more calming for people to separate themselves from others and be able to connect with themselves.
I plan to create a bar but also a small room for individual healing.
I have created a bar and also a seating area at back with tables. The seating area at back is placed for people is groups to hang and talk but the bar is for people who is alone and want to start a conversation with a new person or people who came into the space in pairs. These spaces is a social space for people to unwind. To get away from the normal routine of everyday.
Then we have a separate space where it is opposite to the main space but they but have the same purpose. It is also a space to unwind and release stress and unwanted negative energies. But this space is more for individual reflection and connecting to the space in a more spiritual and personal way.
After consideration I decided to not go through with the two in the top right as after showing it to peers they said it looks like a toilet paper roll holder and that is not what I want a door handle being perceived.
This is my final decision on the door handle. I had decided on this design as it is quite simple and since it isn’t a key feature in my design it doesn’t need to be extravagant. The shape flows well with the walls I have created in the space.
Do Ho Suh has influenced my idea to create a sensory kind of room- making it more personal as his installation of ‘Home Within Home’ influenced the idea of having an individual attachment toward the space.
I am unable to make another version of the foyer in the site so I decided to think about the five senses as it’d be a way to connect to the site emotionally. I thought about which sense would be able to appreciate the site most and concluded with sight. Because of being stuck at home for a long period of time. There aren’t many spatial qualities within my home but what came and left often was shadows. Day by day it would visit and leave frequently. After observing it for a long time I have decided to make it one of the key features in the site.
I used silk thread as the foundation in hanging the beads as Do Ho Suh had used silk in his installation and I thought I could incorporate that material in my design. Also, the thinness of the material is great as it is not the feature I wanted to I had thought about using glass for the beads but they did not gibe the shadow reflection I had wanted. It was quite faint. So I had to use a more solid material. Silver beads were first thing that came to mind as it is very solid so the shadow casted will be strong.
I hadn’t used up the whole room as it the point of having the hanging beads were to cast shadows but the shadow is unable to hit the back of the room. So I had decided to keep the backing of the room empty as a dark space to observe the reflections and allow viewers to reflect on themselves too.
Toilets
Minimum size
With an estimate of having around 30 people in this space as I am hoping to design a bar with this space since it is connected with the theatre I figure it would be nice to have a space to drink and eat after watching a performance. Or even just come to the bar alone. I assume 4 or 5 toilet stalls would be okay as that is the average.
The empty space beside the stairs will be used as the restroom as it is a bar and people will be drinking and eating so there has to have a restroom. Also it is pushed in the end corner as it is not very important to the site but is accessible for visitors needs.
This is the layout I have come up with.
I after the colour research in the second week thinking about the complementary colours I had wanted to create two spaces in the site that oppose each other like the colours. I had removed the stairs leading to the third floor as I was unsure of how to use that area. After researching and finding out that the theatre seating were divided by class as the third floor is for higher class, second floor for middle class, and bottom floor for lower class. I had decided it is okay to remove those stairs as in present day there is no discriminatory towards social class. So removing the stairs would allow everyone to socialize with everyone in the same seating space. So I used that space as another space towards my design.
I had decided on the use of orange as that is the colour associated with the social environment I am trying to create with the space. Blue is the complementary colour to orange so I plan to use that colour against it. I had tested the types of oranges and blues I had found in my colour pencils to see which looked best. In conclusion I though it would be best to have the use of a darker orange and blue as I am planning to create the space into a bar.
When I was capturing the image the lighting casted on my sketch book gave me a little in site of how the colours would look with lighting casted on the coloured surfaces or without lighting.
I had used the colours I had settled on, on the site however the colours looked strange so I switched through various of tones of the colours to decide on what I would like to settle on in the end.
In the end I settled on a pastel shade of orange and blue as it seemed most fitting based on how the walls are structured. I know that the colour is quite light and not really fitting for a bar kind of setting but the colours are light and gives of a soothing calming vibe. Just as I am hoping people to feel when they enter my space.
After I had decided on the colour I had made a colour palette of colours and shapes I hope to possibly work with in my design.
After thinking carefully about the materials as well I hoped to create a space with natural materials but also combine that with contemporary materials. It is said the natural materials naturally makes people feel more comfortable and calm so it is perfect to be used in my design. However I hope to also have solid materials for my shadows and thought metals were good as they also reflect and I was going to create another space for reflection.
In Do Ho Suh’s Home within Home installation he has:
-use of the colour violet full (installation)
-darker lines for outline and details
-verical and horizontal lines
-flat surface ~ transparent ~ silk
I was unable to have the use of silk so I used a transparent blue film, a cloudy-transparent kind of plastic and wooden sticks.
I had tried to get the dark outline the Do Ho Suh conveys in his work by using the dark sticks behind the blue film. Due to the inability to use glue in this project I tried cutting holes in the film for the stick to poke through. However, due to the weak material it broke and did not work.
This first model I had used a cloudy-transparent plastic and folded in a way it can stand. with stick hoping to create that outline like Do Ho Suh used. The blue film stuck on the plastic on it’s own. (I hadn’t placed it where it is. They placed themselves there.) The blue film reflects to the bottom surface as the natural lighting enters in the space.
I tried to layer the blue film to see what effect that would make. I decided to cute a hole in each and thread it on a wire. I noticed that the more you layer the blue film the darker the blue is on the space layered.
The third model I had made I used Plastic files that is cut up. I had cut a slit in the flat plastic so they can slide into each other and the pink strip I had punched a hole in each side of strip and looped in a wire to secure the curve of the strip. The holes in the strip casts an interesting shadow when light is shone upon.
I also noticed the colour of the shadow changed based on the direction of light – in the first image the shadows reflected is the same as the plastic but in the second image the show is grey/violet.
-Shadow of blinds on the right reflected on another set of blinds.
-Source of light is entered only by the right side.
-The image is taken at 4pm but when 5pm comes the shadow has disappeared
This is the image that my group (Laura, Chloe, Emma and I) had created combining our observation images together.
We had noticed that we all had observed shadows as our texture as we are stuck at home and in normal homes not a lot of texture in contained. Shadows is the most easiest forms of texture found in a home. We had made the images black and white for the images to fit more comfortably together since one of the images has a brown colour unlike the monotonous colours of the other images.
My peers suggested that I could’ve used multiple light sources to emphasise more on the shadows -making the shadows larger. Also more colours could’ve been used. However, they commented that they could definitely see the link to the blinds I had taken earlier. Suggesting that I could also use this model and take the photo in the same position in different times throughout the day to observe the way the shadow created by the model changes.
This is my second model^
Tried and placed it on holographic card to see what shadows would appear on the card. The wooden structure is reflected off the card rather than casting a shadow. I find it very interesting with the directions of the lines as some individual lines would duplicate into two.
Artist Model’s Model Analysis
Do Ho Suh – Home Within Home
During the first session we had walked to the St James Foyer from our studio. Whilst documenting our experience our walk.
Below I have attached some sketches I had drawn:
My collage of made from the walk:
Belinda's Blog 