Today, I visited Mimarlar Dernegi at Cinnah Caddesi, for my project (which I’ll write about it soon). I fell in love with that place so badly that I would live there for the rest of my life 🙂 So I wanted to show you guys some pictures taken today.
Monthly Archives: Ekim 2013
Comparison: “Regulating Lines” and “Music and Mathematics as Model”
In this week, our reading assignment was study the texts “Regulating Lines” in “Towards a New Architecture” written by Le Corbusier and “Music and Mathematics as Models” in “Basic Design Methods” written by Kari Jormakka and compare them in terms of both context and content.
Le Corbusier introduces the concept of regulating lines. This concept comes from the primitive man. The primitive man created a living space with using his extensions as a measurement unit. He used his arm, foot, finger etc. and created a perfect relation and proportion between himself and the place. According to Le Corbusier, using proportion creates a harmony and also gives a sense of order.
They are both agree about using proportions make the design more legible. But Le Corbusier believes in the power of proportions so much that he strongly believes golden ratio is the key to beauty. On the other hand Kari Jormakka doesn’t believe that golden ratio always reflects the beautiful one. Even though he supports the harmony which given by proportions, he doesn’t feel the same way about golden ratio. He believes that it has boundries and certain rules that it can limit the thinking process easily.
In his book, Kari Jormakka explains using music as a model. It’s about imitating the music into forms. He thinks that the notes, rhythms and pitches can refer a spatial form. And he also gives some examples about some designers who use music while designing a structure’s regulating lines.
We can say that they are both agree with the importance of the proportion. But they have their own methods for it.
Le Corbusier. “Regulating Lines”. Towards a New Architecture. New York: Dover Publication, 1986 (originally 1931). pp. 65-88
Jormakka, Kari. “Music and Mathematics as Models”. Basics Design Methods. Basel: Birkhauser, 2007. pp. 20-32
From Text to Poster
It was a joint assignment of the courses ARCH111 and ARCH 121, so it was not only designing but also a reading assignment. We need to study the text “Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture” and find some keywords from the text. Then what we need to do is prapering a poster with given sizes as an interpretation of what we understood from the text about the topics Mass and Surface. The poster should include those keywords that I mentioned, an alternative title that we are supposed to find. We also allowed to use an image in an abstract manner.
I preferred to use a black-and-white photograph for the background and I made it semi-transparent in order to make the words readable. I also used different font sizes to emphasize the important words.
Abstracting Space
This assignment has more than one step and lasts about a few weeks. In this post I’ll try to explain these steps and show my working process. At the first step, I basically drew the school building without using any measuring element or ruler. It was more like a sketch, actually.
Secondly, in a group of five we measure the building by using one friend’s arm. In other words, we use her arm as a measurement unit. Then with the help of this process, it became so much easier to abstract the building with the correct proportions.
Next step of the assignment was producing a composition of previous drawing with 3 materials. They were a model cardboard, pins and three types of acetate sheets (transparent, sanded and coloured one). In my project, different types of acetates are representing different spaces. I also tried to emphasize the hierarchy among layers by overlapping them.
At the 4th step, we were asked to rotate 90⁰ and explode our previous composition on x-axis. The materials were again acetate sheets and a wire. But it was supposed to be a single continous wire, so it was so hard to control and shape. On the other hand the wire is also a part of this composition therefore, I tried to make it simple and straight. Unfortunely the instability and softness of the wire didn’t let me. 
Here’s the final look of my work.
My First Photoshop Experience
It was the first assignment that we should prepared with Photoshop. We were asked for to design a poster in given dimensions, with the given elements: an image and a text. And it should also include a title and our name on that poster. I used Adobe Photoshop CS4. To be honest, it wasn’t as easy as it looks, because I wasn’t experienced enough and there was too many options that I couldn’t decide on which one I should use. I wanted to make it simple, therefore I used a filter on given image to simplfy its appearance and created a semi-transparent layer to make the text easy-to-read. Here’s is the one I designed.
Introducing Arch Theory
This week’s reading assignment was a text from the book “Introducing Arch Theory” by Frank Lloyd Wright. Some new terminologies are introduced such as function, purpose and continuity.
One of the terms which had mentioned in the text was function and the concepts Functionalism and Post-functionalism. Modernists saw functionalism as the function turns into a form. However post-modernists pulled function and form apart.
Richard Hill had explained the relationships among these terms in a very easy way which took my attention. He argued that “purpose” is the reason why a building exists, but the “function” is the consequence and the outcome of presence of a building. And the “use” involves the activities of that building.
According to Wright, continuity is about both form and function. The elements of building like wall, floor and ceiling should be the part of each other. I think the best example of this definition of continuity is the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
In his buildings, Frank L. Wright introduced some planes which are parallel to the earth to emphasize the third dimension. As used in the Imperial Hotel at Tokyo, I think it looks really cool.
- Wright, F. L. “Excerpts from: An American Architecture”, in: Smith, K. (ed.) Introducing Architectural Theory, New York: Routledge, 2012, pp. 184-188
Abstracting the Photograph
Our very first assignment was abstracting a photograph. As a freshman who has no idea about what abstraction is, at first the name of the assignment made me really puzzled. We were given a photograph of a really complicated and detailed building, and we tried to abstract it with parallel lines and enlarge it on a 35×50 paper.
To be honest, I really learnt a lot from this project. First of all I got used to using paralel straightedge, setsquares and different pencils. And secondly I witnessed how just a tiny little mistake can ruin lots of things, which made me realize that I should work carefully and focused. Sadly, I learnt it from the hard way but thanks to the eraser shield I fixed it right away 🙂
I spent hours trying to make this better, and I guess I achieved my goal. I got my first AA. 🙂 Here is the final view of my project.
Melis Kucuktunc 