”The City Image and Its Elements”, which is retrieved from “Image of the City” written by Kevin Lynch is our reading assignment for this week. According to Kevin Lynch, there are five elements that create a city image. These are paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. I thought some examples about these five elements in my city, Ankara. Let me share them.
1. Path
Turan Gunes Boulevard
2. Edge
Eymir Lake
3. District
METU Campus
4. Nodes
Kızılay Square
5. Landmark
Atakule
We learned how to produce an axonometric drawing. We used this axonometric projection technique to introduce the layers and reference lines in our exploded assignment. I’ve used 30° to 30° and draw dotted lines to emphasize the lines which are in the bottom and invisible. Here’s my work.
After we had submitted the composition we made by 4 layers, we were asked to explode those layers. This time our structural elements were 4 mm sticks. I used 7 of them, length of 20 cm for the stability. The points that the sticks are passing trough should be the spesific points in terms of the context. In other words, sticks are not only a structural element but also a part of the composition.
This is how our studio looks, after the submission. 🙂
In this assignment we were expected to superimpose the previous assignment and see those lines and planes as a whole. So we took a photocopy of the 3 layers to achieve the superimposed one.
Then we need to unfold this photocopy into 4 layers that one will be the wire, one will be the cartridge paper and two will be acetate sheets. Wire should be folded in 90°, cartridge paper should cut and we need to draw lines on aceatet sheets. With those 4 elements I created the composition below.
This week’s reading assignment was “Basic Observations” from the book Experiencing Architecture written by Steen Eiler Rasmussen. I really like the text in terms of context and content. Writer introduced a lots of opinions and prove them with some easy examples.
At the beginning of the text, writer defines architecture as a fine art. Then he starts to compare architecture with different fields of art or different professions.
For Rasmussen, architecture is not produces simply by adding plans and sections to elevations. It’s something more than that. It’s impossible to explain. Art shouldn’t be explained, it must be experienced.
Architects are like sculptures, plays with form and mass. But differently architecture is a functional art which creates practical solutions to daily problems. Sculpture is limited to the geometric shapes, no matter how abstracted it is. Since it doesn’t provide utility, it cannot be accepted as architecture.
When you look from an aeroplane, every building looks like blocks and some forms to you. But if you look from lower side, then those forms transform into a building. They took on human scale, become houses for humans again. So architecture is for human beings and formed to be lived in, not seen from the outside.
The architect is also like theatrical producer. They both plan the settings of a man’s life.
The writer mentiones a good point with a good example. Here in the picture below, is Christian IV as interpreted by a popular Danish actor riding a bicycle. The costume, of its kind one if the best ones, and the bicycle too is of the best. But they look ridiculous. In the same way, it’s impossible to take over the beautiful architecture at the past era, it just becomes wrong.
The architect also has something in common with the landscape gardener. No matter how beautiful the plants are, it will be failure if it’s not right environment for those plants. Plants are exactly like humanbeings, and the architect is also works with living things like a gardener.
“One of the prooves of good architecture is that if it is being utilized as the architect had planned.”
When compared to the other arts, architecture has a special quality of its own and great clarity.
As the writer mentioned in the example (the one with the boys playing with a ball) they experienced it. Like discovering the direction of wind by sucking finger and sticking in the air. In conclusion by a variety of experiences, man quite instinctively learns to judge things.
According to Rasmussen, to understand and experience the architecture you have to be aware of the observations of forms such as hardness, softness, heaviness, lightness…
Last week I went to Istanbul to visit my family and friends. Since the last time I’ve been there I really missed this city. Everytime I went Istanbul, it reminds me what a fascinating city it is. Actually one of the reasons of this trip was to visit a restaurant, which has opened few weeks ago. It named Jamie’s Italian and it is owned by my favourite chef Jamie Oliver. As a food nerd and a big fan of this guy, I got really excited. And I board a steamboard for the first time, the view of the city was amazing. Here are a few photos that I took, enjoy!
In this assignment, we were asked to abstract all the printing process that we had observed in Dogan Printing Center. The only material that we could use was a blue styrofoam and the only action that we could perform was cutting the strofoam in one direction. So the thinking process was the cruical part in this assignment. After this process I decided to focus on the actions which every paper experience.
As a postscript, I have to state that every gap in my project is reffering to something. The gaps are not just used for separating the units, they are also a design elements. Briefly, in my project the gaps are as important as the styrofoams.
Okay, now I can talk about my work. As I mentioned before, four metal planes create a paper. These two styrofoams and two gaps on the left hand side are 4 elements in total, which are representing the metal plates. And then next to them, there are two identical sized styrofoams and also two gaps, which are also represents the copying process of a paper. First there is only one and then the number of papers is increasing by the copying operation. Right next to it, there is a single syrofoam 2 times bigger than the left one. It represents the unify operation, because in the printing process two paper always come together like the pages of a newspaper. And the right had side one which is bigger, represents the bringing together process, like tens of pages are coming together and create a single newspaper.
The following assignment was creating 3 layers that should refer the previous project. We used 3 transparent paper and colored pencils. We were expected to draw continous lines and planes (which are also should be hatched by the continous lines). So I thought I could specify the previous actions with different aspects. I used the diversity of the type of actions as an inspiration. For example “copying, creating, and then copying again” and assign every action diffent kind of plane. I show the “copying” part with lines which are very close to each other, and “creating” with hatching. In the second layer I used the duration of the actions as an inspiration. In the long processes I used bigger planes. Third layer was about the placement of these operations. And I tried to find some reference lines, and those three layers and also the styrofoam could intersect properly. We should also reflect the idea of “rhythm” as we learned from the workshop that I mentioned before. The changings among the colors are visible and actually shows us the intersecting planes. Here is the final look.
We went to Dogan Printing Center to observe the printing process of a newspaper. By taking photos and videos, and with the short notes, we documented the whole process. It was a very complex structure by the way, but everything … Okumaya devam et
It has been a month since I begin to study architecture. In this very short term, I can easily say that being an architecture student is more complicated than I thought. Though, it is still an enjoyable process for me. So I wanted to talk about my learnings, my experiences and my lessons so far.
There are so many things that comes to my mind while thinking this process. At the very first week, after the first assignment was given (the one with the paralel lines) I really didn’t know what to do. On 6th day, I sat up all night just to finish my project. But now when I look behind, it was one of the most stupid things I’ve ever done. The assignment is not even that difficult, it doesn’t supposed to take that long. So after this, I learned that I have to use my time wisely.
Studying architecture has a different technique in comparision with the other fields. This is not about a teacher who explains what’s right or what’s wrong and a student who directly copies that fact. In fact, so far we always do discussions in the studio. Because architecture is not a science which has rights and wrongs in it, it’s more like subjective thing. So it’s very important to talk and discuss everything and espacially with everyone; not only with teachers but also with other students, maybe some other friends to understand how is it looks from outside. It really helps us to improve our work. That’s why we do the rewised versions of our project, right after all discussions.
We need to give more importance to listen and join the discussions even tough it’s not about your project. We can also learn a lot from someone else’s job by finding something in common. Basically, our learning process consists of the discussions we made.
The most important rule I’ve learn so far is: Work clean! It really changes a lot.
While making this drawing assignment, I suffered from the cleaning issue a lot. And also I realize how important working with plan is. I think it must be the first thing while starting a project. Working with plan helps you to control the progress of your work. By the help of the plan, you can know what you will have at the end, and you can be familiar with the potantial problems that you can face. So it really shorten the working process, in a healthy way. Making a sketch or preparing a diagram can also help too.
The first thing that I’ll consider next time I’ll make a model is trying it first. Trying to work with the smaller version of your project or some part of it will totally help you to get familiar with the material. And if it didn’t work, you’ll have always a chance to redo it. And you big part of your material wouldn’t be ruined.
From the poster design assignments, which I like most, I learned a lot. Everything has to connect with other things. Every little thing that you put there must have a reason. We should always have an answer for the question “Why?”.
We also have reading assignments that we need to summerize at the end of the week. Those are also as important as the other assignments we have. We have studied some parts of a few book so far such as Le Corbusier Towards a New Architecture, Jormakka, Kari Basics Design Methods. Unwin, S. Analysing Architecture. From those texts, I noticed some thoughts in common. For instance; they all talk about balance, continuity, proportion, regulating lines, primary forms and rhytm.
Regulating lines lead us to find relations between elements in a structure. Using proportions make the design more legible. Proportion gives harmony and sense of order. And the order is provided by balance. But balance is not only provided by symmetry. And so on…
About the keyword rhytym, I have lots of things to say. Last week we experienced a body music workshop with Ozgu Bulut. Beside how enjoyable it was, we learned so much from it. By the end of the workshop we have tried to make music compositions with our body and our voice. And then we split 4 groups and do the different compositions from each other. It showed us how we can create a harmony with lots of different things on top of each other.
In this assignment, we were expected to produce a photo essay around the theme ‘texture‘. I visited the specified places to observe textural differentiations caused by light & shadow conditions. Those were the main elements that must be seen in our projects.
I visited two of the given places which are Cermodern, Ulus and Mimarlar Dernegi, Cankaya. I preferred to take the photographs with the morning light, in order to make the light & shadow conditions more tangible. It was one of my learnings from the architectural photography techniques course, by the way. 🙂 Also I tried to focus on only one texture in one photograph. In other words I concentrated on just one planar element in one photo. I zoomed in, just to show the textures better and bigger. And it became easier for me to show the material qualities with this manner.
Since it was supposed to be a photo essay, I should have created a relationship among the photos. So I thought, I can take all the photographs with the same angle, which is 90°. Here is the poster I produced.
Melis Kucuktunc 