As of this week, the first semester of my architecture education is over. I need to say that it is fun but yet difficult and stressful. I had many sleepless nights, trying to get everything done untill the submission hour. I literally lived in studio, using my table as a bed. Despite all the difficulties, creating something new is a wonderful feeling. No matter how good or bad it is, the important thing is what you have learned until the end product which is called the final project. In this post, I will try to explain my final project, its process and its relations with the other courses.
Everything has start with the trip of Dogan Printing Center. We have observed the printing process of a newspaper and we were expected to produce an abstract structure which represents our observations. The whole abstraction idea wasn’t new to us because we had already used this strategy in our previous assignments. While producing the abstract structure with an A3 sized styrofoam, we have participated a workshop about body music. This workshop basically teach us some new concepts such as repitation and rhythm. With the help of what we have learnt at the workshop, we have produced 3 sheets of tracing paper with drawing some lines on it. Of course it has to represent of our abstract structure.
At the same time we have always weekly reading assignments on the course ARCH 121, History of Art and Architecture. We have read the Regulating Lines written by Le Corbusier. It made me realize the importance of the regulating lines and I have used those lines in my project. Then we took the next step, in this step we have got 3 materials and 4 layers. We were expected to produce a 2D design with one cartridge paper, two acetate sheets and a wire. This step was the step where we are forget about the Dogan Printing Center. In this step we have to take just the previous project and its regulating lines into consideration. It is the stage that we have split with the idea of printing process.
In the following step we have to exploded our 4 layers and produce a 3D construct. We have used stick form elements which are plastic sticks and tried to make the project stable. The gaps between the layers can be decided by us. Meanwhile in the course ARCH 111, we have made an exercise called sketch problem. We have produced little 3D models with corrugated cardboard by using some series of actions. These actions were folding, copying, extending, extruding, rotating, shifting and so on. It has been a practice for us, because we have used these actions for our 101 project. After the 3D product, we were asked for merging the layers by dissolving them with the actions that I mentioned before.
I have started this process by preparing some tracing papers that show my regulating lines and I decided everything on that piece of paper. While applying them to my project, I realized that some of them just don’t work. It was impossible to see them on the paper, so I’m glad that I had tried and saw that it fails before it’s too late. Then we experienced our first pre-jury. After that I started to shaped and named my project in order to the criticts that I learnt from the prejury. Weeks were passing through and I was still trying and trying over again. I redo my project like a dozen times. In the meantime by the whole designing process I’ve always ask myself a series of questions. “What is this?”, “Why is that here?”, “Is there a reason?”. I think it is the most helpful thing I’ve ever done to myself through the working process. At some point I’ve become a jury to myself and question everything.
My theme was Labyrinth, I chose it because my project has the continuity of planes like a labyrinth. I applied 5 actions: folding, extending, rotating, copying and moving and shaped my project into these series of actions. The last day we have change our working models into a brand new model. We were expect to create a flawless model. Then the very first jury day has arrived. It was very scary actually, I wouldn’t think that I will be that excited. But at the end of the day, the process is more important than just the final project itself. And I have learnt many things that I will use for 7 more semesters.
Melis Kucuktunc 