STONE & FEATHERS
Spatial design for the modern nomadic professionals.
OVERVIEW
GOAL Design an urban living space fit for modern city nomads
TASKS Ideation, sketching, researching, 3d modeling
TOOLS Sketchup, Illustrator
Team Danielle Ragas, Albert Lee, Omeed Kashefi, Iris Wong
TIME Fall 2014 (3 weeks)
DETAILS
The bulding "Stone & Feathers" were created for IAT 233 on spatial design course. In the span of 3 weeks, our team of 5 members created a set of two story buildings with living quarters, lounge, and working spaces aimed for the urban nomadic professionals.
My role in this project was geared towards concept ideations, sketching, 3d modelling, and some post production work on the final buildings images, diagrams, and slides.
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INITIAL CONCEPT
During the first week, we focused on finding solid concepts that we can use as th foundation for our building's form. While taking inspirations from Steven Holl, we narrowed down our ideas from three main ones to just one, which is: Stone & Feather. To represent the concept of stone and feather, where there is a juxtaposition of weight and movement, we chose to demonstrate the idea through the building's form and materials that will be used.
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FIRST ITERATION
In the second week, we began our 3D modelling process. However, as we were too engrossed with checking off the requirements needed for the assignment, we lost the original essence of the sharpness and movement that we had in our original paper model.
Our first 3D model building turned out to be static, clunky, busy with too many features, and unfaithful to our initial ideas and values. Clearly there was a lot of work to be done, or in this case, stripped away. With 1 week left, restarting from the beginning was a risky gamble
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
We stripped away the unncessary add-ons and decided to stay true and enhance the original sleek design which emphasized on the sense of movement. The building was also designed to be taller to achieve a better visual ratio.
Environment design was also simplified to emphasize on the sharp pathways created by the negative space of the buildings.
FINAL DESIGN
In our final iteration of our project, the buildings were explicitly chosen to be made mostly of glass which gives off the feeling of feather-light weight while the cladding on the outside refers to the "stone"of our concept. Once the form felt solid, sketches were finished within the first 2 days, and exterior modeling of the buildings and interior furnishing using online 3D libraries were completed by the 5th day.
In the final 2 days, while my 3D modeling work was done, I assisted with the post production of our buildings' material and creating diagrams that best show the buildings' scale using scale figures.
 |  First material test |
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 Material adjusted |  Path in between building |
 Path in between building |  |
 |  viewport5 |
 viewport3 |  viewport4 |
 viewport6 |  viewport7 |
 viewport8 |  viewport10 |
 viewport9 |  viewport11 |
 b3(post) |  interior3 |
 entrance1 |
FINAL THOUGHTS
While the project was extremely intensive, it was one of the most influential. I realized the importance of strong concept that one should strive for during the design process. As concepts build the foundation of the project, once the fondation is solid, re-iterations and changes will be easer to make. Likewise, the ability to think openly and the willingness to start over and approach the problem from a different angle is quite important as well.
Overall, I'm very proud of our team and the result of what we achieved within a shorter time than other groups.