SHED – WEEK 4

When given the task to design a shed that reconnects people with nature, I challenged myself to find out what happened in the past decades. I tried to understand why people keep isolating their self from something that has been so important for humanity for thousands of years. I identified many different reasons, such as the development of technology and urban environments. I learned a lot but what astonished me the most is that a lot of people experience nature and being outdoors in general as „boring“ and I decided to challenge this issue with my project. I wanted to find a solution which is tackling the problem in an optimistic way, as I believe that motivating people to spent some time outdoors and sending them on an adventure has a bigger impact on the situation than a pessimistic artwork.

The side we were given for this project, Tentsmuir forest, is a massive area which includes many different landscapes and an incredible amount of different plants and animals. The stunning scenery of this place and all the hidden details inspired me to focus on the beauty and the variety of nature. I wanted to encourage people to observe carefully, get inspired by the area and experience Tentsmuir as an adventure. The Italian universal genius Leonardo da Vinci once said that observing and understanding nature is essential to develop ourselves and our ideas and his observations of nature led to outstanding artworks and evolutionary inventions. He made numerous botanic studies and used his scientific observations for artworks such as „Sala delle Asse“ and „Vergine delle Rocce“. He deeply respected nature and its forms and studied them when working on his flying machines or church designs. Focusing on observing means for me highlighting the beauty of a place and its details and framing the view. Following this approach I created a walking journey which goes through Tentsmuir Forest and encourages to observe better. When doing that I realized that my project became much more than just a shed, I created a whole story and adventure around it.

The shed, which is also part of the walking journey, became an open structure, as I wanted to connect the surroundings with the Interior and I wanted the nature to be a part of it. Architect Arata Isozaki once planned pavilions which were completely open spaces and when he was asked why he didn’t close the space he explained that its surroundings complete the pavilion: “The ceiling is the sky, the surrounding mountain range and rocks are the walls and partitions…the floor is the desert.”, there was no need for him to isolate the space. I found this idea very inspiring and decided to follow a similar approach. I also decided to keep my design very simple as I wanted the beautiful scenery to be the centre of attention.

This project showed me how powerful Design can be. I learned that I can use architecture and my subject of study to tackle problems and to improve a given situation. I also realized that there is a story behind every building, I developed a narrative that reflected on a topic which is highly discussed nowadays. I found my own way to tackle the nature disconnect and I not only improved skills like model building or rendering, I learned how to interpret an issue in different ways and experimented with possible solutions. While designing I faced several problems, I had for example difficulties whit the shape and I also struggled with the choice of materials. In the end, however, I found a story and a design for my shelter. For future projects, I want to look more into proportions and materials.

This project showed me that what we do in our course is not only about designing an Interior, it’s about designing a whole environment. We have to understand how people move around within a space or environment, how they use it and how they interact with it and each other. It is not just about placing furniture somewhere, it is much more than that. I also learned that Interior Designer is a combination of many different disciplines, for example I need to use graphic design to communicate my ideas or product design when it is about the usage.

Throughout this module, I realized how much I enjoy being an Interior and Environmental Design student. I can express myself through it and I feel challenged every day. I enjoy the social aspects of this discipline, as it is so much about people and their needs, something I want to explore better in future. When I saw my finished project at the exhibition I was sure that this is what I want to do in the next years of my life.

SHED – WEEK 4

This weeks challenge was it to visualize my ideas in a way in which I could present and communicate them with others. I build a model, made renderings, drawings and presentation boards which I then showed at the final exhibition.

The model

I decided to build a conceptual model in 1:50 that represents my ideas and the atmosphere that I want to create rather than building a realistic model. The material pallet is simple: I used wire for the frame, a metal grid for the walkway and white fibre paper for the facade. A small person gives a reference to the scale. In order to recreate the dunes, I used a steel plate which I formed and treated with a corrosions paint.

SHED – WEEK 3

At the beginning of the week I was thinking a lot about how people could potentially use the space inside the structure and I decided to replace the ladder from my concept “Gateway to Sea” with stairs. I did that to make the design more intrigued and I liked the idea of a walkway that goes down to the water. Also, the stairs would be a good place to sit down and to enjoy the beautiful view.

SHED – WEEK 2

This week I explored different ways to change the form of the shed by using Sketchup to visualize my ideas and simultaneously building cardboard models. I tried to remove the roof, to create new openings, to change the arrangement of the walls and I also experimenting with the floor plan. While doing that I found it very helpful to use a person as a scale in order to understand the volume of my shed designs better.

SHED – WEEK 1

I started the new project with a lot of sketch models, always using the shape of a traditional shed as the starting point for my designs.  That way I wanted to explore the idea of inside-out and get familiar with the idea of creating a shed.  I didn’t want to destroy the shape of the  “normal” shed completely and I started experimenting with different openings, which could be windows or other architectural details. While doing that I was thinking a lot about the shadows that the structure could potentially create. 

In relation to the idea of creating openings I looked at the Transparent Church ( designed by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh ) in Belgium. I found the idea of making such an open space very inspiring, as it creates a strong connection between a building and its surrounding.

Page layout design for the Short Attention Reader

For this project, we had to design a double page magazine spread, which we then had to adapt to a tablet screen. We were challenged to analyze different layouts and had to find a way in which we could make images and text working well together. During this project, we learned how to use grids, hierarchies, type, and symbols to create a visually engaging layout.

At the beginning of the project I tried to understand the content of my article, the central message and the feelings and thoughts created in the readers head. As the main topic was climate change and design, I wanted to develop a thought-provoking visual language that symbolizes the topic in a serious way but also shows optimism, which is, in my opinion, one of the articles central messages.

In my primary research, I looked at visual languages associated with climate change and similar topics, I collected ideas from books and magazines and analyzed the colors, images, and layouts they used. I noticed a massive variety of designs and colors, which showed me that there are many different ways to visualize the topic. Also, I learned that symbols or symbolic images can be a very powerful tool to communicate such a topic in a sensitive way.