the vim, the vile

Golden Living

Now that’s a slogan.

Viewing the city at a 1:5000 scale, we were interested in the exploration of the city based on its influence from landscape, topography and relief that has, to some extent, resulted with an invisible fan of axises spreading out towards the harbour waters. It was then that the interest got pin pointed towards where these existing axises meet - the pivot points of the fans… What sort of functions/activities are happening there? Were they spontaneously created or was there pure intention?

What was clearly noticeable was that wherever these pivots were at, series of urban parceling that aboded the invisible grids morphed into clusters of buildings - a clash of rigidity. same questions - spontaneous or intended ?

Zooming into a particular cluster, it revealed quaintly and ironically, Chinatown. Yes, zooming in the city of Sydney, Chinatown was seen. It was then another question sprouted - What makes chinatown, chinatown? Is it the spontaneuous/intended cluster that evokes that character of what chinatown is like? Is it the ornamentations in the fabric of Chinatown (‘archi-deco’) that exudes its characteristics?

It was concluded after some discussions that the root of this evocation of Chinatowns character is from gatherings. - people. Human presence and interaction.

Which is also why there is also thaitown and koreantown.

So it was then the attempt to extrapolate the most obvious places in the city that would create these gatherings began to take place. The first main places we wanted to explore was the demarkation of restaurants based on nationality.

The reason is purely simple. Eating is part of a person’s ritual, something that is meant to be done 3,4,5,6 times a day, enjoyable or not. People gather at restaurants. And anchoring from our notion that gatherings create the character of an area, then marking out places of gatherings would be of parallel relevance.

We had 10 panels of restaurants extracted out.

When these extractions are overlayed, what we see is a denseness in chinatown - A thick dense fusion of restaurants. It is somewhat true to say that if every restaurant were to be fully filled with people, then chinatown would ‘have the most people’. In other words, Chinatown would have the biggest potential to draw the biggest crowds.

Drawing from these it leads to a string of questions and potentials. Realising by now that the characteristics of Chinatown has already been well established and sustained characteristically, how can resturants away from this fusion be further developed and sustained like Chinatown?

I find it personally very intriguing how the sense of an area shifts through and changes as one maneuvers his way through the city, and these shifts have some form of power to influence a persons ritual/behaviour - For eg when someone walks pass a bubble tea shop in chinatown and he suddenly feels like buying bubble tea.

Lots more to talk about really.

The Conventional Code…

Week 4 - Fri Studio

“i think there’s something basic about architecture, and when the basics come together, that is when ambiguity comes about. Ambiguity doesn’t mean that it is complexed.”

The very words of Steph from yesterday’s studio.

Our approach towards the model shown yesterday was entirely different with the previous approach that resulted in the series of models on Tuesday.

When Steph spoke about creating spaces with 8 points (and combining sets of 5s) last Friday, my understanding of it was initially about the focus on spatial quality.. caused by the interplay of a set of binaries and compositional strategies to create spatial hierarchies… light vs dark, mass vs voids, static vs dynamic, enlosure/openness..

Thus the series of models produced and shown on Tuesday.

The 2nd attempt was about the golden ratio growth. The approach was more about us sticking by the golden ratio rules as we pieced right angle triangles together and allowing it to grow in scale, overlap and intertwine.

The focus was more on abiding the rules and whatever space created was as it was.

Creating just one model, we showed it to Steph yesterday.

Comparing the response Steph gave on those two days (which was vastly different), it seemed that the latter approach was more inclined to what this exercise was about.

“The point of ambiguity is when things collide… the way things can be many things but looked into one thing.”

Hopefully, i’ll be able to understand what this phrase truly means as the weeks past.

It’s not because i want to do this, but i think that it is absolutely imperative i pen down thoughts about my studio class. Apparently the art of talking cock in me has died off, affecting greatly in my studies, particularly for this design subject this semester where this art has to be at performance best. 

It is week 4 and i still am, very much clueless to what dear PHD Doc Steph’s approaches and perceptions are. Direction-less. Am really hoping for these fogs of uncertainty to clear up thru the weeks.

After reading the extract from “Species of Spaces and other Pieces” by George Perec, i realised how the separation of rooms and the auto categorization of them have become so much part of the subconsciousness. Rooms, separated by walls defining the functions of a space. Should they also define our rituals/routines/way of life? The activities of the day correspond to slices of time, and to each slice of time there corresponds one room of the apartment.

It questions about the functional relationships between rooms and their definition by partitioning. If these delimiting walls were taken off - a bedroom becomes a sleeping area, a dining room becomes an eating area, will activities carried out be any different? will the quality of living be the same?

It takes a little more imagination no doubt to picture an apartment whose layout was based on the functioning of the senses. We can imagine well enough what a gustatorium might be, or an auditory, but one might wonder what a seeery might look like, or an smellery or a feelery.

It is hardly any more transgressive to conceive of a division based, no longer on circadian, but on heptadian rhythm .’ This would give us apartments of seven rooms, known respectively as the Mondayery, Tuesdayery, Wednesdayery, Thursdayery, Fridayery, Saturdayery, and Sundayery. These two last rooms, it should be observed, already exist in abundance, commercia lized under the name of ‘second’ or ‘weekend homes’ . It’s no more foolish to conceive of a room exclusively devoted to Mondays than to build vil las that are on ly used for sixty days in the year. The Mondayery could ideal ly be a laundry-room (our country forebears did their washing on Mondays) and the Tuesdayery a drawing-room(our urban forebears were happy to receive visitors on Tuesdays).

I dun hav tweet, coz there IS an app for tumblr!

Its beginning to bug me w the fact that I’ve not much work to do at all. Somethings wrong here. But what?