300 words reflection

Architectural communication is an intererting and helpful course for first year students in architecture. This course allows students to choose three workshops from five which cover a wide range of architectural study. These workshops are all useful and develops skills of communication by assignments.

I chose fluid thoughts to action, architecture in motion and architecutral drawing for my three workshop. Firstly, fluid thoughts to action was a challenge workshop because it has high requirement for drawing skills and this was really hard for an engineering student. However, it also paid much attention on the understanding of tones, scales and whole structures. We had a trip to the Opera House in the second week. This was the first experience for me drawing from a real structure. The project for this workshop is the collaboration work with our partners such as the simultaneous drawing and then putting them together. We also did presentations for our own drawings and expressed artists' theory.

Architecture in motion was my second workshop which was really interesting of making movie from drawings and models. The key for this workshop was spacial narrative that required students to express their understanding of a space from their movie. The process of making movie was drawing, modelling, taking photos and put them together into computers. It seemed more like a movie-making than architecture but it revealled strong idea of space.

Architectural drawing was the last workshop and this helped me to learned more about professional drawings such like how to scale and how to express ideas through a more techinical way rather than free hand drawing. We did 1:1 drawing of a tea cup, a 3D drawing for a house and shading on an existing drawing as our class tasks, and, a series of architectural drawings of Rose Seidler House as our project.

Overall, arch1142 is a good beginning for architecture students to put their ideas into assignments and communicate among groups. Architecutural communication is an essential thing in architecture and this will help students to learn further in the field of architecture.

Architectural Drawing (Rose Seidler House)

3rd rotation... Architectural Drawing

2nd rotation: Architecture in Motion

These are still images for my movie.

Movie...

Reflection of Fluid Thoughts Workshop

As it is the first time for me getting in touch with workshop, everything seems new to me. Also I have no sense for drawing as I am an engineering student. To my surprise, the four-week workshop is really intresting and rewarding, and never gives me any pressure.

The drawings of using different tones and sketching in Week 1 are the beginning of this workshop, which focused more on the feeling of objects' tones and shapes rather than actual drawing. I really enjoyed it because it gave students the chance to communicat and exchange ideas.

In following three weeks, we mainly focus on the Opera House. It is really memorable for the Opera House trip as it was the first time that we learned outside the campus. Moreover, from this trip I learned how to make a proper drawing such like how to shading and how to measure. The main assignment for week 3 is the collaboration work with our partners such as the simultaneous drawing and then putting them together. We also did presentations for our own drawings and expressed artists' theory. During the process of finishing our project, I have learned how to use charcoal to make big drawing and how to understand what my partner want to express. Pat is fabulous and helped me a lot. Thanks!!!

This is just the start of converting our thoughts to action, which is an essential skill in architecture. I have getting started in this field and learned a lot from this workshop. It is a really fantastic period for this course.

The Use of Light in Architecture

Paintings by Escher

Paintings by Maynard Dixon

Paintings by Steven Holl

Paintings by Utzon

“The sun did not know how beautiful itslight was, until it was reflected off this building.”

-- Louis Kahn

In terms of the Opera House design pricinples, Utzon said, "It is important that such a large whitesculpture in the harbour setting catchesand mirrors the sky with all its variedlights, dawn to dusk, day to day,throughout the year."

“Themovement of the body as it crosses through overlapping perspectives, through the landscape and the free movement threaded between the lightgathering lenses of the new addition are the elemental connections between ourselves and architecture,” says Steven Holl, the designer of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

The similarity of these two artists' ideas is the importance of light in architecture. It could be used through many different ways, such like the reflection, transparency or creating different colours.

When this theory comes to drawing, it can be expressed by different tones by shading. Actually in my inmature drawing, I was using only simple tones to express light. There is no specific way of correct way to shading as I chose cross line on it.