Material Modelling

This workshop encouraged open minded experimintation. To let loose our creative self. We had to develop and rebuild our house. I live in a terrace house on a street where each one is the same. Therefore my aim was to achieve a structure that will stand out as well as rise above to get the views of the city through elevation.

I began to research and look for interesting ways to approch this. One idea that really stood out was the concept of a twisting building. I looked Eisenmann's buildings, and thought about how to effectvely achieve this idea through modelling.

I experimented with many different types of material and different stratagies to obtain my desired form of structure. I played around with card, foam board and box board, cutting them and building them up to resemble a splayed deck of cards. I experimented with balsa wood and clay.

To achieve the sense of elevation above the other terrace houses, i built simple models to place next to the twisting building to communicate that idea of scale.

These photos show how i decided to create my model. I first built a framework of balsa, wrapped wire around it to keep its shape, placed plaster on to for reinforcement and then coated it with paint.
The collage below shows the buildings internal layout in a 2D representaion.


This workshop allowed my to explore the creative side of developing an idea without all the restrictions, which opened my mind to new and wacky possibilities. I learnt how important modelling is in communicating a vision, and that there are many ways and materials to achieve this. Finally, that collage is a very effective way to show the observer your idea of layout, atmosphere etc. and is a tool i will definatly use in future projects.