Pavilion Exercise

24.03.16

Studio time was spent creating pavilions to reflect one of the stories that was written by our class throughout the week. Our story was on climate change and we chose the phrase "Hailstones as big as tennis balls" as the inspiration for our pavilion design.

The exercise was valuable to get a grasp of where we might start designing a pavilion with a specific theme, one of our first questions was to ask what made a pavilion, but after some discussion and planning we realised it was really open to interpretation and worked together to create an original and engaging idea. I really like the combination of hanging and fixed elements in the design and the idea we started with became clearly communicated.

This exercise was valuable to determine how to undertake a broad theme and narrow it down to something that our group could all visualise and agree on. It was really interesting moving around the different executions and seeing how others had interpreted their specific stories and I look forward to having input into several of the different pavilions as we progress. 

Wayfinding

17.03.16

In studio we formed groups and were assigned a destination to visit in Wellington. The aim of the exercise was to visit your given destination and capture different examples of way finding on the way to and around that area. Our team was given the Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul as our site and we also visited Westpac Stadium and the Railway Station to find some more examples. The exercise was enjoyable and it was interesting to note how poor some of the signage is around these city landmarks when taking a closer look. There was no theme to the way finding in specific areas and most the signage was really chaotic and difficult to interpret. We documented a range of photos on twitter but here are some examples of which signs stood out for both good and bad reasons.

Studio #2

10.03.16

After collecting large sheets of cardboard throughout the week we spent todays class creating large scaled, three dimensional letters in teams of four. We used an OHP to project the letterform onto a surface before tracing it onto card and cutting and taping it to create a 3-D object. The exercise was a lot of fun and really effective for communication and team building. My team had the letter 'F' to work with and at the end of the exercise all of the teams came together to place their letters in different spaces around the campus and eventually spell out the words 'Form & Space'. Some of the executions were really impressive and structurally sound. I found it valuable to see how various letterforms can be used to interact with different spaces and surroundings.

Text in Spaces

09.03.16

I have collected various examples of using text in space creatively. It's an interesting challenge for designers when trying to make something really clearly stand out while remaining visually engaging to users. A lot of the examples related to wayfinding which I then did some research into and found to be a really interesting topic. 

Pavilions

08.03.16

After running through the brief in our first studio I decided to look into the concept of pavilions a bit further. Once I had done some research I brainstormed what exactly defines a pavilion and collected reference imagery of some creative executions.

A Slightly Isolated Dog

03.03.16

In our first studio we had A Slightly Isolated Dog come and work with us for the majority of the session. They are a Wellington based performance company and we had them performing Jekyll and Hyde for us which is their next upcoming show. The session was really interesting and enjoyable. The performers were great at feeding off of one another and involving the audience in their set. Students were really engaged with the performance and it was hard to tell which of the stories they were telling were inspired by some truth and which were completely fiction. There were a lot of laughs and most students were comfortable participating throughout the performance. 

After they had finished we sat down together and talked about different stories of our own that involved us feeling embarrassed or ashamed. By running this exercise after the performance everyone was a lot more comfortable speaking out about their own experiences and it was interesting to hear a range of stories come from my peers. From backing into someones car and not leaving a note, to refusing to give change to the homeless with a pocket full of coins. Overall I really enjoyed the session and look forward to how this paper will progress.