Thursday, August 11, 2016

Expectation and Exploration

Hi blog readers,

Today I want to continue my discussion of creativity and how I plan to integrate it with architecture. 

The interesting thing about creating something is the product that one produces. I never fully realized the power of creativity till I actually really started making architecture models. What you expect to create and what you actually make are two different things. When you begin to create something, the process takes over. What you conceptualize initially changes over time to something that mirrors your conception. But the concept that initially sparks the creation changes. Now you have a model that is spatially developed. This development creates new ideas that wasn’t noticeable beforehand. In reality, I don’t think creating organic space will be difficult, but rather it will be an extended iterative process, where building multiple layers of the same idea will produce variety of results. Because creativity comes from many attempts of the same process.

So far, in my previous blogs, I’ve been talking about all the flaws of architecture and the creative process. But there are a lot of things that work. Just the process of creating allows the mind to explore what is possible. When I was younger, I used to go to the roof of the building that I lived in, and wonder in awe of the sheer heights of the buildings and the different types of housings that existed. It was really cool looking down and seeing how people created all sorts of things. What amazed me was the fact that people built the structures with their hands.

Everything starts step by step. Say one brick at a time. Or one piece of wood at a time. The processes that we use in architecture usually starts one piece at a time. One of my favorite models is the Wissahickon model that I worked on. I was really captivated trying to mimic the shape of nature. I think I spent a month fully developing the model so that it looked like a natural rock. At the time I was just trying to copy the curve of the rocks. But now I realize, this simple process of one piece at a time allowed me to create something that was even better than the rock that I was basing it off from.

Wissahickon Model

For this blog, I’m going to attempt to recreate my Wissahickon model that I created from planer plywood. I remember spending two nonstop full weeks in the woodshop to build the model. It was a really fun experience for me even though it took a lot of time. The process of what I was doing wasn’t really difficult. But rather, creating the individual planer pieces took a lot of time. I had to measure the piece, then I had to cut it and sand it till it became the perfect size. And I did this for over 100 pieces. The simplicity of the process created a model that looked beautiful to me. I was very proud of what I created because I could see everything I did in front of me. Because of this step, I’ve decided to mimic this process throughout all the other models that I created during architecture school. Hopefully I’ll develop some cool models in the upcoming weeks.

Role of expectation

For today, I worked on developing a top view, a front view, a left view, and a right view. My expectation is to build upon the complexity that I created throughout my model. I did learn a lot every semester in architecture school. During the semesters though, I deviated from integrating the prior semesters and focused more on the main concept of each new semester. So my expectation for this exercise is to build upon what I’ve learned in architecture school and integrating it. I think if I keep exploring, my idea for what I think is organic will slowly evolve. The fun part will be the exploration.

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