Final Portfolio Arch 101Zhijie XiongInstrctor: Jerry Lum

FRAMING AN ATMOSPHERE

Final Project Brief

Framing The SiteThe process of chosing the correct, suitable and meaningful site is one of the most important part in the designing process, beacuse all the procedures are based on the site. Only if we get it right can we continue going on the right routinue.

And the reason why we've chosen this site as the place to but the project on is that this place provides a peaceful and enjoyful view of nature when we first see it. Generally, the site we have is near the edge of the campus, next to a hill that sperates the college with residential buildings, it is a nice place for a person to think deeply or a have a great relax.

But we have troubles also, how to make connections between tree trunks and brunches with the project? And how to zoom the view without any hurt to the site.

Work Division and Combination of Designs

Craig is willing to be the leader of the gourp, generally orgainze the whole plan and make leadership about what should we do correctly.

Jinwen is the person to keep everything in check, and the one to hold the budget.

Alice is the one to make everyone know what to do, and she teaches how should we deal with construting details.

Jacky has to keep everything in order, and make the workplace as clean as possible.

I vonlunteered to be a photographer to keep recording images when the whole team do stuffs.

In general, the final project is to gerneralize the group's designs to a whole entirty, not that kind of akward combination, but a appropriate fusion which is suitable to the site and our spirits of design. Craig's design and Jinwen's are all shaped in bench and they both explore the uses of sectioning in construction choice. And Alice's design and mine focus more on curves with tensioning. It seems to hard for four things collaborate with each other but when it comes together, our views compromise fast.

Beginning

I think the biggest challenger we had in consrtucting was how to incorporate our design with the site. In order to show the enviroment phycially, we buiilt two rough tree models and three benches with specific measurements, then we played strings with it, intially we decided to hang the strings between two tree trunks then use strings to make it look like a dome, but we gave up later because of it's hard to make it come ture without destroy of branches.

Later on, we came up with the other idea that just use one of the tree trunk to zoom a view that people can sit down and enjoy the sight of nature and enjoy that peace on the specific site.

Both of those two ideas can't get rid of the bench, trees and the sight, because they constuct the view that faces to the hill far away from the campus, and this why we call our project as Framing An Atmosphere.

Material and Beginning of Construction

The consideration of materials most focus on the lines that connects the ground and the tree trunks, and what fabric we should use.

At the beginning, we bought some ropes that seems to be strong enough to hold the fabric, then we tested it out. It worked well but finally we changed it into fishing lines, because fishing line is more invisable when compared with ropes, it provides a feel of mystery, looks like those fabric pieces were floting in the air.

For the choice in fabric, we actually had two choice, one of them was a kind of two-way streching, cheaper type, the other one is more transprancy and it's four-way streching fabric, we bought some for each one, made tests for them as well, eventually we chose to use that four-way strechting one because when sunlight came down, it's a kind of beautiful scene when look through the fabric.

Construction

After we've set up our general plan, we began constructing. First of all, we drew on the ground with wood sticks to show the layout of the bench and where should those ground sticked be placed.

We drew on the ground and we also did paper drawings to make it as accurate as possible. They we digged holes first, then put ground stickes in, they were not buried because we have to tie the lines on it.

Then it came to probelm with how to tie those strings on the tree trunk, at this point Jerry gave us a suggestion that using rubber straps as attachments to the tree would be a great choice, and we could use tight knots in tying things securely even if there was a blowing of wind.

And for the way of tying fabric on the strings, we used the other opinion from Jerry that we could buy some grommets, and applied them on the fabric and it wouldn't changed its shape that much. At the beginning,we found out that the type of grommet we bought seems too big to fit the fabric, but we realized later that we could only cut a really smaill hole there then expanded it to let the grommet in.

In order to make those knots as tight as possible, we've done reseaches, looked up on the internet, tried different knots, but we failed once and once again, beacuse those knots we've known even if the strongest one can't really tight securely on the strings. After the failure, I thought about applying several tight knots on the string rather than making knot on knot, and it worked!

Building the Bench

After set up the strings and the fabric, it came to the construction of the bench, we wanted to build a bench which its base burried with dirt, so it looks just like it grows from the field. We wanted to fill the middle of the bench with dirt and mulch found at the site, as though we put a frame around a small hill. Unbeknownst to us at the time , this style is referred to as gabion benches.

Much of the challenge was designing a bench that achieved this goal yet wasa strucurally sound,visually appealing, with a sufficient level of complexity.

The first iterations attempted to respond to the curvature in the site, bending with the hill. Unfortunately our attempts were tpp simplified, looking like a box with sheets of plexiglass for seating.

Introspection

This is my first design class, and I feel I really learn a lot from it from Jerry and all my classmates, thank you for your feedbacks.

What I've learned the most is to pay enough patience and absorb those critics, use them in improving your own designs. Preparing to ask yourself what's your purpose of your every following steps, because you have,and you must have the meaning of it, you can't just act because you want.

Some problems in our process of group working might be the attendence, efficency and too many foucus on details. Some of us are stuggling with courses, and some are toulbed with tough work, well, it shouldn't be the excuse for the whole project.

When it comes to details, it takes so much time to revise, and some of them don't really bother the appearence of the design, so in my opinion, we could have saved time on it, and this problem relates to the efficency as well.

But anyway, I love this course! Thank you all for letting me step forward, it's really a nice try.