Studio briefs 3rd and 4th year second quarter: The Book Place, Natura Morta and MASH extended version

The Book Place, Kathy Waghorn and Jacqui Chan
The Book Place: Avondale Community library

The Place that is the library:
The developing role of the public library has created a set of new and complex challenges for those delivering library buildings and services. The libraries of the 21st century are no longer simply repositories for books. The typology of the library has transformed substantially; libraries now provide an increasing range of different services, using a multitude of media to reach a more diverse audience than ever before.

The technological revolution of the 1980s and 1990s was widely seen as sounding the death knell for the public library as we knew it. Why would people bother to borrow books when they could get all the information they needed from their home computers? These predictions have proved unfounded. Indeed, ironically the internet has proved to be one of the saviours of today’s public library. Public libraries have successfully rejuvenated themselves into places where you are as likely to meet a friend for coffee, do your homework, find out more about the history of the local community or take part in an activity, as borrow a book. Libraries can be thought of now as much as spaces for public recreation as for education.

A recent report identifies four crucial elements to today’s public library: people, programmes, partners and places. A larger number and a wider mix of people are using libraries thanks to the new and innovative programmes they are running. Having commercial partners, such as cafes or internet providers, has made the library into a different kind of place, open for longer hours and more accessible to many users. The imaginatively designed and responsive public library service can play a pivotal role in promoting greater social cohesion and a stronger sense of community and place.

The digital library:
Today, the library is more than a hushed place of learning. It has become a social place accommodating public activities. New technologies, particularly electronic media, have radically influenced the program and typology of the library.

Libraries, through their expanding use of computers and the internet, now hover between physical places and cyberspaces. As access to cyberspace will increasingly rely on our intuitive understanding of space, our libraries will become spatial hybrids, taking full advantage of these modes of existence, capitalizing on their relationship.


The Program – the hybrid library:
This project (based on a past competition brief) calls for the design of a community public library for Avondale that has both a physical and digital presence. The library will offer many of the experiences and spaces of conventional libraries yet the project also asks for designs incorporating digital technologies. The actual physical space of the library may, for instance, be extended into virtual space through the use of simple mobile phone technologies. For example, library customers may receive txt alerts to tell them a new book they may be interested in has arrived, they may then be able to txt back to reserve the book. (Consider how Amazon.com “profiles” customers and makes “personal” recommendations).

While the physical size and details of the library program are at the discretion of the designer, the minimum programmatic requirements are set. They are based on a conventional library program. The project asks you to consider “hybrid libraries” – it is up to designers to decide which program elements should be physical and which virtual. The degree to which the project is “real” or “virtual” is up to the designer. Think about ways in which you use digital technologies everyday to extend the spaces that you occupy. How could these technologies be lent to the new library typology.

Submitted proposals must present ways in which users are aware of each other and the spaces they occupy, whether these spaces are physical or electronic. Submissions should reflect aspects of libraries that transcend functional reduction: presence, place and community must be considered.

The following list of programmatic components is based on a conventional, physical library, and is provided for reference only, the program is free to interpretation.

Entrance
Circulation Counter
Information
Reference Areas
Reading Area
General Collection
Periodicals
Audio and Video (AV) Collection
Children’s Area
Café
Meeting Rooms
Administration Offices and Work Area
Bathrooms
Signage
Name

Many of the activities that normally take place in a library are not intrinsically physical and may be accomplished by electronic means. Each designer will determine to what degree the proposed library will require a physical or on-line presence but designers must establish clear relationships between the physical and virtual components of their projects.

Physical site/location:
Avondale is a western suburb of Auckland city. The design should consider the specific identity of this suburb. Site details will be given.


Project:
It is expected that the project will result in a detailed design; while time pressures will not allow for all aspects of the design to be detailed to the same degree it is expected that designers will choose certain aspects to be explored in depth in order to arrive at a level of detail for that aspect. For example, you might decide to undertake a detailed design for the children’s area or the issue desk.

Designers may choose to work in teams for all or part of the project. We would especially encourage students to work in their group of 8 to accumulate research material. As designers routinely work in cross-disciplinary teams we encourage you to look to your peers in other pathways as consultants for this project.

Timetable:
Mandatory workshop sessions – groups of 8
Group A Monday 9:30-11:30, Jacqui Chan
Group B Monday 9:30-11:30, Kathy Waghorn
Group C Tuesday 9:30-11:30, Kathy Waghorn

Drop In sessions (not mandatory)
Thursday, Kathy Waghorn
Group A 9:30-10:30
Group B 10:30-11:30
Group C 11:30-12:30

Monday 23 April 9:30-11:30 - Introduction to project
Tuesday 24 April 10:30-group research presentations
Monday 30 April 10:30 – Lecture by Sue Scott, Waitakere Public Libraries
Final crit date TBC
MONDAY 11 JUNE - END SEMESTER 1, pin-up of all semester 1 work by 9:30am

Resources:
Here are a few resources to get you started – of course this list will be come greatly expanded through the intensive group research exercise that we will undertake in the first week of the project.

Desk Copy Unitec building 1 library:
Architectural Review, libraries special issue, number 1312, June 2006
Architecture NZ no 5 2006 September October
Lushington, N. (2002). Libraries designed for users : a 21st century guide, Nolan Neal-Schuman Publishers. 022 LUS.

Projects:
http://www.ideastore.co.uk
http://www.rebargroup.org/projects/cnl/index.html
Seattle public library, OMA

Organisations
http://www.designinglibraries.org.uk

Assessment criteria: see this on the fale blog post





Natura Morta, Rachel Carley and Sue Hudson

Natura Morta: Architectures of Still Life

The Design of a House for a Still Life Painter

Introduction

“He lived and worked in a medium-sized sitting room. Its one window faced a small courtyard with trees, which we know from several pictures of his and which he painted surreptitiously, as it were, under cover of this window. Here was his narrow camp bed, an old fashioned combined desk and drawing table, a kind of bookcase, his easel. And all around, on narrow shelves, was the silent, patiently waiting arsenal of everyday objects, all of which we know from his still lifes: bottles, vessels, pitchers, kitchen utensils, tins.”
Werner Hoffman, quoted in Güse, E & Morat, F. (ed.), Giorgio Morandi: Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings, Etchings, Prestel Verlag, Munich, 1999, p.7.

“If a painter could, by a single transformation, take a three dimensional still life and paint it on a canvas into a natura morta, could it be possible for the architect (or designer) to take the natura morta of a painting and, by a single transformation, build it into a still life?”
John Hejduk in Architectures in Love, Rizzoli, New York, 1995, p.6.

The term still life (still leven) came into use in Dutch inventories around 1650 to describe a painting of a motionless model. It is only in recent years, however, that still life has been rescued from the margins of Western Art, where it had been considered one of the lesser genres. Up until the 1900’s still life’s subjects had been objects of mundane, precious or perishable provenance, which tended to be drawn from the domestic realm.

The genre has continued to fascinate both artists and architects alike. Issues regarding ‘space, scale, light, placement and profile’, which have been carefully investigated in the work of still-life artists like Giorgio Morandi, are also crucial concerns for architects and designers.

The architect Charles Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) and Amedee Ozenfant produced a collection of purist still life paintings in Paris between 1918 – 1925. Like the Cubists’ still life paintings, Le Corbusier elected to deploy subject matter found outside the domestic realm, where items such as wine bottles and glasses are combined with newspapers, pipes, chair caning and guitars to evoke the public space of bars and cafes.


Christopher Reed argues that Corbusier’s still life practice paralleled his “anti-domestic residential architecture,” de-domesticating “the accoutrements of daily life by translating them into the factories and temples his writings uphold as prototypes for the new architecture”. Under Corbusier’s direction, homely bottles and glasses are transformed into “forms recalling the marble columns of classical temples.”
Reed, C. (2000). “Domestic Strife; still life”, Tate: The Art Magazine, Issue 21, 52-3.

The late architect John Hejduk compiled a number of drawings for projects devoted to accommodating the still life painter, both alive and dead. Many of Aldo Rossi’s drawings of typological structures also convey an ambiguity of scale that makes them easily comparable to domestic objects of everyday use such as coffee pots and tea canisters (objects which Rossi designed for the Italian manufacturer Alessi).


How to get Started

Students selecting this design project are required to critically investigate the genre of still life, mining its potential for the design of innovative spaces.

Each student is required to conduct in-depth research into still life and identify their theoretical position in regard to this fascinating form of representation.

Precedent studies will be undertaken to investigate the range of subjects deployed in still life, including vanitas (memento mori), food, and objects of daily use.



Recent forays into media such as sculpture, photography and film will also be introduced. Initial design exercises for this project will be practice-based, involving the construction and documentation of still life ensembles in the studio using a variety of media. Particular attention will be paid to material selections, composition, observation, and the impact this collection of forms has on its environment. The spaces, hollows, distances and intervals between elements will be given as much consideration as the volumes themselves.

Following these projects, there will be a series of duration-based exercises investigating time and the image. These will lead to a project for the design of a house for a still life painter.

Learning Objectives

• To demonstrate an engagement with conceptual and theoretical ideas in relation to the genre of still life and thoroughly explore it’s potential to inspire innovative spatial design.

• To develop the early conceptually-driven investigations into well-crafted pieces of design.


Note: Regular attendance and participation in studio discussions and crits is essential.

References

The following books are available on Desk copy at the Building 1 library

Bryson, Norman, Looking at the Overlooked, Reaktion Books, London, 1990. (call number 758.4 BRY)

Culbert, Bill, Light Wine Things, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, 2005. (call number 770.92 CUL)

Culbert, Bill, Bill Culbert-Entre chien et loup - Afterdark, Ville De Mulhouse, France. (call number 770.92 CUL)

Hejduk, John, Adjusting Foundations, The Monacelli Press, New York, 1995. (call number 720.92 HEJ)

Paton, Justin, Jude Rae, Ouroborus Publishing, Auckland, 2006. (call number 750.92 RAE PAT)

Rowell, Margit, Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1997. (call number: 709.9 435 ROW)

Schneider, Norbet, Still Life: Still Life Painting in the Early Modern Period, Taschen, Koln, 1994. (call number 758.4 SCH)

Other Recommended Reading

Bryson, Norman, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990.

Gehl, Jan, Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space, Danish Architectural Press, Copenhagen, 2001.

Lowenthal, Anne W. (ed.), The Object as Subject: Studies in the Interpretation of Still Life, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1996.[For an extensive bibliography on still life painting refer to bibliography in above book p. 117-131.]

Reed, C. (2000). “Domestic Strife; still life,” Tate: The Art Magazine, Issue 21, 50-54.

Schapiro, Meyer, “The Apples of Cezanne: An essay on the meaning of Still Life” (1968) In Modern Art: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Selected Papers, New York, 1978 p. 1-38.

Le Corbusier

Eliel, Carol (ed.) L’Esprit nouveau: Purism in Paris 1918-1925, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 2001



John Hejduk

Hejduk, John, Architectures in Love, Rizzoli, New York, 1995.

Monographs on Giorgio Morandi

Bacchelli, Riccardo, et al, L’Opera di Giorgio Morandi, Edizioni Alfa, Bologna, 1966.

Davidson, Elizabeth (ed.), Giorgio Morandi, The Arts Council, London, 1970.

Demetrion, James T. (curator) Giorgio Morandi, Des Moines Art Centre, Des Moine, 1981.

Guse, Ernst-Gerhard & Morat, Franz Armin (ed.), Giorgio Morandi: Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings, Etchings, Prestal Verlag, Munich, 1999.

James, Phillip (curator), Giorgio Morandi: Paintings and Prints, Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1954.

Klepac, Lou (ed.), Giorgio Morandi: the dimension of inner space, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1997.

Leymare, Jean, Gli Aquarelli di Morandi, Edizioni De’Foscherari, Bologna, 1968.

Marchiori, Guiseppe, Giorgio Morandi: le incisioni, A. Ronzon Editore, Rome, 1969.

Solmi, F & Vitali L, Morandi, Rizzoli, New York, 1988.

Tavoni, Efrem, Morandi: Designi Catalogo Generale, Electa, Milan, 1994.




Project Programme: Semester 1, Weeks 8 - 14

Week 8 Mon 23 Apr 10am –12.30pm ALL GROUPS

Project Discussion, Analysis of Precedent Studies, Slide Show

Students will be required to assemble a collection of still life images from at
least two of the following subject categories for next Monday morning:


• Vanitas (memento mori)
• Perishables (Food/Flowers)
• Objects of everyday use

You will be required to analyse your chosen precedents using writing, drawing,
and modelling practices, in order to answer the following questions:

- What is still life?
- In what social and political climates were your chosen works produced?
- If they were commissioned works, what is the relation of the work to the patron/client?
- How did the artist gain access to their subjects?
- Were the objects readily available or prized?
- How does the temporal dimension influence the still life ensembles construction and representation? Are the objects subject to deterioration?

Analyse your chosen images in detail considering the medium and techniques employed in producing the pieces and how these then alter the reception of the artist’s chosen subjects. (Eg. use of painting, drawing, collage, etching, sculpture, photography, film).

Collect and analyse technical information on the work. For example, what position is the object/s recorded from, is the use of perspective ‘accurate’ or fractured, and if so, to what emotional or psychological end?
Does this work challenge any prior representations of still life, and if so how does it challenge them?
[A list of a range of still life artists is featured below. Any other artist’s whose work you can confidently argue lies within this genre, may also be used].


A Selection of Still Life Artists

Bartel Bruyn the Elder (1524) (vanitas)
Willem Claesz. Heda (1628) (vanitas)
Pieter Claesz (1630) (vanitas)
Gerhard Richter (contemporary vanitas)
Andy Warhol (contemporary vanitas)

Juan Sanchez Cotan (c. 1600) (fruit)
Willem Kalf (1662) (fruit)
Jan Davidz. De Heem (1640’s) (fruit)
Luis Melendez
Georg Flegel
Chardin
Paul Cezanne
Henri Rousseau
Pablo Picasso
Georges Braque
Henri Matisse
Paul Klee
Juan Gris
Piet Mondrian
Fernand Leger
Marcel Duchamp
Giorgio De Chirico
Carlo Carra
Giorgio Morandi
Hannah Hoch
Salvador Dali
Merret Oppenheim
Joan Miro
Rene Magritte
Frida Kahlo
Le Corbusier
Amedee Ozenfant
Andy Warhol
Domenico Gnoli
Stuart Davies

Photography
Cindy Sherman
Gerhard Richter

Sculpture
Marcel Duchamp
Joseph Cornell
Claes Oldenburg
Allan McCollum
Robert Therrien
Charles Ray
Christo

New Zealand Artists
Bill Culbert
Emily Wolf
Jude Ray
Gavin Chilcott
Rodney Fumptson



Week 9 Groups A & B Monday 9.30-12.30
Group C Tuesday 9.30-12.30

Presentation of Research, Tableau: Still Life In Situ

It has been noted that the great still-life painter Giorgio Morandi’s skill lay not in his ability as a bottle painter but in the “profusion and inexhaustibility” in which he displayed his collections of Ovaltine tins, vases, bottles, cans, jugs, and fragments of broken china. The subjects of Morandi’s still life’s were:

“Ordinary objects probably bought at the Montagnola market which he examined, arranged and rearranged on a small platform or table, placed on sheets of paper where their position was carefully marked and even the shadows sometimes drawn in to emphasise it, ready for the next days painting session. He may have made a drawing first to see how the composition would look and if the proportions and intervals pleased him. The position of his feet was then carefully marked in chalk on the floor, to remember where to stand.”
[Klepac, Lou (ed.) Giorgio Morandi: the dimension of inner space, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1997, p.13.]

Students are required to construct and document individual still life ensembles in design studio.

For this exercise you must thoughtfully collect, assemble, and then observe and record your composition from a variety of different orientations and under differing lighting conditions. You may choose to record a number of differing arrangements of these objects before you settle on your final composition. Carefully consider the material nature of the objects that you choose, and the properties of the materials. e.g. Glass, ceramic, plastic, metal (with integral or applied colour or surface detail), perishable or disposable goods.

Choosing from a range of different media (drawing, watercolour, painting, photography, animation, film) carefully document and represent your still life ensemble.

As you are documenting the work, consider the impact this collection of forms has on their surrounding environment. (I.e. the shadows they cast, the reflective or light absorbing properties of your chosen materials). The ‘spaces, hollows, distances, and intervals’ between elements should be given as much consideration as the volumes themselves.



When studying his compositions of objects in space Morandi was “speculating on every effect of the light, hour by hour, day by day”, until a moment arrived when the composition appeared perfect to Morandi in ‘it’s spaces, hollows, distances and intervals.’ Mature as fruit that has reached its peak of ripeness, as Raimondi put it.”
-Joan Lukach in Demetrion, James T. (curator) Giorgio Morandi, Des Moines Art Centre, Des Moine, 1981, p.28.

Morandi waits patiently, until he is satisfied with the spaces between the objects. He waits for negative space to reveal itself in its most perfect form, endowing space with substantiality.

For this exercise students are required to undertake a series of time-based studies, which explore your critical position in regard to the still life genre. As you investigate the relationships between time and the still life image, consider the following questions:
• How does duration intervene with the construction, representation, and reception of still life?
• How do still life artists and you, still life designers, consider the aspect of time in your complementary practices?
• What has been the impact of new technologies on the relation between time and the image?

Each student is encouraged to utilise a range of different media for this conceptual study including photography, film, animation, drawings and models.




Week 11 Groups A & B Monday 9.30-12.30
Group C Tuesday 9.30-12.30


INTERIM CRIT
Pin up: Personal record of work done to date: drawings, models, photographs, films.



Having assembled, constructed and documented your own still life constructions, you are now required to design a house for a particular still life artist. Consider your own still life practice and identify any consonances between your forays into this genre and the work of other artists. For example, do you use similar still-life subjects, compositional techniques, media, or particular vantage points to those employed by other artists?

Undertake detailed research into the artist’s background – this is critical because the artist is your client! For next Monday you will be required to identify and present in drawings and/or models, the particular events that will be staged within the artist’s dwelling.

You will also be required to present at least 3 precedent studies that look at experimental housing solutions. This will be undertaken in order to look at the manifold ways in which design practitioners challenge our pre-conceptions about what constitutes a house – just as still life artists cast light on overlooked aspects of the quotidian realm.

Week 12 Groups A & B Monday 9.30-12.30
Group C Tuesday 9.30-12.30


Pin up: Conceptual sketches and models for a House for a Still Life Artist




Each student is to design a house for a still life artist. Your design investigations into composition and duration can be used to inspire this foray into domestic design.

Each student is encouraged to produce:
Models and drawings (sections, perspectives, plans, developed surface drawings, details). This documentation should be executed in at least 3 different media.

Spaces are required for:
- Artist’s studio
- Eating
- Living
- Sleeping
- Bathing

Carefully consider how you might design your artist’s dwelling. Bear in mind some of the following questions:

• Is the house a single structure or constituted of multiple parts separated from one another?

• Is it made of monolithic materials or lightweight materials, or an amalgamation of both?

• Where do the artists’ ‘subjects’ reside?

• How are rituals of daily life poetically integrated into your programme for the house?

• How might openings and exterior frames of reference impinge upon the interior life of the artist?

• Does the site play a significant role?



Week 13 Groups A & B Monday 9.30-12.30
Group C Tuesday 9.30-12.30


Design Development of a House for a Still Life Artist

Week 14 Tues 5 June 10.30 – 1.00pm ALL STUDENTS

FINAL CRIT: Project Pin Up and Presentation

Week 15 Mon 11 June – Fri 15 June
STUDY WEEK (No Classes)

Week 16 Mon 18 June: 9.30am
Assessment Semester 1 Ends

Requirements for Presentation

Refer to “Communication” in the Assessment Criteria.
You decide on a strategy to communicate this project, how best to ‘tell the story’ of your project.

Analyse what is best communicated by drawings (sketches, plans, sections, elevations, axonometrics and isometrics, perspective views), renderings, photographs or digital presentation, a built model or a series of maquettes, and then decide how best to make use of these communicative tools.

Note: All stages of the work you undergo during the seven week programme should be retained as they will be evaluated and will contribute to your final grade for the project.

It will be important to demonstrate full engagement with the brief, thorough exploration of your ideas, and development of your design to a well resolved, carefully considered and beautifully presented final project outcome.




The MASH extended (4th years only)

If you are a year 4 student interested in pursuing the original MASH brief into the next seven week block of the semester you are required to write your own project brief.

Your brief needs to be sent to Kathy by Friday 20 April.
(kwaghorn(at)unitec.ac.nz)


The project brief you will write supporting your desire and rationale for continuing on with this needs to carefully consider what you aim to achieve within the 7 week programme. Your brief must include a timetable.

We are looking for in depth analysis and design for one tenancy (out of the original three) of your choosing. As a result of the detailed research of this “client” you need to be very specific about who they are and what their needs are. While the second part of the project asks you to focus on one tenancy from your original three, the aspects of either “synergy” or “collision” that occur between the three original tenancies must continue to be explored, as and how they involve your chosen client.

We will be looking for two distinct projects at semester end, with this second project becoming a fully developed, well-resolved and detailed interior design project.

* Please note: the continuation of this project will be allowed at the discretion of the Interior Design Programme Coordinator. Each student wishing to continue with the MASH project is required to submit their own brief (as described above). The programme coordinator will then determine whether the brief is substantial and rigorous and therefore suitable for continued work. If the programme coordinator determines that the brief submitted by a student is insubstantial the student will be required to undertake one of the other two studio projects on offer in the second quarter.



A few reminder pointers from the first brief:

Think Green: Sustainable Architecture and Design

All students continuing with this project are required to undertake further research and exploration as to how thinking around sustainability would be achieved in their specific project. In terms of the client that you choose consider how their “philosophy” would engage with the many directions that can be taken in this area.

Mt Eden’s Urban Regeneration

This part of Mt Eden developed as an early industrial zone. Parts of it are well over 100 years old. It has in recent years become an area ‘under transition’, combining medium to high density housing with low rise commercial businesses, bars and restaurants. It’s proximity to Auckland’s CBD, plus it’s adjacency to the Mt Eden train station make it an ideal place to live and/or work. It is possible to walk into the city from here, or take a short train or bus ride.

Historical Background to the Enfield Street sites

In the first part of this project little attention was given to the research and exploration of the historical qualities of these sites. All students continuing with this project should consider this aspect.