Final project is underway! The final project has emphasis on focusing on the library addition through a "prescribed lens" to help/further the design. Personally, my lens has to do with the Library as Mind. So, initially, I began to research and think about what that would mean to me. Upon my research I stumbled across definitions of mind, such as the following;
According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary "the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills and especially reasons, or 2 - organized concsious and unconscious" I found this second definition particularly appealing. A library is a vault of knowledge containing ideas, thoughts, wills, beliefs, etc of men and woman of every race, creed, color, background, life, etc and the mind takes these complex elements and utilizes them for thoughts (allowing us to model the world around us) or memory (storing the information to be racalled later on).
The idea of the conscious and unconscious has been a concept I have been working with for the last project. In a sense, sound itself in modeled form is a struggle between the conscious and unconscious. The models from the previous post were inspiration for my first concept of this library. The radiating sound on the front of the model is juxtaposed with the straight vectors of sound. These are perceived aspects considering we are unable to see sound - although we do understand how it travels, etc.
The process sketches below are my first thoughts on applying the library and its program to the site adjacent (west) of the existing library. The idea is focusing on the interaction of the conscious and subconcious. In these terms (mostly seen in section) my thought process is that ortogonal shapes are the conscious and curves, bent planes, folding floor plates, etc - begin to suggest and generate forms of the subconcious (more affecting emotion than logic).
According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary "the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills and especially reasons, or 2 - organized concsious and unconscious" I found this second definition particularly appealing. A library is a vault of knowledge containing ideas, thoughts, wills, beliefs, etc of men and woman of every race, creed, color, background, life, etc and the mind takes these complex elements and utilizes them for thoughts (allowing us to model the world around us) or memory (storing the information to be racalled later on).
The idea of the conscious and unconscious has been a concept I have been working with for the last project. In a sense, sound itself in modeled form is a struggle between the conscious and unconscious. The models from the previous post were inspiration for my first concept of this library. The radiating sound on the front of the model is juxtaposed with the straight vectors of sound. These are perceived aspects considering we are unable to see sound - although we do understand how it travels, etc.
The process sketches below are my first thoughts on applying the library and its program to the site adjacent (west) of the existing library. The idea is focusing on the interaction of the conscious and subconcious. In these terms (mostly seen in section) my thought process is that ortogonal shapes are the conscious and curves, bent planes, folding floor plates, etc - begin to suggest and generate forms of the subconcious (more affecting emotion than logic).
interesting... although, i'm not sure how you assign particular formal characteristics to the unconscious/conscious. the other thing that is interesting about "the mind" has to do with memory. ie. how is the library a repository of memory/memories? or, another one: the mind as the brain: as the nucleus that drives the body.
ReplyDeletehow do you overlay these ideas with the previous formal experiments?
Well for my second concept, I am thinking of choosing a site within the quad adjacent to the library (to the east) and using a pure geometric volume (a cube most likely) to represent the mind in its totality - the nucleus of the "campus system". Within the cube, there will be a division between sides/or between above ground and below but yet to decide. On one side will be the stacks formally organized, orthogonal planes, etc (memory repository). There will be a transitional zone between (represented by voids much like the sound model where it was cut out) and then very irregularly shaped floors/volumes on the other side (representative of thought processes and implication of these memories). The entire cube will be encased as a whole under 1 system - unifying the two halves as whole.
ReplyDeleteinteresting... very provocative. i am curious about its relationship to the ground given the site... maybe 1/2 way (above and below ground)? a volume that floats in a crater, in other words....
ReplyDelete