FORMATION | TRANSFORMATION | TRANSLATION

Home + Studio for a Modern Artist-in-Residence

Project 01

Your first project will be to design a home and studio for an artist-in-residence. The site is a strip of land on the northeast corner of Riverside Avenue and Warwick Road (approximate street address is 2088 W Riverside Avenue, Muncie, IN 47306, for the purposes of looking up on Google maps). Disregard any infrastructure construction that might still be located at your site. You are free to use the site as you see fit and there are no height restrictions, but given the home’s prominent location on campus, privacy for the living spaces must be addressed. The following is a list of spaces/events to be designed for:

- Gallery for Artist-in-Residence Collection (Total 800 sq ft)
- Office (200 sq ft)
- Kitchen (250 sq ft)
- Entertaining Space (Total 800 sq ft)
- Bed/Bath/Private (300 sq ft)
- Garden Space(100 sq ft minimum)
- Gallery for current artist work and end-of-term exhibitions (800 sq ft)
- Artist’s Studio (900 sq ft)

DESIGN OBJECTIVES:
To understand form- and space-making as an iterative design process which uses a diverse set of tools, skills, and media in an opportunistic fashion. Examine the creation of space within the framework of an experiential sequence of spatial opportunities. Reflect on the importance of rules and constraints within a design problem and its resolution.

SKILL BUILDING OBJECTIVES:
The careful and rigorous craft of creating physical models and orthographic hand-drawings. Thoughtful consideration of each design move—every modeling or drawing operation—as it relates to volume, surface, and light.

STUDY MODELS + DIAGRAMS:
This will be a quick, week-long assignment (ending on Friday, 26 August) to sharpen your skills and thinking after a long summer break. Your first assignment for Wednesday is to study this problem with study models and diagrams. For Wednesday, please carefully construct three study models of project ideas at a scale of roughly 1/8” = 1’ (don’t worry, I won’t measure these). The third model should be the most complete and reflect your latest idea/scheme (the first two models are quick process). In addition, please create five diagrams of this third scheme and the process by which it was generated (i.e., hopefully the diagrams are also part of the decision-making/form-making/”genesis” part of your design process, rather than drawn at the end). Try to use an economy of line work (and please, no arrows).

FURTHER MODEL CONSTRAINTS:
For each study model you are only allowed to use two 12” x 12” “planes” or flat sheets of material. You can shape these as you wish, and you can (and are encouraged to) perform an unlimited number of folds, slices, and hole cutting operations to the sheets to create spatial complexity. White museum board or brown chipboard is recommended (1-ply please). Try to think in terms of “plane”, “surface”, and “opening” for space making, and “cut”, “score”, and “fold” for operations to create the models. This “mind-bender” will hopefully help you think in terms of careful positioning of horizontal and vertical surfaces—of course, most spaces do not need 4 walls and a ceiling with a standard door opening. Think in terms of physical and visual spatial flow and sequencing.

Several points and constraints should be noted for your decision-making:

- You are encouraged to overlap spaces and functions. For instance, gallery space and entertaining space might coexist together in certain parts of the home (this is just one example).

- Some of the programmed spaces mentioned above would only be used at certain times of the day or only intermittently. You should consider your own ideas of additional activities that could take place in these spaces (entertaining space, garden space, etc) and which could be facilitated on a daily basis.

- Try to minimize “dead space” such as plain hallways. On one hand, you could strive for spaces that flow into one another. On the other hand circulation “spines”, “passages”, or “ramps” could be nice opportunities for showing off artwork.

- Consider fenestrations/windows/holes as opportunities to frame views, connect spaces (laterally or vertically), display artwork, or create dramatic, meaningful light/dark contrasts.

- One last point—please interrupt me to ask questions. No question is right or wrong, and class participation and discussions are a key component of learning. I will constantly and consistently ask each of you many questions throughout the semester—I expect the same from each of you.