60105 // Project 2 / Anthropometrics & Ergonomics: Observation Study

Based on my 12 daily activities, I shortlisted 3 activities to do a study on based on the interestingness of the furniture used. The activities were surfing the web at the round chair, studying at the round desk, and resting at the green sofa. Here are some snapshots of the furniture and activities.

Here are the shortlisted sketches from the previous assignment:

Resting/texting at the green sofa in the library.

Surfing the web on the lazy chair.

Studying at a curved table.

Based on those 3 sketches, we had to conduct a more elaborate study on the anthropometrics and ergonomics involved with the furniture. I changed some of the poses as I had better pictures involving those poses. We needed to add a 10cm x 10cm image, a 1:20 scale drawing of the plan and any elevation view (front or side), a 1:20 scale sketch of our height for reference, and various poses we could do while interacting with the furniture.

Before conducting this assignment, I identified the sort of poses/activities I could do on the furniture and categorized them (resting, sitting, etc.) and did a few studies in my sketch book. Here are the rough sketch studies:

First, I mapped out my measurements and sketched the furniture and poses approximate to scale, so I could easily refer to these drawings when I work on the final product.

Here are some resting poses I referred to which I could implement to my studies.

Another type of pose was the seated poses, and here are my studies for activities involving chairs and tables.

Here is the final product:

I chose this furniture because I liked its unconventional dimensions. Its heightened arm and backrest creates a sense of personal space and the seat area is big enough for napping and other activities such as studying and reading. It is also possible to do small exercises on this sofa, like yoga or weights.

I like this chair because it reminds me of 'incubation'. It gives me the feeling of security and relaxation, perfect for a lazy day for a lazy me!

The curved shape of the desk makes it useful for studying while multitasking. I can display my notes in a easy to read manner, and I won't be too distracted even though my gadgets are placed at the side, but at the same time, can easily access it if needed.

Here are the photos in better detail:

Surfing the web on the round chair.

From a different angle.

I preferred this photograph instead of my texting photograph as it showed more of the green sofa. Here you can see how it creates a cozy personal space perfect for smaller rooms.

Me studying for finals at the study area. There were many types of curved desks but I like the heightened one the most.

60105 // Project 2 / Anthropometrics & Ergonomics: 12 Daily Activities

12 activities I do in a day + My height at a scale of 1:20. Drawings in no apparent order.

For this task, we needed to study the anthropometrics and ergonomics involved in our daily activities. From my understanding, anthropometrics refers to the measurement of our body relates to our furniture and surroundings. Ergonomics refers to how our body adjusts to that environment to provide optimum comfort. Hence, I had to make sure each sketch involved an architectural structure or furniture which affects my pose and posture when I interact with it.

A day in Hidayah's life... here's an elaboration about the things I do.

• I start the day with my prayers, and to do that I need to take my ablution. As I stayed over at campus, I took it at the surau on campus.
• Being a night owl, I need coffee to function during the day, so I have my daily cuppa with a magazine to entertain me.
• I spend a significant amount of time in the library. My favourite section is the arts section, of course. I will browse for inspirational books at the shelves.
• Then, I move to a comfy sofa to read the books and absorb new information.
• Besides books, the internet is a good source of inspiration and knowledge. I like surfing the web in lazy chairs, and the spherical one I chose was perfect for it.
• The library also has movies, and they were showing Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, so I head over to the mini cinema to watch it on a nice comfy bean bag.
• I find a nice green sofa to relax on as I text my friends about our assignments.
• Being a normal human being with bodily functions, I use the restroom from time to time, so that's when I do my deep thinking. Then I wash my hands after using the restroom, of course.
• Then, I wait for my friend Nadia at the library. I rest on an interesting furniture while waiting for her.
• We then head to the study area where I revise on my theoretical subjects.
• We rush to the studio to work on our projects, and we use the stairs.
• When we're done, it's back to sleep I go!

60105 // Project 2 / SUPERGEN: Esquisse

Meet Nectarine (but people call her Tarin)

I based my character on mostly reality with a bit of fantasy. From a first glance, Nectarine is very different than me, but beyond they way she looks, she is made from bits and pieces of my personality, and her achievements are based on my ambition. She isn't perfect, but I love her design the way it is.

Nectarine is a fruit similar to a peach. I chose this name due the double entendre of the name. (Nectar + Tarin, and the fruit, which bees love)

Here's her story summarized:

It all began during an expedition in Egypt…

Tarin, a freelance archaeologist specializing in relics and botany, was exploring the catacombs of a pyramid, looking for relics for a wealthy client. Scavenging deep in the tomb with her team, she discovered an exquisite jar perfect for the client.

The jar was made of meteorite minerals and was embellished with gold leaf and sapphire crystals. Inside the jar was a dark liquid, which turned out to be honey. The client did not care about the honey so Tarin decided to examine it in the lab. 

Honey lasts for thousands of years. Upon examination, she noticed the honey had traces of unknown minerals in it. Curiosity got the better of Tarin, so she decided to try a spoonful. It tasted amazing, and she ended up consuming most of it.

Nothing changed at first, until she noticed that she had more stamina while working out. always felt energized. She also had cravings for sweet fruits and was attracted to floral fragrances. 

She paid no heed to the changes until… she realized she could communicate and control bees. Thus, her adventure begins!

Extras: How does she save the world + facts

Bees are very important for our environment. Most of pollination occurs due to bees. Another contribution of theirs, the production of honey, has astounded the medical field for years due to its medical properties. Naturally, bees are like the servants of Mother Nature.

Tarin uses her gift of controlling bee to also play the role of Nature's nurse from her perspective. The bees know secrets of plants that the scientific world does not fully know yet. These bees teach her how to create antidotes for ailments out of plants, herbs, and honey. She created a gadget called the Hexyringe (a hexagonal syringe) which helps administer the antidotes to the ill. As syringe needles can only be used once, she created the needles as a form of ammunition for her gadget. She can easily swap the cartridges containing antidotes with subduing poison whenever she is fighting the bad guys.

Due to her new super strength and immunity, she also helps fight crime and usually comes out unscathed. Criminals are no match for an athletic spirit like Tarin! Even before she got her powers, she had interests in extreme/obscure sports and recreational activities to increase her flexibility, agility, and strength. She learns free running so that she can scour the excavation areas with ease and speed.

Another thing about bees is that they have hypersensitivity in terms of emotion. Due to this, she feels a strong need to reach out to the less fortunate, mostly orphans, and single mothers. She can only communicate with bees, but she can also sense when animals are in need and gets along with most of them.

Bees are also afraid of birds and swimming. Tarin possesses the same fears in different ways. She is afraid of birds pooping on her or attacking her due to an incident that happened when she was very young (a wild goose chased her and she has also had crows poop on her.) She can swim, but has nearly drowned before, so she prefers to stay away from water.

My first part of the esquisse.

The second part where you get to know Nectarine from a more personal level.

Here are some snapshots of my mascots (more pictures in a future post coming soon):

Finalized Mascot (the hat isn't actually a part of her costume, but it was fun to add removable parts!)

My first mascot. I had to change it to suit the theme, however.

Wing detail, which I put on both versions of the mascot

What our presentation boards looked like.

Materials & Finishes: Project 1 (Identify & Explore)

Here are my board designs for the first individual project for Materials and Finishes. We had to conduct thorough research about a material of our choice, and for the next part, do an on site visit to identify 10 other materials and finishes and do a short summary on each material. We then had to present our findings, which I enjoyed sharing with the class.

I did research on Cork. I love cork as it is very versatile, sustainable, and gives a rustic look to the home/office. Another thing to take note of is that it is easily attainable and we can craft with it as well.

Here are the boards for my on-site visit. I chose one of my favourite bakeries, Tous Les Jours. I enjoyed this assignment as I got to eat good food and had coffee while working on this assignment.

60105 // Project 1b / 3D Abstraction (Final)

Chronological Transformation of my mockups! From lines and planes, to just everything, to a final centralized form.

Here is the final product. At first I hung it parallel to the cube frame, but to make the composition more interesting, Mr. Qhawar cut off a string to give it a tilted angle... personally as someone who likes order, I preferred the original but this is not bad either, as I get to appreciate my work from a different angle.

Hello! To conclude Project 1b, here is the blogpost you've all been waiting for. This is my abstract artwork inspired by the Bee colony and Peter Eisenmann's houses. To be honest, I didn't draw any plans or accurate sketches to design the sculpture, all I did was measure the modeling board pieces as I stuck it together, and every measurement has some sort of relation to one another, like a Mondrian artwork, but in 3D.

Sans Titre (Untitled), Piet Mondrian, 1925. The father of Neoplasticism.

The formal organization of this abstract sculpture is centralized (as it is centered around a cubic volume) and clustered (with the additions and extrusions occurring around the form.) There are many design principles, and the main ones are transformation (as it is no longer a cube but a complex form) datum (as you can still see a cubic outline) and hierarchy (in terms of design and segments, inspired from the beehive and colony.)

Let's have a look at the various angles of the sculpture:

The front and back view of the final sculpture before it was properly suspended from the frame.

Work In Progress shot. It only had 5 main faces stuck to it but already had the cube form. I like how it already possessed a certain complexity of itself during an early stage. You can observe extrusion, addition and subtraction from the front faces of the sculpture.

Plan view of the sculpture. I love how shadows play with the various forms of the sculpture. You can also notice a smaller cube protruding out of the bottom of the sculpture to make it less rigid looking to give it an unusual composition.

Pictured below are the various elevation view of the final abstract sculpture. A lot of people told me it looks like a house, and it sort of does because it's inspired by a house (a beehive = bee house and the research I used were houses) (haha.) I am okay with that, I guess. At first I was nervous my lecturers might have qualms about it looking like a house, but I guess not! I was also nervous because everyone else had curvy and flowy sculptures, but it's good to be different, I've learned.

60105 // Project 1b / 3D Abstraction (Mock Up)

For my 3D Abstract sculpture, I was instructed by Mr Qhawar to derive inspiration from Peter Eisenmann's House Series Designs. I decided to draw inspiration from the series but studied the design principles and formal organization of House VI as it fit the composition I wanted to create. I didn't copy his design though, but it was inspired by his works.

• The formal organizations I derived and chose are: centralized and clustered.
• The design principles are: hierarchy, datum, and transformation. I also made sure to use intersections, addition, subtractions, positive and negative space in my design. There was also points, lines, planes, and volumes. As the main shape was a cube, the extraction of design principles ended up transforming it into a deconstructed look, which was the kind of architectural principle Peter Eisenmann was a fan of.
• My abstract keywords are: Colony, Busy, Scale.

Let's have a look at House VI!

I never had a dream house, but now I do. I love the minimalist textures and complexity of the architecture within a simple form. I also have a thing for pre-cast concrete houses as they look so beautiful and raw... I also love the ambient lighting which gives the house a relaxing, ethereal vibe.

Even without the light, the house still looks magnificent. Okay, I want to graduate and build my home now!

Orthographic drawings of the house. I studied the relationship of the planes and tried to translate it into my design.

Axonometric drawing of the house to better understand its form.

The side elevation. The windows are larger and strategically placed to get the best natural lighting during the day.

Now let's look at my mock up models... this was before my idea was refined and I was still exploring the various design principles and techniques, before I could go on to composition.

It started with a small cluster of planes purely intersecting with each other.

Ignore the curves, that was just an experiment. I added more extrusions to explore addition.

The pieces could be rearranged in different ways, but I realized it was too skeletal to be part of the final model, so I revamped my concept...

This one was more similar to my abstract drawing, and was a clustered design. However, it was too weighted down.

A better angle of the 2nd mock up

Through this exploration, I learned various ways to explore addition, subtraction, intersection, extrusion. The only problem was that it was too clustered and messy, and needed a more centralized form. Hence, I decided to include that into my final composition. Stay tuned to the next post to see how it turns out!

In the end, I quite liked the progress of how my mock ups turned out. In order to create a beautiful construction, you need to go step by step. I wish I could put all my mock ups next to each other, but I kept salvaging the parts into the next step to save money.

60105 // Project 1b / 2D Abstraction

The following week, after receiving my C&C, I improved my abstract design by adding depth using various pencil intensities, and intersecting 2D & 3D squares. As much as the patterns were decorational, it had a meaning behind it (representing anatomy from the body parts to the intricacy of the bee hive.) If I could, I would have made a painting of this composition.

My reflection from this assignment is to always picture things from outside the box... or you could really look at the box (zoom in) or tilt it (different angles) and through this process I have learned to appreciate things more thoroughly and derive inspiration for my architectural projects.

The finalized keywords were:

• Colony (which is represented by the various forms of hierarchy in this composition. It is both clustered and centralized in terms of formal organization, which is what I think a beehive would be...)
• Busy (Busy as a bee, get it? Bees always have a task to do, it is even ingrained into their anatomy, and they are also busy in the way they fly, the way they are divinely designed, and the way they make their hives and colony.)
• Scale (referring the architectural scale, not insect scale as I really had to zoom in to appreciate the various details. These details are larger than life, and you'd need a microscope to really appreciate the intricacy of the bee's work. It is simply amazing!)

Other keywords I would have used but didn't make the cut: anatomy, buzz, cells, deconstructed (but this might be a theme for my final project!) (also did you notice the keywords are alphabetical?)

Finalized 2D Abstract Drawing

60105 // Project 1b / Abstract Studies

We've done the concrete relief model, now it's time to keep things abstract. In class we learnt to see our insects from a different point of view, and derive key words and abstractions from that new point of view. Hence, how do I see? I did some research and found interesting scientific drawings of bees from a not-so-typical perspective...

Bee Larva

Bee's eye, zoomed in, the pattern and flattened shape gave me inspiration for my artwork.

Bee undergoing metamorphosis in a hive cell. We always view it from the front (the hexagonal part) but here it is from the side.

A cross section of a bee hive. It looks like an artwork in itself!

From my research, I derived a few designs on what I think an abstract bee should look like. I did struggle because deriving something intangible from something we are so used to seeing and perceiving was something I wasn't used to. Even my designs weren't abstract-ish enough at first. Here is my design process and outcome:

My first abstract artwork. The squares represent the bee's colony (as I wasn't allowed to use hexagons) and the lines represent the bee's wing (anatomy)

I decided to experiment with mutation (metamorphosis and anatomy) and made it into a centralized design (representing the hierarchy of bees.) I liked the concept but this composition still needed refining.

Inspired by the cross section of a cell with a metamorphosing bee, I decided to make a pattern out of it. Each bee is different, representing the various stages of metamorphosis.

I refined the concept of mutation, and came up with this composition. I was inspired by Salvador Dali's artworks as I like how his artwork seemed to have movement and flow... This was one of my favourite compositions, but it would be too difficult to turn into an abstract sculpture so I had to go for a composition which had more sculpture.

As I was inspired by the pattern of the bee's eye, I came up with this abstract drawing. I chose the keywords Colony (represented by the squares which I had to edit to make it look more intersected), Anatomy (as it was based on the bee's eye, wings and limbs) and Scale & Detail (as I had to really zoom in on the bee to derive this interesting pattern.) This was the shortlisted concept and I did like it a lot as well.

The refined version of the selected artwork I chose based on the Bee's Eye!