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.