FMP | #6

Currently, in my search for new ideas, I have begun to pursue a technique I learned during the early weeks of this course. By cropping and isolating certain parts of images and photographs it will enable me to highlight certain details that I find particularly interesting. For this I focused on shapes and forms that could potentially use to create structures. Drawing and tracing them out helped me to better understand the shape and also allow me to use that shape for manipulation and development

I found the process of selecting details a great way of finding new and interesting shapes to work with, the images I selected were a variation of existing apartment blocks. These included images of the Swiss Cottage estate in London, the Barbican Center and also an apartment block out in Ukraine that I found online whilst searching for images to use. 

I've noticed a bit of a trend within the apartment blocks I have been looking at and that is that they are all majorly made from concrete. It also occurs to me that Trellick Tower, Balfron Tower, the Barbican Center and Swiss cottage are not only mainly constructed from mass amounts of concrete but they are also very sought after places to live. It seems that they also each have their very own vast history, with almost all of them being recognised as Grade II listed sites. The trend ultimately tells me that buildings built in a brutalist fashion seem to withstand the test of time and the test of taste when it comes to peoples preference on where to live. 

Reading a few books from the library about the history, application and properties of concrete helped me to understand why it has seemingly been the most successful material to use when creating buildings such as apartment blocks. It's cheap, durable and it strengthens over time. That is why places such as Trellick Tower has been standing for decades and looks almost identical to when it first opened, give or take a few patches of weathering. 

I feel that by replicating the same style of architecture with the correct material, Brutalism and concrete, it will help to cement a better image of my proposed building. If my idea is to try and change peoples perceptions of social housing for the better then sticking to what works, in terms of peoples opinions, should be the most effective way of achieving my overall goal

The best way for me to visualise these shapes were to redraw them neater and in 3D. 

Choosing two of my favourite out of the many I had picked out was a way to narrow down the ideas and then put more focus on these shapes. The best thing about these shapes and some of the main reasons for why I have chosen them is their potential to be developed into something greater than they currently are. They fit in with the theme of 'boxes' in my eyes, the way they have been shaded also accentuates the possibility of a Brutalist inspired building. I think my decisions on these two specific shapes was partly due to me envisioning their development and their potential. 

These two artists, Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer have been pretty inspirational to look at whilst creating a little experiment. The idea was to use my building to make a statement. This was really appropriate because the first pieces of solid research I managed to acquire were a selection of stand-out statements that I felt I needed to focus on.

   

I was introduced to these artists by my tutor during a one-to-one when looking back at the developments of my small 'cheap boxes'. I had used a spare piece of balsa wood to engrave the statement "council houses are synonymous with cheap boxes' onto it to give the models more context and also for presentation. 

My 'cheap boxes'

    

 The idea was to engrave some statements onto the side of some 'cheap box' models like the ones above. 

Example:

I found that engraving a flat piece of cardboard and then constructing a structure from that is much easier than trying to engrave onto an already built structure. 

  

I think it was a very 'fine art' approach to some idea generation but it was nice to even just give it a try. I don't see this idea going any further than this because I find if I were to create something with text on the side it would be really tacky. I don't think architecture and typography go great together, and certainly not in this case.