For this design work, we were given an old train building, the Pufferbelly Depot in Pullman, WA, and we were asked to adapt it into an artist's residence, studio and gallery. We were to also incorporate ADA and Universal Design aspects that would accommodate a spouse that had a vision impairment. We started by determining our concept by drawing inspiration from a tour through the existing building, then we came up with a module design that we drew our final parti idea from and created a textile design off of these. After having printed and received the textile, we started developing 3D concept ideas and created a model off of this. Once our concept had been solidified we started working on the design of the actual depot, utilizing bubble diagrams, adjacency matrices and block diagrams. To do this we chose an artist to base out design off of and I chose to use my aunt who is a painter in Germany. The final work included numerous plans, elevations and perspectives, but a few aspects of the project from start to finish really challenged and inspired me. From this work I drew out my final title as the Portal Beyond.
One of the most important components that helped me through my design were the inspiration I pulled out from a tour through the depot. We were asked to walk around the space, taking pictures of anything that drew inspiration for us and then pic from the images we had taken. Two immediately caught my eye and I decided to use both and draw inspiration between them. The first is the doorknob to the basement stairs and the second is some decaying pieces of metal from on the train. I was attracted to these objects because of their organic lines, mixed with geometric shapes and the rich colors that came from both. The doorknob and metal fueled my design work and from them I drew 3 ideas of concepts: organic/geometric and the portal between the two, repetition of elements and contrast. I learned to think more abstractly from what I was thinking and look for the elements and principles of design that drew my eye.
The next component that further my design creation was the development of my parti design. We started off looking at these images and abstractly exploring elements we picked out from it, as I stated previously those three concepts were most common in my explorations. From there we moved into created fifty thumbnails that portrayed these objects and the words we drew from them. Off of those fifty we chose twenty to present to the class and gather feedback on. As we continued narrowing down we finally decided on one final thumbnail that would become the parti design for the project. From this aspect I was able to continue thinking abstractly and learn to look at things in a different way.
These two images are a couple of the explored thumbnails I created and the final parti is below.
From the parti development we moved into created a textile pattern off of the parti. We explored many different patterns for the concept and then created 4 different possible color schemes to bring in. The parti above shows the colors I drew from my inspiration, with the mint color from the metal and the rust or brown color from both the doorknob and the train metal. As we explored the patterns we flipped, stretched and mirrored the parti to create a pleasing pattern that we would send into the Spoonflower website to be printed into a yard of fabric that was to be used in our depot design. I was able to even further stray from a set mind frame in this step and was surprised at how the final pattern came out and related to my original concept. The first image below on the left is the digital image I reproduced to send into the website for printing and the image on the right is a picture of how the textile was printed out. Although the colors are more muted I feel they fit better to my concept and I am pleased at how it turned out.
After this stage we moved into 3D concepts and finally started designing for the artist within the depot. I found the furniture floor plan was a crucial component to my design, because it incorporated the layout of the space, the entrances/exits, furnishings and color/materiality. From this component I was able to work out all of my other drawings. We started by working a demolition plan that determined which walls we kept or destroyed and then decided on how we wanted to layout the furnishings within the space. The final step was rendering the space and determining how the materials would be laid out. During this step the most difficult part was finding a way to render my darker elements so that annotations of the space would still show through but I found I did that very successfully and learned to create a space that was both pleasing to the eye and functional.
The last component I feel was crucial to my design work was the final model. When exploring the demolition plan we started by working off a model, moving walls around and visualizing the interior space. In this we were able to look through exterior windows to see how the rooms were layout and how the expansive ceilings might affect the area. The final model was to include windows, doorways, interior walls, a rendered floor plan, a roof and show the entry paths to the building. The most challenging part of the model was to figure out how to create the roof but by looking through the construction documents and looking at an example model I feel I was able to recreate the depot roof successfully. From this I learned how to draw from multiple sources to create the best model possible.
Overall, through the semester I feel improved my ability in many different aspects. The first was my ability to render a space successfully. I had been struggling with making a drawing seem realistic with color, but I feel I was able to pull this off very well this year. The next aspect I feel I improved upon was my abstract exploration and thinking more abstractly. The final aspect I feel improved in my design work was my model making ability. But no matter how much I believe I improved there is always room for more. I am very pleased with the final result of this depot and look forward to showing my aunt the designs.
