unofficial blog for course ARCH243

Lehigh University
Art Architecture and Design
113 Research Drive
Building C
Bethlehem, PA 18015

Colin

Colin 9/7 Presentation

The definitions of collision, collage, and coincidence that I had drafted and looked for in the various projects are as follows:

  • Collision: an unexpected disruption at the intersection of two or more elements
  • Collage: a layering or combination of two or more elements that enhances the composition
  • Coincidence: a seemingly unplanned harmonious correlation between two or more elements

21ST Century Museum of Contemporary Art

When looking at the 21st Century Museum, I was immediately struck by the rooms being extruded through the roof. This extrusion resulted in a collision, you would not expect the rooms to disrupt the roof at this intersection. I also was drawn to the collage when looking at the top view of the building. The shapes on the roof, which are all rectangular apart from one circle, are combined on the circular roof in a manner that is visually pleasing and more interesting than just a plain roof.

  • 21st Century Museum Collision
The collision locations are diagrammed with a blue hatch.
  • 21st Century Museum Collage
The shapes are shown with blue hatching.

Oakland Museum

When first looking at the Oakland Museum, I was drawn to the collage of the shapes and spaces in plan. However, after looking deeper into the structure I was also intrigued by the collage of heights used in the design. Looking past these surface level elements, I noticed that many of the spaces were in line with one another, however that is not made immediately clear. These seemingly unplanned correlations lead me to draw construction lines to see just how many coincidences were at play in this design.

  • Oakland Museum Collage
The light blue hatch is used to demonstrate the collage of shapes in top view of the model. The dark blue hatch is used to demonstrate the collage of heights when viewing the model from the North and South.
  • Oakland Museum Coincidence
The construction lines have been exploded from the plan and show the coincidences throughout the model.

Grace Farms

When viewing Grace Farms, I was at first looking for coincidences where the private spaces were in line with each other. Due to the curved nature of the structure, I did not expect there to be any strong correlation between the spaces’ locations, however, after drawing construction lines I saw that the spaces actually were in line with one another and the lines were parallel to each other. Looking past this the next thing that struck me was how at different views of the structure, the roof and private spaces would become layered onto one another creating a beautiful collage of shapes and figures.

  • Grace Farms Coincidence
The gray lines show the coincidences in the plan and they are all parallel to one another and tangent to the private spaces.
  • Grace Farms Collage
Here I am showing how the spaces are layered when viewing the structure from one location (noted by the arch at the bottom of the diagram). In each different colored section, those spaces are layered onto one another.

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