MODULE 4-FRAME VS. FEILD
In M4, we are required to identify and reorganize the elements from the Old Quad and use these elements to build a city in a homogeneous space according to the given story excerpted from Invisible city by Italo Calvino.
Interpretation
The story I’ve been allocated with is the city of the sky, Thekla. It is a city with a blueprint of stars that will never finish construction, and the workers build the city only during the day, they don’t work after the sunset. They construct this city to keep it functioning and once they stopped the construction the city and something else would fall apart.
All things in the world have their own rules to follow, just as the planets in the universe keep running in certain orbits, and Thekla is like one of these planets: People in the city respect the nature and are willing to obey the rules, or in other words the unseen power that makes the world functioning, they continuously build it to keep it revolving at a certain speed in its orbit. Once the construction stops and the city derails, not only this city, but the whole galaxy will collapse.
Based on the story and my interpretation, I designed the city Thekla in a form of a galaxy that expands from the middle to the outside, and to optimize my perspectives I designed the middle part of the city in the shape of a deformed cross.
View Capture from Rhino
Top
Bottom
Northeast
Southeast
Northwest
Southwest
Main Themes for designing the city:
Constructing: expansion
Framework
Fragile
Unbalanced
Nature and Rules
Mythology
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Submission of Isometric linework with notation
Feedback from Studio and Supercrit:
The notations are overcomplex and hard to understand.
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Amendment:
Simplify the notations and change the lines for vaults and ribbon to make them more obvious.
Submission for Portfolio
Perspectives
Submission
Feedback from Studio and Supercrit:
Should consider the meaning behind the washes; the background is too empty.
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Amendment:
Add proper washes to the perspectives and give explanations; add a plane view at the bottom of the background of perspective one to echo the relationship between the city and the sky; add more clouds and change the light of perspective two to further create an atmosphere of mythology.
Submission for Portfolio
Perspective One: Exploration
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Analysis of Perspective One
The sky is regarded as a symbol of the ideal and desire of the city (human world). The operation of the celestial bodies intrigues people's infinite imagination and forms the principle of people's constructing the city. The sky represents a view for human to explore the principles that we can't see or notice in the urban fabric.
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The characters I put in this scene are several famous astronomers during the Renaissance, the reason why I am doing this is because Newton’s epitaph is, “Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light”. following the direction, firstly you can see Galileo sitting in the middle of the foreground, holding a telescope, and several steps further you can see Newton standing against a column, where the city have Larger weights. And in the distance you can see Kepler sitting on a chair, I put it reversely because I think the developing trend of this city should be in all directions. On the sides where have the largest weight stands Copenicus and Thyco.
Continuously constructing the city is the way how the people living in Thekla adjust the function of the city so as to achieve the harmony of the interaction between human and nature. They respect the natural rules and are afraid that their city would fall apart if they stop construction. The purple fill here has the meaning of fear, expressing the sense of anxiety, fear and awe.
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Perspective Two: Imagination
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Analysis of Perspective Two
Exploration cannot bring all the answers to the puzzles that confuse the people in Thekla, they still worry about their unstable and unfinished city, they want a perfect home that is filled with happiness and peace forever. Perspective 2 describes the desire and imagination of human for the eternity of their civilization.
Mount Olympus
Thekla origins from the ancient Greek name ΘεÏŒκλεια (Theokleia), which meant “glory of God”. Gods are believed to be the creator of everything, including the rules how everything functions and interacts with each other. Thus I chose the gods of the sun, moon and stars as my characters in this perspective.
The gods have inexhaustible vitality and are the guardians of human beings and cities. In the imagination, the city guarded by the gods has forever peace, so I used the yellow fill that has the meaning of tranquility, showing people’s wish for wellbeing and stability.
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The texture I chose for the edited old quad comes from the surface of different planets, to echo the blueprint of Thekla: the sky full of stars.
