INTERIOR DESIGN STUDIO 2007

CASTAWAY

ross mcleod and jason parmington

‘The sun never knew how wonderful it was until it fell on the wall of a building' Louis Kahn

The project began with an exploration of the principles of ‘chiaroscuro', the arrangement of light and dark elements to create dramatic effects in a pictorial work of art. Using the mediums of charcoal and photography the students carefully considered and recorded light and shadow upon and within architectural form. We sought to capture lights play across the materials, geometries, textures and rhythms of the urban fabric and in doing so define the relationship between structure of a buildings form and the shaping of the qualities of light in its volumes and spaces.

Drawing on the geometric principle known as ‘wallpaper groups' and through their own personal enquiries into the geometry of repetition the students explored the potentials of tile patterns. Once a pattern was developed the students were asked to pierce apertures or openings within the face of the tiles. The apertures developed a new language of openings, borders, edges and perforations which further enhanced the original geometries of the tiles.

The students were asked to conceive a space whose material and light qualities shifted throughout the day and throughout the year. Sited in Melbourne Australia the space was to be designed to specifically interact with the suns movements at this longitude and latitude. The space was to be a composition of cast elements which poetically interweaved structure, aperture, pattern and texture so as to respond to the constantly changing qualities of sunlight, the orientation to the suns path manifesting the poetics of the space.

The final assignment asked the students to synthesize all of the information and skills they had developed during the semester and express them into a specific design. They were asked to choose a city from somewhere in the world in which they would develop a memorial space that reflects and remembers a moment in the cities past or which captures the psyche of the city and its population. The ‘Museum of Shadows' was to be made from the cast materials and use the metaphoric and emotive potentials of light and darkness and its interaction with space to powerfully express the essence of a memory.