We began midterm week with ferocity: the final review of our Project 3 of the Take Five studio was the Monday before Spring Break. We continue to move from abstract to realism, vague to detailed. This segment of the studio began to enliven our designs and pull them out of the darkness and ambiguity they have been shrouded in, exposing them through developed sections and renderings.

Wire models were the only physical aspect of Project 3, though a daunting one in itself.  The models were intended to depict the structural forces that move through the buildings.  For all the time and excruciating work they demanded, they definitely had a strong presence in the presentation.  In the final show at the culmination of the semester – with all the models present – they will surely stand among the proudest of our representational work.

Travis Kalina explains his section.

The majority of what was addressed with Project 3 was an eventful move to digital manifestations of what has long been physical.  Armed with knowledge of basic materiality and thicknesses, the virtual models began to evolve from their paper parents and reveal their hidden identity as a building.  Digitizing the models presented an interesting challenge for many, as the folds manipulated on paper were difficult to reproduce within the software.

This brought forward a latent value within the methodology of the Take Five studio: the inverted task of converting from physical to digital produced unique difficulties that assaulted our prowess in the understanding of our work.  An authenticity was demanded.  Ironically, it was the virtual manifestation of our projects that unsympathetically interrogated the pragmatism of our design.

The review was tag-teamed by Grant Gibson, Julie Flohr, Ryan Palider, and Dan Wheeler.  Reto Geiser, a candidate for the Assistant Professor position, also participated in part of the review.  If it were to be said that this project was the crossing of the line between fiction and non-fiction, the critics had a lot of meat to bite into.  Some received diligent advice on how to continue to move forward while others dealt with the harshness that comes from the difficulties of brining the work into full believability.

Regardless, this is an exciting point in everyones project.  The next step, Project 4 of the 5, is to physically build a 1/16″ scale model followed by designing the interior layout in our plans.  Finally, the program has been revealed: we are designing an office.  Mercifully, the blurred programmatic requirements of an office layout allow us to be inventive with our layouts.  The detail demanded by both a model at this scale and the insertion of programmatic layouts in our plans will definitely provoke our stamina and willpower, especially as we continue to ensure the projects stand as plausible buildings.  Summer better get here soon…

All photos taken by Mathew Messner.