Public Space : Living and Dining Spaces

Cataloge Furnishings : Living Room

Custom Furnishings & Color Study

Custom Made Furniture

Partner Parti Charette

For this part of the exploration of a parti, the class was told to pair up with people in studio who are very different from each other in order to gain a new perspective other then our own when it came to development of our concepts. I partnered with Shane and gained a helpful insight into my own design, it was also helpful to talk out my ideas to help me figure out what it was I really wanted to convey.

My reaction to Shane's original parti drawings and sketch models.

Parti that my partner Shane created after listening to my description of my own parti and what I wanted to achieve with my art piece.

Shane agreed that my concept did indeed have to do with color, but also suggested that my design should not be as compartmental as I was originally thinking. She suggested I think about how the brush stroke colors in my painting are clustered near the center and then radiate out, intertwining with each other.

Bungalow Models

1":1' scale model of my bungalow dining room sideboard.

Another view of my 1":1' scale model of my bungalow dining room sideboard.

3":1' scale model of my sconce lighting fixture in my bungalow dining room.

Gathering Precedent and Inspiration

Where to go on from here:

Art Piece: Abstraction # 507 0 (1950)
Artist: Vincent Pepi (American Abstract Expressionist 1926)

Finalized visual parti

After generating my conceptual parti from my artist and art piece, the next step is to take it from conceptual to the beginnings of the design process. How does this parti basis begin to take the form of readable elements in an interior space?

Schröder House by dutch architect Gerrit Rieveld

Utrecht, Netherlands 1924

One reason I think of Gerrit Rietveld's Schröder House is because of the primary color scheme it entails similarly to what is in my art piece and finalized parti. This interior is more structured in it's organization than the abstracted expressionism of my painting and the fluidity of my parti, but the idea of color assignment to surfaces, nooks and furnishings in a contrastingly black and white interior intrigues me.

Eames House (Case Study House No. 8) by Charles and Ray Eames
Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles 1988

Eames house is inspiring to me because of the materiality uses as well as the contrasting primary colors.

Final Bungalow Board Layouts

Ranch Charrette : Model Assembling

Quick sketch models inspired by our parti conceptual gesture:

Parti conceptual gesture reaction to light and shadow

Parti conceptual gesture reaction to color and shape

Parti conceptual gesture reaction to materiality.

Ranch Charrette : Concept Visualization

Parti (n.)- The basic scheme or concept of an architectural design.

[Dictionary.com]

Here are some gestural images generated from the Ranch house parti. Utilizing our selected art piece, mine being Abstraction #507 0 by Vincent Pepi, and the research we gained from our abstract expressionist we were to explore through drawing what would end up becoming our concept for the Ranch House.

In researching Vincent Pepi and other abstract expressionists of the time, I found an important influence in their "splattered" painting style were the elements in Jazz music. So while utilizing the dominate element of design of color I listened to jazz just like the artists had in order to be inspired.

Jazz Group: Nuclear Whales (Saxophone Jazz Band)
Songs: "Harlem Nocture", "Summertime", and "Duke Ellington Medley".

A first attempt at listening to a piece, automatically I picked up on different instruments and depicted them in different colors. Yellow being soprano, blue being tremble, and red being the bass line.

Then I began exploring how the piece was composed and how all the instruments played together to create the composition.

Exploration of the soloist.

After this gestural period of following beats and pitches I was urged by my professor to take elements from the gestures I drew and start simplifying towards a concept. From my observations of the piece in my drawings I drew the conclusion of a soaring soprano line, an active treble line, and a steady bass line.

First couple attempts at achieving a simplified version of my observations.

The more I attempted to simplify the more I realized that I also wanted to keep the element of a "collision" of sound that sometimes occurred in the jazz pieces, so my spread out elements became more integrated.

Final Conceptual Parti:

Conceptual ideas derived from Parti:

Rhythm
Line
Shape
Color

Bungalow: Vision Statement

My current study of Gothic art helped me to pinpoint the conceptual idea of Gothic: tracery, the thin stone masonry pieces that support the glass in cathedrals. This feature draws on complex shapes and patterns as well as the positive and negative spaces it creates. In addition, the idea of a heavy material seeming almost fragile intrigued me. Thus I layered positive and negative spatial designs through the textiles and furnishings in this dining room. Reminiscent of Arts and Crafts aesthetics, I abstracted the complexities of stone tracery normally found on a cathedral and used basic circles and lines throughout my designs that screen light and shadow while also creating a dialogue in the room. With all the elements combined, the finished design mediates between a Victorian world and modern one, purposefully echoing my forebears in design who struggled with the same challenges.

Ranch House: Art Piece & Artist Analysis

Art Piece: Abstraction # 507 0 (1950)
Artist: Vincent Pepi (American Abstract Expressionist 1926)

The Artist & Artwork
The artist I received from the Weatherspoon gallery is the abstract expressionist Vincent Pepi and the specific piece I received is titled Abstraction #507 0. Pepi is an artist that paints in a gestural manner that is often compared to that of a contemporary Jackson Pollock. This style of “gestural abstraction” that he uses in his drawings is also known as action painting, painting that involves impulsive dripping, splattering, and smearing of medium on a surface in order to achieve the artist’s concept. In this innovation of art, New York and its New York School became a sort of rival to the classical Paris School. Classical teaching gave way to expression through abstraction as art became more about artist satisfaction rather than opinions of critics.

Abstract Expressionism
When looking back at the era of Abstract expressionism and the date my chosen artist painted this artwork I found it to be influence by the ideas and structure of jazz music. Abstraction of jazz and blues was a trend that started during the occurrence of World War II and continued to be effective after the war. Artists like Pepi were drawn to the parallels that improvisational jazz inspired, a sort of “gesture & response” pattern as stated in Gibson’s Abstract Expressionism. Jackson Pollock, often used in comparison to Vincent Pepi’s contemporary style, even painted to jazz music by Charlie Parker and “Dizzy” Gillespie in order to achieve the patterns and designs he needed to express his ideas on canvas. With this inspiration of music, pigments of acrylic and oil paints were what instruments in a Jazz band were, different components used to create an entire composition.

Inspiration to Ranch House
In the piece Abstraction #507 0, Color is a key element in the composition. The painting itself is fairly small in work of art but the color dominant the surface with its contrasting whites, yellows, reds, and blues. This contrast of color is accented due to the dark brown, chipboard-like, canvas board that the painting is painted upon. Also there is no clear linear element in the composition to draw the eye, all the strokes of color are curvilinear and random, only the colors move the eye through the painting. I think this idea of color will also become a key element in my design of the Ranch house as it did with Vincent Pepi’s piece, with all the levels nooks, and built-ins existing in the space color could be used to identify public and private functions of rooms or as hierarchy in space and furnishings. Another idea stemming from this research and the idea of color is the affect of different types of light (like artificial and natural lighting) on colors in an interior. When I was observing my art piece in the Weatherspoon the colors looked more like they were white, orange, green, and blue rather then the colors that showed up in the photographs I looked at, this phenomena of color change based on environment could open up other ideas such as gradient or attention to atmosphere of the space when I’m designing the interiors of public and private spaces.

Resources
+Weatherspoon Art Museum: http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu/collections/show?id=2799
+Abstract Expressionism Gibson, Ann Eden, New Haven : Yale University Press, c1997. P. 31-32
+Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia on Abstract Expressionism
+The New York School versus the School of Paris, Article from Historical Methods; Fall2002, Vol. 35 Issue 4, p141, 13p, 11 Charts

Bungalow Boards

The board layouts thus far:


Things to work on:
- Eliminating white space on elevations/details on boards.
-Layout of second board, primarily process images.
-Label drawings on second board.
-Add materials schedule.