Jared Hernandez
IMAGING (IMG) — An image can be used to represent an idea but also as a medium for ideating. With the addition and implementation of digital tools and techniques such as drawings, rendering, photography, video and the software that enables the manipulation of these outputs, students of architecture now have at their disposal a range-y set of options for communicating ideas.Introduction Video
Students view some scenes from movies that display a sense of space, and tell visual stories in different ways. They discuss how these scenes are composed and directed, and what decisions are being made to create the visual environment. Then, using Adobe InDesign, students annotate their own scene, noting things like focus, lighting, framing, and positioning. They act as mini directors.
Example by Mason Magemeneas
Sudip Deb
Asholey Culito-Cucul
As the project progresses, students imagine their own space that could be captured in an image. Some examples are Erik’s cigar lounge, Sudip’s holographic space station, and Faijah’s underwater sand pit. Using Rhino 3D, they create a physical model of the space with simple architectural elements like doorways, windows, and walls.
Once the space is created, students choose a view and angle to ‘shoot the scene’ from. Here they make their 3D scene into a 2D image. In Rhino, they color code their image based on lighting and material to be able to process in Photoshop later.
Using their color coded image, students find textures and add them to the scene. They are careful about scale and perspective, and choose materials that support their thoughts about how the space should operate.
Tom Anderson, Jada Ingram, Jazzmyne Fagin, Royshawn Tye-Horn
Shadows, lights, and overall color scape are continually refined and adjusted. Students continue to learn different Photoshop tasks each day as the image progresses. Each has a creative responsibility and freedom to direct their space as desired. Klay did an especially nice job with his lighting for his bowling alley.
Klay Cole
Sudip Deb
Erik Vega
Kennedy Watts
Jada Ingram
To wrap up the project, students make a ‘catalogue of things’ that they used in the image making process. These catalogues show the extent of their Photoshop use and are made in InDesign. Working across multiple platforms is essential in the program, and students are comfortable switching between them.
Jared Hernandez
They also make a collage - one that evokes the space without directly showing it and mirrors the saturated image with a minimalist tone. Here, students find images, crop them, and compose them. They learn to develop space on a paper, and allow the drawings to breathe. Each is evocative and abstract.
Kalista Bennett
Devon Hunter
Fahmida Faijah
“Imag(in)ing” designed by Eduardo Villamor, Eugene Kim, Valeria Velazquez with Yojairo Lomeli and Mason Magemeneas
This last leg requires you to now fully articulate three-dimensional space, having learned from the positive/negative inverse studies, and exploiting the potential your geometries demonstrated to fully flesh out a rich volume based in interiority. In this project you are asked to develop one cohesive, and coherent solid that is equally interested in its negative space as its positive space. Coherent and cohesive in the sense that no one piece can feel out of place, or not part of the larger system established to conjure up the form. This artifact is to be an original, creative, and thoughtful response in three dimensions. Form is the architects’ language, and you must develop novel ways of shaping it and describing how it performs. The form you are asked to design should be complex in its simplicity. Meaning that it is not trying to overly communicate through unnecessary complications, but rather through an elegant composition that reaches complexity through its illusions. Here we ask that the form be incredibly evocative, while at the same time maintaining a strict sense of economy.
