jessica zuniga

Preliminary Sketches

2009-05-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

The Design Process

2009-05-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

Defining Spaces

2009-05-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

Finally, I get a minute to blog. Here are my initially SPACE PLANNING ideas generated from taking angles and forms present thru out the design of the rest of the building. Travis suggested that I should not give myself boundaries and use other points to bring in walls and spaces to the Architecture Floor Plates.

Changing the Concept Around

2009-05-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

There were many moments when I did not know how to use the "transmetamorph" concept and apply it t0 our design. So I tried to look for other meanings of the word and this only lead me to looking up the words that caused chaos in our design. Noise (from the atrium to the studios and auditorium) , Disturbance (all the open areas where birds, ohhh those birds, could fly thru), Clutter (all areas one against another with little or no barriers) (or all type of people coming into the building not knowing where to go...therefore causing a traffic jam and cluttering the floor) etc......

Guiding Me in the right Direction

2009-05-11T19:12:00.000-07:00

Before I knew I was going to be focusing on the studio part of the project I was looking at images of innovative ways to display signage and way-finding material. Some of those ideas transfered over to the studio design additionally to some ideas I got from looking at different ways to create open and exciting areas for a studio environment.

The Blur.... BUILDING (not like my life)

2009-04-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

As I was looking for some inspiration I came across Dubai's future buildings they are proposing (which are crazier than our design and concept)!!!! Anyways I mentioned it to Travis and he suggested I should look at.................................................................................................

Diller & Scofidio

Blur Building

Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland

“ An inhabitable cloud whirling above a lake”.

architecture magazine

The Blur Building is a media pavilion for Swiss Expo 2002 built at the base of Lake Neuchatel in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland.

(because there images are copyrighted here are a few links to see the BLUR BUILDING arcspace, designboom )

cool huh!!!!!

Locked Down.

2009-04-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

After numerous changes to the signed and finalized plan, a new plan was finally the final one. Thank You Jimmy for taking the initiative to finish the damn design. Anyways, it looks amazing.

After talking to my group and deciding that there is no way I can design way finding and signage, I decided to change my individual part. I am no longer designing signage or anything related to way finding in the building. The architecture floors are now mine to design. OK so here I go!!!!

I am looking at using a part of the concept but not the whole "transmetamorph" of it. I think I am going to break it down and see which parts fit into the ideology I have for the architecture floors.

Elevation View from Oakland (in perspective)

View from McCormick

View from McCormick w/ shadows

Elevation View from McCormick (in perspective)

View from corner of Lee St. and McCormick

Elevation view from Lee St. (in perspective)

OUTSIDE THE GLASS WALL (structural glass wall)

2009-04-14T20:41:00.001-07:00

Jimmy has been talking about making an outside amphitheater, where the land is excavated to form a place for it. Maybe excavated is too strong of a word. Outside of Sage Gateshead there is an outside performance area and it is not really dynamic but it gets the idea of performance stage and seating across.

INSIDE of our building??????

2009-04-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

Inside of The Sage Gateshead. The skin surrounds the inside and makes for an interesting view and makes the structure of the ceiling attractive.

Spaces in between the plates and the skin are made into seating spaces, circulation, exhibit areas, etc....

We just keep coming up with questions, that are partially or never answered. Here are a few images that enclose a "skin" or roof structure. There is a point in which a building roof transitions into the walls of the building, where are those in our building? Do they happen inside the building or are the walls included in the complete form? The Sage Gateshead in England is one example of using the skin as their roof which encloses the building and all the floor plates are inside of it.

Navigation

2009-04-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

At the last review, Travis asked me if i was thinking about having little heads "holograms" follow people around telling them where to go and at what point to turn. I said yes.

At that point our building was a complex mess. We needed a way to aid (aid as in helping them get from point a-z without getting lost and also help them understand the building they were in) those who would occupy the building. I started looking at robotic and mechanical signage and way finding, and i came across V.I.K.I, from I Robot. She is the brain of a building where NS-5 robots are

designed and made. She is a powerful source for humans, mainly because she guides them and analysis there thoughts before they can. Well, since our building design was already very complex and huge, the design called for a brain to structure and control the complexity of it all.

V.I.K.I, here is V.I.K.I's manual key. Which is also controlled by a 3-dimensional keyboard.

V.I.K.I's infrastructure. V.I.K.I is allowed to roam thru the building as a human would but she is only a hologram that can appear anywhere inside the building or where electric currents travel.

Here you see V.I.K.I walking along side another robot (ironic). Actually the hologram (three-dimensional photographic image) would guide humans thru the building and be an information carrier.

INFORMATION CARRIER

Materials Model

2009-04-13T19:58:00.001-07:00

Once we figured out what the new design would look like, our next task was too define what each plane was and decide a material for each of those planes. The model also starts to join planes so that it becomes one unified "roof", or "ceiling". Our next task is too model this in sketch up, which i have already started. The exploration in sketch up will try to make a concrete building form, so we can begin to find out how this structure will stay and be constructed. I know we are not suppose to figure all of the engineering in detail, but it would be nice to show diagrams of how we see this building being built in real life. Is it even possible? The new design is a bit more realistic but it still has its unique features that makes the structure complex and attractive.

We Got It all Figured Out!!!!

2009-04-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

Individual : Wayfinding & Signage

2009-04-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

Transmetamorph: Building Models

2009-04-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

2009-04-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

Something I found on the TABLE.

2009-04-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

The times that I am in studio, I find random things laying on the tables. One day i found this piece of mesh and thought about our building skin/form. I realized that this piece of mesh had an inside...where our programming stuff could lie or be placed in. I guess that idea did not last very long because I forgot about this piece of mesh and never talked about it in any of our group meetings. I would like to point out that I did not make this, but who ever did....kudos its an awesome form.

ETFE: ethylene tetra fluoro ethylene

2009-04-02T08:24:00.001-07:00

It turns out our skin idea might not of being an idea that was difficult to accomplish or far from reality reach. The Watercube, Beijing's National Aquatics Centre uses a structure that could be sturdy enough to have some floor plates and structures be attached to it. Of course, it would not be by a string. In some of the construction drawings for the wall cavity of the watercube, it shows the thousands of connections that needed to be made to hold up this structure. Those same connections could be made to hold tons of steel and concrete in our skin design.

RESEARCH :: MATERIALS

2009-03-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

Midterm Review

2009-03-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

Obnoxious or not, our group was determined to make the building as big as possible. We added a few extra hundred thousand square feet to our design, only to make sure that there was enough room for both the college community and neighborhood community to meet and come together. Yes, we are exaggerating but as Jimmy says first make up the craziest idea possible, make it as unrealistic and unreachable and then come back to a feasible approach. It is always fun making crap up that wont work; but how will we know it does not work, if we didn't give it a chance at first.

ATLANTA

2009-03-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

So after Emily Davis and I almost did not make it to Atlanta because of the snow storm, We finally decidedm

i like it better upsidedown

2009-02-26T07:23:00.000-08:00

It looked like we were adding piles of trash upon piles of trash, but we were actually trying to come up with a building form. Individually we came up with pieces that formed a "building structure". Once we finished our individual exercise, as a group we came together and pieced all of our individually parts together. Basically we made puzzle pieces and then we tries figuring which part went where (without the picture on the box). After coming up with various forms, we choose one that excited us or was appealing and we made sketch up models. Still we were at a very conceptual state, and we could not decide on a single building form. We tried piecing the sketch up models together but that was not as effective as putting our sketch models together.

Pass IT On>>>>>

2009-02-25T16:22:00.000-08:00

After we left Sunday night we were still unsure of what we had accomplished that day. We started with this trench (sink hole idea) that got complicated very fast so we stopped. However, on Monday we sat around the table and started to draw. Each of us started drawing about what we had talked about the night before, then we passed around our drawings so that each of us had an opportunity to draw on each others initial sketch. (VERY GOOD IDEA by the way) We ended up with this abstract SECTIoN of how we wanted the new architecture school to look like and started working from there.

This was an awesome exercise that we did, each of us had a different perspective on each drawing. I turned a few drawings upside down and saw a completely new design or shape of the building. P>S> the sketch that we are using tho develop our design is on the yellow trace paper>>>

2009-02-24T18:17:00.000-08:00

For those of you who were not available to attend Paula Carr's Lecture on Friday, here are the projects she talked about on Friday. Check them out!

BRIDgING?

2009-02-24T11:05:00.000-08:00

I had a hard time figuring out how the design of the building would fit into the site and how it will be part of the ground. On Monday, team DF7A26, sat down and sketched a few ideas of what bridging meant to us, what we were going to bridge and who would benefit. This sketch (above) is really more my idea of how the building would fit into the site and how it will go underground and be exposed above ground.

Sketch Model Series | Following the Site

2009-02-22T10:33:00.000-08:00

In this model, my intention was to explore how people would approach the building from Lee St. Towards the begining I was thinking people would enter from the corner of Highland and Lee but it was not very inviting. As I developed the rest of the model, some planes started to look more like overhangs or canopies which were more inviting to enter the building.

Most of the conceptual models I made did not fit into the straight piece of land that we are being given to work from. I tried finding comonalities between all the concept models that I have made and for this batch, I have discovered that they all fit perfectly into the site (narrow and long).

Sketch Model Series | Adjecencies

2009-02-22T10:32:00.000-08:00

When I was coming up with forms, for the buildingless models, I was just thinking about pitting pieces together without really thinking what it all meant. After I talked to Travis, I realized that with out thinking I was coming up with adjacencie models and was thinking about how the program could be split. It is satisfying to realize that the work you do might not mean much to you at the moment but it means so much after someone else takes a second look at it.

Sketch Model Series | Layers

2009-02-22T10:30:00.000-08:00

Looking back at the adjacencie sketch model that I had made, I began to realize that I should not be putting these models together just for the heck of it been done. I tried making up one reason for why I should build each model. From that one reason, I generated some ideas about why a building form could follow that structure and how the sketch model would benefit from that idea. OK, so my idea for this one sketch model was layers. What would be layered? (floors, spaces, materials, structures, pluming, etc) What could happen in each of these layers? (it could be open, enclosed, generate multitudes of people, nothing would happen on the layer!!) How would the sketch model benefit from being modeled? (well the sketch model's only benefit would be looking nice enough for a picture and be published on my blog) BUT how would I benefit from the model what conclusions could I draw? In this case I found interesting ways for possible floor layering and interesting materials that could be used for the construction of a building that looked like the one above.

Sketch Model Series | Landmarks | Spaces

2009-02-22T10:29:00.004-08:00

Approach??? How would anyone approach a place that looked like this??? (please feel free to leave some ideas behind)

Sketch Model Series | Simple vs. Complex

2009-02-22T10:29:00.001-08:00

Sketch Model Series | Landmarks

2009-02-22T10:17:00.002-08:00

2009-02-20T11:48:00.001-08:00

[ collaborating on Greensboro's future l final report ]

2009-01-27T09:21:00.000-08:00

When i was looking over Greensboro's 2025 Redevelopment Plan, I came across this image, (very sad and gloomy). This is the feeling that you get as you drive down Lee St. coming from I-40, I know I did when i used to drive down Lee St. as I came and went to Cary. I always hated driving back not only because it was a long drive, but also because Cary is a very well kept town, you don't see areas like in the pic above.