Overview (Sketchbook)
The sketchbook I used during the Cornell Introduction to Architecture summer program in June and July of 2017 served several purposes. While the course required it for note-taking, I, being halfway through my IB Visual Arts course, felt it would be appropriate to visually document my process as well.
Therefore, this sketchbook contains a thorough documentation of my time at Cornell, from lecture and video notes to experimentation and records of my final products. Below I have also attached samples of assignments done during that time as well as blog posts, which were written subsequently for KaSaInteriors, and based off material I learnt at Cornell.
ASSIGMENTS
#1: Venturi
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, a husband and wife team, were two of the most notable architects of the budding avant-garde, or postmodernist movement. Their claim that architecture should be symbolic as well as functional brought about a paradigm shift, and thereby changing the way people perceived architecture, paved the way for successful postmodern architects such as Frank Gehry...
Also transcribed as a blog post, with accompanying illustrations.
#2: Duck, or Decorated Shed?
In their seminal work “Learning from Las Vegas”, Venturi, Izenour, and Scott Brown (1977) grouped architectural works into two categories describing the relationship of function to the architecture: the duck and the decorated shed... To determine whether the architecture of the Johnson... represents its function, I will first try to define what that function is. An art museum has several, but I have selected three for the purpose of this essay.
• Exhibition: it should provide public access to art, in as visually appealing a manner as possible4.
• Collection: an art museum should provide a safe environment for owning and caring for art5.
• Education and research: it should be a resource for students and the public, allowing them to learn about art and its history...
BLOG POSTS
What exactly is the function of a chair? On the surface, it seems a trivial question. The obvious answer is that a chair is made to be sat on, no more, and no less. However, I urge you to take a look around you. How many of the chairs in a given room are actually being sat on at any one time? I’ll hazard a guess and say, not many. Yet chairs dominate both our spaces (literal) and our language (non-literal, e.g. in turns of phrase such as “take a seat”, or “chairperson”). Clearly they are important to us, and being practical beings, we must therefore consider that they serve some purpose. The thing is, what exactly is it?...
The Environment and the Architect
The natural world and the built form have traditionally been at odds, the latter being developed to ultimately act as a protective barrier between us and our environment. Today, however, as the vulnerable party becomes the environment, we find that the roles have reversed, architecture’s role as protector remains constant. Architects can help the environment by reducing, eliminating, and reversing buildings’ carbon footprint...