Tuesday 9: Today I finished my research on Louis Kahn, well finished it not the correct term, but I'm stopping there because I've completely stretched out the research on him. It could have and should have been condensed into fewer days. Even though this project is longer I should not abuse the extended time I have, I will try and carry the other research quicker next time because when looking at it what I am trying to find is their concepts/ philosophy and design process and that shouldn't span over multiple days for 1 person. I definitely got carried away because of the persona of the man, but research like that can be done in my free time, after this project. I just need to get what I need and move onto the next artist. All my notes on Louis are finished so all I need to do is type those up for the blog.
Wednesday 10: The focus today was on Tadao Ando and Jean Nouvel, I did not make the same mistake this time and stayed focused with the research, I looked for the answer to my questions and moved on, I would've loved to get lost in the research and spend a lot more time on both but my hand in date for this part of the project is in a week so I don't have the time. Again researching architects of that caliber is just fascinating, what they're able to produce is jaw dropping, and I can only dream of one day creating buildings of that level and depth. What I especially loved with Jean Nouvel is that I saw buildings I'd be in, I am a Parisian, born in Paris grew up there and go there nearly every holiday to see family, and from the three architects I researched his projects were the only ones I've actually experienced I remember going to see a graffiti exposition at the Foundation Cartier, I remember being fascinated by the Paris Philharmonic ever since I saw it even during construction and the Arab World Institute a building I know for a fact I've walked past countless times and never paid any attention too, which I feel stupid for. So next time I'm in Paris I will go there and right my wrongs.
Arab World Institute- Jean Nouvel 1987
Thursday 11: I managed to finish the research portion for the last three artist today, that was Richard Mosse, Charles and Ray Eames and Tinker Hatfield. I definitely spent less time on these three artist, but I got what I needed, and in Richard's case there wasn't much to research because I was only focussing on two of his projects. With Tinker Hatfield it was quite short as well because I knew some stuff and was very familiar with his work, especially the Jordans. For Tinker I watched a documentary on Netflix, and I really enjoyed it because it offered insight on a lot of his innovative projects, like the self lacing shoes, and Air Mags from back to the future. I especially like the final part of the documentary when Tinker talks about being a "provocateur" and someone that moves the field forward, and says "if people don't either love or hate your work, you haven't done all that much" and I just felt like that was a fair statement, usually when artist try and bring something new it is either hated or loved, and in both cases I think it's something good, because even if it's hated you can learn from it. I also watched another documentary on the Eames, it was called "The Architect and the Painter" and that one was amazing. I watched that documentary right after I read an article that tried to debunk the significance Ray Eames had, saying that she was a nuisance more then anything else, which really saddened me. I had been reading articles for a couple hours now saying that this couple was the perfect team, Charles maybe the dreamer and Ray the realist, but together they built one of the most important design offices ever. So I was happy when watching the documentary because it reinforced that they were a team, but it also showed that sometimes they could be a detriment to the team, Ray had her flaws, she was maybe messy and too perfectionist, but so did Charles he could be unrealistic. The documentary was fair, and I don't think that article was. The one think that really stuck with me though was the pair's willingness to always work in things they didn't know, and ultimately thats what other company like IBM wanted, they wanted their problem solving, how they got to learn about these new thing; that was what was unique to them. Charles rightly said that their work was just them problem solving, and in a field such as architecture maybe that is all it is. An architect solving the problem of the brief, it is just that the methods of problem solving differ from architect to architect, or artist to artist. I just really enjoyed today's research.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/oct/26/eames-furniture-team-charles-ray. Link to the article that tries to discredit Ray.
Friday 12: Short day today, just drafting my project proposal and concept, I'm starting to get a rough idea of what I'd want to do. I want to do something modular, that can easily be repeated to create a larger housing complex for example. I was thinking of targeting it at a professional couple, thats probably down to the Eames I obviously liked them and would like to try and learn and meet the demands an audience like that has.
Saturday 13: Today I've just been working on the research pages for the 6 artists, I have all the notes for all six, but obviously I cannot just publish a blog post of my notes, especially because my handwriting is awful. So I've just been writing it up and sourcing good pictures for the blog Post. Today I got the text down for the Eames and Richard Mosse post, but everything will go as drafts until I've done all six, so I can publish them all at once.
Sunday 14: Probably the most boring day ever. I knew I would have to Harvard reference since the start but of course I never done it probably and just copied the link of my websites on a word document and put the date. Thats not the correct format for the Harvard referencing, so today I spent a big majority of the day just copying and pasting the links into cite me and then going back to the page to find the author and date because the website would nearly never find it. Anyway it wasn't exiting but at least from now on I always have my site me page open so I won't have to do this again, because it was long, I was annoyed at the amount of website I'd gone on. I did however discover Thomas Heatherwick a designer/ architect that designed the new London buses but the project that I really liked was his Zeitz MOCAA in Cape town, which reused old silos. I like the up-cycling of old silos.
Zeitz MOCAA- Thomas Heatherwick (2017)
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