Studio: Project 1 (Light + Weight + Water)

For our first project in studio, we were issued this statement:

The second project requires that you contain at least one quart of water.  The site for this project is to be the 
metal window muntins in the studio.


You are to use the window sill and muntins as the primary means of vertical support.  However, water must 
be supported in such a way that the lowest level is at least six inches (6”) above the window sill.  You are 
alowed to make points of connection to the window muntins by removing the existing screws. However, at 
the end of the semester you are to return the window to its original condition.


Your approach to light, structure, and materials should be informed by and should further explore the 
approach used by one of the architects studied in the precedent analysis.  You are not limited to the Pool + 
House that you studied in the precedent analysis but are free to use ideas from other precedents.  The intent 
of this project is to explore the potential of the transparent, reflective, and dynamic qualities of water in 
relation to light.


We were instructed to conceive of this model as a physical medium which controls or manipulates a particular phenomenon offered by the window (light/landscape/perspective, etc).

I considered the landscape. More specifically, I chose to look at the cross streets behind Main St, which my window faces.





I extended those streets where they, in reality, terminate at or beyond Main, across the street and into the window, using their varied angles to create impossible or imagined intersections behind the threshold of the glass. The basin of the pool is held by those extended cross-streets. Here I chose to use a found form, drawing from the precedent, giving myself that limitation around which to construct that physical "map."









(Pardon the poorly-lit photos.)

This model also attempts to provide a view at the horizon line (not apparent in these night time photos), occluding what is below it, so that what exists is only the imagined landscape, its termination (both at the window and at the horizon line), and the reflection of that represented map back into space.

Structurally, the construction is held in tension, connecting the to the various muntin screws from those synthetic intersections on my map.

I'm going to produce the next iteration in a more rigid material (lasercut acrylic), which will hold the required quart of water.