WEEKLY TUTORIAL EXERCISES

This module kicked off with a series of weekly tutorial exercises which introduced us students to the very basic fundamentals of architectural drawing, rendering and lettering. Although these mini-assignments were very small, they helped to train me to get used to drawing architecturally and learning beginner design conventions.

Reflection:

As someone who had no background in architecture or design education, this series of tutorials was a very simple and effective way to get me into fundamentals such as lettering neatly, rendering details effectively and making my very first floor plan. Having it be done in such an easy way at the beginning helped to pave the way for the more complex tasks ahead.

PROJECT 1

Movie Poster

After learning the basics of drawing and rendering in the previous tutorials, we were tasked with our first real project, which was to create a movie poster of our own creation (or of an existing property). We were to take full advantage of any media we could find, whether it be colour pencils, paint or charcoal. I personally went with colour pencils exclusively as that was what I worked best with.

Reflection:

I was able to really let loose with my artistic freedom in this assignment and just have fun creating something that could express my creativity freely without any restrictions, whilst taking away a thing or two about composition, colour palette choice and proportioning elements in an image. I based my design off the Star Wars movie posters in terms of how the characters and objects were placed around the title and captions.

PRESTON & ROPER

A Tale of Two Souls

The story of a dragon named Preston who lives in the city of Horizon's Hope, who seeks more out of life and hungers for adventure. His chance meeting with a deer named Roper unknowingly sets off a chain of events that will decide the fate of their lives and change the city forever.

PROJECT 2A

Farnsworth House - Model Making

Our second project commenced in four separate parts, training us in basic architectural presentation. The first part tasked us with creating a scale model of the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe, using conventional materials such as balsa wood.

Reflection:

It got me to train myself in making models (something I had never done prior to this degree) that were polished and presentable. The Farnsworth House being such a simple building in terms of form made it ideal for training beginner architecture students to make miniature models, and I took to it quite quickly, getting used to using the blade and cutting mat to shape wood into a house. Given that I would be making more intricate models as my course progressed, this was an ideal starting point.

PROJECT 2B

Farnsworth House - Orthographic Drawings

The second part of the Farnsworth House project helped us to train our architectural drawing muscles as we were required to produce standard orthographic drawings of the house - floor plans, elevations, sections, etc.

Reflection:

This part of the project was very helpful in establishing how to do orthographic drawings properly, especially as Architectural Design I's Project 2 required us to produce such drawings for the final submission. Again, the Farnsworth House's simple design made it a good training tool to do such drawings. I never realised how long orthographic drawings could take to produce, so knowing then helped to make a point that time management is extremely essential in an architecture degree.

PROJECT 2C

Farnsworth House - Axonometric Drawing

The third part of this project involved producing a single axonometric drawing of the Farnsworth House. We were given the choice to do either a 30-degree or 45-degree angle drawing; I went for the latter.

Reflection:
I found that axonometric drawings are a bit tricky and finicky to produce so I was happy to use this mini-assignment as a training session to produce one that was nice-looking. Getting everything to line up perfectly was extra painful since everything was diagonal but I think I did a good job.

PROJECT 2D

Farnsworth House - Perspective Drawings

This was the final part of the Farnsworth House project which involved producing perspective drawings of the house. The mini-assignment introduced two forms of perspective, that being one-point and two-point perspectives.

Reflection:

Producing these two drawings helped me to not just understand the rules of perspective but to also to add background elements such as vegetation and the surrounding site around the subject. I got the impression that these drawings were less for measuring and referencing in construction and more towards presenting a structure to clients/customers, a takeaway that I have since used to great effect to make key drawings for my future projects.

PROJECT 3

Presentation Board

The final project of this module trained us to create a presentation board for the Farnsworth House as we would for our own architecture projects, using colour and composition to bring out the best qualities of the subject involved.

Reflection:

This being the final project made it clear how the rest of my architecture assignments were going to pan out in the future: make models, draw plans, present beautifully. Learning how to layout drawings for people to read easily, using colours to enhance the material qualities of your structure and placing captions when needed are just some takeaways I learnt from the final project of this module.

REFLECTION

Design Communication as a whole was very enlightening - it introduced the very basic fundamentals of design and how to bring those fundamentals together to create an "effective" design - a design which can carry and present a message or idea effectively.

My tutor, Miss Illia, was consistent in providing us information on how to carry out and improve our work through lectures or immediate feedback.

This module served very well in bringing me from someone who had never drawn like an architect to a student on their journey through architecture. I hope to bring the experiences gained from this module to my next semester to inform me on creating good design.