Boyer Park Poster

These are final posters my group and I did for a remodel of the Boyer Park event space located outside of Pullman. To start the project, we met with the managers and asked them questions about what they wanted to do with the space. It is just a big open room that had been walled in to protect visitors from the wind, so we had a wide variety of things we could have done. Actually talking with the clients and finding out what they want for their space was not only fun, but extremely helpful in narrowing down options we had come up with, as well as excellent practice for when we have real clients. The couple was very nice, and easy to talk to.

Working in a group is always a challenge, and it is something I'm very glad we are doing. It forces us to work together to find design solutions that best fits the clients needs, and again, it was great practice for when we actually work. Our team worked together extremely well, and we decided to leave the existing concrete floor, and give it an acid stain treatment to cut down on material cost, and to help with sustainability issues. As for the wall. we removed most of the west wall facing the lake and replaced it with Nanawalls, which are giant window wall doors that can be opened out to the new deck we built, leaving the inside and outside spaces less distinguishable. The managers really liked the natural atmosphere, so on the wall opposite the Nanawalls we decided to add a stone veneer over the entire wall to bring more of the natural element indoors, as well as to add aesthetic value and texture. The rest of the walls were just painted a pleasant neutral beige and the furniture would be tables they could move around/ add at their leisure. Overall I'm very pleased with the space and I'm very glad we had the opportunity to work on it.

Textile Reflection

This is an image of the final textile pattern that I chose to turn into a fabric to be used for my art hotel. I love the pattern and the flow of the fabric, and it embodies the Australian train station beautifully. Choosing a color scheme turned out to be a challenge because the pattern is a bit intense, and many colors were too much for this, so I went with neutral brown/ beige colors that contrats nicely against the black in the back ground. What I dont like about the design is the middle square section. it looks odd because its so plain and a little awkward compared to the rest of the design, and I would like to eliminate that part and just join the pattern together in the middle to create one whole piece. A feature that I have grown to like is the lines that separate the squares/ modules. At first I really didn't like them and I tried to eliminate them, but the way the pattern lined up wouldn't allow me to get rid of them fully, and now that I see them in full context I think it adds interest. This was definitely a learning experience on pattern and design, and the next time I make a fabric I will have better ideas about what aspects work and what doesn't.

Blind Experience

I don't have any pictures describing this posting, but I think the one above works perfectly to illustrate what I experienced. At the start of the semester, a partner and I took turns walking around the WSU bookstore wearing a pair of sunglasses with the lenses covered in Vaseline to simulate the visual/tactile experiences of someone who is blind/ partially blind. Since we are designing a hotel who's manager is legally blind, this was a great thing for us to do. Looking through the glasses was very similar to the picture above, where most object were fuzzy blurs, and the source of light indistinguishable. My partner led me around the store, up and down stairs and I was able to attempt to use things such as an ATM, or elevator buttons with limited visibility. It was challenging, and it made me nervous because I had to rely on someone else to get where I wanted to go. This experience was fun, and it gave me a deeper interest in wanting to learn how to design spaces for people with vision problems. It is something I definitely don't quite understand yet, but doing this allowed me to "see" firsthand some of the problems people with this disability encounter, which in turn helps me design better spaces that help make this problem less significant.

Grandparent's Apartment

This is a sketch-up model of the grandparents residence I designed last semester. I am just learning how to use the program, and for the most part it is pretty easy. I am learning new shortcuts and tools that will make my models look better with practice, but I do like the way this view of the living area from the kitchen turned out. Although it took a lot longer than I expected, I learned a ton of stuff about how sketch-up works including commands and tools that allow me to import pictures/ 3-D models from other places that give the model texture and variety to make it more realistic. For this model, I went online to find manufacturers' pictures of actual materials I had specified for the apartment, and imported the colors and textures into things such as the carpet, and the wood to show how it would actually look in the space. For the furniture, I had more of a conceptual understanding of how it would look, so I used furniture similar to what I planned/envisioned from the warehouse to put into the model. I learned that picking an interesting as well as functional view into the space I'm making in sketch-up is one of the most important factors, and doing that will help show off the space I designed as well as create an interesting picture.

Textile Design

As part of the design process for the art hotel I am designing, I created a book of textile patterns from four original parti drawings based of of a train station ceiling in Melbourne, Australia. The ceiling curves and folds in a really interesting way, and I wanted to show the curves in the textile pattern I made. These are the four different patterns I came up with to represent the train station, and I think they turned out well. They are all very different, but share similar attributes, such as curving lines. I incorporated four different color schemes into each pattern to get a better idea/understanding of how the values and color contstats would work together when turned into an actual fabric. Now that I am looking at them again, I see that I would have really liked to eliminate the straight lines where the repeating patterns come together in order to create a better "flow", but overall I am pleased with the outcome.