Final Submission - Beauty in Architecture

Class Challenge

Our instructor challenged us to design an object utilizing a given top and front view.  After class, I rendered the above front and top images which were my initial interpretations of the given.  Below are the top, front, isometric, back, and right views of my object correspondingly.

“Thoughts on Humans and Nature”

Today, I have come to the realization that the built society as a “whole” has become so astrained with nature that a group of peope, five or more, cannot sit outdoors without causing a ruccas. They ignore the Eastern Woodpecker in a nearby tree, the temperature of the wind as rain nears; the sound of a quiet forest. Our lives have become consumed by so many electronics that the buzz of lights, the humming of computers, and the sound of music with every internet connection has warped human interactions; to remain forever interconnected. Until real, live nature is brought back indoors, the human race will only forget more about the environment without four walls.

Travis Kyle Miller

5 July 2013

Ft. Jackson, SC

From this list, I would choose:

From this list, I would choose:

          ARCHITECTURE! over architecture?

ARCHITECTURE! to me reads as keynote architecture; or architecture that has never been duplicated except by various ideas if form, structure, and/or function. The beauty of this architecture can be found in it's uniqueness and deliberate existence to contrast contemporary standards of it's time. As I begin to practice, I hope to be able to take on large scale projects that will put focus on my overall design ideas as to copying or re-implementing someone else's ideas in the same atmosphere in another built environment. This desire comes from the atrocious placement of houses all over the US, with most having no unique quality in coordination with it's surroundings. The same structures are found in a catalog that can be purchased for $20 at a local bookstore. So I ask, how is that expressing architectural ideas???

          Networks over Objects

As I have interned and worked on studio projects dealing with urban design and development, I have begun to understand how important the fabric of life, culture, the built environment, humans, nature, and many others begin to overlap into a living organism network. As I move into the future, I hope to develop buildings not just for the client or for my own personal prestige, but for the overall greater good of the surrounding fabric of networks. Everyday, we experience the built environment, sometimes unconsciously walking and interacting with the surroundings. So I pose the question, instead of interacting with just the building, what if your interactions in the building can impact and interact with the greater built environment or networks of life and the like organisms? What if flushing a toilet or using a sink would lead to a water purification system in the building that waters the plants on the exterior of the building, which in turn feeds the endangered birds of the area. Would then architecture not contribute to the greater good of life?

          Substance over hype

I must choose substance over hype because I feel that too many keynote building now days are hyped up over the architect or person funding the project. Where many of these projects fall short is their connection to networks and the “WOW!” factor. Anyone who has millions of dollars can fund a major project and any architect can drop trees hardheartedly onto flat surfaces. However, I question what greater good will that building serve? If the building doesn't take into account environmental factors, the various networks of human and natural interactions, or the account a greater purpose, then I question why build the space as a monumental structure? Why not instead keep the project as a simple building that everyone recognizes for it's purpose because unless every-time someone walks into a building and feels a greater good or connection, then the keynote building will be no different than the mall down the street.

Thoughts on Ai Weiwei and Architecture

After reviewing Ai Weiwei in Architectural Theory last week, I began to think of how Ai Weiwei and his art actually relates to architectural design in a cultural sense.  I remembered that architecture often has hidden meanings represented in its designs much like an artist's work.  Architecture like the White House and the US Capitol Building are symbolic in meaning of strength, institution, and democracy through the design and use of the columns, the use of granite, and the incorporation of steps along the major facades.  These design ideas are to insinuate a connection with past cultures like the Greeks and Romans, showing a historic reference with modern ideas.  Likewise, when one would design a building breaking traditional rules, like Phillip Johnson's Glass house and it's reinterpretation of personal privacy, the Architect, much like the artist, is making a political/cultural statement.  This statement is often met with resistance and in Ai's case, being struck and jailed for expressing cultural misunderstandings and free speech.  With this knowledge, architects can and should begin to change society for the better much like Ai Weiwei's efforts to help reform China and allow more personal freedoms such as controversial art back into society.

US Capitol Building.  http://c1038.r38.cf3.rackcdn.com/group1/building9145/media/07bhy8w.jpg

White House.  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/WhiteHouseSouthFacade.JPG

Phillip Johnson's Glass House.  http://www.architecturaldigest.com/architecture/2012-09/architect-philip-johnson-glass-house-modernism-article/_jcr_content/par/cn_contentwell/par-main/cn_pagination_container/cn_image.size.philip-johnson-glass-house-h670-search.jpg

Check out how the cities of the future might work in this clickable article from BBC News.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23524249

This IS Architecture: an understanding of built beauty

If you were to travel through someone's life and pull out examples of beauty and the built environment, many of their ideas of beauty would greatly contrast and yet complement your own. This is from our own past experiences; experiences that shape our personal understanding of beauty, and only through these intimate experiences that one can claim that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

          Where One Grows Up and Lives

If one was to look into my past, they would find a trail of events in life that impacts the way I design. I, like other designers, draw on my past experiences to design starting ultimately with where I grew up. I was born into a middle class family in the hills and countryside of Southern Indiana. I grew up fairly secluded from other neighbors from the trees and plants at full bloom in the summer, and only seeing your neighbors in late fall and winter when the trees are bare. Not far from my family's property, one finds a much lighter, yet repetitive landscape of corn and soybean fields. It is these earliest experiences of playing in nature, discovering coves, caves, trees, plants, animals, and landscapes that I draw most of my design ideas. The complex geometry of forests, the relativity of spacial constraints, and the likeness and success of plants and animals living in close proximity to other environmental aspects all responds to the other in a living network. To accomplish the living network in my designs would be my grandest and most desired design idea for the built environment.

To live is to experience life to the fullest; only regretting not having time to explore every desire. I truly believe this in the aspect of designing in the built environment where one will always find new opportunities and experiences within a space, yet being drawn back into an environment for more experiences. I believe that like nature, the built environment is not only ever changing but ever-evolving. So, why can't buildings be the same way? Drawing on my experiences backpacking, camping, hiking, and living in the outdoors from the Boy Scouts of America; I hope to create more naturalistic built experiences that brings nature and biophilic design back into our everyday environment. I only hope to teach others about the natural beauty of the world and it's landscapes through architecture and the built environment.

          Obsessions from My Life Experiences

One of the most influential thing in a designer's life and what they perceive as beauty comes from personal obsessions. Leonardo da Vinci was known to obsess over understanding the physics of the human body. Some of the best medical artwork for early medical journals and research came from da Vinci and his obsessions of the body. I myself have my own obsessions that greatly influence my own personal work and how I perceive beauty.

Water – my first and most forward obsession. Water is the basic building block of life, without it, none of us could survive. Water has principles that are defined, yet remains elusive to most until their senses encounter the substance. Water and its properties of sound, movement, and feeling within a space is what will help draw me to architectural achievements. As people come into contact with water, their mood lightens showing the playfulness people associate with water.

Human Body – like da Vinci, I have a personal obsession with the shape, definition, contour, feeling, and pigmentation of the human body. Ultimately, the human body is to reflect nature, so the perspectives on sizes and interactions of and within spaces is relevant to the occupant. This also extends to the abilities of disabilities and the different ways one can move in and around environments for interaction.