Workshop With Tuliza Sindi

Architecture & Agency

Anchor. Unsee. Compose

The three afternoon workshops focussed on the questions that the students have been facing throughout the year within the unit, bearing in mind the themes and main concepts that have brought the student’s ideas together to what they are currently. Students were required to consider context, their social outlines, experiments, research and clients that they are designing for.

Furthermore, students were to think about the systems that are integrated on their site and the flexibility of their interventions – which ones should be fixed and which elements should be moved. Students were to imagine themselves as the users and how they would like to feel within their intervention and with the presence of other users within the intervention. They were to also imagine being blind and only having to experience spaces through feeling as space is a form of energies experienced which should be considered in the three workshops.

Workshop 1: Anchor

Students were given ten minutes each per drawing to articulate movement & route and volume & scale through their chosen site. These could be communicated in plan or section but had to be drawn with their eyes open but looking forward towards their vision, away from the paper. The medium chosen couldn’t be lifted off the page unless they changed their medium to a different colour or type.

Movement & Route

Medium: Watercolour paint, black inc and graphic pens.

The image above illustrates who the main and secondary users are, and where they are going to and what they will be doing there. What does the movement and route connect to and how does it connect to it. The image was drawn in plan, identifying the two nodes that the main and secondary users are going to visit on the site. The main route shown in black emanating from the black circle indicates the primary route that guides users through the side in a fluid manner whereas the blue lines indicate the secondary unmarked routes that the users can take. The drawing also portrays how the different users could either visit one element or meander through the site to visit more than one component within the intervention.

Volume & Scale

Medium: Watercolour paints and black ink.

The drawing above indicates how I wanted the users to feel within the intervention and when I wanted them to feel the air on their skin, to feel covered in sunlight, to feel enclosed or free, to feel part of a route or the arrival to a space. What elements are the users engaging with and how is the scale of the enclosure being influenced with their engagement. The drawing was communicated both in plan and section where the curved lines represent the users being exposed to the natural elements whereas the dark patches indicate the enclosed spaces. The enclosed spaces are the rigid and massed elements that differ in scale, due to their different interventions, whereas the areas that are open to the natural elements are more fluid, whose size is significantly smaller than the enclosed spaces.

Workshop 2: Unsee

Students were given a further ten minutes each per drawing to illustrate hierarchies and landmarks & marks on the land within their chosen site. These could be communicated in plan or section but had to be drawn with their eyes closed but looking down towards the paper. The medium chosen could be lifted off the page and the medium could be changed at any given moment to a different colour or type.

Hierarchies

Medium: Watercolour paints and black ink.

The figure above represents, in section, how a user would read my intervention from the outside, the two large black spots, and from the inside, the lighter lines in the background symbolizing the view of the outdoor interventions open to the natural elements. The programs that lie within the large black spots are those that need to be confined and controlled but also have the intention to spill out towards the outside in order to activate and link outdoor programs with indoor programs. The horizontal planes step within the natural fall within the landscape to accommodate a transition through the various levels and variety in programs within the design intervention.

Landmarks & Marks On The Land

Medium: Watercolour paints, black ink and graphic pens.

The graphic above illustrates portions of the intervention being hidden and others being celebrated through the scale and placement of the structures on the land in section. Portions of the intervention reside within an existing iconic structure with a spill out of vibrant activities on the higher and lower levels on the site where some activities are more vibrant than others. The objective of the intervention is to attract outsiders and daily users within the site through the various outdoor and indoor public activities proposed on the chosen site.

Students were then given feedback on their illustrations and had to choose one drawing to use for the next workshop. It was discussed that there was a continuous notion of two important elements within my site that ran throughout all my illustrations which made a powerful statement. My main concept of assemble and disassemble was also detected within each drawing made which was unintentional.

Workshop 3: Compose

Students were required to build a model in forty five minutes over a photocopied site image, panoramic view or the chosen drawing done the previous afternoon. This model needed to indicate the vision or narrative in the design intervention proposed on the chosen site. 

I chose to use the chosen graphic made the afternoon before, landmarks & marks on the land, in order to build up my model. While I was constructing it, I was bearing in mind my main concept of assemble and disassemble as well as how the users would move through the spaces within the site. 

I wanted to articulate the various outdoor and indoor experiences that one would pass through. I was trying to design playful outdoor elements for sportsmen to utilize that either formed part of the building or were set away from the structures. I wanted to also communicate the fluidity of the movement through the site where users would experience various interesting views and programs at different points on the site.