Tag Archive for ‘Yale’ at ku10

Tag Archive for 'Yale'

Yale BP08: Common Ground Poster

Published

on July 27, 2008

. 1 Comment

A while back, the Obama campaign hired Scott Hansen AKA “ISO50” to follow up Shephard Fairey’s PROGRESS print. The result was my gateway to the rest of Scott Hansen’s work: amazingly tactile, geometric, retro work combining natural media, Swiss layout sensibilities, late 90s futurism (a la Designer’s Republic), and the pop vernacular of 60s-70s music posters.

Two weeks ago I got a chance to try my hand at totally ripping off Mr Hansen. I was asked to do a poster advertising Common Ground’s involvement with the Building Project, to be posted on our building site for the next two years. (The 2008, ‘09, and ‘10 BPs are going to be next to each other.)

Whenever I design anything my first reaction is to go for the heroic, which is why—until recently—a lot of my buildings were either very long or very tall. In addition to ISO50, I looked at Works Progress Administration and Soviet Constructivist graphic design—they all have in common lots of bold, carefully calculated geometric shapes, solidly anchored typography, dramatic angles, and strong colors.

As far as graphic design goes I’ve always considered my lack of illustration ability to be a weakness—luckily, over the years my crutches have gotten better. I modeled the raw geometry in Rhino, adjusted the virtual camera to 25mm, and exported a 2D Illustrator file, where I adjusted colors, gradients, and typography.

Next I brought my Illustrator work into Photoshop, where I started applying textures to the objects and to the foreground/background. I made a circular array of squares and applied that to the background to get some more dimension out of it.

I brought my poster to site the next day, where it was promptly rejected for being, basically, too cool, and also for its overly BP House-centric focus—turns out they wanted a more “community”-ish design, meaning less imposing and more contextual. Read the brief carefully, kids.

I went back to the drawing board with a couple of new challenges: the aforementioned context, adding a map, and—worse of all—use the Common Ground logo as the main title. (As you can see from their webpage, the Common Ground logo is fresh out of Word.)

I made this one after getting only three hours of sleep—my client, uh, conveyed the urgency of the situation—and after a while I got sort of delirious. When evaluating my own designs I always leave the final word to gut reaction, and my gut was telling me this one was very very bad. I shopped it around my friends and got a couple of responses: “fall collection,” “New Years’ bash,” “leaves?” etc. Some of them mentioned that there were serious hierarchy/perspective problems, which got my subconscious thinking while my conscious passed out.

The next morning I work up at 4 AM and couldn’t stop thinking about the damn poster. I got out of bed and hiked over to studio at 5 in the morning and started ripping out layers, gutting the crap, completely determined to save my design. I put everything on a white background and saved the basic geometry, and incinerated everything else. I added a dash of McSweeney’s and a whole lot of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (not on purpose)—thus was born the final print.

Indiana Jones at Yale

Published

Gary

on May 25, 2008

in Entertainment

. 3 Comments

I just came back from seeing Indy 4, and holy shit that movie made no sense at all. It’s basically a long chain of chase scenes, which is good fun until you reach that typically “wuh?” Spielberg-ending. One of the strange things about Indiana Jones is that he personally witnesses astounding things that should force him to question the nature of religion, the fabric of reality, the very origin of human civilization itself—I mean, he’s a freakin’ professor—and yet at the end of the day he just sort of shrugs and goes back to teaching Anthro 101.

Anyway, now I’m going to brag about how the chase scene through Indy’s university was filmed at Yale. That’s right, Indiana Jones is Professor Henry Jones, Jr. of Yale Effin’ University. The chase scene’s hilarious because it’s completely out of sequence—they’re warping all over campus. They start at a nonexistent corner burger joint, go down Chapel Street, flip over to on Elm, cut through old campus, go up the steps of Sterling Library, and end up in Commons (a dining hall masquerading as the library’s reading room).

Yale Building Project 08: First Day on the Site

Published

Gary

on May 20, 2008

in Declaration

. 4 Comments

Today was the my first afternoon on site. My arms and fingers are sore—my biceps feel like they’re made of cabbage. I helped raise a wall, measured, cut posts and headers, moved plywood and beams, ate a muffin and a bagel and two apples. It was fun, though I have no idea what I’m doing and ended up standing around a lot towards the end.

I’ve said it before, there’s nothing more amazing than seeing lines on a paper translated into wood and concrete, floors and walls—it’s like watching a baby being born, except nothing like, a lot more like watching a building get built. The accomplishments of architects are physical, real things, and that’s the one thing architects can hold over investment bankers and corporate lawyers who make seven-digit paychecks but nothing actually tangible. I see windows I drew at 2 AM after four beers actually put together in real life and somehow I feel a little like god.

Also, I’m going to let Susan Surface take all the photos, because she’s amazing and someone who’s not me should pay her money:

Notice, once more, that our house is perfectly square. I really love regular Euclidean geometry.

A Year of Models

Published

Gary

on May 6, 2008

in Declaration

. 2 Comments

My desk from the back.

My desk from the front. You’re looking at one year’s worth of models, about 80% of all the models I’ve made at YSOA so far.

Those of you who knew me in undergrad know that I got through the last three studios nearly model-free. The result: I left not knowing what made a building really work—circulation, space planning, scale, all the things that happen when drawings and models are the core of the process. Yale’s transformed me, particularly the Building Project. I’m finally learning how to architect. The people here just don’t take no shit.

Yale Building Project 08: What Won

Published

Gary

on April 28, 2008

in Declaration

. 4 Comments

Here’s the scheme that our team won with—what’s going to be built is going to be way different, due to client requests.

The 1/8″:1′ scale model Photoshopped into a photo of the site, a plot in New Haven’s Hill Neighborhood. The house has two units in one envelope: the owner and her family live on the first floor while a single tenant gets the second floor. (The owner’s a wheelchair-bound Iraq War veteran, which is why the entire family unit is on one floor.)

The backyard. The kitchen wall is fully glazed, so the garden and kitchen are visually connected. Rendering by J. Haferd.

A section through the house, describing the sectional relationship between the owner (first floor) and the tenant (second/third floors). Both spaces are partially or completely double-height, with some pretty dramatic skylights. The tenant’s “third floor” is actually a suspended sleeping loft set within the tenant’s main space. Drawing by T. Smierzchalski.

First floor/site plan. Notice the tenant’s entrance on the East (right) side. Drawing by K. Thatcher and J. Hahn.

Second floor plan. The second floor is about half the width of the house, the other half being the double-height space of the owner’s living room/kitchen. You can see the stair leading up to the bedroom loft. Drawing by K. Thatcher and J. Hahn.

The owner’s main living/kitchen space, seen from the West end of the house. There’s a thick bar of cabinets and stairs that separates the living area from the bedroom area; the tenant’s wall curves over it and up to the ceiling. Rendering by J. Haferd.

The owner’s master bedroom. Clerestory windows cut through the tenant’s space to illuminate the owner’s bedroom. Rendering by J. Haferd and myself.

The tenant’s main space, high in the house. Rendering by J. Haferd.

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