This is my final MArch Architecture project portfolio.

Design Studio 15, Westminster University, 2014.

The Ceramics Quarter project design is inspired by Moroccan arts & crafts, architect’s own explorations of chance through ceramic firing experiments and then directed by answers given by the I Ching.

The new neighbourhood in the medina of Marrakech will provide living and working spaces for local ceramics craftsmen and potters. Ceramic architecture components fired on the site will create an outstanding typology inviting tourists to the north east part of the medina. The proposal also responds to the current urban fabric of Marrakech medina, where poor and rich are often next door neighbours.

This doodle is an outcome of an interesting exercise we did in the studio at the beginning of the year. You can clearly see that one does not do a typical doodle…

More doodles of my coursemates can be found here.

The brief:

Imagine you are stuck in a very boring meeting, which goes on for a week. Do a doodle. On a really big piece of paper – A0. No Digital. Medium – Biro (any colour). Paper may be blank or not. The drawing should be very dense and completely amazing.

 Sketches of Marrakech, Morocco.

05-10 December 2013.

Or watch in better quality on VIMEO

This might seem like just a graffiti / painting on a set of plinths, but there is more behind it. The idea I am fascinated about the most is – the provocation of students. This installation was done at university, on all plinths of our MArch Architecture studio a week before our interim crits.

Taking all the plinths might seem rude at first, but architecture is about behaviour change and interaction between a space and its users, which is what this installation did. The painting on the plinths gave them a sense of untouchability (or at least I hoped it will). I was curious what will happen with a crit day approaching. Will students start to take the plinths one by one? They belong to them as much as they belong to me.

I wanted to see a progressive defragmentation of this painting, but what I’ve discovered instead, not even 24hours after the installation was made – plinths composed randomly, looking somewhat similar to Picasso’s paintings. Brilliant – a number of coursemates decided to re-organize them.

I loved the idea of chance in this installation – stacking the plinths randomly and then painting a symbol on them left me wondering how will each plinth look like. The random sizes of plinths stacked together was also a way of escaping a typical grid. It also has an effective three-dimensional quality, due to lengths of plinths they can be spaced in a random way, again creating something completely different and completely by chance.

The crits went great too, as my tutor Sean Griffiths, Co-Founter of FAT said: “Ricardas, you have had the best presense during the crits today”, meaning that all students were presenting their models on plinths with a piece of my painted symbol.

I was hoping that after the crits I will collect them and stack them in a random way, but there was no need for that, as like I mentioned previously, it happened sooner than I expected thanks to my coursemates.

The painted symbol is from my own created alphabet, which you can check out here and download as a font here.

I have also made a small model of this installation, which will appear on the blog soon.

Above you will find a time-lapse video of the installation making process, and at the bottom a photo gallery of the installation, as well as a photo gallery of plinths being used in the studio by other students to display their work.

]]> http://whycgi.com/Ricardas/?feed=rss2&p=568 1 http://whycgi.com/Ricardas/?p=561&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-i-ching-t-shirt http://whycgi.com/Ricardas/?p=561#comments Thu, 28 Nov 2013 11:39:06 +0000 http://whycgi.com/Ricardas/?p=561

I made myself an I Ching t-shirt for an interim crit that I had yesterday.

This year I’ve been working on a lot of stuff involving chance together with guys at DS15. I Ching is our core material that we base our studies on. Since the beginning of the year I loved the idea of assigning colour to hexagrams of I Ching. The hexagrams have a very strong graphic aesthetic and look brilliant on a tee. Making this for my crit was a great way to level up the presentation.

BUY?

I had some requests from people wanting to buy one like this, so I might get to it and make more soon. If you would love to invest in one, then give me a shout through a contact form below (inc. tee size) and I’ll keep you updated!

]]> http://whycgi.com/Ricardas/?feed=rss2&p=561 0 http://whycgi.com/Ricardas/?p=504&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=alphabet-part-2 http://whycgi.com/Ricardas/?p=504#comments Mon, 18 Nov 2013 19:43:30 +0000 http://whycgi.com/Ricardas/?p=504 Here’s a completed alphabet represented in Times New Roman Font.

This is a developed version of the first set that was posted previously. This final set has gone through a lot of handwritten development, mainly trying to simplify the initial shapes composed of squares, triangles, circles or rectangles. Once I managed to get those compositions writable by hand I have applied a Times New Roman style to the alphabet.

The final alphabet has a clear connection with the initial abstract compositions as each letter represents at least a partial square / rectangle, circle or triangle.

FONT DOWNLOAD

Here’s an attempt to create a notational system / symbolic alphabet. I used four geometrical shapes to create a variety of combinations. Then explored how these would change by adding colour to the background, which revealed more geometry in the compositions.

Dalston Art & Dance Youth Centre, Ashwin Street, E8.

Five geometry compositions made in 2012. (repost)

Here’s a set of chance compositions made consulting the I Ching.

Using the I Ching as an oracle I devised a series of questions that allowed me to make a series of chance compositions.

I assigned values to 64 hexagrams (shown in four graphs) and asked four questions:

1. How many shapes to use in the composition No. X?

2. What is the shape No. X?

3. What is the colour of the shape No. X?

4. What is the scale of the shape No. X?

I have drawn a square and have fitted the shapes into it proportionally to the small square in the graph 2, then assigned colour according to the graph 3, and have scaled up shapes according to the value from graph 4.

If the hexagram turned out to have some changing lines – I would then use a value of the transformed hexagram, with exception to the colour graph – where I would use an initial hexagram for the fill of shapes, an a transformed hexagram value for a colour of outlines.

The shapes were layered on top of each other.

In order to complete a final composition – a number of compositions were recorded during the process.