Ice Melting Experiment
- Topic: Architecture Quick Design, Spatial topological variation
- Duration: 3 hours [ 2013 ]
- Tools: parallel ruler, needle pen, markers
design question
It was a three-hour quick design practice I did in my fifth year of undergraduate. This practice required students to design a small art exhibition that would express the concepts extracted from the melting process of ice, within a space of 6M * 6M * 30M.
design challenge
The main design challenge of this practice is to extract and translate concepts from the process of “ice melting” and express them with spatial design. I needed to visually represent the “ice melting” process and also communicate the kind of spatial feeling that space is “melting” like ice.
design process
Imagine the process of "ice melting" in real context
In order to abstract the essence from the process of “ice melting”, my first step was to imagine the phenomenon in details. And focus on the questions like “what exactly are changed or not changed in this process”, and “how they’re changed”.
Analysis the process of "ice melting"
After visually rehearsal the process of “ice melting” in mind several times, I found the main changes in this process were the volume and property of ice.
Map the elements in the process of "ice melting" to different spaces
At this step, the design question was how to translate “the ice remained” and “the ice that had melted to water” to different spaces. Finally, I came out with three perspectives to do the translation.
Start from the section design
Normally, designers would start designing architecture from its plans, which to a great extent would be limited by its functions. And in most circumstances, “function” is the biggest limitation of the “form” of architecture. But in this project, the spatial design is on the highest priority. Therefore, after learning about the architectural functions demanded in this case, I started the section design first, which was aiming at connecting these spaces in a certain order.
Finish the floor plan design
The floor plan design of a small exhibition can be very flexible, for it won’t have many limitations from its functions. In this case, the limitation of floor plan design mainly came from its section design.
