The Eames House

The Eames House, designed and built in 1949 by Charles and Ray Eames, sits nestled amongst trees in the Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. The house is defined by 14 metal frames that create two distinct buildings: a larger living space and a smaller studio, separated by a modest courtyard. The elevation drawings of the Eames House capture how the house sits within nature, rather than allowiung its architecture to impose itself upon the hillside.

Visual Thinking was imperative to my architectural journey. The class provided me with the tools I needed to succeed in Studio as I failed and succeeded in understanding how to draw plans, sections, and perspectives. While I was confident in my artisitc ability before this class, I had no experience in drafting or communicating architectural ideas.

Digital Collage

Alongside hand-drawing skills, Visual Thinking pushed my understanding of Adobe Suite and helped me gain confidence in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. To create the above collage I hand-drew a perspective of the Eames House, scanned the drawing, then used photoshop to create a digital image of the house. I greatly enjoyed this form of artistic communication as it gave me much freedom in respresenting the building. I could have used autumnal foliage to represent a different time of year, or placed bare trees and a warm light to convey wintertime. I am excited to use collage in my future work.

2D & 3D Verb Concepts

This exercise asked students to create three different designs based off of a single verb. Between the 2D and 3D exercises, the same verbs could not be used twice. Above, I have provided six of my favorite concepts. Students were only allowed to use three colors: black, white, and 50% grey. I found the 3D concepts to be easier to create because I could play with space to convey a message, but I find my 2D designs to be more enjoyable to the eye.

Formal Abstraction

The formal abstraction exercise used Pablo Picasso’s bull as an example: we needed to take a creature and abstract it down to its core form. I chose a ladybug because I found the other insects provided to be revolting. The ladybug is most known for its large black spots, where I spent much of my time resizing and reforming through my iterations. I finally determed that most people ignore the head of the ladybug and can easily identify the body, so I reduced the head to a single form and removed the legs and antennae. I had a hard time with this assignment because I thought there were too many steps, but instead I found that the small changes helped me identify the most important shapes.