1.1 Explore Phase 2: Instant Air-b-n-b
You You Guo, MA Interior Design , 18/19
Exploratory Practice// CARC7002// CIND7002
Introduction Mobile working and Air B and B are contemporary ways we inhabit space and the city. But temporary inhabitation and rest in a space-not-our-own is a fundamental part of the mediated space we commonly inhabit in our lives. We all have basic needs of rest, relaxation and sustenance and there are a myriad of different ways this is designed, across the world, from guesthouses to giant resort hotels. We make our homes in a space only transiently our own and this is a fertile ground for challenging and interesting design solutions to the problems of these fundamental human habits.
Brief
In the first part of the explore project, you explored time, now you will be exploring space, specifically personal space. The new brief is to design a portable living device which allows the user to rest in the site of the Soane Museum, London.
Context
The device will need to: 1. Facilitate sleeping, eating, leisure, rest, relaxation. 2. Be very specific to the site you are working with. 3. Be portable or packable in some way. The first project is a combination of group work, and also individual design outcomes. The project is designed to challenge your perceptions of design skill and thinking as an an introduction to design research through knowledge investigation and making practice, and to expose you as widely as possible to the resources the university has on offer through introduction to the workshop spaces on site, and the opportunity to engage with some of the specialist making expertise available. It is also intended to provide you with a framework to determine your area of investigation for the year. We hope the project so far has brought you both challenge and satisfaction and some good lessons about project management and delivery of a real thing to a deadline. The next project will help you think carefully about how to design and make realistic details so you can design with resepct to materiality and manufacture, delight and realism. You should be going through a shift in your very understanding of design and approach to design thinking, to improve your critical and intuitive skills, which can be scaled up to include any design problem you come across. Through the review and supervision process you will develop a critical framework and self-evaluation which will allow you to progress your project work freely and you will become familiar with the process of design through prototype with the opportunities of testing to failure to develop a rigorous process and ambitious designed outcome.
Outcomes To expand understanding of fabrication methods and space making.
To develop engagement with detailed drawing and communication of spatial ideas. To develop understanding of detailed design, and engagement with materials, fabrication methods and engagement with ergonomics, personal space and pesonalised use. To develop specialist understanding of the the needs of space and the user, specificity of programme through design intervention. To develop skills in the manipulation of the perception of space through innovative solutions to a design brief. You will learn how to respond to a very specific brief, using contextual research as the basis for developing a spatial aesthetic language. UCA Canterbury School of Architecture // MA Architecture // MA Interior Design // 2019-20
