Ohio University
Interior Architecture
Faculty: David Matthews, M.Arch, Associate Professor Vincent Wojtas, MFA, Assistant Professor Matthew Ziff, M.Arch, Associate Professor, Area Coordinator
HCIA 495, Senior Thesis, Spring 2007
Course Syllabus
Course:
HCIA 495 AO3, call # 03605, David Matthews: Tuesdays HCIA 495, AO2, cal # 03604, Vincent Wojtas: Wednesdays HCIA 495 AO1, call # 03603, Matthew Ziff: Thursdays
Time: TWTH: 9:10am-12:00am
Location: Grover Center W27 & W330
Course Description:
Independent thesis project. Design and development of proposed topic as approved by the faculty of the Interior Architecture program.
Credit Hours: 5: 1 lecture, 8 lab
Prerequisites: HCIA 402, 402A, 470
Attendance Policy:
attendance of this studio course is required. it is expected that you will be at your desk and working from the beginning of class through the end of class. if you are not at your desk and working, a message indicating where you are and why you are there is considered appropriate. you are allowed to miss two (2) studio classes without any penalty. more than two (2) absences, regardless of the reason,, will lower your grade for the course.
do not 'waste' your two allowed absences. save them for a moment when you really need them. each absence in excess of two (2) will reduce your course grade by one-half letter grade. absence from eight (8) or more classes will result in failing the course.
Mid-Term Critiques
Tuesday, April 17, Wednesday, April 18, Thursday, April 19
Mid term critiques will be 'formal' presentations of the work you have done up to this point of the quarter. 'Formal' means that you have to prepare a coherent oral explanation/presentation of what you have done so far. You will need to spend appropriate time assembling your work into a viewable form, be it pinning up paper drawings, or placing images into a PowerPoint slide show. For this review the faculty will be looking at the content of your work, not the form of the presentation, so do not become unduly worried about taking a vast amount of time to construct a presentation. Just assemble your work and think about a good, clear way to describe your ideas and your products (drawings, models, sketches, et cetera).
Final Thesis Critiques
Tuesday, May 15, 9:10am: Thesis students with David Matthews
Wednesday, May 16, 9:10am: Thesis students with Vincent Wojtas
Thursday, May 17, 9:10am: Thesis students with Matthew Ziff
The final presentations will be given in the day of the week order that we have met during the quarter:
All students are required to have completed their thesis projects by Tuesday, May 15, Wednesday, May 16, or Thursday, May 17.
This presentation is to contain all of the design work you have produced during the quarter. The purpose of these critiques is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your project. The purpose of holding these critiques at this point in the quarter is to provide you with a period of time in which you can make changes and refinements, and work on designing your senior exhibit.
The Senior Thesis Exhibit
Starting Monday, June 4, 2007, and continuing up to the evening of Wednesday, June 6, 2007, we (you) will be putting up a display of senior thesis work. On Wednesday, June 6, at 5:00 pm, we will hold an 'opening' event for the senior thesis exhibit. By this date, at 5:00pm, you will have a visual presentation of your thesis work on display in the Grover Center third floor public areas. Specific areas for each student will be assigned.
Be sure to design your presentation of your thesis project. Remember; designing, and presentation are not the same; designing may involve all sorts of varied thoughts and actions; presenting is a moment to bring your work together, into a coherent and interesting experience for a viewer. Designing media and presentation media are also not the same thing. Power Point, for example, is a good medium for presentation, but is generally not very good as a design exploration medium. AutoCad is a good design exploration medium, but is generally not a very good presentation medium (AutoCad drawings typically need assistance with hand rendering, or with perspectives in a poster-like format. Simple AutoCad elevations, for example, are often not sufficiently informative to merit their presence in a presentation; they need to be enhanced with more than single line weights, and black and white format.
Requirements for Thesis Preparation and Proposal,
HCIA 495, Senior Thesis
HCIA 495, Senior Thesis, is a design studio course, much like the other Interior Architecture (IA) design studio courses that you have taken over the past two and a half years.
Unlike previous design studio courses, the Senior Thesis is a substantially independent design exploration, of a topic that you have proposed. Each of the three full time IA program faculty will be working with one third (6 students) of the students in the senior class. Each individual student will be working with one faculty member, as their primary instructor/advisor, for the entire spring quarter.
The senior thesis studio environment will be very much like previous design studio environments, in that all of the IA senior level students are required to attend the regularly scheduled studio meeting times, TWTH, 9:10 am - 12:00 pm.
Attendance for these studio sessions is required, and absences beyond two (2) will impact your course grade.
Regular participation in the studio environment is a foundation of studio based design education, and this thesis course needs this foundation perhaps even more than your previous design studio experiences. Your colleagues must provide stimulating and significant support for your work. You need to talk with each other about your work, and about your professional development.
The work you undertake in HCIA 495, Senior Thesis, is advanced level design work. This is a thesis project, which means that you will be required to:
* present your design work in regularly scheduled appointments with your assigned primary faculty.
* work independently and responsibly, producing substantial and high quality design work between meeting sessions with your faculty.
* explore the discoveries that you and/or you and your faculty encounter during the course of your project. faculty suggestions, advice, and recommendations must be explored to a sufficient degree to demonstrate that you are learning about and responding to the larger world of designing and of important designers. pay attention to what faculty say to you, and take their suggestions and advice seriously.
* work in a multi-dimensional manner: the project you are undertaking requires that you work on more than one component at one time; space planning, material selection, color palette, design issues, finishes, furnishings, and code issues all need to be explored in relation to each other. designing involves a great deal of synthesis work, bringing together pieces and parts that impact each other and result in a new and unpredictable result.
The structure of this senior thesis environment can provide you with an environment in which you can produce a very interesting, high quality, and professionally meaningful design project. It is our hope that the value of this opportunity to do independent, original, and creative work will be the primary motivating aspect of your studio experience. This is a senior thesis; this studio course must be placed high on your list of priorities for the spring quarter. Your schedule needs to include appropriate allocation of time and energy for this undertaking. Make the most of this exploration.
The Thesis Project
All students are required to have completed their thesis projects by Tuesday, May 15, Wednesday, May 16, or Thursday, May 17.
The Concept of 'Inspiration' And The Use Of 'Inspirational' Images'
We encourage you to look at, and to seek to understand what other designers, contemporary, interesting designers, and especially the 'great' desigers have done. We also very much want to encourage you to be creative, to generate forms and ideas that you discover, as your own interpretation of issues, requirements, or material applications. To this end, the Interior Architecture faculty have come to a policy decision, stated below.
Inspirational images may not come from the same 'typology', that you are working on, nor may they come from the same scale of project that you are working on.
In other words, if you are working on the design of an office space, you may not use inspirational images of other office spaces. If you are working on the design of a room, you may not use inspirational images of other rooms. Inspiration, for designers, must be a transformation, of a form, a material, a texture, a pattern, at one scale, or application, to a different one. One of the classic ways that designers have sought, and found, inspiration, is through a close look at nature; at natural components, such as a bird's wing, a sea shell, a leaf, a sunfllower, a maple seed pod, a pine cone, et cetera. Another classic way to seek and develop forms is to use an existing piece, such as a part from a typewriter, as a beginning 'form' for a transformation into an interior component.
Of course you can, and will, look at whatever you wish, but for your presentations to the faculty do not use inspirational imagery as described above. We are taking this position because it will make you better designers, not to irritate you.
The following components are required to be included in the exploration, development, documentation, and presentation of each project:
Large Scale (1/4" or greater) rendered floor plan of each floor level.
Rendering is to indicate floor material(s), furniture, equipment, partitions, and all other significant elements. Floor plans are to be drawn using proper drafting conventions: poche all 'cut' objects, use at least three (3) line weights (a heavy, a medium, and a light) to help communicate differences between surface pattern (light line) and object edges (heavy line). Include room names, and a North arrow.
Two rendered vertical building section-elevations with human figures:
include the floor above/roof profile. These drawings must 'read' as sections; materials that are 'cut through' must be visually bold.
A minimum of Six interior perspectives:
include furnishings, finishes of all major, and some minor, surfaces, lighting qualities, human figures, visual qualities of ceilings, all major interior elements, such as stairs, reception areas, sales counters, et cetera.
Written specification of all:
furnishings: include manufacturer/custom, materials,
relevant test performance
lighting fixtures: include lamp type(s), beam spread, power usage, manufacturer
equipment: include manufacturer, power requirements,
finish materials: include flame spread rating, contents
door and hardware schedule: include door type, material, size, location, hinge
type, number of hinges, material
Floor plan code overlay sheet:
one large tracing paper sheet, OR digital floor plan image, showing appropriate
building code issues addressed in the design of the space. Include: appropriate
number of exits, egress paths, noting distance in feet to each exit, dead end
corridors (no more than 20' in length), fire rated partitions, egress stairs,
fire suppression systems, Use color coding to indicate each of these issues.
Architectural Details: a minimum of four (4):
thoroughly shown (each detail shown in plan, section, and elevation views) interesting construction/material/joint details.
Materials of all major and most minor surfaces must be shown visually, and noted.
Generic identification, such as 'wood', or 'metal', is not acceptable. '3/4" thick, by 2 1/2" wide, by mixed lengths, white oak strip flooring, with a tongue and groove connection,with a Duron #6 pale violet penetrating stain, and a Duron clear gloss varnish.'
Four physical 'study' models: these must be made during the investigation phases of your project. these are not to be 'finished' presentation type models, they are to be study/design process models that show an exploration of something.
no more than two may be of the same element/thing within the project. One model must be of a small, or detail, condition.
The remaining two weeks of class will be used to implement suggestions, make revisions, and refine the presentation of your work.
The Senior Thesis Studio environment: Your Educations Requires That You Make Informed Decisions, and Judgments.
The IA Senior Thesis has been developed as a dynamic capstone experience.
This studio course will give you the opportunity to discuss your design ideas, and your design work, with all three of the IA program full time faculty. The faculty not only encourage you to take part in this process, we require you to do so.
Each of the three faculty will, during the course of the academic quarter, offer you their views of your work. The views of the three faculty may well contain varying, or even conflicting, positions. This is not because of 'confusion' on the part of the faculty, but rather, it is a natural characteristic of the qualitative realm of visual design work. Each of the IA faculty will offer you a professional, responsible, and informed point of view. Once you have listened to this view, it is then your responsibility to decide how you will proceed.
The faculty expect that each of the IA courses you have taken during the past three years will inform your design decisions. Lighting components and lighting qualities should be explicitly related to the work you did in HCIA 288. Materials and construction characteristics and details should be explicitly related to the work you did in HCIA 350, 351, and 361. Drawing techniques, including digital rendering, and hand sketching and rendering, should be explicitly related to HCIA 200, 201, 202, 279, 300. The faculty expect that your design work in the context of the Senior Thesis will reflect your knowledge, skills, and attitudes as they have developed over the past three years.
It is also expected that you will be more productive during the course of this Thesis project than in any of your previous studio projects. The faculty encourage, expect, and in fact, require, that you conduct your design exploration, documentation, and presentation, of your Thesis project at a level of productivity, and design sophistication that is the best you have ever done.
You now know enough, and possess sufficient skills, to make your ideas take lively visual form. You know how to interpret the value, and merits, of a variety of ideas, and you know that to make such an evaluation requires that you explore, through visual means, the strengths and weaknesses of these ideas.
If you have an idea, draw it, make a model of it, and present it to one of your colleagues. Designers make things visual. Your ideas must be explored and presented in visual form to determine if they are good or not.
Points To Keep In Mind When Designing
When major planes, like floors, ceilings, and walls, meet, SOMETHING should happen. This is an 'architectural' moment, and must be articulated with some type of detail.
Floor plans must be drawn properly. Poche/darken/hatch all elements that are 'cut'; show door swings, show windows. The floor plan is like the hub of a wheel; it is the center reference point, and orientation for understanding what is being shown in the other images. The floor plan must read clearly, boldly, and accurately.
Include human figures in perspectives, and in vertical sections.
Design project work is an expression of skill (Form z, drawing, rendering, et cetera), knowledge (building code requirements, how stairs work, what materials can be used for, et cetera), craft (how well something is executed), focus and direction of the designer, and a sense of scale and detail.
Show 'N' arrows on all floor plan images. The orientation of a space is important; sunlight changes spaces!
Be sure stairs are drawn properly: use a break line after the first six or seven stairs; include an arrow, and the letters 'up' or 'dn'.
Cite all images, references, pieces of music, used in a presentation. Not doing so is plagiarism.
Go overboard with a design idea. If you have an idea for a form, or a texture, or an organization, use it to the maximum; it is far easier to reign in an over exuberant use of an idea, than to try to inject some life into a dull project.
Elevation images need accompanying vertical section details to explain, and give life, to what is being shown in the elevations. Details are the vehicle for giving a 'human' scale, and touch, to a space.
Sketches play a useful, and important role in a final presentation. They should be used to show how you got to the final images. Do not make sketches compete with finished Form z images, because they will usually look sort of 'inferior' to the form z images.
All sleeping spaces must have a window.
Vertical sections are very, very important drawings; they communicate information that no other drawing can communicate.
Kitchen cabinets make a big impact on a kitchen space. Select cabinets that really work with the design character you are trying to create.
How do you know if a 'parti' is a good one or not? You probably should try several different parti forms and then look at them with a critical eye to see if one looks like it will be more useful, appropriate, interesting, or creative than the others.
Interior Architecture is a major in which
making things
(the active, engaged, physical process of making drawings, models, statements, objects, spaces)
defines who you are
(as a designing person, having ideas, knowledge, beliefs, desires, points of view)
and
how well you are doing
(as a design student, working to expand your horizons, develop skills, and discover new points of view)