... it seems like the weeks go by soooo fast, I know this whole year is just going to be a total blur and I want to be able to remember some little details!
(sorry this is long ... there I warned you)
Monday
Design Theory: we handed in our concept boards for the auction item. Little did anyone know, we also presented them (it seems like we present everything we hand in these days). My concept was good, but my board was not. Printer issues with the colour printer at school, then no time to make it prettier in black and white .... so I am re-doing it before the actual auction where this will be on display. Everyone else had beautiful concept boards and ideas and I can not wait to see the final products!
History - we had another lecture. This year we started on modern design history, which started around 1910 and continues today. So far, past weeks the lectures have taught us Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and a few other small movements. Today we learned about the beginning of the Bauhaus. So much of the furniture designed there is still available to buy today and still looks super modern; I can't imagine seeing it in those days. Pretty cool minds.Also, seeing pictures of modern homes sitting next to the tradition "of the time" ones, was just crazy. Love it.
Tuesday
Space Planning - this is an 8:30-3:30 class! A little long for my liking. But we got from 8:30-1:00 to finish our space planning project we got last week. It was not meant to be 'pretty', but to be a preliminary plan that works as far as adjacencies, traffic, sound, fitting people, getting people sunlight, everythings wheelchair accessible (which, most of us forgot about doing that for the front door so making the rest of it accesible was pretty pointless! haha!), and such .... but even though it was a 1-week project (with two 4-hour labs) it was worth 20% so the pressure was on pretty bad. And we were working in a 1/8 scale instead of the 1/4 that we are used to so it was kind of hard. But the plan was so big we didn't want to enlarge it. I had mine readyt to just make a final copy of, but I needed to straighten lines and re-measure furniture and such. It ended up taking the whole time because I totally re-did my open office space. Anyways, after 1 o clock we presented our finished project, just free-hand in pen. Then we put them all up on the walls and Michelle and Manon (instructors) went around and discussed the good and bad of each one. This took for-eeeeeever. And we stood from 1 until 3:30 without a break. I don't know why, but I guess it was enjoyable for the instuctors. Mine was second to last so by that point nobody cared and the teacher had seen too many super good ones - haha - and as it turns out, the scale of my furniture in the entire open office area was totally off and wouldn't have fit if I had drawn it properly. I swear I measured 1/8, i don't know how that hapenned! Some other people did it too, but.... bah I hate stupid mistakes.
Wednesday
AutoCad - In AutoCAD we basically had a lab because the instructor was going to teach us stuff but she kept talking about super elementary stuff we all know so I just kept working on my project. Our project in this class is an office space plan where we have to do a big reno with construction walls, demo walls, existing walls, and the same for the plumbing, equipment, and furniture. There are requirements for each room, etc. Boring.
Comm - awe. I love Communications (business; writing) this year. Our instructor, Deanna, reminds me of Julia Child. The way she talks with big fluctuation in her voice, and so sweetly, but she'll also surprise you with some things you wouldn't expect to hear from her mouth! Making fun of people and such. Anyways in this class we are writing a formal proposal to BCIT or our department, on a topic of our choice. Its actually really good to see how one writes a proposal and its amazing that by doing what the guidelines tell you, it actually does make it convincing! So we got lab time for that and I got mine almost finished. Its a proposal to get all ergonomic equipment for the computer labs in the school. I just need Deanna to read it over again, then I can fix and I'm done. But we got a one-week extension because everyone was complaining we have too much due next week! Haha - well, works for me!
Thursday
3D Cad - We got time to work on our projects again - this one is a little corner of an office with desk, chair, shelf, accessories, etc. 3D autocad was super hard at first.Now I'm getting the hang of it. And in future we will be able to import "blocks" of furniture from websites and suppliers of furniture, which makes it sooo much easier to not to have to actually build the furniture line by line. Anyways, it was good we got lab time for this too, except everyone's was sooooo nice compared to mine! So I want to work on it and really step it up this week, its due on Thursday.
Materials - Hmmmm materials we got "lab time" to work on our auction item. most people just went home! Including me, who had a headache and needed a nap cause I skipped going to the gym this morning.
Friday
Graphic Presentation - We handed in sketches of a proposal we started last week on the broadcast building on campus. Last week we went over and traced it through transparencies, interior and exterior views, then you can go back with trace paper and make your wavy lines that you drew while holding a transparency in mid-air into lines that make sense, and then you develop it into a sketch that the client will have no idea we actually didn't have to figure out the perspecitve of on our own! (thats one sentence!) I dont know how to explain it better without showing you and I don't have pictures! So I went to make photocopies of my sketches to hand in in the morning, and of course the 2 copiers are both down. one no toner, the other now paper. I was mad. Which was worsenned by looking at everyone else's work which was amazing! Ugh. I hate handing things in that I am not proud of in the least! Anyways, in class we learned about making graphic bubbles. That sounds ridiculous.... but designers use bubble diagrams to figure out adjacencies on a floorplan and show relationships before it gets developed into blocky rooms or walls. So she taught us how to make them look representable and something we could show a client, with a legend, colour-categorized (public space, support space, accounting department, etc.) and showing the most important adjacencies with arrows of different types, graphics showing the views on each side of the building, and we also used colours to show the path of traffic through the building - primary and secondary circulation. So we had an hour to do ours and hand it in. The name of the game was to not get too caught up in the actual space plan of the bubbles, and work on the graphics, font, clarity....because thats what she would mark. Lots of people were disgusted to have to hand in such a "mess" - haha - but I think its supposed to be kinda messy anyways. My kind of work! Then she showed us what we will be working on next. Because at the end of all this there will be a graduate show where we all have our portfolios, businness cards, resumes and work to show a bunch of people from the industry and such (who we have to make invitations for). We are starting with businness cards next week so she brought in some interesting ones for us to look at. We quickly concluded that anything too small or "tag-like" looking, we would have thrown out. There is something valuable about the standard size and shape of a businness card, there is no question what it is. So I have a few ideas I need to work on, and I am pretty excited! Next week we will learn about resume graphics (I'm so curious what that means exactly) and eventually we'll have a whole package that says "ME!". Fun stuff. Oh and also, in this class we had made a poster for our charity auction upcycled item, and my group won! Ok, well they only told us the top 3, but ours totally rocked so we probably won fully. I should find a jpg of that to show off to you!
Lunch - there was a guy named
Paul Downton talking at our school about Eco cities and the changing climate. It was pretty standard issue information, but he was good and interesting and claims to have a book that is "too expensive". He's an Aussie though, so I like him :)
Lighting - aaaah lighting. Everyone is so ready to go home at this point.But lighting is really interesting. Today we learned about the psychology of light and how if everything is the same value of light in a room, the brain interperets it as a cloudy day, and you get depressed. Its true, studies show depression. This can also happen in elderly people with cataracts - they really need to brighten up their spaces if they want to be happy! Other than that, just talked about residential lighting a lot and how to do things to avoid crappy things hapenning. And then....home time!
So, looking back, it seems we had a lot of lab time this week. It is nice that they try to give us a considerable amount of time in class to do stuff, but it wasn't really like this the first couple of weeks, so I hope it does continue. Now its saturday and I am going to work on autocad, 3D and my auction item (its almost half done already) - lots of fun!
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