Porfolio/Senior Show

I know it's been forever since I posted in this blog, which is meant to be a motivator in doing art and posting it for anyone to see. Honestly, last semester was really depressing for me in matters of design, I literally had no motivation due to lack of learning/teaching in the design classes I had. Also, this is my last/6th year in San Jose State University, and I am pretty much ready to leave this school and move on with my life.... finding a job and start living independently is another story...

This semester, our final senior project is to work on our portfolio of our best work, and set up a senior show gallery for professionals to see and possibly consider hiring us. Our senior show website is available here in case anyone is interested in seeing who we are.

I have been working on my portfolio a bit, and based on feedback from last week, I came with this (bear with me):

This is suppose to be the cover of my senior interior design portfolio; the idea is to print it on vellum paper to have it on top of card stock paper as seen below.

This semi-cover will be have the letters laser etched, I still need to confirm with my professor and classmates if it will be a good idea.

Here is the table of contents of the five projects I picked as my best projects, I am still working on the layout, so expect changes. The first project to present is my hotel project:

This is the basic layout that mainly follows with the other projects to be presented. The next project is one of the early projects I did starting in Interior Design, the live and work loft:

I feel most of this portfolio should be self-explanatory, it just feels weird not saying anything about it. Following this is a project I did last semester, we had to take an anchorage of the bay bridge and turn it into a spa based on an artist we were given to study and our idea of a relaxation element. I was given Robert Smithson and choose the ocean, or in this case bay water, to develop my design like this:

This next one is something I did this semester with three other classmates, we were asked to design something that would be able to 3D print as ceramic in a 3D printer. Our concept was filigree vases, we each had to design our own individually, but be designed so all four could be put together like a family. So far we have only printed them in wood, (first time we tried rubber, but all except mine fell apart), and from what I have heard, they will be available on display and for sale at the Student Union book store at San Jose State (have yet to figure out when).

This final project is what I like to call the Sweatshop Cafe, another project I did last semester. This project we were only given about a month to design and finish. First we were asked to develop a wallpaper design based off of an industrial item. I experimented with sweatshop workers, and decided to bring the glove item as a feature design for my cafe, which serves a hanging ceiling element and table legs for the assembly line created. My main idea was to give customers the idea of what it is like to work in a real sweatshop, to have your back faced to the person behind you, and a blockade to the person in front of you. Many keep saying this may be my best, which is why I left as the last to be presented.

That concludes my portfolio, there may be adjustments to it before the final. Also for the senior show, we need to make a board of three of our best projects up to display for all to see. Here is how I set up mine so far (changes are to be expected), it consists of the Coral Motile, Live and Work Loft, and the Sweatshop Cafe:

That pretty much wraps up all I have for now, all kinds of feedback and critics to make this better is most appreciated, I have roughly a month left to finalize all this. Our Interior Design Senior Show will be at the Glass House in downtown San Jose, CA, May 20th (it will be in the evening around 6pm, we are still finalizing the times), so come on down and check out all our work in person.

Spring 2014 Design Work

I know I have not posted in a while, I've just been a bit occupied with other things due to it being summer break which I kind of needed after a semester of hard work, not to mention going through portfolio review last Fall semester. And for those of you who don't know, for the first time in forever (notice I'm referencing from the Frozen soundtrack) I got a summer job, technically more of an internship for school though still a job I am proud to say I am a part of. Anyway, back on topic, I'm mainly just going to show you all what I have been up to with my spring classes (also because a childhood friend I met up with recently reminded me to update my blog), so here we go.

One class we had was a series of space planning projects, first starting with an existing building, we worked in groups of 4 to create the plans, elevations, modules, and whatever else we can do to show how much we understand our overall building. This one is known as the Adobe Utah Campus.
Sadly the JPEG file of the whole project is too big to just project, so you're going to have access it through this link and might even have to download it... sorry.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5khS4uIpyrzcFRqcmdndkNEMkU/edit?usp=sharing
The second project involved taking the existing space we had and creating something in it, so our group we had to create an open cafe using a special wall we did in another class.
This is a big file too, and it can only be seen by downloading it...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5khS4uIpyrzeHVOUmp3WEZ3bjA/edit?usp=sharing

For both the first and second projects, we had to make a model of part of the building, the model is suppose to represent the atrium of the Adobe Utah Campus, and the close up shot above is part of the open cafe our group came up with. I personally made the walls out of watercolor paper, where I had to do all the cutting and folding in the fourth scale model.
The third and final project for the class was taking an office building, and using the first five floors to fit in the program requirements for a fashion store/office space. Originally we were set in different groups of four at the start, but then we had do the project individually in matters of design.

The image above is the overall floor plans done with a bubble diagram of the entire program

The two images above are modules, 7 zoomed in plans of certain spaces being represented in the building with texture palette.  

This last picture are four renderings of 4 out of 7 modules with two overall section cuts and a 3/4 diagram of the entire building. Everything took a lot of time and effort, especially the model making part.

In our other class, we had to experiment with different model making techniques. Our first project involved folding, first we started with paper and then we moved on to a material that we could fold, for our group we choose metal:

 These two images are the few prototypes we made to decide on what to make for our final.

These two above are the final folds we made for our class, each are about 16" x 20"

For our next project, we had to create molds using certain objects as a cast and plaster. Our group had a bit of a struggle with making any, in the end we ended up with these:

 We all liked the pillowing effect, though it honestly was not our best project...
The third project involved tying and knotting with string like material, we each had to come up with two model each, then decide on how to make the final based on each other's models:

These two are the models I made for my group, though neither of them made it to the final cut...

Here is one of the models that was used for the final, which is suppose to be one of 4 models to tied together as one model.

And here are the two finals, the one above is made with really thin copper wire, while the other is a bunch of twain rope tied together with multiple knots.
For our final, we had to take one of the models we made throughout the semester and make it fit into an office space, for ours we did a reception space with one of the folding models we made to make a wall/ceiling:
This is the pdf file of the finish plan:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5khS4uIpyrzUUREd1NiSzZxekE/edit?usp=sharing
And this is the pdf file of the furniture plan:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5khS4uIpyrzbkRlbEpoZmNWZW8/edit?usp=sharing

In another class, we had to learn a bit about lighting, though it was mostly observing how different types of lighting/light sources work in various situations. In one project, we had to create a lamp enclosure based on the architect/architect company we had to study. For me, I had to study a company called Snohetta, and ended up creating a simple lamp enclosure like this:

The outer shell is made of watercolor paper cut out like a diamond pattern with some diagonal rectangles going across diagonally. The middle layer is made of trace paper on side and vellum paper on another. The inner most layer is chicken wire I received from a class mate, this helped a little in creating a variety of lighting and shadows projecting on the transparent papers and other surfaces.

That pretty much concludes my big update, I did had a business class focused on our major, though we did not do any actual models or drawings for our projects. I did do a few sketches a while ago, though I do not think they are worthy for internet viewing... at least not yet. Hopefully I can get something in before the end of summer vacation, it's all in a matter of getting started and whatnot.

Fall Semester 2013

Okay, I know it's been months since I've posted, I've just been extra occupied with classes and I had to focus on a portfolio review for the Interior Design Program at my university (which I passed, thankfully). Anyway, quite a bit of stuff happened, and I do not know where to start, so I guess I will just present my final projects and whatnot.
Hopefully you all can view google docs... so this link is for one of my classes where we learned how to draft and create construction documents. For this, we were given a floor plan of an office where we had to first arrange the rooms and spaces according to our program description. After going through the schematic design phase and the design development phase (where we had to work in groups of 5 or 6), we each individually had to create a partition plan, an openings schedule, a reflected ceiling plan, a finish plan, a mill work/detail elevations, and a cover sheet. I ended up doing pretty well with the whole project, though there's still room for improvement.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5khS4uIpyrzVFlUUmVucm1qczA/edit
This next link is my portfolio (because it is a huge file, I needed to lower the resolution so the quality of the file is not the best). For this we mainly just had to collect various projects we have done in the program and organize them all into a book format. We also needed to customize our cover with special paper and make our own book binding. This is technically still a work in progress so there will be changes...
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5khS4uIpyrzem40YXNMbzhFb0U/edit
To add on to making a portfolio, we also had design the interior space in a hotel based on our concept designs and curtain walls made earlier. This project we had to work in groups of 2, so the work was kind of divided up. Because the original pdf file is humongous, I plan to just show the work I did for the hotel project. Because my partner had a bit of a struggle doing the rendering work with modo (long story of computer problems and whatnot), I was in charge of doing all the renderings for various rooms in the hotel in both modo and adobe photoshop.

 So these two are renderings of two hotel rooms (one being orange with a purple line drawing wallpaper and the other being purple with an orange line drawing wallpaper), each with a king size bed and our curtain wall shaped like a coral reef.

This is the interior entrance of the hotel (what it would look like if you entered into the hotel), we wanted to do a bridge where you can cross to get to the main lobby and would feel like you are entering into a coral reef and could see the pool located below the bridge. For this, the lobby, and the basement, we struggled finding a color scheme that would work with the colors of the coral wall, so in the end we had to settle with this purple color...

This is the main lobby area where there's a reception, seating along the wall, and a bar where you can get wine or coffee.

This is the basement area/pool (here you are view out in the water), it is hard to see, but we shaped the water area to be like a horse shoe to add on to the curvature of the hotel interior.

These two are the facade renderings of the hotel (one elevation, and one perspective).
This link is for an isometric line drawing of the whole hotel that I did (just to give you all an idea on how the whole building should look like).
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5khS4uIpyrzczgyZFg2UU5HWmc/edit

This is a quick photo of what is suppose to be part of the curtain wall in life size. They were crochet and sewed together.
There was a lot more previous work done before all of this... though I feel like it may be a bit too much to show on a blog. I also did some work on the plans and sections for the hotel, my partner just did the touch ups and final editing for our final presentation. Personally, I felt like I did a better job on my portfolio than the hotel project (maybe because it was individual).
That's pretty much it for now, overall a busy semester with a lot of work/projects (but I ended up with really good grades in the end). I'm hoping to be able to draw/sketch a bit more though that will depend on how busy I get next semester with classes and possibly an internship if I can find one.

Closing the summer of 2013

Okay, so before I go back to studying and working my butt off in college work, I wanted to do a post of stuff I managed to sketch out for the remaining of my summer vacation.

This one is a drawing of one of the hanging lights one can find in Japantown San Francisco, did this while waiting for a friend:

These are sketches I did while waiting for a friend's birthday party:

One of the girls I was waiting with asked me to draw out a person, I ended up picking a picture of a girl on one of the photo machines we saw. Record shows figure drawing is not my thing...
These I drew just yesterday in Caffe Frascati with some A/I friends:

That's pretty much it in matters of art for now, I managed to work on my portfolio a bit; such as reorganizing the format, replacing the photos, and adding in a little more hand drawings/concept, though I do not feel like sharing it yet. I am going to take a special portfolio class for my major so hopefully I will learn something in making a professional portfolio.

I am also having a handful of classes this semester that could determine what will happen to me for the rest of my college career, so I may not have much time to do sketches for fun and whatnot. Though I hardly think it matters to many of you (lots of you readers managed to live without me posting for months). I do plan to inform you all how things go this semester, most likely at the very end when I know the results/grades. And to all my art friends: best of luck to you all for your classes and any other obstacle you plan to conquer this semester.