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.