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Project 4: Architectural Style

I saw the Memphis style and fell in love with the patterns. It reminds me of the IDEO buildings, especially the one in Boston that brightens the whole street. 

I woke up yesterday morning and looked outside to the layers of grey buildings that I can see from my Williamsburg apartment fire escape window. I love seeing random pops of color and instead I see the drab buildings and wanted to pop in some color. 

I made this in Illustrator and Photoshop. I used colors and shapes inspired by different Memphis style wallpapers and buildings, and decorated a building. I like that it’s just one, and can be seen by any apartment building on my block. 

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Project 3: JPL Pregame

I’ve always had a fascination with outer space since I watched a video in high school about what rain would be like on Mars. These articles really ranged from being more theoretical to having more technical prototypes and plans for the future. I was drawn to the article on Space.com about protypes about what the future of Mars may look like. They each look so separate and different than Earth, and almost mystical. They remind me of the mystical way that we view outer space - as this completely foreign and practically untouched entity. The Tokyo 10 designs to equp humankind for its first missions to Mars is so interesting to read through - especially as it includes clothing and a cup to drink liquids out of, rather than being all about the spaceship and transportation elements. I’m so intimidated by the science and sheer knowledge that happens in JPL’s doors, so it’s refreshing to see the other smaller and still well thought out design that is happening.

I think it’s easy to forget how many years have gone into these designs. “When the Russians joined the program in 1993, their architecture was based largely on the Mir and Salyut stations they had built earlier. Russian space vehicle design philosophy has always emphasized automated operation and remote control.” (Nasa). So many different countries and ways of thought have all been pushed together into one building and one industry to create something that really could change a lot for humankind.

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Project 2: Part B

I was hungry on campus so my friend offered to swipe me at Lipton Dining Hall. We walked over and as we were approaching the double doors, we saw a sign that seemed to give every indication that it was closed. “Lipton Dining Hall is currently open. Please close the door behind you as you enter”. From any distance and even up close, that indicates that it’s closed, which is what we thought. All of the words are the same size, under the word “open” is “close” as they ask for you to close the doors after you, and when a restaurant sign says the word “currently”, it’s almost always meaning closed because they want to come off as being open most of the time. When we later spoke with both a member of the NYU Dining Hall staff at Lipton, as well as the security guard, they both expressed their frustrations over the sign. The security guard, who sits right outside of the doors, groaned that people couldn’t read a single sign, and always asked him if it was open or closed. It’s all about hierarchy, and although people are reading the sign, they are looking for one word that is the same size as all of the other words: OPEN. We remade the sign by throwing hierarchy into the sign: we made “open” large, made all of the other less important words smaller, and removed part of the “close the doors behind you” because it was unnecessary information. It was tricky to get the sign up because the security guard incessantly asked us why we were moving the signs and kept worrying people would get confused. We left one of the old signs up and kept our new one up and backed up to see if ours had any effect. People in the lobby started commenting how much better ours was, and it was clear how small of a change made such a large difference.

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Project 2: Part A

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Project 2: Intro and Synopsis

This project is all about signs, the information they bring, and the power they have.

The goals are:

(1) transform a space by improving the communication happening in the space to make it a better experience

(2) it is mandatory that you communicate with a subject/person in order to make the transformation happen

(3) Work quickly through an action based process that is framed by defining the problem, finding a solution, and showing results

I was walking into Lipton to have a friend swipe me in to the dining hall for lunch, and thought it was closed. I actually left and texted her saying it was closed, but she insisted the dining hall was open. When I looked closer at the sign, I realized it was open. The sign’s hierarchy is nonexistent - every word is the same size and weight, and it reads as if it is a negative announcement rather than a positive “OPEN” sign, like the neon signs that restaurants typically display.

We will approach the subject by emailing NYU dining or talking to the person who swipes students in. I think good questions are what they were hoping to achieve by writing the sign, why the sign was put there in the first place, and if there are any size or style limitations to the sign itself, such as how it must have the NYU border surrounding the page.

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Project 1: Part D

The final steps in this chair process: the assembly and zine. I laid everything out on my kitchen floor and sort of stared at it and tried to figure out how to assemble. Should have taken progress photos of this, oops. I drilled holes in the sides but realized I could use the white seat supports to string my twine through, which was perfect. I had also bought dowels to try to add an extra hanging line at the top, but the dowels were very thick and my drill bit was very not thick, so that would be difficult. I also bought those twist hooks to twist into the wood which was easy and very useful for hanging anything, really. Finally, I had the revelation to just put the seat in at the bottom to throw things on. This was cool because it also meant you couldn’t just through stuff haphazardly from across the room because it would get caught in the twine. You actually had to come up and place it under the twine setup. It worked, which was great. For presenting, I hung some of my stuff on it. 

The zine was pretty simple, made a PDF and added my own drawings to simple line drawings that mimicked Ikea’s directions. No words added. 

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Project 1: Part C

3D Modeling the Chair

My 3D model, made in Maya, is very rough. Very rough. Maya kept crashing on me because it hates my computer, but here is what my idea was basically. Remove the seat, replace with some sort of twine strung through the front and back wood pieces to let things hang on, and a basket type thing strung around the legs to through things in as well. Materials required would be twine, some sort of basket thing, as well as hooks for the sides (I didn’t 3D model this).

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Project 1: Part B

Assembling and Disassembling of Chair

I documented this process in a video and photos. I was expecting it to be more difficult and stressful than it was. I always feel like I’m one of the last people to put things together when compared with others, because it just takes me a while to organize the instructions and I usually get too excited and mess something up. But it was very simple, and after I assembled, I feel like I have the instructions memorized. There was a lot of setting up chair and twisting wooden pegs in, which definitely would be difficult for someone with lack or limited mobility in their fingers, and difficulty lifting slightly heavier objects.

Sketching Process

I began just brainstorming various ideas. I was thinking about making it into some sort of medical stretcher or bed frame, or maybe making it into a ladder. I thought of materials at the same time, thinking maybe a material would give me an idea about a concept. I thought of yoga balls, fabric, hangers and towels. I thought about getting rid of parts of the chair, or adding wood. 

I began to consider having it be anything but a chair. I thought of how we as a society use chairs, especially in our bedrooms, and thought of a Twitter post I had seen a while back.

I feel like this is so relevant, and sort of a ode/comment on how we are lazy. We think by piling up clothes on a single chair (or stuffing clothes in a closet, under our beds, etc.) is ‘cleaning’ and organization, but it’s just procrastination and inconveniencing our further selves. The “chair” becomes no longer a chair to be sat on, but rather an object to be burdened with piles of clothes, in an effort to be less messy. 

I thought about ways to implement both a drying rack and general clothing rack structure into the chair. 

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Project 1: Part A (Ivar)

First, I searched for the chair itself on the website. Solid ratings, a PDF online to explain how to put it together using no words and only images. The New Yorker article was right about minimal explanation. Two widths are given, 19 ¼ inches, and 49 cm. Corresponding heights are 4 ¼ inches, and 11 cm. Corresponding lengths are 38 ½ inches, and 98 cm. Made of solid pine, and certainly looks easier to assemble than a bed frame or huge setup. There’s a website called idealhome that explains ways to spruce up the Ikea chair using cord. Ikea describes the Ivar storage system as functional, and Ivar as the Ikea term seems to be overtaken by storage/shelving systems. There’s a youtube video on the assembly. So many people have countless Ikea pieces in their apartments, and I can almost imagine them crouched on their floor, beads of sweat glistening on their arms and necks as they grunt to screw two boards together - yet you don’t see this, you just see the simple completed object. Google images features Ivar chairs covered in red paint, or a mixture of dark and lgiht wood. They are starting to remind me of the toy my sister had growing up, where you had a bunch of plastic chairs you had to stack as high as possible, attempting to use them all before the contraption swerved down.

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Project 1: Part A

Before reading the articles, I already knew Ikea was a very controversial company. While it could allow someone to fully furnish their apartment without breaking the bank, I also recently grabbed coffee with a friend who is still waiting on her bedframe she ordered 3 months ago, forcing her to sleep on just her mattress. Ikea is known to be extremely unresponsive to customer’s plights, which have included: recieving furniture without all of the necessary tools, not recieving orders at all, or attempts to cancel an order and failing, amongst many other issues. Despite all this, as a concept it is a very interesting company that allows for the “fast fashion” of furniture and kitchenware.

I had no idea Ikea had been around for so long, viewing it as modern and maybe a ten year old company. Lauren Collins, in her New Yorker Article, painted a strong picture of Ikea has framed her apartment, and how their ethos has heavily effected their customers. Ikea tries to convince customers what they want, and how their homes should look. Their simple pieces appear in such a large percentage of homes especially in NYC, and is beginning to cause all apartments to look alike. I know three people with the same exact bed frame.

I am very familiar with the style Hygge (Danish for coziness, using light woods and chunky knits - aligning with Ikea), and therefore Ikea’s style is perfect and laid out. It’s simple and foolproof, except not very foolproof as the instructions are often tricky to figure out, written minimally in small booklets as Collins points out. The articles certainly pointed out the controversy of the company.