The 3rd Weekly Opus

~wednesday, 11 February 2009

In the field of architecture, scale such as size, dimension, and measurement are very important things which show that how tall, how big, and far away to re-make the real physical things in larger or smaller scale. Based on these terms, "scale" is the best and the most important term for architectural action. So far, I used "scale" for the project of "Pat's Chair." I had to deal with scale really carefully to have well-measured scale. In addition, from the view of literal side, "Scale" would be used in a little bit differently. For example, Egyptians used "Scale" to show the importance of religion, and hierarchy of dominant class to give into Pyramid. In the textbook, "Egyptian society was highly stratified. At the top of the hierarchal scale was the pharaoh, or king, whose powers were divine and who represented god on earth (Blakemore 3)."


The term of "Unity" can also be defined in different word "harmony" because "Unity" means that being one and together. For example, the Capitol in Washington shows the "Unity" of utilizing orders and as the President Obama said, there is the United States of America. In the textbook the author Blakemore says that "The role of the orders was significant in defining spaces of the Greek interior; nor only did they divide spaces horizontally...(28)." Moreover, utilizing orders mean that it supports the roof and the entire building and also it is a part of building which shows the entire building as a part.



From the past to the present in historical view, "Boundary" means that indication of one's own territory. For example, the Great Wall in China. However, in historical view, the boundary used in different way with more literal meaning of boundary as Chinese used in their wall. As utilizing the huge scale of building, it represents that this is our great building and here is are territory where the huge building exists. In the textbook, Roth says that "The Pyramid are virtual mountains, at the time the largest buildings in the world, ....The base of Khufu's pyramid covers just over13 acres...(197)"



"Section" sounds literally a part of whole which means gateway is a section of entire building. However, it is used a little different in the architectural field. For example, I did draw Pat's Chair section as cut it half and see it throughout the cut parts and used Posche to indicate cut parts. Section is used in architecture to express structural arrangement. Blakemore says that "The cross section of the shaft could represent earlier structural arrangements the stem of a plant(12)."


"Vignette" is a drawing technique to show the concept of drawing as drawing its part or limited section instead of drawing entire parts. In other words, it can be defined that Vignette is not a completed drawing. As an example, the Egyptian wall painting, "Wall and Ceiling from the Tomb of Sennefer(10)" can be because these wall paintings show part of scene instead of showing entire scene of it.




To sum up, this week's Opus prompts are scale, unity, boundary, section, and vignette. These are well-related each other. Vignette is a way of drawing of Section of one thing or a scene. Unity is about well-Scaled artifact which shows its Boundary. In architectural field, there are a lot of things which cannot be delivered, translated, seen in literal ways because terms can be related to each other even if the terms do not mean the same things.