Assignment 3 Limits and Regulating Lines - Analysis and Authorship

Due Friday, August 29 at the beginning of class. 

Part 1 (Complete first) 

Design is about choices and commitment. The choices you make are part of the design process, you commit to ideas and limits that assist in forming your design outcomes. Technique, resources, elements, principles, and objectives are five basic categories of design that you are in control when designing. Become familiar with the Elements of Design, Principles of Design, Design Technique, Design Resources, and Design Objectives, by reviewing the terms and resources below. 

Elements - the basic visual units that are implemented to create the design. Spend 10-15 minutes visually reviewing Chapters 1, Primary Elements, 2, Form, and 3, Form and Space in Form and Space in Form, Space and Order by Frank Ching. (Study the Table of Contents for an overview.)

Principles - the methods used to organize or structure the elements. Spend 10-15 minutes visually reviewing Chapter 4, Organization, 5, Circulation, 6, Proportion and Scale, and  7, Principles, in Form and Space in Form, Space and Order by Frank Ching. (Study the Table of Contents for an overview.)

Technique - the way or method of executing your design. How you cut and fold paper would be an example of technique to execute a design idea. Technique is related to the craft and skill that the designer has over the process and resources. 

Resources - materials, data, information, and time that is accessed and manipulated to complete the design. Shigeru Ban uses recyclable cardboard as a resource for constructing buildings.  

Objective - the desired outcome or purpose of the design. As illustrated above Shigeru Ban has an objective of sustainable design for emergency structures. His objectives are supported by his selection of resources (cardboard) that inform the techniques of construction. 

Do the most with the least. 

Part 2 - Andy Goldsworthy River and Tides (Complete any time during the assignment.)

Review the following video on Andy Goldworthy. Make note to his selection and control of design elements, principles, technique, resources, and objectives. 

Part 3 - Setting Your Parameters

Working in a group of 2-3 people, set up a similar project as the last 2. Your only parameters from your instructor are:

  1. PREPARATION - Read Regulating Lines by Corbusier, posted under Course Material on Blackboard.
  2. FORMAT - Work on a white 11” square in 2D. 
  3. OBJECTIVE - Create an abstract two-dimensional compositions by controlling the negative (white) area with the placement of the elements. Make the white space become alive and vibrant by emphasizing contrasting major and minor spaces. 
  4. PROCESS:  In your teams make up your own limits for the 3 compositions. Each team member uses the same agreed upon limits. Limits should be organized as elements, principles, technique, resources, and objectives. (Write down the agreed limits.) 
    1. As individual team members make a series of 10 different sketches (10 or more per team member) in your sketchbook or blank letter size paper using a pencil then finalizing with a thin marker. (Divergent thinking) 
    2. As a group review the sketches pinned on the wall and discuss the success and potential new designs for final exploration in Adobe Illustrator. (Convergent thinking)  
    3. As an individual arrange a series of shapes (elements of design) to make 3 compositions that successfully integrate ordering principles. You may refine or edit the limits based on the review in step 2 above. 
    4. Using Adobe Illustrator make 3 files in the same manner as Assignment 2 (using layers, construction lines, etc.)
  5. OUTCOME: - Print out all 9, just as you did before in Assignment 2, using the the three layers. 

REMINDER: Be sure to organize your files. Set up folders: assignment one, etc. You will be required to make a final pdf and you will be turning this in. And save your work to an external hard drive!

Everyone in the group should have the exact same files for Assignment 3.

Diagramming the Composition 

A work of architecture may be significant, organic, dramatic, but it will fail to be a work of art unless it is also schematic.  This means a systematic disposition of parts according to some coordinating principle.    

-Claude Bradgon

The Architect, by his arrangement of forms, realizes an order which is pure creation of his spirit; by forms and shapes he affects our senses to an acute degree, and provokes plastic emotions; by the relationships which he creates he wakes in us profound echoes, he gives us the measure of an order which we feel to be in accordance with that of our world, he determines the various movements of our heart and of our understanding; it is then that we experience the sense of beauty.

Regulating Lines.

An inevitable element of Architecture. 

The necessity for order.  The regulating line is a guarantee against willfulness.  It brings satisfaction to the understanding.

The regulating line is a means to an end; it is not a recipe.  Its choice and the modalities of expression given to it are an integral part of architectural creation.  

-Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture

Objective:  To analyze design aspects of abstract two-dimensional compositions. 

To think critically and analytically.

Vocabulary:  regulating lines, rhythm and repetition, geometry, hierarchy

Using your Illustrator files, save them with the title Iteration01_Diagram, etc. and diagram each of the 3 final compositions. We will discuss this in class.