Class Commentary- March 10th

We watched a video on Dutch Artist Theo Jansen. This wasn't the first time that I have seen his work. He has been doing these living creatures for some time now. During my research when I studied architecture, I would run across his work from time to time. I had a project where we had to design a music studio for a music professor on campus. The site was in the VanLandingham Japanese Garden. Terrible site. Anyway, one requirement was that the building ahd to move and transition through time and space taking on different forms and occuying different areas in the garden duringthe whole development process of a music piece. There was no set amount of time that the building had to stay in one place, nor were there specific areas that it had to occupy. To me...it was a reflection from one physical piece
(music) to another physical piece (studio) in how the the whole process changes and develops. It completes a circle of life. Begeining and ending inthe same place. I had walked through the whole garden making reference and cataloging all of the specific focal points that I thought wre important. I developed conceptually this overall building based off of circles. And how you can experience them and walk through them. I took my inspiration from the moon gate and the idea of a cycle of creative thought to make a music piece. With the moon gate you walk through a circle. I redesigned the gazebo to mimic the trees around it. It took on the shape of a log turned on its side. Tree trunks are circular. But with the gazebo....you walked beside the circle. The musicians studio plan took on the shape of a circle. Basically you would walk around or underneath the circle. acoustically I thought the sound echoing through a circle would be great for keeping long notes and echoes. It would make the music come to life....like it was having a conversation with itself. My idea was that the building itself didn't come to life but the journey that musician was forced to take in experiencing the whole site came to life.