HometownMemories
Skill
Photoshop, Hand drawing, Sketchup, Modeling, Photography
My childhood connects with my gramma and her old house in Shan Dong, China, and this is my earliest memory of the cotton, wood-frame house, warm campfire during the night, and the brownish mud-brick wall. It reminds me of security, safe, where I never stay up late at night. My hometown village was famous for cotton that my gramma own a very large land and she has a special room to preserve cotton avoid dampness. I still remember that room, the cotton flower was not as soft as people imagine, since seeds are hiding in the flower; despite cotton's flowers were preserved for making cloth, branches were used as material for the campfire, since Shandong located in the northern part of China, so it's relatively cold in winter.
Gramma will make clothes for me using cotton in a winter coat or light fabric in summer. So my childhood was surrounded by warm red fire in the kitchen, dried corn leaves to set up the fires, bright yellowish candles at night, and a dark wood house by the lane.
In this project, I add coloured glass into the building, woodshed roof that remained the same material in my hometown house. Because orange and red appeared most in my memories, these two colours will be the main theme of the building. Through the natural light, the glass will reflect orange and red to the front glass, this will give the sense of being hugged by the hometown memories and warm sunlight. So whenever you are, you'll always find a way to go home.
After the sketches, I started to build concept models in Sketchup to reveal the overall atmosphere through 3D modeling. During this stage, one main concern is glass's nature in terms of transparency, which largely abandons the secure feeling, particularly during resting, study, or meditation time. In the project design by Japanese Architect Shigeru Ban, " two public toilets separately located in two busy Tokyo parks with transparent glass walls that become opaque when they were occupied". This privacy smart glass technology perfectly demonstrates its functionality and aesthetics in this bold design. "Smart glass is also referring to switchable glass, is electrically switchable glass with adjustable opacity". Adapting this technology will solve the issue while having control of the preferred transparency of the house.
The concept for Project 3 is to provide a shelter-like space that could be related to individuals‘ memory about safe, warmth, and security -- hometown. This atmosphere will be derived from wood’s character of warm, traditional as well as the positivism feeling such as hope, heat, sunshine, love of yellow, orange, and red-coloured glass. Personally, these three colours filled in my childhood memory, red campfire, red cheek due to the cold wind in winter, yellow wheat-straw, and the sunshine. Bringing the familiar colours into the design gave me a sense of belonging, a tendency to draw on old building features to revive memory. “As research showed that when we are exposed to a new environment, we tend to cognitively try to find a match in our memory that fits the new environment. This helps us interpret and understand a new environment and might make it seem less daunting or intimidating.” (TCP Lighting Solution)
The main purpose of this project is to convey the feeling of the hometown so whenever people enter this building, they will feel the warmth covered themselves by light and the sense of protection brought by the wooden structure.
During the daytime, sunlight will go through the building and create shadows with different colors correspond to the glass wall. When yellow and red colored-glass were reflected on the ground at the same time, the overlay areas will produce orange or pink light that improves the visual sense. Color and light are determined features in my design, they domain the whole atmosphere while introduced different feelings of the day. Nevertheless, not only the color itself could affect people's emotions, but the brightness and saturation of the light source are also influential aspects. "Some studies have shown that brighter light can intensify emotions, while low light doesn’t remove emotions, but keeps them steady, and more saturated hues can have amplifying effects on emotions, while muted colors can dampen emotions." (TCP Lighting Solution) In order to reduce the negative effects such as aggressive, intensity feeling brought by yellow and red, apply low saturated color and muted hues to reduce the effect and deliver calm emotion though these anti-depression colors.