INTRO
The purpose of this project was to create a space that helps experience an event rather than hosting. The event I chose was a Solar Eclipse event.
The location and time were unspecified, so we had a bit of freedom in those terms. Regardless of time and location though I researched for a good 3 weeks all that I can understand about solar eclipses and its effect on animal behavior, material that is sensitive to light, solar eclipse lenses and what optical properties can be extracted from the solar event.
Once a good understanding of the event was established the brainstorming began, this session was to take all the knowledge conducted and apply structural mediums to emphasize the effect I was exploring, as if how can a building translate a solar eclipse to its attendees? What senses do I want to stimulate?
Initial ideas included creating an open field with different structures that projected the eclipse; here are some of those ideas with the models created to study the effectiveness of the space as a event pavilion.
RESULT
The solar eclipse pavilion is a structure built to facilitate a crowd of over fifty.
The walls are made up of open cylinders that are placed in an angle to where light directly from the sun will only come through when at the sunbeam’s direct path.
The space is a take on specially representing the solar eclipse rather than literally re-representing the eclipse on a screen or any other mean.
As the solar eclipse begins, the dome will begin to darken inside and eventually no light will come through, in the meantime birds on the trees next to the structure will also go quiet due to the eclipse, this will add to the effects the visitors will have where both senses of vision and hearing will feel like it had shut of.
Final presentation layout mockup
MODEL MAKING
Creating the physical model was a huge challenge, I visited a couple of my local crafts shops for ideas and inspiration, I needed something tubular to allow light through the walls while esthetically pleasing once connected to each other. too long and I would end up with a porcupine looking building, too short and too much light would be let in, luckily I found these beads that served the purpose at that stage.
I used small beads I found at a local crafts store, used a hot glue gun and attached them one by one using a foam half-ball as a guide to create a prefect sphere
I LOVE projects like these where I get to experience different techniques and try to understand and learn new ways that are more time efficient and esthetically and structurally sound. This was my first run at it and realized that how I had planned was going to leave considerable amount of gaps and inconsistence in the pattern.
Although this was the first take, I still wanted to see firsthand if the light effect was up to my standard and expectation, so I placed my mockup people and rendered a light effect, and there it was: the light effect I was looking for. We had success!
Take 2 at the model making
FINAL PRESENTATION PIECE
Added people, trees, and painted the dome along with the path of the sun with a gold paint. I also created a visual entrance using an upside-down L frame to guide the visitors.
Final posters