Marek

MAREK JANUS- School of Cræft

Our project this semester was to explore craft- or rather "cræft"- through architecture, and to create a School of Cræft.
But what is cræft? That's where we started off: investigating cræft itself.

What is Cræft?- Intitial Investigation

Our first task was to make a poste investigating cræft, or how we understood it at the start. This was my interpretation; Something made by people taking inspiration from the world around it, that then contributes to its own "world" of cræft. My definition was a lot more along the lines of art than what we decided to keep.
The final definition that we came to was "An activity involving expert skill in making functional objects by hand," which we kept in mind moving forward. We used the old English spelling to emphasize the traditional handmade skills, rather than more modern, machine-oriented jobs.

Now that we had a definition, we had to come up with examples. The inclusion of the words "by hand" relates strongly to more traditional crafts, so that's what we circled in on, ending up with three:
Metalworking, Textiles, and Culinary Arts.

Cræft Investigation Poster

Architect Investigation Presentation

Our next job was to study an architect to see how they incorporate cræft into their projects. My architect was the group Wendell Burnette Architects, situated in Phoenix, Arizona. The works I chose by them were Dialogue House, Field House, and Desert Courtyard House.
All three projects have their own separate ideas, as well as certain overlapping ones.
Dialogue House is based around John Van Dyke's ideas of desert light, particularly "Colored air" and "Reflected Light."
Field House is based on the surrounding rural environment, specifically the abundant farmhouses and silos.
Desert Courtyard house is designed with the thought of the interactions between the house and the outside desert.

Architect Investigation Collage

Architect Investigation Parti

Though they all stand with their own concepts, one idea I see shown throughout all three is a sort of "refurbishment."
All three take ideas from the surrounding environment, and then make something new out of it by introducing new concepts, effectively refurbishing it into something new.
This is what I decided to show in my second poster, cræft in architecture.

This is my parti drawing of the Desert Courtyard House, where I focused on displaying the various areas of the building and their interactions with the environment. Below are 3d renditions of the same parti.

Architect investigation Parti 3d Rendition

Now with an understanding of what cræft is, and having selected three cræfts to investigate, we split up to each research one. I chose the cræft of metalworking, and created this Padlet to store the information I got through my research. This helped me understand metalworking as a craft, allowing me to design based around it.
This was stuff like genres, characteristics, products, tools, etc.

A pattern I found from my research was this contrast between the different types of metalworking. There's very intricate, detail oriented forms, such as welding or jewelry, but then more "Brute force" forms, like forging. These also follow the "timeline" of metalworking, with newer forms generally being more precise. This was a very interesting contrast that I wanted to explore.

Metalworking Investigation Collage

This collage was made after researching, and represents my findings on metalworking.

Project 01- the Wunderkammer

Now with an understanding of our cræft, and how to represent it through architecture, we had to design a Wunderkammer, or "Cabinet of Curiosities" for it. This is meant to be a place where one could practice the cræft, as well as representing it as a whole through its design. I had a lot of ideas on how I could do this, as metalworking is a pretty broad craft at a glance. I started my design process with the first thing that came to mind: the Greek God of fire, Hephaestus.

Idea 1

My first concept I spent the most time on. I wanted this design to represent contrasting concepts in different sections, carved out of an almost cave-like space. The reason I went for this style was based off of my first thoughts of metalworking; The Greek God of fire, Hephaestus, hammering away in the fires of a volcano (or cave, if we want this to be reasonable). This idea eventually spun off into a separate "extreme" design.

My second idea was probably the most disconnected of the three from my final design, but there are still aspects that snuck into it. I wanted this design to mimic fire's general upward motion, so I had the space focus upwards. The floor layout was also loosely based on scale, with smaller projects being worked on one side, and larger ones at the other. With the focus on upward movement, I decided to incorporate a method of cleansing the forge's fumes as they exited the top, following the shape of the building.

Idea 2

Idea 3

This is the "extreme" design that I was talking about, as in not really being something that you could legitimately turn into a building.
I call it "the Flower of Hephaestus," based off of Greek mythology's tales of Hephaestus using a flower (the large fennel, specifically) to transport fire. I thought this was a very interesting idea, especially considering you wouldn't really relate flowers and fire. The idea behind this design was that the plans from Idea 1 would be covered with "petals" of sorts, and having the middle be a very loose pistil representation. Said pistil ended up as this sort of Venus flytrap-like mouth, so that it could open up to release fumes (relating to Idea 2) and maybe use the sun for energy.

My third design is what I eventually picked to move forward with. The inspiration for it came from my research, where whenever I found images of metalworking, there was always this drastic difference in lighting between things like forging/furnace related things and welding/cutting among other things. Though I think that these changes in lighting are mostly just for the composition, I thought that bringing out metalworking's contrasts with lighting was a very interesting concept. I did this by separating the forge into a different domed room, with more modern forms being in a larger open room with a sunroof of sorts facing away from the dome.

The pencil sketches seen on here are from later on in development, using this plan as a base.

"Extreme" Idea

Final Design- The Metalworking Wunderkammer

This is the final design that I ended up with for my Wunderkammer. It's organized by sort of evolution left to right, with the oldest form of metalworking, being the forge, on the left, and newer tools and machines following to the right. Top to bottom, there's a separate organization of the "Brute force" and the "Delicate." This is meant to show the evolution of metalworking as a craft, as well as the different contrasts within metalworking. The walls taper inwards on the outside, only partially revealing the outermost pillars, akin to finding the natural resources for metalworking. These would vary in material, with the earlier "hours" using earlier metals such as copper, and developing as you move around the building.

Much of my design is taken from my original Idea #2, with the forge being in a separate area, and the sunroof creating the natural divide between the two. I incorporated pillars surrounding the shape, acting as the hours of a clock, in order to show the "time" ideas involved. The forge's chamber is meant to be the 12, and the rightmost pillar being the 6. Having the entrance be on the right, as one would walk through the wunderkammer towards the other end, the pillars also help somewhat "guide" you to the forge by closing in at the end. I also incorporated the idea of interacting with the environment like the flower from my "extreme" idea, the forge's chamber having plates that can open up to release fumes/cleanse the air using filters found between the plates and the inside.

The Drawing

This is my Wunderkammer drawing, meant to show the different ideas I used in the design to express metalworking as a craft. I used sun motifs throughout to show multiple concepts, the most literal being the interaction with the sunroof creating the natural divide between the two halves. It is also meant to represent the passage of time, as is commonly associated with. Its "shadow" also helps create the divide between the brute and the delicate, shown through the symbols placed in the sun's path (if it were to be in the position indicated by the clock on its face.

The Model

This is my Wunderkammer model, made with similar meaning in mind. With the large emphasis on contrast throughout my wunderkammer, I opted to go with the clear contrast of the moon against the sun, and having an overall darker composition. This helps the model and drawing work together to communicate the idea, as well as filling in certain gaps.
The major aspect I focused on with the model was, again, the flower. I intended the Flower to represent the forge itself, moving out of its chamber and facing up out the sunroof. I also included the idea of the pillars showing the passage through time, with copper oxidizing- the same color as the flower, symbolizing how old and developed metalworking itself is.