Assignment 03: Hunting Down Design

My partner for the scavenger hunt was Erica Loughry and you can access her blog by following this link: http://design200spring.blogspot.com/.

As for division of labor we both went around to every location and took turns being in the pictures using her camera. Before we even started the hunt, we used my computer to figure out/double check where all of the clues would lead us because we thought that this was the most efficient method given the assignment. We used a lot of our prior knowledge from the field trip in order to locate many of the designs. Working in a small group definitely made it easy to communicate as well as have a chance to see all the designs for ourselves.

 Clue 1:

Erica is pondering in the Barcelona Chair which we found in the Knowlton School of Architecture Library. This chair was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1929 and is considered to be an icon of modernism. Mies derived this idea from ancient Roman folding chairs. The Barcelona Chair was designed for the Spanish Royalty to oversee ceremonies.

Clue 2:

Above is a copy of the "Harvard Design Magazine" (published by the Harvard Graduate School of Design) that I am reading in the following picture. We found this chair in the Knowlton School of Architecture's Library. It is the Red and Blue Chair designed by Gerrit Reitveld in 1917. The chair was originally painted white, black, and grey and was one of the first designs made through the De Stijl art movement which emphasized geometry.

 Clue 3:

This is me in front of the Wexner Center for the Arts designed by Peter Eisenman. The design includes large, white metal which gives it a scaffolding feel. Eisenman intended this to give the building a sense of incompleteness. He analyzed the street grids of OSU and the city of Columbus and represented these angles through the metal gridding. Originally when it was built, there were open windows where light shined brightly into the art gallery. This caused some controversy which lead the university to redesign the windows to block the light and save the artwork from fading.  

Clue 4:

Philip Johnson is responsible for the design of both the Math Tower and the Science and Engineering Library at Ohio State. The picture both is located in front of the Math Tower where Erica is posing on the stairs. Below in an up close picture of the top of the building which we thought was interesting. There is one larger arch which is surrounded on both sides by smaller arches. This seems to demand the attention of the observer towards the center of the building. Also I like the small half circle windows that are further divided in half. It reminds me of a pie graph, which is math related (seems appropriate for the building!).

Clue 5:

This is me in front of Thompson Library (the Oval side). Acock and Associates were selected by an OSU committee to conduct the renovation of the William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library from 2006-2009.  The original  architects, Allen and Collins of Boston, that designed the library in 1910 were selected as a prize  for winning an architectural competition. Since everything in the Oval must remain the same the side that faces the Oval had no renovations. Only the west side is new.