Refinement Breeds Cultivation

The next desk crit involved Professors Anderson, Leshinsky, AND Volchansky! Whew - talk about pressure! Overall, they seemed to be content with our progression, but really encouraged us to take it to the next level and to really think about our design decisions. Professor Anderson in particular encouraged us to keep going back to our product and to think of how each decision affects our product mission statement (which at this point is still in development...). At this point we're going for a more modern, sleek, gallery-like element...


We also had our final wood structure and I think that caused some confusion. However, we did receive some comments that spurred some change; particularly about the design of the furniture - Professor Anderson talked about the drawers, the knobs...all of the design choices - no matter how large or small - should fall in line with our product and mission statement. They even talked about the columns of the structure and the "chaotic" approach to the pictures in the plexiglass wall and how it all fit with the whole "sleek, modern" look!

So we removed the drawers from the furniture - easy enough, right? - decided to keep more of a skylight versus the larger area for the roof, and then Richard took the structure home to begin painting it white and putting in the plexiglass.

Once again, Richard, Jade, and I met up to work on the model. It looked great! We started working on the cutouts for the floor - we decided to still use cork; it's organic still, but this will be a "high-traffic" area and its a durable material and won't show off dirt and grime from shoes as much. We also began thinking about how we wanted to arrange photos on the wall. There was some mild contention on the design decisions as one would expect in a group; my suggestion was for us to bring both versions of the floor and the postcard photos. You can't just imagine it - it needs to be visual. Jade's solution was to email Professor Leshinsky (something that came back to bite us later.)

Jade and I decided to take some pictures of model outside to see how it would look in its "element." Boy, was it cold out that day! Our hands were freezing but the photos were well worth it!

But it was THIS photo...

That let us know we were on to something! It reiterated the sleek, modern feel of a gallery - but there was this apparet serenity - Jade called it "oneness." One building, one light, one desk...