Project2- Design Development

Sunlight is one clue to represent the word "hope". In the morning, the sun rises from east, so the east-facing room is designed to be the woman's morning room(she can eat breakfast there, reading there, and of course the most important thing is looking out expecting her fiance). and when the time pass by, and the sun rises higher, the woman moves up the higher level, which is the north and south facing rooms. those two rooms is her major activity space during daytime. and when it getting dark, the woman become a little bit disappointed and goes down to the west-facing room.

Stair is another clue to drive the woman towards hope. and I use the different sized stair(it's part of the flooring actually rather than simple staicase, the woman can have activities on the stairs). Right front the window, the stair size is big, so the woman feel hope and confident, but when she is moving to next direction, the width become smaller,and she feel hurrier and can go quicker to next direction.

Project2-Revised narrative & Concept sketchup model

Narrative:

A woman is waiting for her beloved fiance, who has gone for war for years and hasn't been heared of, she never gives up hope and is always immersed in happiness.







In my narrative, my key word is "waiting" , so I want to design a building for this woman waiting for her fiance with love and hope. while she is waiting, the most important thing is to see, to get the view from every direction. So, I arranged four rectangular corridor-like geometry facing for four direction, and at the end of each "corridor", there's a big window to connect outside world.




Also, I was inspired from this picture: the man not only use the building as an enclosure, but also use it as a "furniture". He is lying in his building looking and enjoying. So, for my building, I also add some stair outside to communicate the different parts. Therefor the woman can wait her fiance in or on her building.

Project2- Selected Painting & Narrative

Edward Hopper
South Carolina Morning
Oil painting on Cavas, 1955
Whitney Museum of American Art New York

My Narrative: a place for a plump passionate woman cooking for and eating with her beloved fiance.


Background reading about the painting: "In this painting the Hopper dichotomy is expressed as a tension open to psychological interpretation. The house by the beach is on a raised concrete or stone dais, like a manmade island in a natural setting. The painting's true centre is in the figure of the woman, in her red dress and black shoes. The dress is almost see-through, and the cut and fall of the fabric emphasizes the woman's physical presence. In this almost geometrical composition, the woman's body is dominant, and the effect Hopper achieves is an ambiguous one: the stance of the woman, who is dressed as if to go out, seems the epitome of motionlessness, yet at the same time there is a latent, smouldering dynamism in the sexual challenge she offers"



My own interpretation on this painting: The mid-aged, good-shape woman, who is the key of this painting, dressed well in red and black high-heal. It seems that she is expecting someone(her fiance?) to come. She has already prepared a nice meal for it, and she has confidence for her cooking. from her face, she is lost in her imagination, she is trying to draw the picture of the future happy life with him.


It is harvest time in the autumn, but it's still warm outside. The field of wheat has no end in sight, and they are leaning towards the house, perhaps in a breeze. The house is constructed by dark timber with 4windows in the facade which we can see in the painting, but all of them has been shutted so that no sunlight can get in at that time.So we can guess it's pretty dark inside. Therefor the contrast between the exterior and interior is obviously expressed: endless, bright, fresh, warm(exterior) Vs. small, dark, dull, cold(Interior).


The woman stand in he middle of her doorway. between the exterior and interior. The exterior imply her imagined colourful life in the future, and the interior imply her current isolated lonely life. Hence the door act as a symbol.


So when the man comes, she may open the door and the widows, let the sunshine in, and let him inside, eating the dinner she already cooked , smiling, falling in love...... and the small, dark, dull house will become a bright, happy, warm place then, the same atmosphere as the outside.

The site:
a big farmland somewhere in America.

Project2:"Room and Narrative"- Edward Hopper

about EDWARD HOPPER and his painting


LIFE:Edward Hopper(1882-1967): His life was strikigly quite and orderly, without abrupt aboutturns or upheavals, neither of a psychological nor even of a merely geographical kind. In a sense there is very little to say. Apart from two sojourns in Europe, Hopper lived in New York from 1908 on. For over 50 years, till the day he died, his studio was on the top floor of 3 Washingto Square North. the fame that came his way from the Tenties onwards never went to his head, and he lived a quiet life there with his wife Jo.
--------- from the book Edward Hopper, 1882-1967 :transformation of the real

PAINTING:a prominent American realist painter and printmaker." His art confirms a preconceived image of America, which is not due to the painter's style or aproach. What is so American is the subject matter. Hopper's American qualities are in the scenes he chose to paint."

"His paintings tend not to offer us extensive panoramas: rather they limit the view-and Hopper often substitutes an interior seen through a window, or widow prospects limited by houses or other icons of civilized word, for an unstricted view of nature."

"The work of Hopper displays a comparable transformation, the transfer of visual interest to the interior......He hs his eye on psychological factors rather than on the merely visible: representational realism is used as system of encoded signs that communicate the subconscious basis of conscious perception."

"Through Hopper was a painter of landscapes and townscapes, he also painted female nudes throughout his working life. this nudes begin with earlu studies influenced by impressionism, include psychologically suggestive and seemingly narrative pictures."

--------- from the book Edward Hopper, 1882-1967 :transformation of the real

"Maybe I am not very human. What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house."

------------Edward Hopper