Sketches 3-28

Final sketches for magazine layout. Simplified down to more necessary elements, not as cluttered as before. My next step is to scan all my imagery and start compositing. 

sketches for 3/21/12

today I really focused on what I wanted to use for my layouts. I am going for more of the process that Gehry works in, instead of focusing on one work. I want to use his sketches to intergrate everything since they are the base of all his designs. I might work with playing more with the sketches, but for right now this is what I have. I still feel like it is maybe too organized (as my professor stated, like an OCD person) I'm gonna try a few different overlapping before next class. 

Gehry body text

Frank Gehry loves to sketch. It is the beginning of his architectural process. From Gehry’s sketches flow the models, one after another, each a refinement, that will eventually become finished buildings unlike any others in the architectural world.
It is this sketch quality, what he calls the “tentativeness, the messiness,” that Gehry clings to as a way of guarding against formula or repetition.
Working closely with his colleagues, Gehry takes his sketch ideas and, as quickly as possible, makes them three-dimensional, the better to see how his buildings work, how they fit with their neighbors, how they function in the most essential way. Model after model is scanned into a sophisticated computer and rendered into working drawings.
Gehry’s designs dramatically blur the line between art and architecture, yet the strong appeal of his sculptural designs does not obscure the role of function. He follows a painstaking process of subtle vision and revision both in his sketches and in his model shop.

It is a common misconception that Gehry’s buildings are constructed as mere containers, built for the sake of their form. In truth, the buildings are built from the inside out. Wooden block massing studies are constructed and reconstructed in step with Gehry’s own evolving sketches. Gestural models of cardboard, wood, and cloth act as intermediaries, keeping Gehry conscious of the three-dimensional implications. The process, as Gehry admits in the film, forces him to “work in two or three scales at once.” This forces him to forget about the model as an “object of desire” and instead to concentrate on how the building works.

Based in Santa Monica, Gehry works with a formidable team of architects and model makers to bring his sketches to life. The resulting structures are imbued with the dynamic energy of Gehry’s original sketches and with the improbable nature of his study models. The interiors are both grand and unpredictable at once. This process is perhaps best illustrated by his two seminal works: the 1978 renovation of his own house, what has since come to be known as the Gehry Residence.

Gehry and his wife, Berta, raised a family in this house, where they still live, a thirty-year testament to the fact that, for all the artistic flourishes of his ideas, Gehry’s architecture works, in the most practical and fundamental way.

Gehry’s concern for the people who live and work in his buildings, and how his buildings function as spaces for people: how they embrace and envelop the people in and around them, and how that embrace is returned.

This is a unique quality of Gehry’s works, and just one reason his fame is so widespread and universal. People feel welcome in his buildings; they feel, as artist Julian Schnabel says in the film, encouraged. Sydney Pollack’s shots of visitors ambling in and around the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall are reminders of how connected people feel to Gehry’s architecture. This, for an architect, is the most welcome validation of all. (pbs- Sketches of Frank Gehry)

Sketches for Magazine Spread

For my magazine spread I plan on focusing on Frank Gehry. My two ideas are to either focus on his work and process (top sketch) or just one piece itself, the Guggenheim Museum (bottom sketch). Right now I am leaning towards just focusing on the process Gehry uses. His sketches are very interesting to me and I think would be a neat way to connect everything. Gehry is a very interesting guy and not focusing on one work would give me more of an opportunity to express who his is more than just his work. 

Final Cover

I changed a few things for my final design. Adding the publisher and also redoing the back the most. I played around with some different thing for the back cover and eventually came up with this basic, but I feel more efficient design. I also made slight changes to the front and binding making things more legible.