The Space Between

My structure focuses on the negative space it creates, hence its title.

The Strongest Tool in an Engineer's Toolbox

How It All Came To Be

What now stands as a collection of 20 spectacular and variant structures, share a common beginning: a pile of metal “widgets.” Looking at the final models that currently decorate the desks in our studio, it is hard to fathom that we were all given the same assortment of odd metal parts to draw. We were told we could only use hard lines when drawing the widgets at a 1:4 scale. Although there seems to be little room for improvisation and the hand of creativity, each set of drawings that was presented at the end of the two week period was astonishingly different. The fact that we had all perceived beauty so differently in the arches, lines, and planes of the rusted metal parts was beautiful and poetic in itself. From the intricate and symmetrical notches on the clock cog to the delicate (and sinfully difficult to recreate) curves of the metal pin, there was a unique geometry to each widget which truly came forth in the third step of the process: creating Photoshop compositions with the widgets.

As we tinkered with our drawings on Photoshop many of us found that the drawings would oftentimes fit together seamlessly like corresponding pieces of a puzzle. However, when the drawings were forced, the compositions risked looking like “someone threw tools up into the air and let them land spontaneously on the page” (Pritchett, C.).

Just like the widget drawings evolved over the two weeks we worked on them, the compositions worked in a similar way. The first composition for many of us was not our best work (me including) but as the shapes and patterns became more obvious to us, the compositions took on a new life, and new forms.

These very compositions were then extruded into rough study models, and through the same process of evolution and discovery have become the final models that now decorate this blog page.

Widgets