The Ones That Didn't Make It

Some Sketchup doodling that just didn't make the cut

XRAY

Equus

The character I received from the list by john hejduk was the director of medical services. I decided to turn this character (let’s call him Geoff) into someone trapped in a dark reality. His passion for his work and his will to succeed was the main structure of his life. But the real driving force now is the shattered dream that he can’t escape, the inability to stop the monster he has created

To develop a design for Geoff’s house, I tried to think what he is trying to achieve in life, what makes up the persona of the character. What faults and idiosyncrasies does he have? How do they help develop the character that he is?

Design 1: Research

The first design is centralised around the type of work the director of medical services is involved in. Neat, orderly, methodical, precision, failure, are words that come to mind when dealing with medicine and research. There would be a strict methodology to his work, an order. His research is all trial and error, trying to develop a solution. Placed in the middle of a lake the model is very structurally orientated with shifting cubic elements that float in space that seem to be able to pull in and out and re-arrange at will. These floating glass boxes are held together by a thin envelope of structure that meanders around them, giving the notion that it is only just holding the building together. This is in resemblance of the character where it doesn’t look like it will take much for the structure to give in and sink below the lake.

Research Take Two


The card model of this design is built around the same floor plan but was less forced and I tried to let the model fuse together more easily, letting the card go where I felt it wanted to go. I was pretty happy with the model which stopped me from making any drastic changes to the sketch up but I feel a peeling back of the design might be more beneficial.

FEAR

The second model I wanted to try and push towards the emotion of the character. What has happened in his life? What great error has he done that could be so bad? Where was that dream, that one perfect idea? Gone, shattered to pieces. He endeavours everyday to pick up the shattered pieces of his once great idea. The house resembles this. He feels alone, exposed his life is torn adrift. He still has his aspirations, his goals, but at the moment he is a lost soul

Using these ideas and feelings behind the development of the design I wanted the structure open and exposed, leaving no where to hide. It is a very rigid and unyielding structure with skeletal elements intersecting all over the place. The design, in a way, could resemble a jail cell which is a metaphor for Geoff who can’t escape his past. It is full of very bold and hefty elements which give bulkiness to the design, but then the entire outer perimeter is made of a glass curtain wall. I wanted the floors to float and the interior to be stark so the whole interior seems to rest in the outer structure but not touch it. I also wanted the outer façade to resemble the shattered pieces of his broken life. (Funny mood when I came up with this)

Fear 2: The Sequal

For the sketch up model of this one the outer shape remained relatively the same, but I wanted to push and pull the interior to try and find a more expressive layout to the inside of the building. I found giving it more of a disjointed geometry causing a more surreal and disjointed experience to the occupant. Like the movie ‘The Labyrinth’ or ‘Dark City’ if anyone knows either of those titles.

Within a nondescript laboratory, the Medical director of a top neuroscience research facility reads aloud from his list of prepared phrases. In the adjoining room, a volunteer listens carefully with a collection of colourful wires trailing from a metallic device attached to the subject’s head. He is studying brain pathways, trying to discover Behavioural characteristics of the patient, to open a doorway to the human mind. Not content with his earlier achievements, he wanted to push his work to the very limits of reality. His macabre research focused on the possibility of sustaining life through artificial means by trying to understand the mechanism’s which control the human mind. His laboratory is home to all manner of bizarre experiments and phenomena, which only a few people in the world could fully understand. His staff quickly became acclimatised to the sight of disembodied heads and desiccated animal corpses. As uncomfortable and ghastly as it was, his findings may prove influential to many modern medical procedures. He is driven by a deep-seated motivation to make amends for his past wrongs. His range of vision and talent is unsurpassed, transcending his field of specialisation. He has never been able to discover, create and manifest in his own life a harmony between theory and practice. He believes that he can never appease the nightmares that haunt him. If only he’d been more careful, less arrogant, checked his methods! How could one small but very dire mistake created such a monster, especially someone so deeply involved in his work, coming close to the point of obsession. Where did it all go wrong?

Director of Medical Services