The idea for this sketch was to take a small piece or artifact from of Shin Takamatsu’s Dental Clinic in Kyoto (one of my favorite buildings) and design another building. I’m simply working in elevation for the purpose of this exercise. As much as I like to draw by hand I really like to sketch in CAD and so you’ll see the elevations and details shrink, stretch and change relative to my search for desirable proportional relationships. I’ll also borrow certain motifs from tpkamatsu’s work you can find in his wonderfully rendered elevations and images of work by simply googling it. Another theme of this sketch is a heavy expressive structural system as seen in the criss cross steel beams which appear at both ends of the short elevation. An interesting thing about Takamatsu’s work is the stark differentiation between window and solid. So here I’m expressing the windows with a large number of mullions to make them look vastly different than the various planes in space that wrap the building. One of the challenges was to figure out how to adapt the circular shape with central window. At first I assumed it would generate some kind of helmet like form which would serve as a window however, you’ll see it eventually made more sense as a kind of cover for a balcony. The circular shapes then generated others that look as though they become like hinges or axels of some sort. Eventually you’ll see that I start to use fills to add dimension to the various planes in space. I also like to add shade and shadow in CAD as well. It’s much faster and more precise than in Illustrator. What you’re seeing here is both the front and side elevations. In the end I think I’ve begun to capture a bit of the spirits of takamatsu’s work however, although the building is still a little clunky and I’ll work another version in perhaps the next sketch. I’m Doug Patt. We’ll see you next time.
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