Artistry Exposed

By Brittany Ricker

The semester is coming to the point where it’s crunch time and although there is a little over a month left to go, it doesn’t seem like much at all. Recently the graduate students had a mid-review where outside critics came to watch our presentations and gave us pointers (or point out what we were missing). The site is located in the Near West Side in Chicago, Illinois. Within the master plan that my group developed, I thought it was most appropriate to do residential. During initial stages of design I was constantly thinking about the Artistry that was surrounding the area of our site and how beneficial it would be to have those various artists all in one similar location that they could call “their own”. A place where it wouldn’t matter what time of day it was (since artists…of all kinds tend to not have a consistent schedule) and they could rehearse for a concert, use machines without disturbing their neighbors, etc. Below is a conceptual diagram over the master plan depicting areas where certain artist types could reside and the sound vibrations that correlate with each group.

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Currently, I am working with IMPACT ARTISTS and AIRBORNE ARTISTS. Impact is the sound vibrations that come from various sound vibrations higher than 55db. The northern half of the art studios will house various types of impact artists that require higher levels of soundproofing. This space will be designed so any type of activity/construction could occur and no one would be disturbed. Airborne is the sound vibrations from various sound vibrations less than 55db. The southern half of the art studios will house these types of artists that will still need soundproofing but not to the extent as the northern half. This area will just need to pay closer attention to noise coming from conversations and movement within the building. When trying to figure out the actual design of the building, I looked into the light of Chicago and surrounding artistry features and did a light study represented below. This gave me the idea to actually pull all the artists together into one central location and expose their creativity to the public. Giving the public an interesting/non-predictable pockets of light that would end up being the actual artist rehearsing/painting/sculpting….anything! 

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Following the light study and incorporating the artists, graphic representations of what this design is trying to express was done. Seen below is the process of taking a box which symbolizes what currently exists on the site and then in the next step … exposing the artistry that is occurring within the design.. Whatever  that may be. This was the conceptual phase  of this design and with a little over a month left to go, it’s being spent making this design work functionally AND conceptually which at times can be rough but that makes it definitely worth it in the end when you have a final design that you had fun (for the most part…) designing!

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