Drafting Projects

Design Drafting

Analytical Presentation of The Kathleen Clay Edwards Library

The Kathleen Clay Edwards Library opened on September 10, 2004. The library was named after its benefactor Kathleen Clay Bryan Edwards, a devoted philanthropist who donated 2.5 million To Piedmont Land Conservancy to protect Price Park. This land was previously owned by Jefferson Pilot and was sited for the company club house. Edwards’s donation was in honor of her grandparents Julian and Ethel Clay Price, founders of Pilot Life Insurance. Piedmont Land conservancy holds permanent easement rights on the perk to ensure that the land is always used as a passive park. The Greensboro parks and Recreation Department oversees the maintence of Price Park where the Library is located.(http://www.greensboro/ Libraries.com)

This grand opening initiated the environmental focus of this branch. The event included a poetry reading from environmentalist and theologian Thomas Berry. Father Thomas Berry is considered an Ecotheologian. Also the T. Gilbert Pearson Audubon Society in collaboration with the city’s park and recreation department and the Piedmont Land Conservancy.
In the entrance/reception area of the library is a large cupola(a dome like structure with a polygonal base) the dome has a polygonal lantern with windows all around. This cupola is similar to the cupolas of ancient Roman temples which illuminate the space below. [1]There is a mural of wild life and nature scenes on it with verses from Thomas Berry’s poetry which state that it is the responsibility of this generation to lead the next generation in learning about the earth and its inhabitants that we would be good stewards of the earth for the sake of the next generation to come. “That it takes a universe to educate a child”, “ It takes a universe to fulfill a child”. This is just one of the verses written on this oculus.

In Thomas Berry’s latest work, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, “Father Berry gives an historical perspective, with the environmental crises multiplying around the globe. Berry offers the alternative of deeply affirming the sacred quality of the earth”
To summarize briefly we as human beings should be good stewards of the earth and that
Everything on earth need not be tamed. We must learn to accept things in the wild as nature intended them to be that all living things have a purpose on earth. There is a huge
Conflict between developers and environmentalist. We should truly study the earth (nature itself and learn to live with it in it’s natural state that over developing the land is detrimental to all living things.
Kathleen Clay Edwards Library is the first environmental library in North Carolina with the soul purpose to educate the community about conservation of the earth. They have programs such as the master gardening program to teach about gardening and replenishing the soil. Just recently they had a Earth Day celebration. Every month the calendar is filled with activities for individuals as well as families to enjoy the outside
Area. This library is located on 93 acre Price Park. They have a bird and butterfly meadow, a reading garden, walking trails, ponds and wetlands. The Library has an extensive collection of nature gardening and environmental resources for children and adults. The architects for this building are Teague, Freyaldenhoven and Freyaldenhoven . (TFF) The architectures of this building ensured that the construction of the library was environmentally conscious and minimize the impact on the park. .A large red oak tree which was cut down was used in furniture items these were then auctioned to provide funding for the library. The library has many green building features including natural
cork flooring, carpet tiles made from recycled materials, and ply-bent wood chairs which use the most sustainable process in furniture making. Low flow toilets were installed and solar panels and a cistern system to collect rain water is used to maintain the gardens around the library grounds. The building that I compared my selection in this analysis is the Weissenhoff building in Stuttgart Germany built by Mies VanDer Rohe which was built on the international style in 1927. Other architects in the international style was Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier.

1[1] The Stalin Report, leadership in energy and environmental design.
2. www. Greensboro/libraries.com
3.www. newbuilding.co “ A Sustainable life
4.www .Thomas Berry.com
5.www. Teague, Freyaldenhoven and Freyaldenhoven.com
6. Great buildings on line-Archiplanet.com
I also phyiscally surveyed the building and the grounds itself because the cistern system was not in existence at the time of the building being in construction. This was later added on by another company.

TEN BEST THINGS THAT GUIDED MY DESIGN JOURNEY

Ten Best things that Guides my Design Journey:

1. Egyptian Pyramids and any kind of Egyptian artifact. The Pyramids fascinate me. When I was a child in elementary school a student did a science project by putting bread under a pyramid shape and days later the bread was still fresh. It was preserved. I own an authentic Papyrus Egyptian painting.

2. The Immaculate Cathedral in Washington DC. Again my grandmother would take my cousins and I to this Cathedral on special occasions. There seem to be an aura of majestic peace and reverence when ever we visited this Cathedral .

My Grandmother's dishes. My grandmother always set the table for evening dinner after breakfast so that all she had to do was serve dinner when my Grandfather came home.from work. I loved to see the pattern on the plate as I ate my dinner.

I love animals all kinds but especially exotic birds, Macaws,Parrots, Parakeets, etc.
their feathers are so beautiful and colorful. They are such intelligent animals then again all animals are.







Amphitheaters: I enjoy sitting outside in an amphitheater listening to Music





love a cup of warm coffee in the morning.

I grew up with Danish modern furniture. My Mother had a fetish for good furniture. My Grandfather was from Denmark.




I love the sea and Islands anywhere especially in the Caribbean.
I love to travel and meet new people and places.

So these are a few of the things that inspire my Design Journey.

Coming full circle

Community We had a party for the IAR community last week and I'm sorry I missed it. I could not get in at the gate because I came alone and left my phone at home and was unable to call someone to let me in. Bummer.
One of the notable aspects of critical regional reactions to imported Euro-American Modernism was the reaffirmation of community of creating environments for groups of people living and working together in ancestral traditional ways. pp 607 Roth
As far as Interior Architectural Design goes we are coming full circle in our now global economy. The world has become a smaller place to live. A Global community your neighbor may have been born anywhere in the world and for now the house next door may look like everyone else's on the outside but the interior will be of the culture from which they came. With the high level of immigrants into America and Europe people from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and South America have a determinate influence on style of furnishings. For example people from the Middle East don't sit at a table to eat they sit in a circle on the floor. Many African countries still use their hands to eat with instead of table ware. People from Mexico and South America like to paint their homes in bright color that remind them of their homes were they came from. These are just some examples of change happening in American and European cultures. Since the 1990s with the rapid change in electronic communication and constant change in communication devices we are able to do business globally communicated with countries all at the same time. Do banking electronically. Work from home, go to school from home or even home schooling our children not attending a building except for the main home. Before 2008, the Housing market for the past forty years has been mainly healthy but now this is no longer so. The fall of the housing market has caused a financial crisis across this country and across the world. What will be the out come of this crisis with people all over losing their way of making a living.

How does this effect architectural style we are already across major cities in the US cutting back on new construction of housing and most cities are in trouble finding funding to preserve historic homes. Some cities across the US are thinking about using for housing the huge van's shipped with goods from China that stay empty in stock yards in major cities .
According environmentalist it is a good low cost living structure that stays cool in summer and due to insulation between the panels warm in winter. Use and reuse /sustainable living? I agree with Patrick in class when he mentioned stewardship. Sustainability means good stewardship of what we have in natural resources, water, soil , food, housing and building. Many store front are going empty and homes all over the country are going into foreclosure meaning empty homes. What impact will this have on the near future. Even here in Greensboro N. C. I see beautiful homes up for sale by owner due to the staggering economy. Times are a little frightening today what impact will this have on the near future for us as Designers?

Future designers will have to come up with inovated ways for housing, will we have communal homes like some in the 1960's. Will homes become smaller and close together? Will historic building be used for other purposes? Will there be a need for a School building if everyone communicates by electronic means? Who will be the new Designer to invent the best econological way to create housing that will be sustainable for 100's of years.in the future. As an older American most of us have cut down, cut back and realized that "less is more" from Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe.

(Pair)ing Down

Mediation/Celebration:
In our communications and Design class we were assigned first a window treatment that had to present duality and medication and celebration. We went through a process of twelve different drawing showing negative/positive,in/out,front/back,
dark/light and so on. We were allowed to use MDF board and paper or one other liner element. This project is now a continuation of another project that has to do with making a mediative.celebrative room out of the two offices on the first floor,room 118 and room 120. We had to get the dimenision of the room do a plan, plan elevation and three sections also reconstruct the room as one unit eleminating the middle wall choose to make the now office into a lounge for graduate students a place to relax mediate or sleep if need, as well as a mini public gathering place.

In Interior Architecture class the Arts and Crafts designer were more mediative in their craft of furniture making it was well made but rather plain and sterile.It was comfortable and well made but not as exciting as the Art Nouveau designers like Victor Horta with his Winter Garden. Celebrative style of Art Deco or Contemporary American design of Frank Lloyd Wright with his etched class windows in the SC Johnson and Son Administative building in Racine Wisconsin.

Action Verbs:

Speculate: Neoexpresionist speculated that their designs would be accepted and approved by Stheir clients and the public in general. In 1995 Gunther Domenig exposes what seems to be a skeletal frame of crete piers and beams extending a trussed steel and glass mass that curves
as it reaches out extending each story as it rises, with a slender steel beam and diagonals reching out from the finisher structure as if it were unfinished. Two other well known were Bart Prince and Grank Gehry who were known as biomorphic expresionist.
Prince is know for the a house in Corona del del mar,made of combined concrete and wood in curved and faceted modules. Frank L. Wright was another biomorphic architect who used trapezoidal plan layout with angeld incorporating sheet metal and cyclone fencing with angluar roofing. One major problem was translating this design on drawings for the client to see. Then of cource the most famous is the Guggenheim Muesium. These two architects are more artists than anything else expressing their thoughts and ideas as to what a designed building should be

and getting their clients to buy into their ideas.

In Design class we had to spectulate how to redesign our classroom windows for a place of duality and celebration.

Compose: Art Deco designs were composed of geometric emphasis derived from Cubism.

This was avant-garde movement in painting from 1907 to 1914 led by Pablo Picasso and George Braque it meant to deconstruct the Renaissance form of representing three dimensions of a two dimensional surface. This new analysis of visual reality resulted in fragmented , angular forms known in Art Deco work. Art Deco artist looked beyond the European influence for their design they look at the East and Middle East Japan to Arabria for the exotic. Large pillows for the floor. platform mattresses bright bold colors in the room and woodwork a resemble

from magazines and plays . A while back we watched the movie a Mid-Night Summer's Dream and from this we composed a story about our artifact which followed to other related designs in our combined design classes this semester. One of our lastest assignments was how is a story like a design.