My sketch and analysis of the Innovation Center.
Traveling here I knew one of the places I wanted to sketch was the Innovation Center. I had previously written a paper about it for 2300 and was excited to experience and analyze it in person. I was a bit concerned about it because we were warned that it was a challenge but I decided to stick with it and push my minimal sketching skills. I decided to focus on a section of the innovation center that had a large cantilevered area because I thought it was interesting and showed a lot of the elements of the project like the texture of the concrete, the scale, the parts that stick out, and the voided spaces. I definitely found that figuring out the proportions and angles was a challenge but I am pretty content with what it ended up looking like. I also tried to do a quick sketch of the entire project on my analysis page and after 2 attempts the end product is definitely not perfect. I was surprised that such a simple looking building was pretty difficult to portray correctly.
Something I was really interested in was the texture of the concerted and so I tried to portray that in the shading and then provided a more up close view on my analysis page. I was interested in how many details of the planks showed up in the concrete down to the heads of the individual screws used to hold them together. I think the texture helped break up the massive facade into more accessible proportions and was a wise design choice. I also analyzed the spheres on the path and the interior voided space.
I also analyzed the sphere areas along the main path. I felt like these areas were a very effective way to break up the path and create a space that allows people to interact with it how they choose. I sat on one of the larger spheres and used a smaller one as a foot rest while sketching and found that to be a pleasant experience. was sitting there a child walked by and briefly played on one of the smaller spheres which made me think back to the spheres at the infant park which Elemental also designed.
I think your sketch of the Innovation Center turned out very well, especially showing the material of the space since it was an important aspect of the building. The wood plank look softened the building so it isn’t viewed as a brutalist building. I also like how you showed one of the most prominent aspects of the extruding block. I found this building to be very interesting since I expected it to be much darker on the interior. I also expected the roof of the interior courtyard to be more of a window and less of a shade. I didn‘t even think of the spheres in the front of the Innovation Center, but that is definitely comparable to the concrete spheres in Elemental‘s Infant Park. Also in Infant Park I noticed the repetition of circles throughout the entire park: the organization of the slides, the concrete spheres, the children swings, and the tree grove‘s circular raised rubber platforms.