INITIAL IDEAS FOR RENOVATION OF MY OFFICE SPACE IN SL

These are just some ideas I had during our design class on wednesday about how I might start to renovate and re-think my design for the office space that I designed on paper and transferred into animation and will now re-develop into a virtual world. 


The idea of "nature" as a gift, Judy pointed out that this is an extremely broad topic and narrowing it down to something more specific is more useful. What is even "natural" anymore, there are too many uncertainties and questions with nature and the sustainability debate. Adding planting to everything will not necessarily solve all the problems with urban architecture and it's probably too much of an obvious solution. Though "green" elements have been shown to increase productivity in the workplace I would like to consider these more carefully in the renovation of my office design as I added green elements in probably too basic a way in my previous design. 


Thinking about REACTIVE ARCHITECTURE, and ergonomics, the human at the centre of the design, what are their needs in general and what are their needs right down to the smallest details like ease of use of objects, door handles etc etc. The architecture should react to the needs of the user and the architecture's impact on the used should be positive. I can turn negative aspects from my previous design into positive things now that I can see what was wrong with them in the first place. 


Thinking about nature and light in design (two things that i've always focussed on and seem to come back to time after time with my designs) and how these relate to the sublime (the feeling that is hard to pin down, awe and wonder and some overwhelming sense...) I might look back on the work I did during my last year at Elam when I researched nature and the sublime and into the finer points of how the sublime comes about and what specifically creates it, although i'm not sure I quite got to the bottom of those questions or that anyone else has... But I like the way the sublime relates to the idea of architecture being more than a sum of it's parts, that you can't predict everything about how a building with feel and work until it's actually built and you can experience it in the real world. 


SUBLIME - WILD - WILDERNESS




LIGHT - SPIRITUALITY


Ian suggested looking at the word 'numinous' to look further into these kinds of interests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous

Numinous

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look up numinous in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Numinous (pronounced /ˈnjuːmɨnəs/) is an English adjective describing the power or presence 
of a divinity. The word was popularised in the early twentieth century by the German 
theologian Rudolf Otto in his influential bookDas Heilige (1917; translated into English as
The Idea of the Holy, 1923). According to Otto the numinous experience has two aspects: 
mysterium tremendum, which is the tendency to invoke fear and trembling; and
mysterium fascinans,^{[citation needed]} the tendency to attract, fascinate and compel. The
 numinous experience also has a personal quality to it, in that the person feels to be in 
communion with a Holy other. The numinous experience can lead in different cases to belief 
in deities,the supernatural, the sacred, the holy, and/or the transcendent.