Just adding extracts I have written recently regarding my project. They are not a finished item but I think it is valuable to upload writing as I write it to the blog. Aim: To keep track of progress and use it as a means of communicating what I have done, how it is developing, similar and re-occurring thoughts and processes which clarify my project in my own mind.
Sketch Essay 2
(CH 1) Intro
"...If we want to find ourselves, we must enjoy ourselves. In an individually personalized environment. In our own personal bathroom. A bathroom that, in its entirety, is a kind of interface for our physical and spiritual needs and which also reflects them.”[1] (Dornbracht, 2005, P.21)
Discuss what the bathroom is to me, and the intentions of the project. Yes
ABOUT THE THESIS TOPIC
My Master of Design Thesis seeks to investigate the bathroom, how it is used as a space and if there is the potential for a method for design that accommodates a singular persons/MY daily rituals, routines and actions within the bathroom. [Using myself as the tool for investigating ].
It is my belief that the methods for design demonstrated throughout this Thesis could be applied to any room within the domestic home, and used to inform the design of a better home, tailor-made to it’s inhabitants’ rituals, routines and movements. This belief for me was realised last year (2010) whilst completing my Bachelor of Design, majoring in Spatial Design. I investigated my bodies relationship to my home on Wellington’s busy Cuba Street, and created a series of works that highlighted the visual connection between inhabitant and habitat, me and my home.
SHOW VISUALLY WITH CAPTIONS. ^
IMAGES OF RED ROOM
Description relevant to project for both
IMAGES OF BEDSHEET
The bathroom is very much a ritual based room – it is a room built for purpose and one enters it with specific intents – such as washing, showering and bathing. Current bathroom designs seem to be defined by the multiples of singular products they contain, and not by the rituals that happen within, so what about the bathroom as a whole? Through my practice-led research, I intend to re-design the domestic bathroom based on the movements I make whilst performing rituals that happen within the space.
Gap - the gap between the role of the spatial designer and the product designer. Design is the interface between space and products?
Observation of my body’s movements, the keeping of a bathroom diary (both filmic and written), generation of movement diagrams and organization of body parts, products and actions from the diary, I have generated a series of tables that inform me of the actions, body parts and products that are most used – most interacted with, and most recorded – which will aide me in the generation of a tailor-made bathroom design unique to my own rituals, routines and actions – as fitting as a tailor-made suit.
[1] Dornbracht, A. (2005). People, Ritual, Architecture. In D. Hebel & J. Stollmann (Eds.), Bathroom Unplugged: Architecture and Intimacy (pp. 21- 25). Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser.
