Romain Du Roi
SCI_Arc Visual Studies / Spring 14'
Instructor : Anna Neimark
This project continued our studies of representational strategies with an emphasis on formal legibility through systems of geometrical rules, annotations, and scripting. The pedagogical goal was to build a sense of precision and intentionality toward architectural drawing and to develop a critical awareness of the inherent bias in each medium of representation.
The project started with the analysis of a letter-form through reconstructing, regulating, transforming, projecting, and rendering its shape. The characters of Le Romain du Roi, originally developed in France during the 17th and early 18th century by the decree of Louis XIV, offered the starting point for our drawing and modeling exercises. This typeface was strictly designed on a two dimensional grid following a rigorous set of geometrical rules that dictated the construction shapes: points, axes, lines, and arcs. I chose the letter-form of “E” to first accurately reconstruct, then deform, manipulating and articulating the outline using its controlling geometry.
In the following exercise, I projected the letter-form “U” into the resulting form of “E” from the first exercise. The two letters, oriented to form right angle, were extruded through one another, then reduced to their intersection. I then produced a series of four drawings of the resulting three-dimensional object, each a different representational study.
1- “Academic” rendering, where shading and shadows fall at 45 degrees from the top left to the bottom right to create depth in a two-dimensional drawing.
2- “Color” rendering, where hue and tone are applied to create different shading and shadows, producing a different legibility in the original object. Although colors were mandated, they could be combined to appear grayscale at a distance.
3- “Vector by number” rendering, where the raster shaded image is translated into a vector field, and a grayscale pattern is created by applying lines or dots in an ordered grid and calibrating them in size and orientation according to the underlying vector field.
4- “False” rendering, where over-printing, ink leaks, blurring, incorrect shadows and graphics undo the legibility and obscure the depth of the object, flattening out its form.
