Undergraduate Thesis:
How-to

The most influential part of my college experience was during my fourth year, when I worked on the masonry foundation wall of a house that was being built near Virginia Tech. From that point forward I tried to view any piece of architecture as a sequence of parts instead of a final built product, and I was fascinated with the way that these parts came together.

For my senior thesis project, I explored the ways that we document instructions, how building instructions influence architecture and vice versa, and lastly, the practical applications of novel construction drawing formats.

Step 1: 2-4-6-8

When deciding where to start my research, I thought back to our second year of school where we learned about a building called the "2-4-6-8 house". Built in  1978 by Morphosis Architects, the house was commissioned by Josh Sale, who supposedly requested that the building instructions be shown in a way that could be read and understood by a layperson, so that he could build it himself.

The result of this request was this set of building instructions that more closely resemble a lego instruction manual than a conventional construction drawing set, and while unorthodox, they show the process of building in a way that would look much more familiar to someone who has probably only ever followed consumer product manuals.

The result of this request was this set of building instructions that more closely resemble a lego instruction manual than a conventional construction drawing set, and while unorthodox, they show the process of building in a way that would look much more familiar to someone who has probably only ever followed consumer product manuals.

To determine the effectiveness of these instructions, I tried to follow them exactly by animating each step shown in a 3D animation software.  

After getting through the first quarter of these instructions, I had two main takeaways regarding this format of building instructions:

#1: Sequence

Looking at each step one after the other reduces the amount of on-screen information at one time. While most written instructions, including the Morphosis instructions, show many steps, the video only shows one, leaving no question as to where the viewer's attention should be directed.

In the animation software I use, different events are laid out chronologically on a type of graph known as a "dope sheet". A dope sheet shows marks where important frames known as "keyframes" occur, such as the beginning or end of a camera zoom, or the beginning and end of the path that a nail travels. Dope sheets are an industry standard practice and have been used by animators since the early days of  Disney.

#2: Scale

The biggest weakness of the morphosis instructions, in my opinion is the difference of scale which some of the steps are shown at. The sequence of images zooms in and out with little to no indication as to when or where this happens. Since this video is taken using one continuous shot, there is much less room for confusion as far as keeping track of the point of view

Step 2: Amphitheater

For the next step of my thesis, I wanted to improve upon one of my past projects by developing it to show how it could be built using a a video instructions. To do this, I revisited my 3rd year competition piece, an amphitheater built near Virginia Tech's duck pond that could be closed and opened to adjust the level of enclosure it provided for its occupants.

This project was built in the woods in a sensitive area off of any roads and buildability was a high priority since the beginning of this project, therefore the project was extremely small and only built using a handful of materials.  Most notably, the panels that made up the amphitheater walls could collapse and unfold so they didn't compete with the natural enclosure provided by the tree canopy, so chain link fence hardware was the basis for much of the structure

Unfolded

Collapsed