This is the completed model prior to the addition of the street line and overhead awning. I added a lot of the surrounding site as I thought it was important to the depiction of the building as a model. It's context influenced the design and thus most of the carpark is included.
I constructed the site from white foam core to represent the base mass of the surrounding buildings as simply as possible. The brightness of white highlighted the raw brick structure of my model and represented its street culture in its difference to the surrounding buildings.
This is an image of my actual design as a whole, prior to the making of the site.
I constructed the model in 4 main stages; firstly the main gallery room, secondly the apartment at the rear of the site (seen here), the courtyard in the middle of the two and finally the site itself.
This is my skylight of graffiti, which can be seen to illuminate the main function room. I was only able to make this out of paper which i reinforced later with a whitecard frame, as whitecard itself was much too difficult to cut in such a fine way.
Here you can see the aluminum foil added to my model, to represent the side of trains which is another exploration of materiality in graffiti surfaces and in turn its evolution.
This was very difficult however as the sandpaper wore away my knife very quickly and was difficult to cut.
The choice to use sandpaper was one based on a desire for a strong sens of materiality on the model. My exploration of the evolution of graffiti involved changing surfaces, and of course one of the most raw elements is brick. I used sandpaper to represent this and it resulted in a beautiful texture that encourages one to touch it.
This is the afternoon, and one can see the light fading and warping up the walls.
This is the light at midday, and this is when the graffiti is perfectly clear as the sun shines directly above.
This is the shape of the light that enters the building in the morning.
This is an image of my main gallery and graffiti skylight that is positioned above the main function room. The graffiti plays with the notion of the building being part of the art work and is oriented to face the solar path above the building.
Right Section
Left Section
The courtyard and apartment share a close relationship with the car park as it is almost surrounded and provides the perfect urban context of sounds, smells and general atmosphere.
Following the notion that my building follows surrounding form, one can see my room that grow in height from left to right, following the neighbouring building.
To illustrate the materiality of the building I covered the walls and floor of the main gallery as well as the exterior of the apartment in sandpaper to represent brick and thus the main surface of graffiti throughout time. My 'train room' can be seen in this image at the front, covered in aluminum foil to represent the side of a train. This sectional model was split in the exact middle as it allowed the main features of all room of the model to be seen clearly at a 1:100 scale.
The design for the facade is an attempt to create an emotionless front that beckons the pedestrian inside. The gap in the awning is deliberate to show the break in regular shop fronts and to highlight the 'ally-way' entrance. This entrance is dark and is to impose the mood of street art onto the person; 'a dark ally at night where youths are spray painting their tag onto their surface of choice, brick.'
The gallery occupies Site One and its form is based around its immediate context; the main gallery sits at the front of the site, ending where the building to its right ends. The courtyard is in the middle of the gallery and apartment and finishes where the building to the left creates a dogleg. Circulation in the gallery is quite strictly dictated in order to take one on a journey to illustrate the evolution of graffiti. The entrance foreshadows the coming rooms, each of which representing a different stage in this evolution.
This is the final model of the graffiti art gallery and it is based around my gallery owner's narrative. 'A mature graffiti artist wants to promote the recognition of graffiti being a lot more than vandalism and that it is an important part of mainstream art. He wishes to present this to the community through the art gallery and explore the concept of the evolution of graffiti.
