Animation Introduction Lecture

This is for all students and instructors at SABE... Please feel free to come if you are interested in knowing more about animation and animation in Jordan...

Maysaa' Bataynah and Omar Al-Ma’eni Living Niches at Dabouq - Amman

The eye starts its first trips of wonders searching for where to enter. The concluded order the eyes get from the stimulated brain is not to stop but to continue the exploration. Hence, the first move the body makes is the will to jump to all over the different and the unlimited overlooks the site affords. This suggests that if there are many people located at this paved path of the site entry, you will find in a moments that these people will go in different directions and to the different hearths of the site.

At a first sight you hardly can recognize the house, though its there

but it speaks itself out as one of those destinations that you may want to get to in your trip of wonders throughout the place. The whole setting speaks itself as a place that tells different stories about different things that are to happen or that they already happened around and within the place. Some kind of time elapses within the spaces and the niches stitched here and there. Part of the experience is that you hardly can recognize whether the local stones the house is built from are part of that the site or the site extends as part of them. The stones are used and exposed in the vertical outside and inside layers.



You perfectly experience the place with landscapes connected to those of the past vernacular alcoves of our grandparents and great grandparents’ houses in fashionable expressions. Memories bring you to the place through the architecture and landscape, and through site and material. The point is, you can not get enough with your physical and visual wonders around the place, wither you are inside, outside, or on top of the house.

At the highest point of the site, which happens to be on top of the house, you recognize another experience of wonders, terraces of roofs and earth are expanded and displayed at your different perspective. Horizons extend through the roof texture to the blue skies if you are located at ground zero on the top terraces. Surprisingly, this same ground zero visual experience, which extends you from earth to sky, at another middle point of the site it takes you from blue (water body) to blue (sky).
Exploring the inside of the house does not feel like you have moved to another level of spatial communication. Rather, it extends through the different layers of glass planes, stone walls, skylights, and openings to the same outdoor experience, but it takes you to another dimension of time and weather envelops.

The indoor experience continuously evokes with contextual suction of the soul that elaborates meanings and connections to transformed memories through your genes that may be awakened as flashes from their unconscious state to the conscious alert state with the willing to keep exploring and to serine at the different hearths on your path of finding.

The visual continuity framed by the different transparent layers above and in front marks the above expressed experience.

All Photos in this post are taken by Dr. Majd Al-Homoud. 2004.

House Design is by Maisam Associates.

The Transparent Wall

Cultural meaning usually shapes peoples perception about the built environment in such a way that any alien element to their perceptions is introduced gets their attention and criticism. Such cultural meaning usually reflects definition of boundaries in terms of privacy and interaction. This is usually expressed in countries like Jordan through space and mass rather than space and distance. This defines that solid walls in space express needs and attitudes towards privacy more than transparent walls.

We moved to new constructed offices within Building A of German-Jordanian University at the Scientific Royal Society complex that have glass walls on the exterior and on some of the interior. Controversially, many GJU staff and students expressed to us their dissatisfaction with us projecting ourselves to the public as a showcase and their awkward feeing about our lacking of privacy.

Having our backs to this transparent back wall did not make us feel lack of privacy to a certain degree especially that we are still located within a fenced territory that belong to GJU/Scientific Society. This territorial boundary offers us a buffer zone and a transitional space between the very public “street” outside the fence and the transparent wall. Plus the aluminum shutters offers us a choice of control over when and how much we want this visual interaction.

Off course the passers by from GJU staff and students felt this visual interaction and the extroverted flow of information from the inside to the outside is a cultural shock that contracts to their definition and meaning of a wall that should closed and not intrude visually and physically the privacy of the users inside. Though we are in an institutional setting, a public kind of setting, this did not help to accept such a new definition of a wall. Mirrored glass walls seem to be more acceptable than such transparent glass wall.

All Photos in this post are taken by Fawaz Shamma, March 2009.

Does Nature Navigate People and Architecture?

Suggested here is the unconventional approach of understanding a place and feeling what the place feels, and listening to what a place suggests.

Would be fair to imagine the place and its natural context have the right to navigate people and architecture? Meaning to choose what is right for it?

Photo in this post is taken by Dr. Majd Al-Homoud. February, 2008.

Meditative Spaces

In the [Interior Architectural Design 1] course, I gave my students a project to design a meditative space.
The restrictions they had to work with were:
:: The dimension of the interior space was 3X3X3 m cube. The walls are made of concrete.
:: They have to come up with one meditative act that your space will contain… this act should reflect their personality.
:: They have to design the interior of this space including lighting, walls, ceiling and floor finishes, and any furniture used.
:: They have to design their own openings including the entrance to the space.

The reason behind this project is that I wanted students to get the essence of interior spaces which are light and color. And for them to go to the basics I chose meditation function because it is going to the basic and the specific. The main challenge of this project was to employ minimalism as a design approach, which for second year students is still too hard.

I wanted them to work with one specific concept that will tie all their design decisions together and justify them.

And yesterday they had submitted their project after almost 5 weeks of work...

= Ridab Soudani | The Golden Cage
In her project, Ridab chose the act of sitting in a cozy, enclosed way on her self. She chose the metaphor of a woman womb. The idea of rebirth was manifested in her entrance and exit to the space through a narrow tunnel.
She used the idea of layers as well to represent the concept of a protective cage...
One of the layers was tubular skylight that permits daylight into the space.
Ridab was successful in creating an experience within her space with a good start and end... but I think she could've manipulated more the mid of the experience.




= Dalia Musleh
In her project Dalia chose the act of watching the stars as her act of meditation.
She played around the idea of creating a space defined by light. She created a central circle on the floor where she would sit or lay surrounded by a light diffused by green calcite stone. Above her another circle of stars painted by glow-in-the-dark paints to represent the milky way... around this circle is a band of candles lights...
Her main down point is in having a static view instead of changeable views of the sky.




= Ruba Yaghmour | Poetic Wall
In her project, Ruba choose the act of writing poetry as her meditation. Her space consists of two facing walls one with famous quotes she likes and one with her own poetry pinned arbitrarily on the wall... her other two facing walls are a mirror wall with the door hidden in it and a stripped windows to give allow daylight and air.... in the middle of her space is her couch where she sits and writes and above her a chandeler created from crystals to give various reflections on the surfaces of the space.
Her work might seem not very minimalistic in its nature and she could have worked on joining more elements together. Also she could have played more on the concept of poetic architecture... using her text in a 3D way... and playing more with text, light and shadows....





= Mudaffar Moaitah | Hubbly Bubbly
For his meditation, Mudaffar chose smoking hubbly bubbly... An unconventional act but a legitimate one when freedom rules. Mudaffar had a challenge of creating a minimal space but yet incorporate tradition. In some points he did by using a recess in the floor for wood burning. But when it came to his other furniture he had a problem. His central "fire" square should have been reflected more boldly to the ceiling by creating a ceremonial duct for the smoke. Lighting as well was put with no deep consideration of the spirit of the place.





= Shadia Jaber
In her project, Shadia worked on the idea of staring at the outside view. She wanted to approach Japanese architecture but she was very timid in doing that. Her wide window was outlined by a vibrant orange frame to emphasize on it as her focal point. But the rest of the room did not play the same tune. Another interesting feature of her work is the painting with the Japanese script saying "Beauty". But once again this worked only on the visual side with no deeper consideration for its real meaning. Her work could have been developed into a more interesting output.





= Farah Hamdan
In her project, Farah chose the act of reading as her meditative act. Her design is simply a safe design. Visually it has no real faults and to some could be seen appealing. But conceptually it doesn't have the strong impact of stimulating the mind. She had a start in creating zones for the different stages of reading... but she didn't take it to the maximum and turn it into a ceremony. She also didn't play very well on the minimalistic approach. But she had thought of certain details quite well.





= Amina Hassan | Illusion
In her project, Amina wanted to create the sense of floating to induce the mind to relax and meditate. In order to do that she created a mirroring tiles and a glassed ceiling... thus upon entering the space you will see the sky, its reflection and you suspended in between. Her couch was made of glass and white linen. Her only problem was the lack of designing the walls... Her walls don't speak well with this strong approach.





= Sara Khatib
Sara Chose water as her playing medium. But she took another "bold" decision of changing her whole work two days prior the deadline. Her output was relatively poor. She had good ideas of how she wanted the person to feel the presence of water and how it can help her to relax and enter into a meditative state. But as I said she didn't have enough time to develop her [new] ideas into mature design.




Over all the students took a huge step from their previous way of thinking into a minimalistic way of thinking... They could have worked harder on the details in general and on making their designs more mature.
The issue of timidity is obvious and also of commitment.
I hope in their next project we can work on these two things.

Also a point made by one of the Jury members; Ola Sawae was of letting the students think of the exterior with the interior... giving hints on the outer walls of what is happening inside their meditative boxes. I have to say I wanted students to focus more on the inside since this is their first interior design project. However this is a a valid point that I will keep in mind.

Play as a Padagogy...

Playing a game consists of the following; a set of variables that determines the players, the locations, etc... and then there are the rules that tell you what you can and can't do... then there is the mission to be completed... which more or less is the playing process... and lastly there is a reward which signify getting the mission completed.
Looking at the words highlighted above [Variables, rules, mission, process, reward] I can find resonance in my own understanding of design process...
So... for me using playing a game as a method of teaching design is meaningful, interesting and rewarding... adding to that students feel more at ease and have more fun....

For today's classes in Multimedia and Web... I came up with an idea of making students create their first storyboard...
After dividing them to groups... each group had to write on separate sheets the following:
- Name of a celebrity
- Date and Time
- Place
- Name of an activity
- Name of an event

Then we shuffled those and hand picked one of each category for each group... then each group had to come up with a fantastical story that combines their keywords...
Afterwards they had to draw a short storyboard max. 5 frames to tell their story.

One of the key elements in this exercise are the ideas of chance and juxtaposition... these two concepts had their peak during surrealism which arguably had its second renaissance in the age of computer games... and in many ways are seen in the digital design and multimedia... [think of a trash bin next to your documents on your desktop with a mouse running around...]

Words chosen by students were variant from Julia Roberts to Mit3b Il Sagar.... from 16th century to distant time in future... from the jungle to Paris... from dancing to fencing... and from Christmas Eve to Jerash Festival...
Forcing themselves to create narrative that combines these words smoothly and "convincingly"...

In less than an hour time... Here are some samples of students works... which I have to say was quite good...

Hello World!

School of Architecture and Built Environment from German-Jordanian University is happy to start its own blog. In this blog instructors will share their ideas and reflections on their teaching methodologies and showcasing their students' works.
Hoping to promote a more open and creative education scene in Jordan and the region... especially in the fields of Architecture, Interior Architecture and Design and Visual Communication.

So...
Hello World indeed...