Final Train Depot Design

For my sophomore interior design studio our final project was to redesign a train depot located in downtown Pullman, Washington into an art gallery, art studio, and residence. I was able to reuse the train depot into these three spaces while obtaining some of the history of the old depot.  The art studio is for an art welder and the gallery is to display the artwork in a space that is ADA accessible, the residence is designed to the needs of a resident who is legally blind. Many different processes were done to reach a successful remodel of the train depot.

To help design these spaces I was able to take a trip to the train depot and explore around for an object that inspired the whole design. At the depot I was able to find the object that I used for my inspiration; my object was a door that had a gold plate that read push on it. I chose this object because it had me thinking about what was inside the other room and what’s behind the closed doors. These thoughts lead me to compare the door to the actual history of the depot and what had happen inside the depot in the past. The concepts of the object that were used throughout the whole design were inside, old fashion, lines, and anomaly. By visiting the site I was also able to get a feel of the space and how open the space is, how light it is from all the windows, and how tall it appears. . Taking the visit to the train depot and being able to be in the actual space was a huge help throughout my design process.

The main factor of my design came from my inspiration object that I found inside the depot. The door and its push plate had me thinking of ways of how I could incorporate that small bit of history into my design. The main concept from the door was looking inside or trying to look inside. I also liked the idea that the door had an old fashion look to it so I used that as a concept too. I pulled two main elements of design and principles of design from the door they were lines and anomaly.  Curved lines were used on the door with the wood grain, horizontal lines were used in the trim of the door, and the vertical lines are found on the elongated gold plate. All these concepts were to create a parti that was the highest idea generator for the design.

After depicting the thoughts and principles and elements of design from the door and its push plate I was able to take my analysis and create a 2 dimensional design that worked with all the elements. To develop my 2 dimensional designs I played around a lot with looking inside or through lines. Many of my abstract designs used horizontal and vertical lines as a barrier and what was being looked inside of. Curved lines were brought into the design because of the curved wood grains that were seen on the door. The design of the cured lines that I used was done to resemble a vintage doily that represented the idea of old fashion. Anomaly is used with color; gold to represent man made items on brown which represent natural wood from the door. My final parti/ 2 dimensional designs was the curved lines overlapped by horizontal and vertical lines, it was a way to add my entire concept into the 2 dimensional designs. I was able to use my final parti in a 3 dimensional way all through the depot. 

The most important part and the part I learned the most from in this project was designing the art gallery. I had to find many ways to add my concept into an actual space. The main part of my concept that I stuck to was looking inside, it can be seen in the art gallery on the vertical display walls that are made from reclaimed wood and have slits through them to be able to see through, also the away the display walls are displayed played with the idea of looking inside to the next sections of art. The reception area was designed to be a literal 3 dimensional space of my parti design; I worked with a desk that used the same reclaimed woods with slits on them to look inside where you are able to see the curved pattern on the back wall. Curved lines are also used with the display walls and to help move visitors through the space. This process is a great way to learn how to incorporate a concept into actual space.

My favorite part of the remodel of the train depot was the ticket window located in the art gallery. As a way to keep the history of the depot alive I kept the original ticket window and the wall that it is on. I redesign the ticket window to show unity through the whole gallery but kept the actual window and booth. The design includes my concept of looking inside because the windows are meant to be a way to look into the other side where the artist studio is located. Visitors can look inside the windows to see the artist work space and how the art is done. The wall that the windows are on uses the concept of anomaly and brings back the door that was my inspiration object.  Two thirds of the wall is covered with laminate gold plates to represent the gold push plate on the door and the bottom part of the wall is adorned with reclaimed wood that signify the wooden door. Anomaly is seen by using man made items on top of natural wood. The design of the ticket window was a way to add concept to a new space but also leave a little history with it.

This project was a great way to help me improve ways I can add concept throughout a whole design. By adding concept to the design I always have a reason for what I do; I do not just add a design in because I like it each reason is connected to my concept in some way. I was also able to develop my commercial designs and how to add ADA accessibility and universal design to spaces. By finishing the redesign of the train depot project I feel as if I have improved in many of my interior design skills and learned new traits for my future as a designer.

STIR Competition

While designing an art gallery for a welder I was able to take my ideas for the space and create a poster to submit to the STIR Competition. The STIR Competition student design challenge created by Sherwin Williams is a way for students to be able to work with certain colors and color schemes produced by Sherwin Williams. I picked an analogous color scheme of yellow and red with a neutral brown. The yellow and brown were placed in spaces were the artwork was the main focus while the red was placed in spots where there was not much artwork was around so that it was not taking away from the pieces of art. Yellow was mainly chosen to go with my inspiration object which was a wooden door and the gold plate that was placed on it. The red went with the wood and how it had a bit of a red tint to it. This color scheme also works well with the artwork of the welder chosen for the gallery space, she uses red often to add a pop of color and browns and yellows is seen in the actual materials. For this competition my biggest weakness was deciding which parts of the gallery would work best to show my concept and the reason I chose the colors I did. My strength in this process was matching my renderings to the specific colors and showing the different values of the chosen colors. In my final poster for the competition I successfully was able to explain and show my concept through my sketches, renderings, materials, and color palette. 

Art Gallery Experience

Thomas Kinkade Gallery of Tri Cities

19 N Cascade St. Kennewick, Wa 99336

The artwork that was displayed were paintings, Paintings before 2003 used lithographic transfer, paintings after 2004 used gilcee printing. They were displayed in a gallery that is about 1200 square feet.

To display the art work they used movable walls to mount the paintings, most paintings were mounted on the walls or movable walls but there were also some that were leaning up against the wall. They also had some small tables holding up trinkets that were either for sale or for added decorations. They had a separate room which had a stand that was connected to a dark red wall, this space was meant to allow buyers to place the paintings they were interested in on, and it let the buyers seclude their painting from all the others to view it alone.

Thomas Kinkade was known as the painter of light, his artwork showed this by using many different values of color to bring out the look of light in his paintings.  For this gallery lighting played a huge role in the experience received from the artwork. There were three main types of lighting used in this gallery natural lighting, dimmers, and spotlights. In the three sectioned out rooms dimmer lights and spot lights were mainly used. In the main/middle area part of the gallery natural lighting and spot lights are used. Each sectioned out rooms have a theme, one room is Disney themed and each paintings look changes as the spotlights are brightened and dimmed, this room mostly stays bright to add on to the happy vibrant feel of Disney. The main/middle area has a lot of nature paintings which works well with the natural lighting that is coming in from the large windows in the front of the gallery.

When entering the gallery you are able to see the reception desk on your right and the exhibit starts on the left. By placing movable walls in the middle and cutting off the second half of the exhibit it helps direct visitors through a u shaped path. While going through the u shaped path on the left side are four separate rooms that to go through too, in these room it’s a simple rotation to lead you through the artwork.

The environment of this gallery is very calm colors that are used are deep red, tan, off white, purple, and light green. These colors are used to bring out main points of the paintings. The flooring is a simple wood laminate which is textured; the flooring doesn't take away from the artwork. Before this building was a gallery it was the old Tri City Herald Printing building in 1956, the new owners wanted to keep some aspects of the old printing building. They were able to keep the layout of the building and details like the crown modeling and curved edges. Although some details from the reuse of the building are left it does not take away from the gallery and the artwork it seems to add more character.

Impaired Vision Experience

As a part of the reuse train depot project we conducted an impaired vision experience to understand how it feels to have diminished vision. This was a great way to help experience how life is lived with impaired vision we were able to comprehend what our client goes through daily. For this experience I read the newspaper while holding a bag, this is considered 20/60 vision, I was only able to read the newspaper when it was about six inches away from my face but it was also blurry. I then folded the bag in half which considered legally blind, I was only able to see colors, shapes, outlines, bright lights, and I could make out objects about a foot in front of me. By using the vision simulator tool I experienced the views of a person with central vision loss, loss of parts of visual field, and tunnel vision. While looking through the central vision loss I could notice everything pretty clear expect the middle, loss of parts of visual field made my sight foggy, not whole, and parted, and tunnel vision was very narrow I wasn’t able to see what was on the side of me. The main purpose of this experiment was to do every day activities with impaired vision, my task was to wear simulated glass and walk into the book store on campus use the elevator, ATM machine, and walk up and down the stairs. From these activities using the elevator was the easiest because the elevator does were contrasted to a red wall and they had indications on the buttons. The hardest part was using the ATM because of the lack of indications the buttons were hard to see and I had to get really close to read the directions for the ATM. The stairs that lead to Holland-Terrell Library used contrast on the steps it was not easy going up and down them but they were not too difficult to handle.  With the glasses on many objects looked like big blobs and people looked like moving ovals. I enjoyed this experiment because now I am able to use what I learned to add into my universal design for the train depot.

Concept Development

Concept Model

While visiting a train depot in Pullman Washington I found an old door that had a push panel which became my inspiration for the reuse of the depot. What caught my interest in this object was the line work, a man made metal placed on natural wood, the geometric shapes, the idea of what is behind the door, and the history and age of the door and overall location. These ideas helped develop an object analysis where I was able to expand on these ideas and add in more thoughts i had about the door. By choosing the thoughts and elements of design that I could expand and move on with, it lead me to a Parti design that showed the concept that was being portrayed. After developing a parti design that showed my concept I created a textile by repeating and rotating the parti design, I wanted the textile to keep an aged look so the idea of dollies was incorporated for an appearance of old fashion.The main idea for the concept model was the thought of what is behind closed doors, by adding slits in a box it crafts the impression of a glance inside. Also added was a man made object extruding out of natural wood to stay with the concept of the inspiration object. This project was a great way to help expand my knowledge of concept exploration. I successfully moved the ideas from my inspiration object to a model that represents all the thoughts of my exploration.  My weakness was being too literal and abstracting the object but I then was able to move pass that. I am pleased with the final model and that I was able to move all concepts of the door into a textile and model. 

Contextual Investigation

For this project I was able to work with two others to create a template for a informative poster of an architect who worked from 1890 to 1930. During this project I would say that making a grid together with my teammates was every successful. As a group we brainstormed ideas on a layout that could work for all of us and be able to tell a story and lead you through the whole poster. Our skills of using a grid on a poster came in hand and also being able to lead your eyes throughout it without it losing you. We worked really well as a team, our strengths were communicating and discussing ideas together. My part of this project was to learn a bit about William Lamb who was the principle architect for the Empire State Building where he used an Art Deco style as his inspiration. I was able to grow from this experience and learned how to work with others to create a successful project and learn a bit about architecture in 1890-1930.

Habitat For Humanity

As a group project I was able to help with the design of a Habitat for Humanity House that is located in Tiempo Commons Moscow, Idaho. By using inspirations from the Palouse area we came up with the idea of growth to include in our design of the house. Being part of a group project is a great opportunity to work on teamwork skills; it is also a way to collaborate all different ideas from each member. Our most successful part of this project was working together to design a family oriented floor plan for a two story house. We were able to design an open floor plan with a large family room where family time and bonding can occur. In our floor plan we would have liked to change our dining room so it was larger for family dinners. To develop our floor plan each member in our group made an individual floor plan and annotated what they thought was important for the house, we then got together and were able to discuss all our ideas to put them together and create our plan. My biggest improvement from this project was teamwork skills meaning I was able to listen to others ideas and combine them with my own by working together. I enjoyed being in my group because our main strength was working with each other and agreeing on many aspects for our house design but we did lack in our time management because we have completely different schedule. As a group we worked hard to design a plan that worked with all requirements that Habitat for Humanity has to make a home for a low income family, we also made the interior of the house very aesthetically pleasing with sustainable materials. I enjoyed and learned a lot from working on this project with my group members and Habitat for Humanity.